Welcome to the Profitable Musician Show! In today’s episode, host Bree Noble explores the topic of music awards and whether they are worth pursuing. As an artist, the allure of awards like the Grammys and Oscars can be tempting, especially when starting out in the music industry. Bree delves into the benefits of winning awards, such as gaining legitimacy and credibility, and how these accolades can enhance your artist bio and introductions. However, she also tackles the question of when to stop chasing awards and how to strategically choose which competitions to enter. Tune in as Bree shares her personal experiences and offers insightful advice for utilizing awards to boost your music career while ensuring your efforts and resources are well-invested.

Welcome to the podcast. This is Bri. I’m excited to do another solo episode. I’m really enjoying these because it allows me to go a little bit deeper or take a different angle on something that I talked about in our newsletter. And speaking of the Profitable Musician newsletter, if you’re not signed up for that, make sure you go to profitablemusician.com join and get signed up for our newsletter because every Wednesday we send out an amazingly valuable newsletter that goes deep into a subject. We also are highlighting some really important things going on in the music industry that you can check out. We always have some really helpful tools and I also highlight some songs by some artists that I really enjoy, so you’re definitely going to want to go subscribe to that. But a few weeks ago, I talked about awards because I was thinking, you know, this is the time of year, it’s the Grammys, it’s the Oscars, and people are getting awards.

Bree Noble00:00:57 – 00:01:57

And especially when we start out as an artist, we see all these award opportunities and we think, I need to do that. I need to get those. I need to, you know, first of all, validate for myself that I’m good enough and then also validate for others that I’m good enough. And there is definitely a point to that. I definitely talk about why you should get awards, and one reason is because of legitimacy, right? When you’re new especially, but even just to help yourself stand out against everybody else, it really helps to have those awards. To be able to stick into any bio, to even, you know, if you’re talking about yourself on a, an interview or someone’s introducing you on stage, it really helps. For me, I got an award called the Artist. I think it was Female Artist of the Year for the Inland Empire Music Awards.

Bree Noble00:01:58 – 00:02:55

Now people are like, what the, what the heck is that? Right? That’s just kind of the whole area east of LA in Southern California. But when I could say I was Female Artist of the Year, like, they knew that I went up against a bunch of other people and I won. So. So that was giving me some serious legitimacy. And I used it all the time in my bios when people introduced me on stage. And that was definitely worth getting even. Though I will tell you, the award itself, it was the most lame looking thing. It’s sitting up here on my shelf and it’s like basically they laminated some thing that looks like a kid drew it that said, that says that I won this award, right? So it’s a piece of crap, but it’s all about what it Carries with it as far as basically showing that you’ve been put up against other people and you were the one chosen, Right? So that was worth doing.

Bree Noble00:02:55 – 00:03:15

I got on some compilation cd. I had to go out to this casino to accept my award. It was totally not my scene. I basically went in there in this dark room where all these. I don’t know. It was just not my scene at all. I went up there. I received my award because I was very surprised that I won, honestly.

Bree Noble00:03:15 – 00:03:35

And that’s it. Then I, like, left. I left after, like, two more awards because I’m like, this is just not my scene. And I. I think we ended up, you know, going and hanging out at the restaurant or something like that. So it. It was all worth it, though, because I’ve been able to put that. And I don’t have to even say, like, when.

Bree Noble00:03:35 – 00:04:15
Like, this is a long time ago now. But all I have to do is say that I was this award winner, and nobody’s going to question that. They’re not going to be like, oh, was that 19? You know, 85 or whatever. You know, no one’s really going to ask that. And it doesn’t really matter. So it’s definitely important to do it for legitimacy reasons. It also ties you to, like, a name of an award that maybe people know other artists that came from, you know, people like Meghan Trainor, they started out by winning an award or, you know, let’s say American Idol or whatever. Like, you know, future people that were on American Idol.
Bree Noble00:04:15 – 00:05:12
Like, that show has legitimacy because it launched Kelly Clarkson, it launched so, you know, Carrie Underwood, so many other artists that it has just a legitimacy that goes along with it instead of just being a talent competition. Right? So that’s one reason I think it’s important to get awards. But. But when should you stop getting awards? That’s kind of what I wanted to talk about. It’s like, we’ve. We’ve gotten these awards, and I know for me, in the beginning, I did enter a bunch of things, and I did get several different awards, but then I was like, should I keep doing this? Like, what is the point of me continuing to do this? Say, I’ve won a couple of songwriting awards for some of my songs on my first album. Should I then enter when I have a second album and try to get more songwriting awards? And I basically decided no. Like, I don’t have to say what songs these were for.
Bree Noble00:05:12 – 00:05:50
All I have to say is I’ve won an award from the Dallas Songwriting Competition. I’ve won an award from the, you know, whatever it is. Nsai, right? You know, you won, you were honorable mention in the John Lennon songwriter. Like that’s a huge deal because that’s a national competition. International actually. So I say just get, get, be strategic. Get some of the ones that you really feel like you need. Like, if you’re a songwriter, you’re going to want to get a couple songwriting awards or at least some honorable mentions in some big competitions because that’s really going to lend legitimacy.
Bree Noble00:05:51 – 00:06:43
Especially when you meet other songwriters that maybe you want to co write with, they’ll be like, okay, you know, someone that’s outside of just you and your small circle or your fans has said, this is a good songwriter. It’s worth working with them. So. And competitions can definitely open doors for you. That’s definitely true. And if you’re, if you’re looking to open doors and if you’re entering competitions that will actually open doors for you, they’re not just like an award. It’s like, oh, well, if you win this, you get coaching from this particular person or you get to perform in this particular event that’s attended by industry people that might be worth doing or if you actually get money. I entered a contest once with one of my, with my Christmas song and I actually won $500.
Bree Noble00:06:43 – 00:07:15
Right now it’s important to look at the detail deal around it. Like I was not going to do that if that was, that meant they were going to take my publishing forever. So I looked into it before I entered and they got to keep my publishing for something like two years. And then if they didn’t do anything with it, it reverted back to me, which was cool. And I got the 500 bucks. So it seemed completely worth it to do that. So that’s when I think it’s worth it to do more. Otherwise, I think you should not do more.
Bree Noble00:07:15 – 00:08:02
You should stop now. What I also talked about in my newsletter a few weeks ago is what you can do with that, right? You want to, when you get awards, you don’t want to just hide it under a bushel. You want to utilize that in your bios, in your intros, in, you know, just kind of work it in as an adjective. Right on. On my Women of substance podcast, like we are always award winning podcast because we did win awards. We are, you know, I can say new and noteworthy podcasts because we did get into new and noteworthy a lot. Or number one iTunes podcast. Like I can use that as an, a descriptor in anything that I write about and so you should be doing that.
Bree Noble00:08:02 – 00:09:02

