Just like a business needs customers, musicians need fans. To build a fanbase, one of the most fundamental steps is to identify who your target audience is. If you want to make music for a living, you have to know who to “market” or promote your music to.

How do you do all that? In this blog, I will share my perspective and approach in detail on growing a fan base by identifying your target audience first.
 

Why You Don’t Want to Reach a Wide Audience

 
One of the biggest mistakes that artists, and even musicians make when starting businesses, is having the mindset of appealing to everyone. You need to be very strategic and mindful of who you are marketing to.

You spent all this time and money to make great music, so of course, you want to have as many people as possible to hear it. But the fact is, not everyone is going to like your music or become a fan.

To save yourself time, effort and money, you need to be able to exclude and ignore certain types of people, so you can better focus on the right audience to build stronger connections with. After all, the most effective type of marketing and promotion is one where you can really get specific about who your ideal fans are.

You’re more likely to find your true ideal fans by focusing on a niche or a specific community, rather than casting a wider net of different people.
 

Not All Fans Are Equal

 
Before I go into why you want to go niche, there are two things to keep in mind about the type of fans you want.

As an emerging artist, you need fans. Not passive fans, but engaged super fans who are willing to spend money to support you.

Based on Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 fan theory, you need around 1,000 true fans in order to make a sustainable living. This doesn’t mean 1,000 social media followers. I’ll get to why in a second.

Side Note: There are shortcomings to this theory, especially because it was presented in a time (2008) where the climate of music consumption was much different than it is today. Making a profit of $100 (not revenue) from each of the 1,000 fans would not be easy with all the costs required in music production, content creation and merch. I still believe you need true fans, but how to monetize a small group of dedicated fans year after year has become more challenging for musicians.

Similarly to the 1,000 fan theory, marketing guru Seth Godin talks about how you need a “minimum viable audience” that can sustain you. In other words, you want to niche down enough that you know there are at least 1,000 true fans out there.

Secondly, the process of getting someone to become a fan and supporter of your music, which I like to call a fan funnel, is much longer now because there’s just so much noise and options. This means not everyone who follows you is a true fan or even a regular fan. It’s one thing to identify who your target audience is, but establishing a fan relationship can take more time in today’s digital world.

I know I’ve followed a lot of musicians and artists who have caught my attention based on their brand or hearing a song, but I wouldn’t consider myself a “fan” necessarily. I may stream their music and might follow them on Spotify, but I wouldn’t pay money to buy their merch or see them perform live.

Logic is a good example. I followed him for many years and liked some of his songs early in his career. I didn’t become a true fan until years later when I began to better understand him as a person through his social media posts and content not exactly related to his music. Because I understand him better as a brand, I’m paying for tickets to see him and buying merch.

Everyone’s experience and process of being a fan are going to vary. Niching down and honing into the specifics is the best way to improve your chances of finding your minimum viable audience and 1,000 true fans to establish the foundation of a fanbase.
 

Why Focus on a Niche

 
In case you’re not familiar with the word niche, here’s a dictionary definition:

“Denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.”

Finding your niche is the key to building a strategy around reaching your true fans effectively.

Here are some reasons why:

• You can better understand the needs, problems, values and cultural signals of a niche so you can cater to them as a brand. This allows you to tailor your messaging and presentation in ways that have a better chance of connecting.
• It’s easier to locate the communities in niches online or locally because that’s how we humans naturally come together and organize ourselves. Because of the internet, it’s never been easier with Google.
• It’s cost and time effective because it’s expensive to market massive mainstream audiences.
• Building with niche communities and tribes make it easier to develop stronger relationships. It’s easier for people to relate and resonate with you when they see you as one of them. This allows for more authentic connections to be made easier than if you were trying to reach a broad group.
• Most brands start as a niche. If you’re doing something good and different in a specific audience, you may get recognized and more exposure naturally.
• Niche audiences can be large too, but you may want to try to narrow it down further. A niche within a niche.
• Now that you understand why going niche is often necessary for musicians and artists to grow, I will share the steps of how you should go about it.

Step 1: Self-Assessment – Distinguishing Yourself Through Branding

 
With that being said, it all starts with self-awareness and assessing what makes you the unique person that you are.

