How to Make It in the Music Industry

My name is Chris Muktar. Born 1983, I am currently 23 year old, unemployed, university graduate, sat at home, with my parents, wishing for a better existance. I live in the suburbs of London, UK. I have been working in the city in a proper city job for a year, until I snapped and quit, largely because I had higher hopes in life than to become an accountant.

My quest is now to take myself and my music and make it successful. I know that this is the dream of a lot of people, and 99.9% of people fail, and this is a one surefire road to disaster, but I thought I’d document what happens here, and maybe over the coming months and years we will see an interesting story develop.

Two people I tenuously know have been signed, and reasonably well and very well out of it. They are “Liam Frost and The Slowdown Family” and “Cherry Ghost”. I met both these guys while at university in Manchester. You have heard of Cherry Ghost, his album hit #7 in the UK album charts and he is supporting the Manic Street Preachers. It must be a very tough life. Liam Frost is about 22, and Simon Aldred (aka Cherry Ghost) is about 32.

With that in mind, let me introduce myself a little bit better.

At 23, I can play the guitar. I have bought an electric stage piano, and I can play it pretty poorly but I can play with two hands and to a metronome. Having given up on bands and such like, I have been a solo writer for a while, and have written countless songs, although only a handful are worth reciting (in due course). I realised early on that I would never be a fantastic guitarist, and I would never be a fantastic pianist, and I would never be a fantastic singer, so instead I picked songwriting, as few of my peers seem to do much of that.

I should point out that I hate writing songs, at least while writing them. It’s extremely difficult, but I must admit the self satisfaction is awesome.

I have relatively little live experience (as of August 2007), though I’ve played a few times. I know this is something I should probably work on.

I haven’t lost the plot 100%, just yet. I’m trying to start a company selling medical instruments, although success is slow in coming. I hope maybe somehow I’ll be able to make some money out of this blog one day, a bit like ‘Steve Pavlina’. We’ll see. I hope not run completely broke, and my goal is to move out of my parents house and into central london ASAP.

So without any further ado, I will start to write whatever I think is relevant to help all of us succeed.