7 Reasons Why Writing Well Will Help Your Music Career
As crazy as it sounds, the art of learning how to write well will immensely help in your journey to make a living with your music.
Everything from properly targeted emails to self-penned biographies and album press releases are areas where writing well can have a direct impact on your success in the new music industry.
The great thing about writing is, it’s fairly simple to learn. Set a goal, and write a set amount of words per day. It just might help you in the following ways:
1. Blog Reviews
Want music bloggers’ to review your music? Then you need to create a personal, well targeted email directed solely at them. If your message looks like it’s been cut and pasted to 500 other blogs, you probably won’t get many reviews.
Develop your writing to create relevant emails, that will catch the attention of each individual music blogger.
2. Traditional Press
The secret to getting traditional articles in the paper, can sometimes be as easy as writing the article yourself. A well written article in the tone of the paper you are submitting to, will save journalists from having to find out and craft all the information themselves.
If you’ve done your research and written in the style of the publication, they may use your complete story, or incorporate your writings into their own.
3. Getting Gigs
Using clear language, proper grammar and correct punctuation goes a long way to show your professionalism when approaching promoters about a possible gig. It’s amazing how many artists send emails all in capitals or with no regard for grammar or presentation and yet do not understand why they aren’t getting booked. Keep emails simple and to the point.
Learning how to write well helps form these habits from the beginning!
4. Effective Newsletters
This is a big one. Newsletters are important for contacting your fans and keeping them updated. Study writing and marketing techniques so that each newsletter makes an impact on the reader. These letters can directly impact sales for a new album, or attendance at gigs, so make sure they are engaging, easy to read, and contain a call to action for every reader to perform.
Newsletters should not only inform fan about shows and new releases, but also should encourage them to perform a certain action (download a song, buy merch, vote on something, answer a survey etc.).
5. Press Releases
In some cases, you might still want to go the traditional press route. Usually you would hire a PR firm to craft a suitable press release for you. But the atypical artist who writes well will cut out this cost and take control. Study other news releases, and take notes.
Be warned, these are tricky beasts to master, but once you’ve got a handle on them you can write them yourself and send them out to news-outlets whenever you have a good “story” to tell about your music. Keep in mind that a good story is not a new album release or a show date. Usually it involves an angle; something that will be interesting to the regular reader (a big charity event, a local band touring a faraway exotic place etc.,).
What story can you weave into your next release or gig?
6. Social Media (Status Updates)
Here, grammar doesn’t matter quite as much (think Twitter), but you still need to be able to write well to make status updates effective. Social media is your listening and broadcasting point. How you interact on these forums will determine how your fans view you. If you have a persona on stage, use this persona in your updates. If you’d like to display yourself as a regular person, make sure your status updates aren’t presenting you as someone you’re not.
Learning how to write good headlines is a useful skill when trying to piece together status updates.
7. Artist Bios
Artist biographies are a necessary evil when you need to provide quick information for journalists and bloggers. The ability to write an effective bio for yourself is an amazing skill to have, as bios need to frequently be updated with every new release or tour. Collect five biographies that you enjoy and try crafting your own in a similar fashion.
Once you’ve mastered this skill, you will be able to keep your bio updated and never let it languish (like so many other artist bios before it).
I often say that atypical artists need to wear many hats, as you can see, becoming a good writer is no exception.
As you become more established, the ability to write well will remain useful. It will essentially provide you with the opportunity to get an article published on any topic relevant to you or your music, without waiting around for journalists to write about you.
Is learning how to write worth the time and effort? What do you think?
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Image by: Markus Rödder
18 Responses to “7 Reasons Why Writing Well Will Help Your Music Career”
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tony Molieri, Mike Venti. Mike Venti said: New post up: 7 Reasons Why Writing Well Will Help Your Music Career http://bit.ly/cKBg8P [...]
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[...] We receive thousands of emails at CD Baby every day. I’m sure it’s the same for most distributors, labels, influential music blogs, popular critics, and booking agents. When you’re competing with that volume of individual communications (emails, newsletters, tweets, status updates, press releases, etc.) directed at bloggers, gatekeepers, fans, and journalists, you’re going to want your sentences to pop off the page (or computer monitor). Don’t let your writing fall flat. For some great writing advice, check out Mike Venti’s article “7 Reasons Why Writing Well Will Help Your Music Career” on … [...]
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[...] you can increase your success as an artist through successful writing by reading the full article- 7 Reasons Why Writing Well Will Help Your Music Career. Share and [...]
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[...] We receive thousands of emails at CD Baby every day. I’m sure it’s the same for most distributors, labels, influential music blogs, popular critics, and booking agents. When you’re competing with that volume of individual communications (emails, newsletters, tweets, status updates, press releases, etc.) directed at bloggers, gatekeepers, fans, and journalists, you’re going to want your sentences to pop off the page (or computer monitor). Don’t let your writing fall flat. For some great writing advice, check out Mike Venti’s article “7 Reasons Why Writing Well Will Help Your Music Career” on … [...]
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[...] nobody in the band is like that, then somebody better learn to write, and quickly. After all, if you’re planning on making a career out of music, this email [...]
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[...] nobody in the band is like that, then somebody better learn to write, and quickly. After all, if you’re planning on making a career out of music, this email [...]
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[...] nobody in the band is like that, then somebody better learn to write, and quickly. After all, if you’re planning on making a career out of music, this email [...]
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The “Bio’s” in “Artist Bio’s” doesn’t need that apostrophe.
well written! ;)
And I totally agree… there are so many things that need written outside of the actual songwriting. Unless you are going to have an employee to write all this stuff for you, it’s a good idea to become accomplished to some degree.
But I’m a bit of a one stop shop all around and that doesn’t suit everyone, so each to their own too!
Thanks for pointing that out Greg. The learning never stops!
Well said Helen!
It’s not that hard to learn to write, but you need to pay attention to good writing. Look at what is good and analyze what those writers did. Mimic them until you learn how to do it on your own.
Also, the single biggest reference I can recommend is Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style.” It’s a very short book that gives you tips on how to write clearly and simply.
@Suzanne You’re absolutely right. Writing well is quite simple, it just requires a bit of extra effort.
“The Elements of Style” is a marvelous book for learning how to write. I enjoyed reading it. Great recommendation!
> Is learning how to write worth the time and effort?
Absolutely!… and any year now I KNOW I’ll have that skill!
Thanks, Mike, for the pointers and reminders.
Thank you WM for the great advice. It really makes artists realize where some of our own promotional efforts may be falling short. I am going to use the advice from each of the categories, and hope this will make quite a difference. This was an awesome article!
Agreed, if you’re taking your music as a career you need to be able to write effectively. Short hand and slang when you’re approaching someone on a business level is really not a good idea…
Aint nothing gooder than a well written peace with xelent spelin and a thoughtful targeted subject that will be of interest to your reader. Hope this helps
I’d like to link this blog to a new website for prospective music majors –– MajoringInMusic.com. It offers great advice for up-and-coming musicians about the direct value of developing good writing skills. Those who think that becoming a music major is a reprieve from all the reading and writing they did in high school will really benefit from your recommendations.
I also want to add that writing whether that be blogs, status updates tweets, etc.. will show fans that you are around and actually interact with them, and fans love that because they’ll see you as an actual person and will tend to respect you more and in turn will support your music more granted that you have good music too.