Remember that we’re all multifaceted individuals with different goals, values, life experiences, passions and interests. As a musician, how can you present yourself and interact with others in a way that creates a favorable public impression that will lead someone in your target audience to take an interest in what you do? What are the various signals that will attract your ideal fan and create deeper connections? This is how I look at branding.

When it comes to building a fanbase, I find that your branding strategy and target audience will go hand in hand.

Oftentimes, you’re trying to reach niches that are connected to you in some way. I believe that building a fan base starts with knowing yourself because I like to think that as artists, you want to connect with others like you and vice versa.

If you feel you need more help with the branding and self-assessment, I’ve written extensively about branding for musicians. You can read my blogs on this site or download my free eBook.

Step 2: Identify Your Niche

 
Next, you will want to brainstorm. You’ll want to list all the different possibilities and angles for a niche based on these 3 groups or categories:

• Music Related: Elements directly tied to the music, like genres or similar artists
• Music Influences: Aspects of who you are that directly influence your music
• Interests, Passions, Hobbies: Other aspects of you that don’t directly influence your music

Music Related

The first place we tend to default to is genres, sub-genres and similar artists. At face value, it’s how we naturally categorize and organize music, whether by genre or what artists you sound like. The lines that separate genres have become so much more blended and mixed, which has made it made it harder to define.

For example, with hip hop alone, there are a lot of different sub-genres and subcultures you can find your niche in. Same with electronic music. The more narrow and specialized you can get in a genre, the better.

On a similar path, you can also look at similar artists for niches. Every artist will have their own unique audience. Dissecting an artist’s brand and their fan base is a way to uncover ideas for your own niche.

It’s also a good starting point for creating an audience to promote your music through things like Facebook or Instagram ads.
 

Music Influences

Now focusing on genres may help, but it can also still be a bit broad. Examining aspects of who you are that influence your music directly could be a good way to help identify a more specific niche.

The most obvious starting places are:

• Ethnic identity / background (Asian)
• Religion / Spirituality (Christian)
• Life Experiences (Recovering Addict, Broken Home)
• Lifestyle (Vegan, LGBTQ, Nightlife, Pothead)
• Goal Oriented (Women Empowerment, Political, Social Change)
• Geographic / Environment

When you start to combine these aspects, you’ll be on the path to find your niche.
 

Interests, Passions, Hobbies

Lastly, there are aspects of you that may not influence your music directly. It could be more like certain interests, passions or hobbies.

• Sneakers / Fashion
• Food
• Sports
• Comedy
• Fantasy Football
• Dancing
• Nature
• Traveling
• Pets and animals
• Health and fitness
• Photography
• Other artistic forms of expression

These can play a role in your niche as well. They also can be used as signals for your branding.

I’m sure you’re thinking, why can’t it just be about the music? It can, but I think in today’s current climate, you have a better chance by exploring and expanding. It’s about putting out signals to help others connect with you on a deeper emotional level, so others feel like they can relate to you.

This part can take some time as well as experimenting with different aspects, so be patient. Don’t just follow what others are doing or what experts are saying, see what makes sense for your situation. Whatever the niche or niches you decide, it should authentically reflect your own values, beliefs, identities, interests or passions in some way.

Everyone is different, so the reason why this is an important step is to help you identify all the different possibilities and angles you may want to explore. Sure it helps if the songs you make are tied into or influenced by your niche, but it’s not always required.

If you’re not completely starting from square one, think about what momentum you have or any traction you have. It’s possible to stumble into a niche as well so be aware of potential opportunities.
 

Step 3: Research

 
In this step, there are two general things you want to research. You want to get a better sense of who your target audience is and where they can be found.
You may never get all the data you would want, but any data you can find should help.
 

Who is your target audience?

Please Note: Facebook has removed Audience Insights for quite sometime now. I plan to rewrite and update these sections in the near future.

To get into the specifics of understanding your niche or target audience, you can start with a tool like Audience Insights from Facebook. It is a free tool that you can access with a Facebook Ads Manager account.

