Recording Artist and touring musician 

Introduction 

A recording artist and touring musician is a person who makes there living through the creation and commercial releases of their own discography, alongside live performances and entertainment events. Within this essay, I am going to detail the aspects required to be successful within this profession and reference sources to support my claims. 

Qualifications and experiences 

Relatability- Relatability within songwriting is key to establish an emotionally invested audience who care about you as an artist and the music you create. ‘Songwriting is about the human experience’– Tyler Childers. Writing authentically to you and your human experience allows you to build a strong fanbase and connected audience, leading to more success and profit. A great modern example of this is Taylor swift who has just completed the highest earning tour in music history, and her strong connection with her fans “the swifties” can be seen as a key factor to this success. 

Persistency- Persistency is important as this job role is highly ambitious and within an extremely competitive industry. A modern example of this is shown within the band geese, who were signed in 2020 but didn’t gain any real acclaim and popularity until summertime this year following the release of their third album “getting killed”. This demonstrates persistency as they continued to work touring, writing and promoting themselves for 5 years until achieving major success. 

Communication skills- Communication skills are vital for this job as they are required in almost all areas of work. For example, reaching out to book gigs, speaking to labels, publishers, reviewers and other industry professionals. Good communication skills allow you to communicate effectively and professionally throughout the industry to acquire the things you want as well as build a reputation as courteous, hardworking and professional while also ensuring clarity and understanding at both ends of the conversation. Clarity is especially important while communicating, to ensure your needs are heard and understood. “The clearer you are in your message/ information, meaning etc. the easier it will be for the recipient. As a matter of fact, this is not a one-way-route, communication always runs in both ways.” 

Performance- Being a captivating and proficient performer is key for this job role, as most of the money earnt is through touring and live shows. Having performance experience from small gigs like pubs and clubs allows this skill to build up and is crucial for your audience to pay for a ticket to see you live. Being an engaging performer also strengthens the connection with your audience at live gigs and allows them to feel part of a community, givingthem a memorable and unique experience. “Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.” 

What does a typical days work look like for this profession? 
The nature of this job role is highly irregular, so days look different all the time. However commonly, recording artists will spend hours practicing their craft alongside instrumental/vocal skills, while also spending time on social media, marketing and promoting themselves. Additionally, workdays can be spent in the studio recording albums/projects, as well as travelling on tour to different venues nationally or globally. Often, there is no standard routine 

for a recording artist day to day, and work hours do not sit within the traditional 9-5 work culture. 
 

What are the main financial and legal issues that impact on this profession? 

Financial issues are extremely common for aspiring recording artists as the industry is extremely competitive, cutthroat and hard to earn a living in. Financial issues within this job role also hinder success in practical areas such as affording touring equipment like microphones, a PA, amplifiers and much more. Alongside this, recording artists may struggle to afford studio time and producers to record their tracks. This makes it difficult to progress in their careers without working a separate job on the side, which is often very time and energy consuming, draining creativity and physical energy both. Having to balance both sides of life can make things extremely difficult financially for a recording artist and hinder their chances of success within the industry largely.  

Legal issues are rife within this job role. Copyright is very important within the music industry and recording artists must be very careful not to infringe copyright when composing their own music, accidentally or not as it can become serious and result in court action. Likewise, recording artists must ensure that their own music and creations are copyrighted so that others don’t steal their work.  Another legal issue a recording artist may face is dealing with contracts between labels and publishers and ensuring that a fair royalty agreement has been made. Artists can get assistance with legal issues through various means. A private lawyer, musicians Union, or a musician’s society such as PRS for music. 

What would the potential marketing and promotional aspects of this profession look like? 

Social media: Promotion through social media is common for recording artists as you can reach a wide range of audiences and build a brand/interpersonal relationship with them, in turn leading in more attention to your music and connection with your audience. Promotion through social media can be achieved in various ways. Firstly, posting clips of original songs/covers in short form content like reels/TikTok’s can help grow an audience invested into you as an artist. Alongside this, artists can engage with fans, helping to increase their connection to your brand and content. Another way social media can be used is to promote gigs and album releases. This can be done by sharing posters and visual art to engage with the audience further. 

Website: As much as social media is great for growing an audience, a website is great for having a central hub of all information for your audience to easily access. This could include things like tour dates, new music updates, artist information and social media links.  

Email list: A mailing list is a great tool for promotion as it pushes direct updates about new releases, tours and exclusive content to fans. 
 
Networking: Networking is a valuable tool for recording artists as it brings many new opportunities to you. An example of networking is connecting with the local scene of venues, other musicians and promoters as well assending your music to radio stations and music bloggers. 

