Four things you need to think about before you make a Mixtape
Considering how the music industry is oversaturated with so much bs music and half ass artist, the chances of a new serious artists to making it to stardom are very slim, with this said we would like to point out that that the new way for artist to get in the game and become famous is to drop mixtapes.Now with the internet you can your mixtape on hundreds if not thousands of mixtape websites . So what makes a good mixtape, and what do you need to know in order to make a good one and separate yourself from the competition which is oversaturated with knock off artist who don’t take their craft seriously ?
You need a plan!
What most artists and musicians fail to understand is the fact that music is like any other business, and as a musician you make music and sell your product to wider masses. What we are trying to say is the fact that many musician out there don’t actually have a plan of promotion, they just go ahead and make a mixtape and don’t have any leftover funds to promote it in any way than the free social media that surrounds us today. This is a recipe for failure, to say the least for any businessman. What you need to do is devise a plan. Match your available funding with the plan and make it succeed. A lot of artists purchase expensive studio time with the top of the line record houses, only to realize that they left a big portion of the job unfinished, and what they have in the end is an unfinished mixtape which doesn’t even have a professionally designed mixtape cover, with no means of promotion whatsoever. So as we stated before, make a plan, write it down if you have to, make your money work for you in the best way possible, spread out your funds to match all aspects of your project evenly and you will succeed.
Having a good mixtape cover!
We previously mentioned that people usually neglect the fact that they need a professional or semi-professional designer to make their mixtape cover, now let’s look at why? The first thing we need to understand is the fact that people can’t listen to you mixtape while it’s on the shelf. With this said it’s safe to assume that eyes are the ones who purchase the record, not ears. So keep that in mind when you go about making you mixtape. While the quality of the music needs to be top notch, the mixtape cover needs to match and reflect upon that quality. Another important thing is that your mixtape graphics must resemble the type of music which you are making. Let’s say you are a rapper which is trying to make it to the big leagues, would you like to have a mixtape cover which resembles something that looks like a cover of guns n roses? As we stated before, you need to focus on the impulse buy aspect of people, and the better you mixtape cover is the better the chances of you succeeding are!
Quality beats!
The first thing which we need to state before we get any deeper in to this is the fact that beats can define and sell your music, and they can also destroy it! So with this said how would you go about finding good beats that would ultimately sell your mixtape? The most expensive options are usually the best ones, but without unlimited funds they are un-real. One method which is recommended is the idea that beats are being sold online on various internet music stores, a simple Google search will reveal the rest. The best thing about this is the fact that before you purchase a beat you can listen to a sample of it, and another good thing is the fact that all those beats that are being sold online are usually cheap, and if you put in the time and the effort in to it, you will find what you are looking for. That one sound that will ultimately define your music and your career. When you add all the previously stated to the larger picture of you having a plan it will fall into place perfectly. So don’t just go around making music with beats that don’t suite your needs, take your time, find the exact things you are looking for before you even start recording a song, it will be worth it in the long run.
Recording equipment
This is an aspect which cannot be overlooked. Many musician out there simply pay for studio time, only to regret it later on, so why is that? Musicians which you may or may not already know are much like any other artist, they think of something after the job has been done and they add it to the larger picture as the ideas come, leading up to an almost perfect final product. This is something which cannot be done if you are one of those musicians that buys studio time. However the way around this is pretty simple. While as we stated before, many musicians buy studio time, why wouldn’t you make a studio of your own, not fully professional, but just enough to suite your needs. You will have all the studio time in the world to perfect your masterpiece then once you have a final draft of how you want the song to sound the you can book professional studio and lay the track down doing it this way will save you alot of money. We know what you are thinking, it’s expensive to set up a studio! While this is true, the fact still remains that used studio equipment can be found in online stores like amazon or eBay for a lot less money than you would expect. And the same principle as with buying beats can be applied here as well, if you put in the time and the effort into your work it will pay out in the long run.
Another interesting thing to be aware of is the fact that if you manage to perfecting your craft recording and invest in some of the best equipment out, you can always start to sell the studio time for a lot less than any other studio out there, bringing you a good profit margin.
