This article was written by Kavit Haria, founder and consultant at Inner Rhythm in London.

The independent music world is really rocking right now, and if you’re going to take advantage of it and play the game the right way, you’ll need to operate for maximum results.

•   As independent musicians, we have tons of work to be doing, from making and performing music, to doing the promotion, booking the gigs, getting together a band, the accounting, networking and press.  It’s a lot of stuff. Most musicians see no way round it, but there is. Here are a few things to understand:

First, understand that you are not merely playing towards a music career; you are running a music business – a complete system that is in charge of taking your music and getting it into the iPods and households of as many people as possible. Second, understand that you are the music business leader and owner. You are the music entrepreneur, or as I like to say, the musopreneur. You are the one who works on the ideas, has the big vision and assembles a team to achieve it. Thirdly, for your music business and ultimately music career to succeed, you will have to have a framework for it, which I’d like to spend the rest of this article discussing.

•   When writing my latest e-book entitled How To Design A Winning & Profitable Music Business, I asked myself an important question: What are the important skills and practices required to create a winning and profitable music business apart from good music?

The answer I realized, rests in three crucial things: Being a good leader of your ship, having a well-designed and communicated strategy, and having a good marketing plan that can be executed to promote your music in a structured way.

The word ‘winning’ in the question is important in this context. An average strategy, when executed, gets you average or mediocre results and may not be a fair reflection of your true talent. A winning strategy plan, on the other hand, transforms your current situation into larger success by developing the right tools, people, techniques and street teams to share your art with the wider world.

As musicians, we are explorers. As explorers, our job is to explore the depths of our hearts and souls to share the music that feels most at home to us. Our job is to experiment, and experimentation takes time before it is successful. Your music business needs a framework for achieving results that can be built upon to achieve your specific goals in your specific music genre. When you start to put together a puzzle, you would start by finding the corners and the edge pieces before building and assembling the inner pieces. It is the same with putting together the framework for your music business.

•   Apart from understanding the basic ideas of putting together a business plan for your music, you should also understand the “Four Step Model of Artist-Fan Relationships” on which the success of your career is based:

1. ATTRACT – Attract the fans through your promotion, playing gigs, getting referrals, building a mailing list.

2. COMMUNICATE – Communicate with your subscribers/fans using tools like newsletters, bulletins, forums, blogs, etc

3. BUILD TRUST – Build strong loyal relationships with your fans through regular contact, interaction, and two-way conversations.

4. MONETIZE –After 1, 2, and 3, turning the fan into a buyer of your CD, downloads, gigs, merchandise, teaching, etc. becomes much easier.

Kavit Haria is founder and consultant at Inner Rhythm, a London-based music business consultancy providing workshops, courses and consulting to musicians looking to develop better strategies, marketing and music business success. On Sept. 9, 2008, he released his latest e-book entitled, “How To Design A Winning & Profitable Music Business” absolutely free. You can download your copy at http://www.innerrhythm.org/ebook/

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