 
 
Playlisting: Submitting your music to playlist creators for streaming services can be a great way of getting heard as the most popular way to consuming music in the modern day is streaming. This can be a successful way of widening and growing your audience. 

Merchandise: Merchandise is a great way of physical promotion which involves selling items representing you as a brand. This is useful as they act as advertisements for your music and grow more attention around it. 

What are the intellectual and personal challenges presented by the profession and how might these be dealt with? 

Industry 

Retaining creativity (writers block): This can be a challenge for recording artists to consistently create high quality music without stagnation and continue to develop their songwriting skills and career. This issue can be dealt with in multiple ways, firstly taking time to experiment with different songwriting techniques is useful to reduce creative strain and experiment with new approaches. Additionally, methods such as journalling can be used to help keep authentic inspiration for your songs, especially using sensory language such as taste and smell can be particularly useful to move over into song. 

Industry knowledge: Recording artists may struggle with understanding industry knowledge, such as how to deal with labels, promotors and current industry trends. They can help deal with this issue several ways, firstly reaching out and networking with other professionals and learning from them and their experiences. Also, they can learn from practical application “just doing it” to gain experience and learn from both successes and failures. 

Personal 

Emotional exposure: Songwriting is a very personal experience, and this can be a challenge for recording artists to expose vulnerable parts of themselves to the public. A way this can be dealt with is by creating a support system outside the industry to ensure your mental and physical wellbeing is good. Also detaching self-worth from audience response of your songs is crucial to remember when feeling like your vulnerabilities have been received badly. 

Discipline: Discipline can be a huge problem for recording artists as their schedule and amount of effort they apply into their career is solely up to them. This can be a challenge for artists who struggle with mental health problems. Artists can help deal with this problem by establishing a routine for them to ensure tasks are completed and they progress in their career, alongside this seeking mental health support from family and professionals. 

Competition: The music industry is very competitive and there are lots of other recording artists trying to make it. This can be a challenge as artists may feel inferior to their peers. This can be dealt with by remembering to feel grateful where they are at and enjoy creating music regardless of the surrounding pressure and industry. 

What career-progression/development opportunities are available within the profession? 

Career progression within being a recording artist is non-linear and requires consistent work into a variety of areas.  

• Artistic development over time allows artists to refine performance, songwriting and personal style in turn leading to a better quality of work and solidified persona as an artist. 

• Unsigned to signed is a pathway that a recording artist may want to take. This can be achieved by starting independent, funding and recording music themselves to then contacting labels and publishers to get a record or publishing deal. 

• Social media growth is also an area of career progression which can be achieved for a recording artist. This happens through consistent content creation and improving the quality of their content through trial and error whilst also learning from outside sources. Social media progression additionally provides career benefits such as professional credibility and content monetisation opportunities. 

• Live performance growth- Artists can start by getting local gigs in pubs and clubs and working their way up to small venues and festivals. Additionally growing a touring team alongside this scale of bigger and better gigs. 

• Music industry knowledge- Artists can learn practically and educationally about the music industry and how to succeed within it. They can progress in this area through working practically in the industry such as networking and attaining industry related jobs alongside educationally by researching independently through books and other sources or attend a music course at a university. 

• Building direct fan relationships- This is a crucial part of being a recording artist, creating an interpersonal relationship between fans to create loyalty, connection and long-term support for your brand. This in turn makes them more likely to engage with your brand through various means such as buying music, attending events and buying merchandise. Building fan relationships can be done through replying on social media, creating an email list and high-quality, fan involved live performances in gigs. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, being a recording artist and touring musician takes lots of time, hard work and consistency to achieve success as a career path. It is gruelling and involves non- regular workdays and schedules and is an extremely competitive industry to work in, however it can provide flexibility and freedom in a lifestyle unlike a traditional 9-5 career path. Financially, it can be difficult to make money as a recording artist due to the vast competition however it has unlimited earning potential rather than a standard job which is capped at a salary. 

Bibliography 

• Probst, S.-L. (2020). Communication In The Music Industry. [online] BlackbirdPunk. Available at: https://blackbirdpunk.com/2020/07/24/communication-in-the-music-industry/. 

• Bandzoogle (2024). The Complete Guide to Marketing Your sMusic Online. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db4Bsw0rsUw [Accessed 2 Jan. 2026]. 

• ‌Radcliffe, M. (2020). How to… beat writer’s block. [online] www.prsformusic.com. Available at: https://www.prsformusic.com/m-magazine/how-to/how-to-beat-writers-block. 

• Childers, T. (n.d.) Tyler Childers quotes. BrainyQuote. Available at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/tyler_childers_1207010 (Accessed: 2 January 2026).