Ah, January. The month of goal setting, yearly reflection, and big intentions. 

Maybe 2025 is the year you release that album you’ve been tirelessly working on, or the year you hit 100,000 streams, or the year you finally, finally make it on one of those dang Spotify playlists. 

Whatever your intentions for the year are, we want to support you—which is why we’ve collected all the best tips for crafting your artist goals, figuring out where you want to go with your music, and how you can actually achieve your dreams. 

Let’s dive in. 

Step #1. What Just Happened. 

You probably hear it a lot, but reflection is important. Looking back on your year allows you to see where things went right, where you struggled, and what achievements you accomplished.

Maybe you created a Spotify profile, made an Instagram reel to promote your new release, or sang in the shower to refine your vocal tone. 

Reflection lets us take an audit of our artist journey. Did we release the songs we wanted to release? Did we prioritize our music career? 

It’s important to mark down any habits, routines, activities, and accomplishments from the past year before we get all excited about planning for the next one. Notice what is holding you back and what is propelling you forward on your artist journey. 

• How can you bring what's worked well into this year? 

• What could you leave behind that’s holding you back? 

Step #2. Figuring out what your goals should be. 

Perhaps you’re struggling to figure out what your artist goals even should be. Everywhere we look, there are goals to set and new habits to form, but how many of these relate directly to artists? Specifically, artists like yourself—who may be balancing an emerging artist career with a full- or part-time job.  

Developing goals that align with where you want to go artistically—while adapting to your current circumstances—is the key here. 

A few questions to ask yourself: 

• What is my ultimate vision for my artist career, and how can this year’s goals bring me closer to it? 

• How much time and energy do I realistically have to dedicate to my music each week? 

• What are my current obligations (e.g., work, family, personal life) that will impact my ability to pursue certain goals? How can I adapt around (or with) them?

• Which goals will make the biggest difference in my artist career, even if they take more effort to achieve?

If there aren’t any impactful goals that immediately come to mind, no worries. Perhaps you can focus on developing your practical skills—such as building confidence with networking, learning that new instrument, or improving your songwriting.

Maybe it means learning how to market yourself as an artist, learning about copyright royalties, or figuring out how to connect with your fans offline and online. Think of all the skills, creative pursuits or growth opportunities that you may have put off. Is there a way you can prioritize these this year? 

Step #3. It’s time to get specific. 

Once you have your goals figured out, it’s time to get specific with them.

Specificity is key because our distracted brains can easily lose focus if we have just a general, vague intention about things. The goal of “I want to create more music this year” can vary anywhere from releasing 3 amazing albums to simply sending your song to your sister-in-law. Big difference. 

You’ve most likely heard of setting SMART goals, which is an acronym for setting goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. If you like this framework, use it as an idea board to reshape your goals into specific and achievable outcomes. 

Example: “I am performing my newly released EP at three new venues in my city by August 1st, by working with a manager and reaching out to my network.” 

Personally, I find SMART a bit overused, so instead, I like to keep the elements of specificity, measurability, and time boundedness but add in the element of emotion. (SMET if you want to call it, but to be honest, doesn’t sound as great.) 

Example: “I am energetically performing my EPIC, masterfully mastered EP at three new exciting venues in my music-loving city by August 1st, by working with an awesome manager and confidently reaching out to my network.” 

Adding some emotions into your goals makes setting them and saying them feel more passionate, inspired, and makes you wanna say “F** yeah!” Even if you just add some adjectives to your goal that add in a bit of emotion, the point is to make it enjoyable and good-feeling provoking to read and say aloud. 

Regardless of which way you choose to make your goals more specific, make sure you feel inspired by them AND that you’ve formatted them clear enough so we can build upon them in the next step. 

Step #4: Signing up, and then actually going. 

Did you know that approximately 23% of people abandon their resolutions by the end of the first week, and 43% do so by the end of January? And taking a peek at the calendar today, it’s not looking too great for the 43% of us who set goals at the start of the month. 

So, what separates this 43% from the 67%? What separates those who simply sign up for the gym from those who actually go? 

Though many factors affect your ability to stick with goals, one easily applicable strategy is to divide them into steps. 

These steps let us realize that goals aren’t built in a day. Goals are the result of repeated actions done with purposeful intention. 

