Starting Out in a Band: The Do's and Don'ts Nobody Tells You
By Written by Peter McVeigh
The music industry is full of people who had enormous talent and very little idea of how to navigate the real-world mechanics of being a performing artist. This is the guide nobody gave you. (Photo by Bruce Joseph McClements)
Starting a band is one of the most exciting things you can do. It is also one of the quickest ways to learn that excitement alone does not fill rooms, hold an audience or build a career. The music industry is full of people who had enormous talent and very little idea of how to navigate the real-world mechanics of being a performing artist.
This is not a guide about chord progressions or which DAW to use. This is about the stuff that happens once the music exists - the gigging, the selling, the people, the highs, the lows, and the mindset you are going to need to survive long enough to actually get somewhere.
Take Gigs. But Only When You Are Ready.
The stage is the best teacher you will ever have. There is no rehearsal room equivalent to standing in front of a live audience with a microphone in your hand. The feedback is instant, unfiltered and occasionally brutal.
So yes, take gigs. Say yes to things that scare you. That is how you develop as a performer.
But make sure you have got a show worth sharing before you go sharing it.
An underrehearsed band playing to an audience of strangers does not just have a bad night. It leaves an impression. People who see you play before you are ready will remember that. In a local music scene especially, reputation travels fast and it travels far. The first time you play for someone could very easily be the last.
Get your show tight. Know your set cold. Run it until the gaps between songs are as rehearsed as the songs themselves. Know what you are going to say between tracks. Know your sound. Know your levels. Then go and do it in front of people.
Do Not Play the Same City Four Times in One Month
This is one of the most common mistakes new bands make and one of the most damaging.
If you are playing original music, the audience you are trying to build is specific. These are people who are interested in you, your sound, your identity. That audience is not unlimited, especially when you are starting out. And if you give people four chances to see you in the same month, what you are actually telling them is there is no urgency. They will plan to come to the next one. And then the next one. And then they will not go to any of them.
Scarcity has value. A show that feels like an event will always draw better than one that feels like a regular occurrence.
Cover work is a different conversation entirely. If you are playing covers at weddings, bars and functions, take every booking you can as long as your voice holds out. That is a service, and frequency is part of the job. But when it is your own music, protect the moment. Make each show feel like it matters, because it does.
Think About Why You Are Doing the Show
Too many bands turn up, plug in and play. The best ones are deliberate about every element of a performance.
Before any show, ask yourself what you want people to take away from it. Not just what you want them to think of the music, but how you want them to feel when they walk out the door. That intention should shape every decision you make - the setlist, the order of songs, the moments of quiet, the moments of energy, what you say between tracks, even the venue itself.
Plan the moments. The ending of a set is as important as the opening. A show that builds to something, that gives an audience a reason to stay, will always be remembered better than one that just stops.
Think about whether the venue works for the identity of the band. If the room is wrong, it can undermine everything. A big room with forty people in it can feel like failure. That same forty people in a small, intimate venue can feel electric.
Do Not Force Yourself Onto a Stage That Is Not Right for You
Not every opportunity is a good one. A festival slot surrounded by heavy rock bands is not automatically a win if you are playing acoustic folk. Some rooms are just not your room.
That said, if you are confident in your music and you believe you can win an unfamiliar audience over, by all means give it a go. Some of the most memorable live moments come from exactly that situation. An artist who can cross genre lines and take a sceptical crowd with them is doing something genuinely impressive.
But be realistic with yourself. A difficult crowd on a tough night can knock your confidence badly, and confidence is one of the most important resources you have in this career. It is not bottomless. Protect it early.
Know the difference between a challenge that will grow you and a situation that is simply not a good fit. You are allowed to say no.
Sell Your Music. Confidently and Directly.
There is a strange embarrassment that affects a lot of new artists when it comes to selling their own work. Do not let that be you.
If someone is in the room watching you play, they are already interested. That is the moment to make it easy for them to go deeper. QR codes on the tables linking to your music are good. QR codes that send people to a purchase page, not just a streaming link, are better. People streaming your song gives you fractions of a penny. People buying your record puts real money in your pocket and creates a different kind of connection with your work.
Better still, tell them to do it while you are on stage. There is nothing wrong with saying: if you are enjoying this, there is a QR code on the tables, grab the album, it means the world. Audiences respect honesty. What they do not connect with is an artist who seems embarrassed to exist.
You made something. Be proud of it. Let people in.
Use Social Media. But Just Be Yourself.
The temptation when you are starting out is to present a very polished, curated version of who you are. The reality is that audiences can see straight through it.
Use social media to show your identity. Share what you make, what you think, what inspires you. But do not perform a version of yourself that does not exist. The artists who tend to connect most authentically online are the ones who are simply and genuinely themselves.
You do not need a strategy session to figure out who you are. You just need to show up as that person consistently. That is what builds an audience.
Stop Trying to Be the Finished Product
This one might be the most important thing on this list.
People who find you early in your career do not want a polished, fully-formed version of you. They want to come along for the journey. They want to feel like they discovered something before everyone else did. That feeling, of being in early, of watching someone develop, is incredibly powerful and it builds some of the most loyal audiences in music.
So find ways to include your audience in what you are doing. Make them feel part of it. Kickstarters and funding campaigns are one way to do this - they turn listeners into investors and investors into advocates. We will go into more detail on how to run those well in another article.
For now, just remember: imperfect and real will always beat polished and distant.
Find the Balance. And Stay There.