To access Audience Insights from desktop, click on the upper right hand corner where it says ‘Ads Manager’ and select ‘All Tools’ on the bottom of the menu. The menu will expand out and find ‘Audience Insights’ under the ‘Analyze and Report’ column.

If you don’t have a Facebook Ads Manager account, you will need to set up a Facebook Business Manager account.

You can use this tool to get basic demographic data on who listens to certain genres and follow specific artists.

In the screenshot above, I looked up Logic (rapper) as an example.

Look up genres and sub-genres that closely resemble the music you make.

Look up artists that are similar to you musically and stylistically. Keep in mind that not all artists with a Facebook page will show in ‘Audience Insights’ but it’s worth a try. Also, if you’re target audience tends to lean towards younger demographics, the data may not be the most accurate just because Facebook is not the platform of choice for millennials.

Look up things you listed for music influences.

Look up interests, passions and hobbies.

Things to pay attention to:

• Age
• Gender
• Page Likes
• Geographic Location

The intended purpose of this tool is to help with running Facebook and Instagram Ads, but I like to use it to get some basic demographic data. I will cover how to use this tool for setting up cold audiences (people who have never heard of you) for ad targeting in a later blog.

If you’ve established a following already, you can also access other analytic tools from Google, Facebook and Instagram to find any commonalities or patterns.

Demographics found on ‘Audience Insights’ is limiting, but it’s a start. Another way to learn more about your target audience is to observe them directly. First, you have to find them.
 

Where is your target audience?

Next, you want to find where people of your niche spend their time. This can be both online or in real life.

If you’re having trouble finding where they are, try researching the individual aspects of your niche first. Use Google or search functions on social media platforms.

Here are specific things related to your niche that you will want to look out for:

• Social media platforms
• Hashtags
• Facebook Groups
• Reddit / Subreddits
• Music blogs
• Online forums
• Discord communities
• Publications
• Local communities or gatherings
• Conventions
• Festivals
• Music venues

From here, the goal is to learn everything about the niche’s culture. Chances are you should know these things as an in-group member. But if you’re not too involved in their community, here are areas of focus:

Who are the influencers, content creators, personalities, musicians and brands that your niche already engages with and looks up to? Not only is this big for audience targeting, but it’s also a great way to study them and see how they operate. After all, you’re trying to be one of them.

What jargon, slang, inside jokes and memes do they use? Language is a central component of culture so you have to know how your niche communicates with each other and the references they use. This is an important in-group signal you should know.

Where do they spend most of their time, online and offline? Niches may be spread around all over multiple locations, platforms and communities, but are there any key places where there’s a higher concentration of them?

How do the people in your niche present themselves online and in-person? This is another form of communication and in-group signaling you should understand. Start by looking at individual profiles, see what people post or even attend niche-related events.
 

Step 4: Take Action

 
With this information you’ve gathered, it’s time to take action. This is the part that can take time and investment. I know this blog is focused on building a fanbase, but there’s more you can do with this information.

You’ve identified a niche you want to explore and you’ve researched where you could potentially find them. Here are five action pieces for the last step.
 

1. Target audience for promotion

On the most practical level, this information is going to help you find ways to reach new potential fans online with things like Instagram Ads. To run a successful ad campaign for the purpose of reaching new potential fans, you need to have the right audience target or you’ll be wasting money.

Although you might think it ends here, marketing your music to build a fanbase isn’t only about promoting your music. There’s a lot more to it.
 

2. Joining communities and tribes

Chances are there are communities built around your specific niche. Use the information that you’ve researched to find where you best belong.

I believe it’s extremely important to immerse yourself in your niche in a way that you become a part of the community or tribe. Basically you’re trying to develop a relationship and integrate yourself with people like yourself that either represents your target audience or have access to your target audience.

I wrote a blog on having a community mindset and what that entails, so I recommend reading that first. The idea behind this isn’t to promote and spam your music to these groups and/or communities. It’s about making connections and building relationships.

I’m a firm believer that before you can receive, you need to be able to give first. Provide value for others, and it will be reciprocated.

I know one of the things I say is you have to treat your music career as a business, which is true. But instead of having the mindset of promoting music and making business transactions, think making connections and building relationships first.
 

