There is no single formula for building a career in music.
Ask ten established artists how they made it, and you will probably get ten completely different stories. Some found their audience online. Others spent years playing small rooms. Some built careers around a distinctive sound, while others broke every rule they were supposed to follow.
But after speaking to artists from across the electronic music world, certain lessons keep appearing.
Develop your own identity. Keep learning. Don’t chase every trend. Put the work in. Be patient. And, perhaps most importantly, don’t stop.
For this edition of the PLAYY. Book, we went back through the advice shared by the artists we’ve interviewed and pulled together the lessons that emerging artists should carry with them.
One of the strongest themes to emerge is also one of the simplest: don’t become a copy of somebody else. In an industry where artists are constantly exposed to what is trending, what is getting booked and what is performing well online, it can be incredibly easy to start shaping your music around somebody else’s success. But the artists who build something lasting tend to go in the opposite direction.
DJs From Mars put it bluntly: “Being original and unique is the only way to make it today.” With millions of producers and DJs competing for attention, being another version of something that already exists makes it almost impossible to stand out.
Van Snyder offered a similar perspective, arguing that the modern accessibility of production software and AI tools has actually made originality more important than ever. When almost anyone can technically produce a polished track, the question becomes: what makes yours recognisable? His advice is to spend the time developing a sound that makes someone stop and ask, “Who produced this?”
That doesn’t mean ignoring the world around you. Understanding your scene, listening to what people respond to and staying aware of new ideas can all be valuable. But inspiration should become part of your own creative language rather than replacing it. As Nathassia told us, “Focus on developing your own identity, whilst keeping an eye on trends and what is currently popular.” Trends change. Your identity is what remains.
There is nothing wrong with understanding what is popular. The danger comes when popularity becomes the reason you make something. Infected Mushroom, with three decades of experience behind them, offered perhaps one of the clearest warnings: “Don’t chase what’s working right now, by the time you catch it, it’s already moved on.” Their own career has been built on doing almost the opposite of following trends: watching what people respond to while continuing to move in their own direction. That is an important distinction.
You don’t have to ignore the scene. You don’t have to reject everything popular. But you should ask yourself whether you’re creating something because you genuinely believe in it, or because you think it might perform well. The same principle came through repeatedly in our interviews. Build a world, not a track. Find the sound, visual identity and creative direction that feels uniquely yours. Because trends have an expiry date. An identity doesn’t.
There is another trap that catches countless emerging artists: believing that the next release needs to be perfect. Stop waiting for perfection, the perfect track, the perfect artwork, the perfect social media strategy, the perfect moment to finally put yourself out there. Perfection can become an excuse for never finishing anything. Los Padres offered a particularly practical piece of advice: “Finish more music.” It sounds simple, but it addresses a huge problem for developing producers.
Years can disappear into endlessly tweaking the same project while dozens of unfinished ideas sit on a hard drive. Finishing music teaches you things that constantly starting new music cannot. You learn arrangement. You learn how to make decisions. You learn what works and what doesn’t. You build a catalogue. Most importantly, you develop the ability to turn an idea into something real. Sometimes, the imperfect track you actually finish will teach you more than the perfect track you never release.
There is a romantic idea that success arrives through one huge moment: the viral track, the perfect bookings, the big label release or the life-changing introduction. However, consistency beats intensity, and the advice from established artists repeatedly points towards something much less glamorous: showing up. Write music, finish music, release music, play shows, learn, try again, do it tomorrow, and then do it again next week.
TWINNS summed it up perfectly: “Just keep going and don’t try to rush the process.” That doesn’t mean working yourself into the ground or believing you need to be productive every minute of every day. It means understanding that careers are built through accumulation. One track becomes ten, one show becomes twenty, one connection becomes a network, one listener becomes a fan, one fan tells somebody else, and slowly, something begins to compound.
Infected Mushroom expressed the same philosophy after decades in the industry: “Work every day toward your goal and your dreams will come true. The only way it doesn’t happen is if you stop.” There will be periods when nothing appears to be happening. Releases won’t perform. Emails won’t get answered. Demos will be rejected. A track you believed in might disappear without making an impact. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving backwards, sometimes you’re simply still building.
Passion is important, but passion alone isn’t enough, learn the craft before worrying about the career. The artists we spoke to repeatedly emphasised the importance of learning. Study the music that came before you. Understand the fundamentals of production. Listen outside your usual genre. Learn your software. Study arrangements, sound design, performance and songwriting, and don’t stop learning once you become good. One of the most valuable pieces of advice came from Infected Mushroom, who reminded artists that even experience shouldn’t become an excuse to stop listening: “Don’t assume experience means you have nothing left to learn.”
That is particularly relevant in an industry changing as quickly as music is today. New technology will appear. New production techniques will emerge. New genres will develop. Younger artists will bring ideas that challenge established ways of doing things. Stay curious, talent can open a door, but curiosity keeps you moving through it.
The internet has made it possible to build a music career without ever leaving your studio, but that doesn’t mean you should. Get out of the bedroom. One of the strongest pieces of advice we collected was to actually participate in the scene you’re trying to become part of. Go to shows, support other artists, watch DJs, talk to producers, meet promoters, collaborate, and pay attention to how people react to music in a room.
Relationships still matter enormously, and networking shouldn’t simply mean asking someone what they can do for you. Some of the most valuable connections are built naturally through shared interests, mutual support and genuine conversations. As one artist told us, “Network is your best friend.” Perhaps more importantly, be somebody people actually want to work with. Your reputation isn’t only built by your music. It is built through how you communicate, how you treat people, how you handle rejection and whether you follow through when you say you will.
There is one final lesson running underneath almost everything our artists told us: remember why you started making music in the first place. It is incredibly easy to turn something you love into a scoreboard, streams, followers, booking, playlist placements, labels, views, and likes. Numbers matter, particularly when you’re trying to build a sustainable career. But if those numbers become the only reason you create, the process can become exhausting very quickly. Several artists reminded us to create because they genuinely enjoy creating.
TWINNS put it simply: “Most importantly, make music because you actually love doing it.” That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have ambitions. Dreaming bigger is part of being an artist. It means your ambition shouldn’t destroy the thing you’re ambitious about. There is no shortcut, and that’s actually good news. Perhaps the most encouraging thing about all this advice is that none of it requires permission.
You don’t need the perfect studio, you don’t need the biggest following, you don’t need to sound like whatever is currently dominating the charts, and you don’t need to have everything figured out. You need curiosity, patience, creativity and the willingness to keep improving. The tools available to independent artists today are more powerful than ever, but tools don’t create the identity. You do.
So make the music that excites you, learn from the artists who came before you, listen to the people around you, finish the tracks, play the shows, meet the people, take the opportunities, ignore the noise when you need to, and when something doesn’t work, learn from it and keep moving. Because if there is one message that comes through louder than anything else from the artists we’ve spoken to, it’s this: You don’t have to know exactly where the road leads. You just have to keep walking.
