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Country Music Early Originals

 1950's country music videos

Todays Girls

oh brother where art thou soundtrack

Soggy Bottom Boy's!

Country music is a genre of American popular music that originated in Southern United States, in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the southeastern genre of American folk music and Western music. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. Country music often consists of ballads and dance tunes with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjos, electric and acoustic guitars, fiddles, and harmonicas.


The term country music gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to the earlier term hillbilly music; it came to encompass Western music, which evolved parallel to hillbilly music from similar roots, in the mid-20th century. The term country music is used today to describe many styles and sub genres.

The origins of country music are the folk music of mostly white, working-class Americans, who blended popular songs, Irish and Celtic fiddle tunes, traditional ballads, and cowboy songs, along with African American blues and various musical traditions from European immigrant communities. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, and second most popular in the morning commute in the United States.

 Immigrants to the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North America brought the music and instruments of the Old World along with them for nearly 300 years. They brought some of their most important valuables with them, and to most of them this was an instrument: "Early Irish settlers enjoyed the fiddle because it could be played to sound sad and mournful or bright and bouncy." The Irish fiddle, the German-derived dulcimer, the Italian mandolin, the Spanish guitar, and the West African banjo were the most common musical instruments.

According to historian Bill Malone, writing in Country Music U.S.A, country music was "introduced to the world as a southern phenomenon." In the South, folk music was a combination of cultural strains, combining musical traditions of a variety of ethnic groups in the region. For example, some instrumental pieces from Irish immigrants were the basis of folk songs and ballads that form what is now known as old-time music, from which country music descended. It is commonly thought that Scots Irish folk music heavily influenced the development of old-time music in the Southern Appalachians, where the earliest European settlers hailed principally from Northern Ireland.
 
Ryman Auditorium, the "Mother Church of Country Music"

How To Market Your Music In 7 Steps.

How To Make It In The Music Business, 4 Important Factors

Important Note: This is not one of those guides with no substance that says “Work hard and you’ll achieve it”. Have a read to see what I feel you need to give yourself the best chance of success in the music industry. If you find it helpful, please share with other musicians and band members.

Making it in the music industry isn’t an easy task at all. If anyone’s ever told you it would be, they were lying!

That said, it’s not impossible to get where you want to be either. Want to make an additional part time income from your talent? Or want to play sell out tours by yourself or with your band? There are acts out there that are doing this as we speak, so it definitely is achievable.

But what factors are needed in order to succeed in the music industry? What should you be doing to ensure you hit your aims and objectives? This is exactly what we’ll be looking at today.

Below I’ve shared 4 key things which I feel are all important for hitting your goals.

I hope you find these incites useful, and get involved with any additional things you thing are important at the end of this guide. But first:

Early Disclaimer 1: I’m not saying these are the only factors needed to become a success in the music business. That said, these are what I feel are the most important, and will give you the best chance if you put them all into practice. All of the below 4 factors are broad overviews, as going into any level of real detail would require bring the length of this guide up to book level at least. Thankfully, a lot of the needed finer details can be found scattered around my site and Music Industry How To. Early Disclaimer 2: Everyone’s has a different idea of what ‘making it’ is. Some would be happy with an additional part time income from the music business, for others making it means being both commercially and financially successful. Whatever your idea of making it is, these tips will still be relevant. All are good practices, and traits which generally encourage success.

Now I’m not saying it’ll be easy or happen within the next few months, but get these things in place and you’ll be on the right path. With that out of the way, let’s get into it. Here are the four factors your should be striving towards:

1: You Need To Have Undeniable Talent

The first thing you need in place, is a good level of talent. Without this, your music career most likely won’t be very long lived. Sure if you have a strong marketing team in place and they spin a good angle on why people should like you, you don’t have to be the most talented musician in the world to see some level of success. That said, do you really want to be that person who has more people disliking them then supporting them? My guess is you don’t, even if you are financially successful.

Talent comes before all else. Until you’ve got a good level of talent, you shouldn’t do anything to promote your music. You want people’s first impression of you to be a good one, as it’s not a easy job relaunching yourself to a group of people who have heard you but weren’t very impressed. Chances are they won’t try and listen to you the second time around, even if you tell them that you’ve improved.