3. Networking, partnerships, collaborations

In a similar vein, meet people and network with those in your niche. Find other artists and musicians in these niches that you like and can support. They may want to help you out in return and maybe it can lead to some collaborative projects. The more allies and support you can get will help increase your chances of success in music.

If your niche has a local organization that is related, offer to help in some way. Volunteer to help with organizing, or offer to perform for free. When you put yourself out there in these specific communities, you’re building a stronger reputation and brand for yourself.

Finding niche communities that make sense for you isn’t necessarily about finding people to push and promote your music, it’s about being put closer to those people who expose you to more opportunities.
 

4. Branding

Of course, your music is going to be a catalyst for this, but oftentimes, you’re more than just your music. With branding, you want to hone and emphasize certain aspects of your authentic self, but ultimately, what makes you unique are these collective elements.

Use your research to understand how you should approach your branding in a way that is more likely to appeal to your niche. If you’re all about political action and social justice, make sure that’s made apparent. Understanding yourself as a brand helps you to put out the right signals to attract and reach your target audience.

Again, if you need help with branding, be sure to check out my Branding Guide for Musicians eBook.
 

5. Content

As they say, content is king. One of the keys to success is to build a fanbase is good, consistent content and investing the money to promote it properly. With a target audience in mind, incorporate your niche and values into the content you create, like music videos.

You need to think about how can you appeal to your niche with the things you post on social media. This doesn’t have to be limited to only things related to your music.

At the same time, you don’t want to stray too far either and just post about random things all the time. Come up with a content strategy based on step 2 of identifying your niche. Use the interests, passions and hobbies as different things to experiment with as well.
 

Alternative Step: Pivoting

You may find that it makes more sense to build your brand and audience around a niche not directly related to music first. It may sound strange, but the reality is that standing out in music with your traditional options is very difficult.

The idea behind pivoting is to build your brand around something else you’re passionate about and leverage your following to launch your music career later. It starts by creating valuable content around another interest or hobby that is more discoverable through search engines like blogging on your website or video content on YouTube.

You typically see this happen more often with actors, take Jennifer Lopez and Jamie Foxx as examples. I’ve even seen a porn star pivot/transition into music, but I don’t believe it’s limited to just acting.

For example, if you’re a passionate vegan and musician who happens to be a really good cook, you can first build your brand around veganism by publishing your own personal recipes through your website or create cooking videos on YouTube. Assuming there is potential overlap in audience, you can slowly incorporate music into your preexisting brand down the line.

I understand it is a roundabout way of reaching your goal as a musician, but everyone’s life situations and interests are different. Most may not consider this strategy, but you should be aware of the options that you have.
 

Conclusion

 
Everything laid out in this blog should help you lay the foundation to build a fanbase properly by understanding your niche.

Remember, it’s not about appealing to the masses. The right people you want to reach will not only resonate with your music but also share a deeper connection with you as a brand. It’s about understanding yourself (self-awareness) and building a brand around reaching/attracting your ideal target audience through your music and content.

Building a fanbase is an involved process that takes patience. It’s easy to get caught up in this overnight success mindset that “I gotta keep pushing and promoting my music until I have that one hit that will make me famous overnight.” For most, that’s never going to be the case so don’t let these perceptions in our culture fool you.

To me, when it comes to marketing and building a fanbase, it’s not just about how to promote your music and get more exposure. Not only do you have to think about width (exposure), you also have to balance it by focusing on depth (branding).

At its core, I believe marketing your music revolves around relationships. Instead of having this rock star mentality where fans should worship you, you should think of yourself as someone getting others to build relationships with you. Relationships take time, and so will be developing true fans.

At the same time, you still need to balance your marketing efforts between your true hardcore fans and casual listeners of your music to be truly sustainable as an independent artist.

In her article Playing to Strangers, music marketing consultant Amber Horsburgh challenges this notion that you only need 1,000 true fans to be financially secure as a musician. She presents the argument that true brand loyalty is rare, not just in music, and that there’s more opportunity to make money by scaling to light listeners. I found this to be a good reminder that you need to find the right balance between reaching your true fans in your niche and casual listeners in regard to how you grow your fanbase and scale your marketing efforts.

