A successful career in music doesn't happen overnight. It takes patience, tenacity, an openness to critique, and even some failure to clarify your goals and make it happen.
Here are five essential practices to consider as you build a foundation for long-term success in the music industry.
1. Stay in the Loop The music industry is constantly changing. To keep up, you need to stay informed.
This is just as important for music business professionals as for artists. To land a job in licensing, product design, or marketing at a place like Spotify or Apple, youll need to speak to the changes driving growth in the industry. Similarly, a successful artist manager should be up to speed on industry tastes and trends, emerging niche markets, and changing perceptions around artist commercial viability.
The path followed by the majority of top executives and artists we know today was not narrow or linear. Like theirs, your path will involve ongoing learning, hustle, and investment in yourself.
Music distribution has changed completely in recent years, meaning artists no longer need a deal with a major label to be successful. Staying informed on platforms such as SoundCloud, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook's Sound Collection will help you promote your music and reach a wide audience.
Berklees Career Center team provides insight on relevant professional associations and help you find ways to stay up to date.
2. Meet Others in the Industry
The Berklee Career Jam brings industry movers and shakers to campus each year
Building a career and establishing a personal brand in the music industry requires honing your ability to create and maintain mutually beneficial relationships.
You hear it repeatedly: Networking and creative alliances matter. Why? The music industry thrives on it just like any other people-based industry. So where do you start?
Step away from the studio, or your keyboard or microphone, regularly, and take advantage of face-to-face interactions with peers, colleagues, and established professionals. Industry conferences, trade shows, and festivals provide perfect settings for fun and organic interactions, but theyre not your only outlet for networking. Social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram have made networking easier than ever. If you aren't already on these or other platforms, create a profile and start connecting. Be thoughtfully persistent in building on new connections, whether in person or digitally. Keep track of who you meet and why you both might benefit from staying in touch.
Attend the Career Center's Internship Expo where you can speak to representatives from more than 40 companies.
3. Invest in Your Future with Internships and Working on Campus If there's one thing the music industry prizes, it's experience. How do you get experience?
Where to Start
Search and apply for jobs, internships, auditions, and gigs on the Berklee Career Manager.
Two ways to impress potential employers are internships or on-campus jobs. Internships are a highly valuable opportunity to test-drive career possibilities, develop skills, and gain insight into the work and lifestyle of an industry professional. They allow you to relocate for a short stint to major hubs like Los Angeles, New York City, and Nashville, or even abroad to international hot spots like Beijing and London. Employers frequently use internships to test out future employees. If theyre impressed, they are quick to make a job offer so they don't miss out on promising talent.
There are endless opportunities and ways for you to gain relevant experience. Internships and student employment are just two that will impress and appeal to employers.
4. Know Your Competitive Advantage Your list of skills is abundant. Take stock of your experience and what makes you different from everyone else. You'll need a carefully crafted pitch that tells the world who you are and explicitly sheds light on your distinctive combination of skills, experience, and presence.
As a musician and artist, youll be an incredible improviser, always prepared to pitch a song youve been writing or grab your guitar and walk onstage to fill in for a friend at a gig. Youll also possess solid project management skills. Whether it's handling marketing or event logistics for an upcoming campus program or organizing and rehearsing members of a band for a performance, you've mastered the art of time management, understand the need for attention to detail, and recognize the importance of being both a leader and a team player.
5. Stay Agile There is no prescribed roadmap for how to get from A to Z in the music and entertainment business. There is no guarantee you'll make a certain salary, secure a gig that lasts a lifetime, or cut a deal right out of the gate. It's best to acknowledge and accept that now. But your commitment to succeeding in this business has great potential to make an impact and be satisfying.
You must learn to be agile and comfortable pivoting from opportunity to opportunity, sometimes even needing to take on a non-music lifeline career so you can provide for yourself, a significant other, or a family. The path followed by the majority of top executives and artists we know today was not narrow or linear. Like theirs, your path will involve ongoing learning, hustle, and investment in yourself.
Dustin Gee is manager of employer development and engagement at the Berklee Career Center.
For more information on how to develop your career in music, visit our Career Center resources.
Related Reading
Hearing Women Berklee Today
Spring
2019
Volume
30
Number
3
Hustling and Joy: Madame Gandhis Tips for Success Drummer, electronic musician, and activist Madame Gandhi shared her advice and experience with students at Cafe 939.
Berklee Student Wins Live Nation Scholar
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
08/09/2026
Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) has announced a multi-year agreement with A E...
08/09/2026
Spectra Logic today announced the availability of Media Insight, a new capabilit...
08/09/2026
Rogers Communications and Quebecor have announced a 12-year sublicensing agreement for French-language national NHL games beginning with the 2026-27 season. TVA...
08/09/2026
Skyline Communications and Bridge Technologies will demonstrate two integrations...
08/09/2026
Boland Communications will make the European debut of its 4K55HDR7SNB 55-inch super-narrow-bezel monitor at IBC2026 (Stand 12.C57, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-1...
08/09/2026
Ateme and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) have announced a collaboration comb...
08/09/2026
Haivision has joined the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme as part of t...
08/09/2026
Blackmagic Design has announced price reductions on its PYXIS 6K and Cinema Camera 6K models, effective immediately through Blackmagic Design resellers worldwid...
08/09/2026
AI-Media will demonstrate its LEXI Suite at IBC2026 (Booth 5.C34, September 11-1...
08/09/2026
Bitmovin and Ad Insertion Platform (AIP) have announced the first live deploymen...