Creating and releasing an album is more than just sitting down one day and saying “Yah, album time!” It requires a thoughtful approach (sometimes more structured than others) with a step-by-step framework of how to accomplish the whole thing. 

Here are a few questions to inspire some thought: 

• What is the most impactful action I can take toward [goal]?

• What’s holding me back from achieving my [goal]—lack of time, unclear priorities, missing tools/resources, or something else?

• How do I know if I’m working effectively towards my [goal]? (i.e. What are some “checkpoints” that would signal I’m progressing?

• What does my ideal process for reaching this [goal] look like—structured routines, spontaneous bursts of creativity, regular check-ins, or something else? 

Once you have an idea of the most important steps you need to take, the most difficult or time-consuming steps, and/or the steps that pre-requisite additional progress, it’s time for compilation. If to-do lists are your thing, make a to-do list, ordering the steps in both a time and importance matter. 

Example: “I am passionately posting engaging reels of my music on my Instagram to get 5,000 followers (who LOVE my music) by the time my EP releases in July.” 

1. Have an Instagram account for my music created 

2. Watch a YouTube video on how to get and engage new followers

3. Create a social media calendar and a release strategy

4. Sign up for Canva and Capcut for editing and post design

5. Ask my friend to be my accountability partner so I post 3x a week

And so on and so forth. If to-do lists scare you or make you feel intimidated by the fact that there may be a lot of steps, chunk your goals into smaller segments so there are less steps all at once.  

If you have a yearly goal, for example, maybe try the 12-week year method—where you separate the goal into smaller quarterly-sized pieces, so your focus is only on the next three months, not the whole year. 

Translating your goals into practical steps makes achieving them a lot more realistic and your path forward a lot clearer. 

Step #5: Find what resonates with you. 

At the end of the day, everyone has their own internal and external motivations that inspire what actions they take in their life. You and I aren’t moved by the same things, which makes it difficult to tell you there’s a one-size-fits-all motivational method.  

If you know you work well with words of affirmation (hearing and saying positive reinforcements), then find these words and implement them into your goal achieving process. Maybe this looks like saving your favourite positive responses on your new release and reading them before you start writing that new song. 

If you work well reading motivational quotes on Pinterest or listening to an inspirational podcast, FIND those and surround yourself with these motivations as much as possible.  

If you feel inspired by imagery, maybe you tape a picture of your most inspirational music star on your bathroom mirror. Or you set your phone background to the concert venue you want to perform at this year. 

If you know how you are motivated, you’ll know how to stick with your goals-- even when things get difficult, tough, or tiring.  

Ask yourself: 

• Why do I want to achieve this [goal]—to connect with a wider audience, feel creatively fulfilled, build financial security, or something else? 

• Who in my life (besides myself) will be impacted positively by my accomplishment of this goal? What motivates me the most to do the things I do? 

• How can I apply this motivation to this [goal]? 

• How can I make the process of this [goal] more enjoyable or meaningful for myself? 

• What helps me the most when I feel unmotivated—is it time, reprioritization, finding the purpose within the thing, or something else? 

Create an imagery board of your goals.

The crowd you want to see at your concert, the number of your bank account from streaming royalties or copyright collection, kind comments from your listening audience, the number of streams on your Spotify profile, the guitar you want to be rocking on stage, your album cover, and so on. 

Write your goals down and make them see-able.

Unfortunately, many a goal end up in a journal under our desk never to see the beautiful light of day again. Make sure you consistently see your goals by placing them around your home—maybe on your phone lockscreen, maybe on a post it note on your laptop, near your shoe rack when you put your shoes on to leave, on your fridge—wherever.  

Get an accountability partner.

If you work well with being held accountable, having someone knowledgeable about your goals and knowing what you’re supposed to be doing about it can be helpful. If you work with a manager, maybe they can be this person for you. Ensuring that you’re doing the work to generate excitement for your EP release or writing those songs for your new album.  If money motivates you, maybe add this into the mix.  

Make your goal bigger than yourself.

Who will be positively impacted by the achievement of your goal? Will you provide for/support your family, your partner, your community? Will you spread inspiration and connectedness through your music? Will you use your new following to speak on the messages that are important to you?