There will be nights where everything clicks. The room is full, the sound is right, the band are locked in and the audience are with you completely. Those nights feel like nothing else.
There will also be nights where nothing works. A quiet room, a sound problem, a set that just does not land. Those nights can feel like the end of the world.
The truth is that both of those nights are lying to you.
The career is built in the middle. Try not to get too high on the good nights and try not to get too low on the hard ones. Both extremes mess with your judgement and your ability to keep going. And keeping going is essentially the whole job.
You are going to need a thick skin. Not because people are cruel, though some will be, but because the work of being heard is long, and most of it will feel like pushing into a headwind. Find the balance and protect it.
Be Present in the Moments That Matter
The great moments in a music career tend to be further apart than you think they will be when you start. So when one happens, when you get the booking you wanted, the review you worked for, the audience you dreamed of, be present in it.
Do not drown it in a night of heavy drinking. See what it feels like. Let yourself actually feel it, acknowledge it, sit in it for a minute. Celebrate absolutely. But be there for it.
The number of musicians who have reached something they wanted and spent the night too out of it to remember it is remarkable. Do not be one of them. Those moments are yours. Show up for them.
Be Nice to People
There is an old saying: be nice to people on the way up, because you will see them again on the way down.
Here is a simpler version. Just be nice. To people who deserve it. For no reason other than it costs nothing and the music world is smaller than it looks.
The sound engineer at the small venue tonight might be touring with someone significant in three years. The promoter who gives you a slot on a quiet Tuesday is building relationships the same as you are. Treat every interaction like it matters, because in this industry, it nearly always does.
Share What You Learn
As you develop experience, pass it on. As you make contacts, share them, selectively, with people you trust to represent you well.
There is a fear some artists have of sharing too much. That someone will take an opportunity that should have been theirs. But if someone else is able to take an opportunity that you pointed them towards, they have earned it. Nothing has been stolen. The music industry has room for people who are good at it.
What you want to build is a reputation as someone worth knowing. Someone generous with knowledge, selective with referrals and trustworthy in their relationships. That reputation compounds over time in ways that no amount of self-promotion can replicate.
Talk to Strangers
You were told not to. Do it anyway.
The most useful conversations in a music career rarely happen in the places you expect. At the bar after a show, in a queue at a festival, in a green room with a band you have never met. Introduce yourself. Ask questions. Listen.
Nothing changes without a little chaos in the system. Throw the occasional curve ball. Say yes to the thing that is outside your plan. Talk to people you do not know yet.
Some of the most important relationships in your career will start with a conversation you nearly did not have.
Get a Band Agreement in Place. Before You Need One.
Nobody wants to think about disagreements when everything is going well. That is precisely when you should be thinking about them.
A band agreement is a document that sets out how the band works - who owns what, how decisions get made, how money gets divided, and what happens if someone leaves or the band splits up. It sounds formal. It is. But the bands who fall apart badly almost always do so because they never had this conversation when it was easy to have it.
Do not wait until there is a dispute over a publishing deal, a lineup change or a record contract before you work out what you all agreed on. By that point, everything is harder, more expensive and more personal than it needed to be.
Music Manager Resource has a Band Agreement Generator on the site that walks you through this process. It is free to use and covers the key areas you need to address. Use it before your first real opportunity arrives, because that is when these things tend to surface, and it is the worst possible time to be working it out from scratch.
Understand Your Publishing, Writers and Mechanical Rights. Agree Splits Early.
If you are writing original music in a band, at some point money will flow from that music. Streaming royalties, sync placements, live performance royalties, physical sales. When it does, you need to have already agreed who gets what, because that conversation gets very complicated, very quickly, once there is actual money involved.
There are three areas you need to understand.
Writer's Share: This is the share of royalties that goes to the people who actually wrote the song - the melody, the lyrics. In the UK, PRS collects and distributes this. If you wrote the song equally as four people, you each get 25%. Be honest in these conversations. If someone sat in the room while the song was written but did not actually contribute to it, including them in the writing credit is not generosity - it is a decision that will affect every penny that song earns for the life of the copyright.
Publishing Rights: The publishing share is separate from the writer's share. Publishing rights cover the right to reproduce and distribute the song - who controls it and takes a cut of the income it generates. If you have not signed with a publisher, you own your publishing outright. As a band starting out, decide early whether you are each self-publishing your individual contributions or whether the band collectively controls the publishing.
Mechanical Rights: Mechanical royalties are generated when your music is reproduced - on streaming platforms, physical releases, downloads. In the UK, MCPS administers these. When someone streams your track, a mechanical royalty is generated in addition to the performance royalty.
Before you release anything, sit down as a band and agree the splits on every song. Write them down. Register them with PRS and MCPS. If there is any disagreement, talk to a music lawyer before the release goes out, not after.
MMR covers royalties, publishing and mechanical rights in detail in the guides section of the site.
Finally
Starting out in a band is hard. It is also one of the most worthwhile things you can do if music is what you are about.
The practical stuff matters - the preparation, the strategy, the selling. But underneath all of it, the thing that will carry you furthest is a genuine relationship with your audience, an honest sense of who you are as an artist, and the resilience to keep going when it is not working.
Get the show tight. Protect your confidence. Be real. Be present. Be kind. Keep going.
That is most of it.
Peter McVeigh is the founder of Music Manager Resource and a Belfast-based musician and music educator with 18 years of industry and teaching experience.
Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Rights, royalties and publishing arrangements are complex and vary by jurisdiction and individual circumstance. Always seek qualified legal advice before signing any agreement or registering rights.