Whether it’s through popular culture or unrealistic standards set by other musicians, many of us approach our work in music with a cultish devotion. There’s this idea floating around out there that if a musician doesn’t completely focus on creating, performing, or sustaining their career 100% of the time, they’re not deserving of success. But while devotion borne through hard work and sacrifice is absolutely vital for a musician to find any measure of success in their work, only caring about music is an extreme attitude very much capable of hurting your career and causing major damage to your life.

Sometimes, you just want to throw your hands in the air and tell someone else to deal with all the hard stuff, am I right?! You want to be able to turn to someone when you need advice, call on them when it’s time to strategize, and just know that someone out there has your back. For many artists, that means having a manager. But here’s the kicker—it’s not always the right time to bring one on.

Sure you may be wrestling with all of the above feelings, but just because you want a manager or feel like you need a little help doesn’t mean you’re actually ready for one. Here are five things to ask yourself next time you start to wonder if you’re ready for a manager.

As much as many of us would like, we can’t just make and perform music every waking minute of our lives. This doesn’t just apply to those of us balancing music with full-time jobs and familial obligations, but also well-known successful musicians who make music for a living. Since music is ultimately a reflection of life, songwriters, lyricists, and producers have to delve deep into the non-musical aspects of their lives in order to create meaningful work. Whether it’s to recharge creatively or to tend to pressing non-musical matters, it’s not uncommon for musicians to step away from making music for a long time.

Re-introducing music to fans after a considerable stretch of radio silence can be tricky. Your fans might feel a strong connection to your music and will be thrilled to know you’re in the game again, but capturing and holding their attention in 2019 has never been harder. Here are a few tips for bringing new music to audiences after a long hiatus:

Lots of musicians get jaded over time and shrink their musical ambitions in response for a good reason. Music is a brutal industry, even for those who’ve experienced some measure of success. The story of a promising musician setting out to make a career for themselves only to get struck down again and again is something most musicians can relate to. But even though scaling back plans, hopes, and ideas in music often sounds like it’s the best course of action, it’s something that can damage your career.

There are few things more exciting for a musician than sharing new work with the world for the first time. After months or even years spent working on something like a full-length album, musicians distribute their new work to the masses with the hope that their music will become something special and known to new audiences. Sadly, this hope is being realized less and less in 2019.

Since being broke is an experience nearly shared by all musicians at some point during their careers, the thought of teaching music on the side to earn extra money is something that appeals to many. But while getting paid to share the gift of music with people might sound like a dream to some, there’s a lot of factors to consider if you’re thinking about becoming a music teacher.

One of the biggest transformations music has undergone over the past two decades is the ability to see songs rack up views, streams, and downloads in real time. Local and national charts still gauge an artist’s radio performance and album sales, but detailed metrics offered by music platforms now let listeners see how much a song is being listened to practically in real time. But public song stats are a small fraction of the detailed analytical information most artists now have access to when it comes to who is listening to their music.

From a music business perspective, having loads of perpetually updating fan analytics at your fingertips is helpful, but I think there’s also a downside to consider. Numbers can’t tell the whole story of worth behind an artist’s music. Since most music is now digitized in some form, it means that the majority of music consumption can be measured. It’s human nature to want to assign value and meaning to the songs that generate the most stats, but there’s a whole bunch of problems to consider if you think that your music is only good if it’s popular.