You should be an award winning singer, songwriter, you should be an award winning artist. If that’s, if you’ve won awards, you know, award winning album, if you won anything for a particular album. So then what happens is like, how can you talk about this in a way that doesn’t make you sound like a total egotistical person? And I know especially as women, we worry about that we don’t want to flaunt ourselves. Right. Even though we put so much work into what we do. So, so a few suggestions around that are maybe to make it about your fans and be like, I want to thank my fans for helping me, you know, win this award or, you know, inspiring me to enter to win this award. You know, just turn it around a little bit and don’t make it about you or tell the story around it. For example, you know, when I won the award for that Christmas song, I could tell the story about how I wrote the song.

Bree Noble00:09:02 – 00:10:05

And, and you know, I’m so excited that, you know, this is going to be pitched to other people by this publisher because I won this award instead of just being like, you know, I won an award. It’s nuanced, but it does make a difference in how you do it. So I encourage you to, you know, definitely go out and talk about it on social media, but find ways to talk about it where you’re not just stating it, but you’re kind of talking around it and you get to use it within your story, within your, you know, maybe you’re talking about, you know, my Christmas album. Oh, and by the way, this for, it starts out with this song that I, you know, won the award for, blah, blah, blah. Right. But definitely also just tell your email list, don’t be afraid to tell them because they want to celebrate with you. They want to, they want to know when someone they’re supporting something exciting happens. They want to know about that.

Bree Noble00:10:06 – 00:10:52

So definitely don’t feel shy around doing that. So what is the sweet spot when it comes to awards? And I pretty much talked about this, but I wanted to wrap it up around this. You know, prioritize recognized and, and reputable awards. Like, don’t just order, don’t just go out for any little awards that you see. There’s, there are some awards that have cropped up in the past so many years and I won’t name them that to me, I’m like, I feel like they just created this to create an another award. Like there’s nothing special about this. There’s no Big names behind it. And because people want to have that award winning thing, they will enter.

Bree Noble00:10:53 – 00:11:22

But if you’ve gotten a few of those, then I would prioritize big contests, big competitions, you know, big songwriting, nationally recognized, internationally recognized songwriting competitions instead of the smaller ones. But at first, if you want to just get some awards under your belt, enter the smaller ones. Why do you think I entered the Inland Empire Music Awards? I. I didn’t. I could never win the LA Music Awards. I don’t think I could ever win that. It’s a lot more competition. Right.

Bree Noble00:11:22 – 00:12:16

But Inland Empire Music Awards, like it’s. Inland Empire, is still a very large area and people in Southern California know what it is. And so it was worth my entering. Right. But definitely weigh the cost versus benefits of going into it and making sure that you really want to invest that money and then aim for quality over quantity. Just don’t, don’t enter everything that you see because once you’ve passed a certain number of awards, it’s just not worth it. And I would also say if you haven’t gotten any awards yet, there are other things that you can use. For example, as you probably know, I run the Women of Substance podcast and we have gotten quite a good reputation for curating great music.

Bree Noble00:12:17 – 00:13:11

0:00 – 13:11

And so you could say, like, you know, my song was chosen for the award winning Women of Substance music podcast. And you can use something like that in place of an award until you get awards. Because anytime that you’re borrowing on the credibility of others and the fact that not everybody can get that thing is going to be really useful. If you’ve been able to play at a venue that not anyone can play at, if you’ve been on a bill with somebody that’s well known, like, those are things that you can use until you win an award. But I do recommend that you get a few awards under your belt and then use them in all of your information and be done with it. And then spend the rest of your money on recording and gear and all the other things that we have to spend money on as musicians. But don’t keep sinking it into awards.

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