How to be successful in the Christian music industry with no experience?

So I feel like this question is a little bit misguided for a lot of reasons. 

Before we get into this topic, let’s have our moment of silence. 

At this time, I would like all of us to take a moment of silence and pray to God to help us to become the people that he wants us to become. Ask God to guide us towards him. Ask God to make us stronger at each thing that we do.

Now back to the show

From 0 to 100.

So if you’re reading this, I assume a lot of things from you. 

One, you might be a new musician and are wondering how long is it going to take you to become really good at guitar or songwriting or music in general. 

I get it, however, there is something that you should know about music and generally all of the other arts and hobbies that you could possibly do. 

When you start a hobby, you don’t do it because it pays. No, you do it because you like it. 

And you get better at it because you want to see yourself succeed in that field. 

And you ultimately push past all of the initial awkward moments where you aren’t good at what you’re doing because it’s just fun.

You don’t care about messing up because all you do is mess up. 

You’re in it because it is fun. 

Now what if you want to pursue music as a career?

This is an excellent question, however, it’s a lot of steps that you should take before you can even be considered to have a chance at being successful in music. 

Let’s start with the basics. If you’re already a musician and are pretty decent, I would say skip this next step because you have the basics down. However, If you don’t know anything about music, then read the entire article, it will help.

From 0 to 100: Starting at 0 and ending at 50

I don’t care how old you are, you can still make a living off of your music. 

I don’t care if you have no musical background or no influence or no social media following, you can succeed in music. 

It takes work, time, and patience, but there are certain steps that are needed before you can succeed at music.

The first step is to actually get good at music. 

You need to hone your craft first. 

If you want to be a songwriter, you need to know how to play the piano, guitar, or sing, and write AWESOME lyrics. 

If you want to be a session musician, you better have a whole lot of chops ready at your disposal for the instrument that you want to do. 

If you want to do a million of other things in the music industry, you can do it but it all takes practice, time, and patience. 

Personally, It took me 6 years before I could call myself ready to perform solo.

Other than that, I would always have to play in a band or something. 

Of course I was always lead, but it’s a struggle. 

And that’s working hard at my music for 12 hour days sometimes. Most often it was for 6 to 8 hour days. 

I was working on different things too. I was working on singing, guitar, piano, and music theory. 

It was all difficult, but it was well worth it. 

But you need to practice hard day in and out, don’t be discouraged by the haters who wish that they could be you. Trust me, I was in your shoes one day. I remember there were a few kids who called me gay just because I played guitar.

Let that aggression fuel your desire to get better at music, it did wonders for me. 

And to be honest with you, sometimes it fuels me to work harder at all of the things that I do today. I keep hearing those bullies of when they were insulting me in my head and it just pushes me to work harder.

So, let God be the one to raise you up, and trust me, when God has raised you up, it’s the sweetest feeling on earth. It’s better than playing the guitar or listening to some of your favorite songs, it’s better than anything you’ve ever tasted. 

Anyways, back to the practical, technical advice that I was giving. Get good at reading music, music theory, playing chords in different rhythms, playing at different tempos, your instrument and VOICE. Get good at both instrument and voice because every musician needs to know how to use their voice. 

And any other music knowledge or wisdom that you can find along the way, you have to chase it. 

Of course adhering to God’s laws at all times. 

From 0 to 100: 50 to 100

So, now that you’re EXCELLENT at music. (When I say excellent I mean that you are a professional musician. I don’t mean to put music above God, I mean that you are a professional musician.)

Now that you’re an EXCELLENT musician, you can now journey into trying to become a PAID musician.

A paid musician requires that you have all of the musical skills required of a musician mixed with the professional formalities of being an employee and or business owner. 

If it were me and I knew the things that I know now, I would have started my blog and written consistent blog posts a long time ago.

The reason is because now you have to gain your following and influence in people so that they want to buy your music. 

It’s like a business really. There’s a plan, there’s marketing, and then there’s profits. 

Marketing is where you figure out how to gain fans or “customers” and actually start a plan to get that following. 

Don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t have a million dollar budget to play with. 

Time is sometimes more valuable than money. Because with time, you can make a lot of money. 

I’m telling you it’s so important to start your YouTube channel or blog.

I will often preach to start your blog or YouTube channel because of this sole reason, it’s our marketing plan.

 Right now, I’m going on 1 year and 10 months blogging and I still haven’t made any money off of this blog, however, I’m not giving up. Sometimes that happens, it will be worth it in the end, trust me.

And not only that, but trust in God that if you made something good, then God will be the one to provide the rest of the good things in life. 

I have had some successes in my blog.

In my best month, I had 192 blog views for that month. And I’ve had a few months where I’ve had 130+ views each month.

Think of it this way, it’s a tenth of a 1,000 views a month.

Well my best month was nearly two tenths away from being a thousand views a month.

And the amount of views a month is only going to increase from here. I am going to get my first 500 views a month one day, I am going to get all of the milestones that I wish to obtain. 

And it will be God who gets me there.

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. 

Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time.

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!