How to develop short, mid, and long-term music career goals

By Keith Hatschek

The secret to reaching your music career goals is to define and achieve the smaller steps that will help you eventually achieve your long-term goals.

Many of us have been taking stock of our accomplishments from the past year and are now thinking about how to increase our productivity and success as the new year gets rolling. One of the most commonly ignored tools is learning to use goal-setting as a fundamental building block in one’s own career development. No matter what you tackle in life, setting and achieving goals is key to becoming successful. And setting goals is really as simple as defining various long-term, mid-term, and short-term goals.

Dreams are not goals. A goal must be written down and have a date by which you intend to complete it. For example, pitching your original songs to four music supervisors within the next 30 days is an attainable goal, since you have complete control over whether or not you can achieve this goal. As your own career plans evolve, remember that although we all aim to fulfill our dreams, it’s important to focus on the things you can control and attach realistic timelines to each objective.

As an example, let’s say that your eventual goal is to transition to a songwriter who is able to support him or herself 100% from writing. Right now, you’re working at a day gig outside of music. But your long-term goal (five-ten years) is to write top-10 pop songs. You also need a mid-term goal that’s achievable in one and one-half to four years because it’s unlikely one can go from being a barista or clerk to a hit songwriter overnight. So what might be a good mid-term goal?

Perhaps a mid-term goal is to be a published songwriter and have two to …Read the full story

Source:: Echoes