08/09/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate story-centric media workflows at IBC2026 (Booth 9.A01, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), connecting newsroom production, content ma...
08/09/2026
M2A Media and Ateme have announced a partnership integrating Ateme's video processing solutions into M2A Media's MediaToAnywhere platform for live sport...
08/09/2026
Ikegami will exhibit at IBC2026 (Stand 12.A31, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), including a Day 1 introduction of new cameras in the UNICAM XE series. Additiona...
08/09/2026
Broadcast industry analysts will be gathering plenty of insights at the 2026 IBC Show this weekend in Amsterdam, but Caretta Research has offered up some though...
08/09/2026
SENSHI and DAZN have announced a global broadcast partnership that will bring SENSHI's live events free to viewers in more than 200 markets. The partnership...
08/09/2026
New architecture built with Evertz will bring 4K HDR to Monday Night Football, N...
08/09/2026
Built for rap producers, by rap producers
Sauceware Audio, the independent plug-in company founded by Grammy-nominated producer Jacob (Travis Scott, 21 Sava...
08/09/2026
Classic Sound Techniques design revived
Warm Audio's latest release delivers a meticulous recreation of the preamp circuitry employed by the Sound Techn...
08/09/2026
Latest soft synth inspired by the Memorymoog
XILS Lab have just launched a software instrument that draws its inspiration from Moog's iconic Memorymoog,...
08/09/2026
The Airport Chaplain takes off as SBS's biggest launch of 2026
8 September, 2026
Media releases
1.67 million viewers on National Total TV to date
Best...
08/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/09/2026
Mo-Sys, the world-leading developer of virtual production, camera robotics and image tracking technology, has completed a business restructuring, which has incl...
08/09/2026
New York, September 8, 2026 The TSAmediaHUB audiovisual contribution and distribution infrastructure developed by Telef nica's Audiovisual Services area re...
08/09/2026
Expanded Riyadh operation brings Asharq and Thmanyah services together on a resilient on-premises Pebble platform.
Pebble, the leading automation, content mana...
08/09/2026
Techex, a pioneering leader in live video workflows, will showcase its broadest software feature set to date at IBC 2026 (Stand 2.B45), extending its lead in so...
08/09/2026
Visitors to Grass Valley's booth at IBC2026 will be introduced to new Framelight X capabilities that connect content acquisition, management, editing and pu...
08/09/2026
BCNEXXT will showcase the latest evolution of Vipe at IBC2026 (Stand 2.B09), introducing a series of innovations designed to deliver higher-quality audience exp...
08/09/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Ad Insertion Platform (AIP), a leading innovator in advanced ad insertion technologies, to...
08/09/2026
Brainstorm, a leading manufacturer of real-time graphics and augmented and virtual production, is announcing a major package of enhancements to its Suite 7 soft...
08/09/2026
Big Blue Marble is supporting TDF, French infrastructure and network operator, broadcasting Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and radio services, as a techno...
08/09/2026
Agents work inside a single production environment, from incoming wire copy to a live studio show...
08/09/2026
Building on their strategic partnership, Ceeblue and Layercake make the unthinkable possible: scalable sub-second streaming over standard DRM, SSAI, and CDN wor...
08/09/2026
Brainstorm, a leading manufacturer of real-time graphics, augmented and virtual production, is completing the environment for fast-paced broadcast production wi...
08/09/2026
A SaaS portfolio built to work together, helping operators grow audiences, monetise smarter and run leaner, on their own terms
At IBC 2026 (stand 1.B49) Synam...
08/09/2026
Accedo, global provider of video streaming software and services, has been selected by PlayOn Sports, a national leader in high school sports technology, to exp...
08/09/2026
LiveU, the leader in live IP-video solutions, is enabling The Associated Press to take global newsgathering to the next stage with intelligent connectivity and ...
08/09/2026
Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions to profitably connect the right content to the right audience, today announced the latest evolution of it...
08/09/2026
Compact, power-efficient X Platform performance brings broadcast-grade reliability and ultra-low latency to space-constrained remote production (REMI) workflows...
08/09/2026
Zixi, the leader in live video delivery and workflow orchestration, and Kiloview, a leading provider of professional IP video encoding and decoding solutions, t...
08/09/2026
Collaboration gives content owners scalable CDN capacity and broadcasters enhanced flexibility, including for C-band transition planning
Quortex today announce...
08/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/09/2026
Telos Alliance and Pluxbox Announce Dynamic Media Facility Integration Partnersh...
08/09/2026
J nger Audio Showcases Industry-First S-ADM Cloud Workflow at IBC 2026
Search
Dolby, MainConcept, Techex and J nger Audio will showcase the industry's ...
08/09/2026
Tuesday 8 September 2026
Sky Go gets a major upgrade for Sky Glass and Sky Stream customers
Today, Sky launches a new version of the Sky Go app for Sky Glass ...
08/09/2026
Documentary thriller simulating a Russian attack on UK soil will culminate in a live final episode reuniting the playersTuesday 8 September 2026
Trailer releas...
08/09/2026
Tuesday 8 September 2026
Jamie Demetriou and Amelia Dimoldenberg to host next t...
08/09/2026
Wuppertal September 8, 2026
Riedel Introduces New OnAir Headset PlatformRiedel Communications today announced the launch of its new OnAir headset platform, a...
A successful career in music doesn't happen overnight. It takes patience, tenacity, an openness to critique, and even some failure to clarify your goals and make it happen.