The post 4 Steps to Find Your Target Audience or Niche as a Musician to Grow a Fanbase appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

The two artists that stuck out to me the most, and inspired me to write this, was Slick Rick and Black Violin. Both of these artists shared their stories at some point during the cruise that gave insights into their brand development.

In previous blogs, I’ve talked about basing your brand on elements from your authentic self, but I wanted to use this opportunity to elaborate on why these artists are great brands you can learn from.

For this month’s blog, I wanted to show how Slick Rick and Black Violin pulled from their life experiences to develop their brands, and why they are good examples for other newer artists to learn from.
 

Why Slick Rick and Black Violin?

 
Although we saw and met a lot of amazing artists during this week-long trip, these two in particular stood out because of the stories they shared. They were able to develop successful brands based off aspects of their authentic selves.

The common theme between Slick Rick and Black Violin is that they both combine elements of high class, prestige and wealth with the street, lower-class culture (Hip Hop). At the same time, they both represent two extremes in terms of what they experienced that propelled their brands.

Slick Rick turned the unfortunate events in his life into something positive to create his iconic Hip Hop voice, persona and appearance that is still unlike anyone out there.

Black Violin took their experience of learning an instrument that they actually didn’t even want to learn in the beginning, but ended up developing an inspiring concept and message that their brand represents.
 

Slick Rick

Slick Rick on Instagram
Slick Rick’s Website

Slick Rick made a name for himself as a prolific storyteller. However, he has two distinct elements that made him really stand out in Hip Hop – his signature eye patch and British accent. To top it off, he has this British pimp look going on with the lavish jewelry, gold tooth and Kangol hat. His brand really has the complete package, which is why he’s such an iconic figure in Hip Hop. Not only does he have the looks, but his voice is also unique.

I bring this up because these elements that define Slick’s brand are based on his life experiences. It’s not like he sat around on the couch one day and said: “I want to try this British pimp thing and rock an eye patch.” Hopefully, this helps artists like yourself understand how your life experiences can and should be used as part of your brand or persona.
 

British Accent

 
What people may not know is that Slick Rick was born in London, and his family moved to New York permanently when he was 11. Some people thought his British accent was fake, but it’s not.

In this short video clip I recorded on the cruise, Slick Rick talks about his accent and how it became a part of his brand:

In developing his persona, he knew he also needed to incorporate British vocabulary to sell it. Using words like ‘peasants’ and ‘crumbs’ in his raps really gave his persona life.
 

Eye Patch

 
A lot of people thought he wore an eye patch just to stand out, but Slick Rick is actually blind in one eye. As an infant, his right eye was severely damaged from an incident involving glass from a broken window. It’s an unfortunate accident, but he was able to use it to his advantage. Clearly, it helped him stand out visually as an artist, which is always useful when you want to be memorable.

Butterscotch, who I use as the cover of my branding blogs, rocks a unique looking eyebrow. I’ve heard people refer to her as “the girl with the eyebrow.”

Another great example, who I think is comparable to Slick Rick in terms of persona, is MF Doom. He too is from London and experienced tragedy when he lost his brother DJ Subroc to a car incident. His loss inspired him to return to the music scene as a supervillain character where he incorporates a distinct visual, a metal mask, whenever he performs.

Michael Jackson was iconic with his single glove, which similarly to Slick Rick, was to hide a serious skin condition called Vitiligo.
 

Storyteller

 
The main point of discussing Slick Rick is this idea of transforming your life experiences as building blocks of your brand. He was known earlier in his career for telling vivid stories through his raps.

It turns out that his blinded eye played a big role in that. “I was always pretty shy because of the eye”, he says, “so rather than going out and playing sports, I stayed indoors and wrote stories.”

Although hip hop has drastically changed since the 1980s where Slick Rick first emerged from, his delivery and rapping style was original at the time.

Some might think to themselves, nothing interesting has happened to them that they could base a brand from. As you can hear from the video, he recognized what he had going for him and developed it with the look and British vocabulary to match. Hopefully this gives you an idea on how you can turn a negative situation into a positive element of your brand.
 