As you may notice, I didn’t just put “you should be talented”. I mentioned you need undeniable talent. There are lots of levels of talent, and while you can be quite successful with a ‘good’ level of talent, if you’ve undeniable talent (combined with the other factors in this list), it’ll be hard for you not to have some sort of financial success in the music industry. In all honesty, there are a ton of talented musicians out there who make really good music that will make their target audience very happy. That said, there are a lot fewer musicians whose talent is generally undeniable. If you can get your talent to this level, you’re going to be a lot closer to your music career goals.

2: Drive And Motivation Should Be Flowing Through Your Veins

Next up, you need drive and motivation to push your music career forward. This is just as important as the above step, as without drive, your talent isn’t going to count for much.

You could be the world’s best singer, rapper, or bass player. If however you haven’t got the motivation to get your music recorded, to promote it in any way, or to generally do the things needed for a successful music career, then you might as well be talentless. Because you won’t make a success of yourself in the public eye. If you’re only interest in making good music for yourself, that’s fair enough. But I’m guessing as you read my site, you want more then just that.

Making it in the music business takes a lot of hard work and effort on your behalf, so if you aren’t willing to invest the time needed, don’t expect to get very far at all.

Now I know someone in the comments is going to say that not everyone has a lot of time to dedicate to their music career, and I understand that. That said, do what you can. If you’ve the other factors in place and you dedicate as much time to your music as humanly possible, you can still have some level if success. It may take longer to achieve then it would for someone who has 7 hours a day to dedicate to their music and who has more disposable income. Furthermore, you might not even reach the same heights they achieve. But if you dedicate a few nights a week after you’ve finished work and put the kids to bed, as well as half a day on the weekend to what you need to do, there’s no reason you can’t make at least an additional income from your music. It is possible, but you need to put the work in. Now the question remains; Do you want it enough?

3: You Need Good Marketing Knowledge

The third factor you need in place is the ability to market your music in the correct manor. In the same way having talent won’t help you get out there if you don’t have the drive to push yourself, if you spend 35 hours a week doing the wrong kind of marketing, you’ll find it very difficult to make much progress; both in terms of building a fanbase and gaining recognition.

Marketing is what you need to do in order to raise awareness of you and your music. Without marketing, people won’t know you’re a musician, let alone hear any of your material. That said, not all marketing is made evenly. In fact, some types of marketing are pretty much a waste of time, as it’ll stop you doing the things that would really benefit your music career.

For example, let’s say you read somewhere that Twitter is a great way to promote your music. So you go on to build up 23 fans (You’re following 106), and you spend all your time sending Tweets to these fans thinking it’ll increase your exposure. In reality, it won’t.

Now I’m not saying you’re personally going to do this, but I’m using this example to illustrate my point:

If you don’t promote your music in the RIGHT way, you won’t go very far at all!

If you want to learn more about music marketing, check out the free music marketing ebook. It’ll get you on the right path with regards to raising awareness of your music, so give it a read.

4: And You Need… Luck (?)

Ok, so I wasn’t sure if I should put this one in. I myself have mixed feelings about how big a factor luck plays. Sure you can get lucky and be in the ‘right place at the right time’, moving your music career forward faster then it would have gone otherwise. But if you’ve the above three things in place, it’s going to be pretty much impossible for people to ignore you for very long.

If you’ve an undeniable talent, you will make fans. If you’ve the motivation to get your sounds out there and the marketing knowledge to know how to effectively do that, you will get more people hearing you. That effect will snowball, and you will gain more opportunities and money if you market things right.

It’ll be silly for me to deny that luck doesn’t play any part in a lot of musicians careers. That said, I’m a firm believer that you make your own luck. By putting into place the previous three mentioned points, you will have made yourself more ‘lucky’ then a lot of musicians out there.

If you’re lacking in one of the above three areas, you’ll need luck to play a much bigger part in your music career. If you’ve the others in place to a good level however, you won’t have to rely on this factor quite as much.

How To Make It In The Music Industry Conclusion

So there you have it, four things that will greatly increase your chances of succeeding in the music industry. Regardless of what your definition of success is, if you put these things into place you’ll give yourself the best chance possible of getting where you want to be.

While all of the above are important, marketing your music is the only way you’ll get people to notice you enough to make a difference in your career. If you’re not 100% sure what music marketing involves or how to do it effectively, you may want to check out these 130+ guide from Music Industry How To. They cover everything you'll need to know about making it in the music industry, from how to get people to listen to you, to how to get your music on TV (and everything in-between)! Ok that’s it from me, until next time.