I've met so many incredibly talented, creative and skilled musicians who have a poor understanding of how to manage their finances. Unfortunately, most of those people are unable to sustain themselves through their music. In order to make your living in music, you first need to find the ways to make the income, and then you need to know how to manage that income. The tips below will help you with both of those aspects.

You may have heard this before but it's worth you hearing it a hundred more times. In today's music industry, it is completely essential to have multiple income streams - even top 40 artists rely on multiple sources of income including streaming, downloads, ticket sales, merch sales, royalties, CD sales, etc. You need to discover what YOUR income streams could be. Be prepared to think outside the box with ideas like: transcribing music, recording as a session musician, helping an artist with booking, mixing other people's music, teaching, Patreon/crowdfunding, etc. Or stick with the aforementioned revenue streams that are a little more standard for artists, plus things like TV/film placements which can result in great royalties coming your way.

Even the most successful musicians and artists have moments where they doubt themselves. I'm going to share some information, facts and actions that will help you overcome those anxieties and focus on achieving your goals.

Every artist and musician I have ever met doubts themselves to some degree. The question is: will you allow your self-doubt to paralyze you and force you to give up, or will you use it to motivate you to work harder? Those who are successful never allow self-doubt to stop them from improving and working on their goals.

A major source of self-doubt is the assumption that in order to be successful, you need to be the best in your genre, category, etc. You are basically telling yourself that you need to be in the top 0.001% of the tens of millions of artists in order to be successful, which is a very stressful thought. This is not true in music, because there is no definition of "best". Your uniqueness is what sets you apart from the rest, so you just need to be the best version of yourself. Develop your strengths and practice your weaknesses until they are no longer a hindrance.

The best way I have found to eliminate self-doubt is to take constructive action towards your goals. Use a calendar app to schedule slots in the day that you will dedicate to these actions. For example, if you are an artist you should schedule a 1-hour slot for sending out booking emails, a slot for writing a new song, a slot for posting on social media, etc. If you are truly going all out and working as hard as you possibly can on your goal, much of your self-doubt will be eliminated as you can rest assured that you are doing all you can.

Ultimately, you need to have a conversation with yourself and decide: how much does this mean to me? If you feel as though your life needs to revolve around creating music, then you simply MUST forget about the possibility of failure and work as hard as you can on making that life a reality. You will enjoy the process of working hard much more than the self-doubt and sadness that comes with knowing you're being half-hearted and will probably never do what you love. If you just want to make sure that music is always present as a hobby and passion, you will still need to work hard to make sure that happens in the long-term.

Best video for overcoming self-doubt: https://youtu.be/W6nT2yFc5UA

Charles Berthoud