Do I have to move to a music capital to be SUCCESSFUL?

Let’s think about the pros and cons of moving to a music capital to try and make it.

Sam Jump and Sam Turner, Songwriters and Producers in Cardiff, UK, weigh up the pros and cons of whether you should uproot your life to move to a music capital to be successful.

Are you a music producer, songwriter, artist or creative who lies awake in bed most nights thinking, I should do it I should take the plunge and move to the big city to make it happen?

I think we’ve all been there and had those thoughts. We’ve all had these recurring thoughts and chastised ourselves for the steps or lengths that we haven’t taken and thought, if I’d have done that I’d be where I want to be today.

The Pros of moving to a music capital

So you’re thinking about moving to pursue your dreams? That’s really exciting! Let’s explore the benefits of doing that…

1. Music Networking opportunities

This is the biggest reason I can think of for moving. Many great opportunities and stories begin through happenstance events. Being in the right place at the right time.

Moving to a Musical Capital will definitely improve your chances of increasing these happenstance meetings. You never know when or where you could meet someone who could dramatically change the trajectory of your career. It doesn’t matter how much you message or skype people online, in my opinion, there’s no better way to cultivate a relationship than being in the room with someone.

But to make the most of this massive benefit, you have to put yourself out there and most importantly, don’t be a dick! Be a good person. Be someone people want to hang out with.

2. Short travel Distance for last minute opportunities.

Once you start mixing in the right circles, meeting people and they get an understanding of what you can do and where you want to be, they will keep you in mind.

Being there, being on the place and available is how big breaks can happen. If a session musician drops out and a producer or musical director needs a stand in, if an engineer drops out, if an artist drops out of a gig and a promoter has a spot to fill. There’ll all opportunities that happen all the time and go to people who are there on the place. If you have a last minute spot for gig that’s happening that very night, you’re not going to reach out to someone who lives hours and hours away. You’ll try all your local contacts first.

3. Positive energy from like minded Musical people.

This sounds a bit airy, but it’s so true and so necessary. If you’re living in a small town or don’t really have a network of people around you yet who want to achieve the same things, you’re probably surrounded by people who aren’t. Sounds obvious. But you’re probably surrounded by people who have very different aspirations to you and ideas of what’s possible, this can have a really negative poisonous effect on your psyche. There’s no malicious intent and these people almost definitely want the best for you. They just have very different priorities and aspirations and don’t want to see you get hurt. This is the same for creatives and business entrepreneurs.

This is really a very important point for you to remember, and I’m sorry that it’s so cliche, but please, dream big. Always dream big and if you believe in that dream, don’t stop trying. Because if you keep trying, you know what - your dream is a lot more likely to be achieved. If you stop trying, it’s dead. No one else is going to push the rock up that hill for you.

So surrounding yourselves with other people who also are striving to achieve their dream is where you want to be, because it helps you keep your focus. It helps inspire you to keep working through tough times.

The Negatives of moving to a music city

Uprooting your life, distancing yourself from your support network to pursue your dreams can be really daunting. It’s always good to test yourself and get out of your comfort zone once in a while, but this doesn’t have to be at the expense of your comfort or mental health. In my opinion, it’s honestly fine if you genuinely don’t feel ready to do that just yet, maybe it’s not even necessary! There’s so many stories of people absolutely smashing it from their bedrooms in their hometowns, there’s nothing to say you can’t be one of those stories in the future. We’ll explore a couple of ways to help you progress without moving.

Just a caveat here to this section - I don’t like being negative or reinforcing anyone’s worries, but we said we would weigh up the pro’s and con’s! so here we go…

1. You haven’t fulfilled your true potential of where you are yet.

Have you really exhausted all the opportunities available near where you are? We (Jump and Turner) don’t live in a music capital. We live in South Wales and have a music Studio in Cardiff. There are cities in the UK with fantastic music scenes but London is without doubt the Music Capital of the UK.

Have you built a good network in your hometown or your nearest city? Have you done enough gigs to feel comfortable performing? Have you honed your skills enough to be confident when good opportunities come your way?

It’s worth making sure you’re ready. How will you now when you’re ready? Create scenarios you want to be in and test your skills. Arrange writing sessions, organise some gigs, record some music. Build your confidence enough to feel ready so that when an opportunity comes knocking you’re there to smash it out the park.

2. are music capitals still relevant today anyway?

Here we are in November 2021, still in the world pandemic. through this period we have seen some really interesting things happening, TikTok stars have risen out of nothing, face to face meetings have become rarer and rarer. Remote working is here and it’s definitely here to stay.

I wrote earlier that nothing beats being in the room with someone to cultivate a relationship. I truly do believe that. But with how good remote working is now, there’s nothing stopping you working with people anywehre in the world.

Sam Turner and I (Sam Jump) work in South Wales in a studio in Cardiff, we work with people in Germany, France, LA, London, New York and Canada and the list is growing. It’s a really exciting time to be working and connecting with people all over the world.

If you want to reach out to someone and work, you can do that now no matter where they’re based.

You can message / voice message someone on the other side of the planet and be in a virtual recording session with them the next day. It’s incredible.

Have you worked out your strategy on social media, have you picked a platform, have you tried different things to see what suits you best and see what suits your audience best?

If you want to move to music capital for label attention, yes you’ll probably bump into more industry people in the city. But you will probably get the best deal when they come looking for you. You need to focus on your content and focus on your audience. Make sure you’re making the best content for you and your audience, the rest will follow.

3. Maybe the music scene there doesn’t fit you.

Different scenes grow in different places. Manchester, Brighton, Liverpool, Bristol, Cardiff to name but a few. All different cities, all different music scenes with different crowds and different people in them. If you want to find your crowd and a circle of like minded people as we discussed before - maybe, just maybe they exist in a different city to London. Do your research and find what fits you. Message the people in that area and see what they come back with, go to a few events there and scope out the area before you make such a big commitment.

You’ll likely have a much better quality of life if you do this over going to city like London too where the cost of living is way higher.

In summary…

Sorry guys, you have to decide what is right for you! There’s tons of examples of people moving to the big city and making it, nowadays there’s also tons of stories of success finding people in their bedrooms and small towns. You have to write your own story (you also have got to love that setup and payoff line :) ).

There’s no way I was ever going to write a definitive answer to this, it could be one of the defining decisions in your life! I know we would both definitely advise you to do your research, work smarter not harder and do whatever you feel comfortable doing long term. The last thing you want to do is throw yourself into something that is a bad fit for you, puts pressure on you mentally and financially and burn yourself out and lose the passion for the thing you’ve loved all this time.

Uprooting your life, distancing yourself from family and friends, maybe even moving your family to follow your dream - is sometimes necessary. But it isn’t always the answer, it isn’t going to solve all the problems that you might face.

Ask yourself, are you really fulfilling your full potential of where you are right now? Have you cultivated the right work ethic or honed your skills to make the most of making that kind of move yet? It doesn’t matter where you are or what you have achieved, we all have good days and bad days and sometimes the grass is always greener elsewhere. But I think a lot of the time we need to take a step back and think - ‘Am I making the most of where I am right now?’.

There’s so many more things to discuss here and think about, but it would be like jumping down a rabbit hole. If you yourself are thinking about this ever want to have a chat to us just shoot us a message! if you’ve enjoyed this blog post maybe you’ll enjoy more our other blogs / ramblings. Maybe you’d like to sign up to our free members area where we have a collection of videos you can watch.