Why your success as a singer is SHORT term only?

Believe it or not if you are a singer, 90% chance your success is short term only. Short term means that your singing career will only last one year, 2 years or at most 5 years.

This article is for the singers who are not still sure of their direction in life and needs a career guidance. Now that the year 2011 has arrived, there are a lot of changes in technology, new job offers and opportunities that implies singing may not be the best profitable career that anyone can choose for life.

This is why 95% of released albums will fail, or 90% of singers will not last for a lifetime. Singers will get tempted to change to a more profitable career. Most of these singers might decide someday to become bank managers, engineers or even nurses.

Sadly, only very few will last as a singer for their entire life. I examined deeply the major reasons why singing career is mostly a short term success, it is because:

1.) Singing career is too competitive and least rewarding. Even in Philippines, audition as a singer in music clubs is very competitive (with more than 50 will normally audition all in all) for a performance payment of only 500 pesos per night and at most 2 performances per week. It can hardly finance even a small family and is not a permanent type of job.

You will even get lucky to get paid at first. It is not an easy job, singing in front of people which most normally won't listen to you because they are doing something else. It is different from playing a live concert where you are the center of attention.

In other countries like the US, I believe this is a similar case. Singing in clubs and bars for the entire life needs a strong effort to stay competitive behind most other singers. For example, you need to know how to perform different types of songs and with lots of songs for long hours.

You need to satisfy your audience, their request which can vary depending on their background( new songs for younger audience and old songs for older audience). In this case, it requires you to know the latest songs as well as the old songs.

2.) A singer is nothing without original hit songs in his/her name– it is why you can be easily forgotten if you kept covering songs. There is nothing original in you. You are just another “quality imitation”.

To succeed as a singer, you must have original songs in your catalog. Think of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion. The moment you heard their name, you can always associate them with the popular songs they performed.

It is very hard to beat the original except if you do a “drastically” and “extraordinary” performance that does not imitate the original. For example, the song “Love hurts” by Everly Brothers is not known as the “Love Hurts” covered by Nazareth. If you compare the differences in performance, the band Nazareth does put 500% effort in making the song to sound like a new one and it pays off.

3.) A singer is nothing if he/she is not a musician – singing and music are like marital couples. They go together as one. It is why a large percentage of successful singers throughout their lifetime are also accomplished musician; writing and composing their own songs.

If you just trust in your voice quality and no musicianship, you will not last.