Artists from around the planet are pouring into the digital mosh pit of music monetization. Dave Kusek, the mastermind of New Artist Model, is preparing the next generation of artists for the melee. He created his straight-shooting online music business school for the indie artist passionate about building her knowledge, skills, audience, and bank. One of the program’s shining elements is the Musician’s Business Plan.

While “top ten tips” or quick-start tutorials abound for the musician aspiring to make a living, New Artist Model’s comprehensive courses prepare each artist to pursue individualized goals. As the student works through either the Essential Program or the Master Program, the Musician’s Business Plan directs the courses’ elements into a tailor-made Career Map. In an era of distraction and confusion about the best platforms and channels, this Plan keeps artists’ eyes on the prize.

The Musician’s Business Plan is like both a syllabus and a final exam, except more invigorating and supportive to the artist. “Even when a musician gets a music degree, she rarely walks away with something as clear and organized as the Plan,” notes Kusek, who works one-on-one with each Master Class student to develop her Plan. “It’s a central component that helps the artist think creatively in ways she may not have thought before.”

Kusek understands what music business courses lack, thanks to his extensive experience. Formerly of Berklee College of Music and the founder of Berklee Online, he left the college to address the opportunities for creative musicians to develop their own careers. He created New Artist Model to be more practical than a degree, with less expense and time commitment. Courses cover how to build your message, brand, budget, marketing plan, team, business structure, online presence, and multiple revenue streams—all critical to a musician’s career.

The Career Map is a template outlining the musician’s strategy, personal goals and business targets. It incorporates a timeline and financial projections so that artists can better manage the reality of being a musician today. It’s a living tool that the musician/CEO continuously uses to examine results. And it helps raise money—often the task students find most taxing—literally.

“Musicians don’t naturally tend to quantify things and consider long-term budgets,” notes Kusek, who founded several successful music-related startups. His Musician’s Business Plan teaches each student to “to find the intersection between what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at, and what other people tell you you’re good at. It makes you visualize what you want your career to look like, so you can figure out where to allocate resources.”

The Map also is vital in helping to rally the troops, says Kusek. “When you have to figure out something hard and search your soul and consider your definition of success, writing it down and committing to it can provide motivation to a lot of people.” The Plan articulates “what you’re trying to do and what you need help on,” he adds. “It’s important to know your strengths and weakness, so you can find the right people and fill in the gaps. My artists can share their Plan and train their team, so everyone knows where they’re going, and they can get feedback on things they didn’t think of.” 

“What Dave is doing for artists these days is crucial,” says indie-musician-friendly powerhouse CD Baby’s Vice President for Marketing Kevin Breuner. “The business gets more and more confusing and complex. CD Baby wants artists to see success with their music, and there’s a lot that an artist can learn from Dave and do to make better choices and understand what’s happening with their music.” Breuner’s webinar on creating revenue streams is one of the most popular webinars available for free on New Artist Model’s website.

Kusek cautions, “There are no labels or publishers that are going to scoop you up in the early stage of your career. You have to figure out a strategy yourself.” New Artist Model graduates who learn how to work with and grow their own Musician’s Business Plans, Kusek says, are “people willing and able to do the work—you can see them from space. They’re the ones who will be successful. They’ll try and try again. They are the ones to watch.”

Musicians are often students of the school of hard knocks. Music technology, business and education veteran Dave Kusek thinks it doesn’t have to be that way.

His instructional platform New Artist Model was created to provide straight-shooting yet in-depth training for the serious professional musician and songwriter. The first tenet, explains Kusek: “Think like a startup. Find and build your audience. It’s not hard to figure out your online platforms, your distribution and publishing, all the other infrastructure, once you’ve got that,” he notes. “But you need an audience first.”

To do this, most indie artists don’t need a full-blown degree, with its years of commitment and hefty price tag. They need a guide, a roadmap to help navigate the forks and curves of musical journeys. They need a model, not a diploma.

New Artist Model teaches indie musicians how to find their way, choosing the training level that best fits their time and resources. The structure was a conscious choice, developed by Kusek in response to what he saw as the holes in existing music degree offerings. “Musicians don’t need an MBA, or even a bachelors degree,” he notes. “No one is going to ask you for that. Instead what you need is the knowledge of what is working today and how to operate in the digital world. This is a powerful alternative.”

Focused on the practical and actionable, New Artist Model has two tiers of formal music business training, the Essential and the Master levels. Each provides a straightforward path to building a saner, more sustainable career. Artists can learn at their own pace, on their phones, from the road, and while working, choosing from more than 200 hours of video on a dozen overarching topics. From the first strategy session, NAM helps artists create what amounts to a business plan, to help them manage and expand their careers, however they envision them.

That vision can vary wildly, as Kusek knows from experience. “One of our main principles is that we meet you where you are. Everybody’s dream is different and everybody’s path is different. Everybody is at a different point on that path when I encounter them. I want to help them go further, not get them to fit into some mold that I have. I have some students playing 150 dates a year, and some that would love to break out of recording songs in their bedroom, and everywhere in between.”

Yet the principles of entrepreneurship and business development still apply. They can have a profound impact and shape an musician’s model of her career. “The startup revolution has influenced my thinking. I took a lot of the concepts that have been developed for starting a small business and applied them to a musician’s professional life.” For those that scoff at business notions dictating the shape of art, Kusek has an answer: “The same concepts underlie both endeavors: understand your audience, understand your goals, build a team, figure out where the financing is going to come from and have a plan. Learn how to market on a shoestring. You create a business step by step as an entrepreneur.”

Kusek has lived this approach, from his late teens, when he scratched his way into a job at an early synthesizer company near his hometown in Connecticut. He learned the music business from the ground (and the warehouse) up, eventually befriending many of pop and prog rock’s biggest music makers.  From the likes of Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, he learned that superstars were not untouchable, but were “regular people” like him. From mentors like Ovation’s founder Charlie Kaman and Chairman of Hal Leonard Music Publishing Keith Mardak, he learned about publishing, entrepreneurship and the power of treating art as a business.

When he was 24, Kusek and several friends formed the first music software company, Passport Designs. They got involved with a cool new interface called MIDI and became evangelists for the technical standard that has arguably done more to revolutionize the music business than the MP3. Passport’s products included MIDI sequencers, music notation programs and tools for electronic musicians.

Kusek also founded Berklee Online, the storied music school’s ambitious online education program, which became the world’s largest music school. After some time, Kusek realized he needed to take a different tack, and cut loose from old paradigms and academia, and give growing legions of indie artists the tools they need to succeed on their own terms. He wrote a best-selling book called The Future of Music, which analyzed the impact of filesharing and predicted the iphone, siri and the collapse of the record/music industry. From the Future of Music’s tenets, a New Artist Model was born.

“By 2013, it was really obvious that a new model had to be developed and was being created by people who were out there pioneering new techniques, like direct-to-fan marketing, social media, and digital distribution,” recalls Kusek. “So I thought, ‘Why not bring programs to market that would teach this new model using a very practical, on-the-ground road warrior approach?’ We made the New Artist Model accessible in every way: very inexpensive, easy to digest, and completely mobile. Because that’s where the market is.”

Kusek is onto something: NAM students have grown year to year by approximately 40%, reaching thousands. They come from 60 countries, all over the US, Europe, Australia, South America, Canada, attracting a wide swath of popular genres (pop, country, singer/songwriter, R&B, EDM). These musicians, songwriters and entrepreneurs are developing sound business practices to thrive in the new artist economy, learning to strike a balance between creativity and commerce.

“These days you have to be both an artist and a business person,” says Kusek. “If you can learn how to build your knowledge and confidence, grow an audience, and manage your time, the rest will come. I see it happening every day.”