Black Violin (Kev Marcus and Wil B)

Black Violin on Instagram
Black Violin Website

On the flip side, you don’t have to have crazy, unordinary life experiences to build a strong brand that stands out. Black Violin, to me, is a good example of being able to base a brand around a concept and message.

Unlike Slick Rick, there’s nothing visually about Black Violin that stands out as a brand, other than the fact that they are two classically trained African American who plays the violin and viola.

At the time, combining classical violin with hip hop was not something people really did. The violin is not really considered a “cool” instrument, especially within the culture of hip hop, and has associations with prestige. However, this duo was able to successfully create a unique sound, bridging two opposite cultures of street and high class.

For them, it’s really about the message and the story of how they were able to manifest it into music.

Here’s a video clip I recorded explaining the message behind their brand:

Where they got the name Black Violin

 
Having a good artist name can really help your brand, as I’ve talked about in a previous blog. The story of how Black Violin got their name is a great example of how their brand concept and message are all consistently tied together through their life experiences.

Sometimes a good brand name is one that is straightforward and you know what to expect when you hear the name. In this case, they didn’t come up with the name, but rather they named themselves based off an album by the late violinist Stuff Smith.

In college, Kev came across the music of black violinist Stuff Smith, who was known to be the first violinist to use electrical amplification techniques on a violin. He loved Stuff’s sound, which he described as “classical violin with soul and fire.” He ended up sharing it with Wil-B and it inspired him as well. As a result, they formed the band using the name of Stuff Smith’s album Black Violin.

From this moment, their perceptions of what the violin could do changed, which led them to the concept of combining things that people normally didn’t use together – making the violin sound cool with hip hop.
 

How did they come up with the concept behind Black Violin?

 
It would seem like artists, bands or even duos with a concept is not quite common. Having an interesting concept that no one has done before can be a good way to stand out.

When they first started, Black Violin had a unique sound that caught people’s attention. It started in high school, where they first met. They would listen to certain hip hop songs on the radio and play the melody on the violin for their classmates. Combining classic violin with hip hop was something that was uncommon, musically.

Black Violin put this concept to the test when they competed in the Apollo Theater showcase in 2005. They ended up winning and it became their first big break. They used their unique blend of classical music and hip-hop to spread the very same message that led them to their success. This is why as musicians, they want to exemplify this concept of thinking outside of the box and making something your own.

The ironic part of this story is that both members didn’t want to play the instruments they play now. Kev Marcus only started playing the violin because his mom enrolled him in the music program in 5th grade, hoping to steer his life away from the streets and into a more positive direction.

Wil B originally wanted to play the saxophone so he signed up for band. They mistakenly put him in the wrong class so he ended up learning the viola instead.
 

The Messages Behind Black Violin

 
Because of their own success as artists through this concept, they’ve made it a mission to inspire others with the same messages that got them where they are today.

Their core messages include:

• Thinking outside the box.
• Defy preconceived notions and stereotypes.
• Make it your own.
• Challenge yourself to do something different by looking at things from a different perspective.

It was great hearing stories of how they get kids interested in the violin because it put into a different perspective when combined with hip hop. During the cruise, they mentioned that parents take their kids to Black Violin shows quite often. At first, the kids are turned off when they hear it’s a show with violins, but a lot of them end wanting to play to violin after hearing it with hip hop. The duo also likes stopping by schools and working with kids while on tour.

As Kev Marcus said, “We try to just give the kids just another outlet, and just show them that it’s not really necessarily about the violin. Start thinking outside the box. It’s about taking that passion, that one thing you can’t stop thinking about, just do it over and over. And just do it differently than anyone else has ever done it, you know?”

Not all successful artists have or need a message. However, I think having one makes it more likely that your brand will resonate and inspire people through a deeper emotional connection. To me, that’s a strong characteristic of a good brand.

Hopefully, you now see how their life experiences brought all their elements together to make them Black Violin.
 

Conclusion

 
I wrote a blog recently about how to find that one thing that makes you unique so that you stand out. Clearly, Slick Rick and Black Violin have found the angles that work for them.

Is it truly unique? There are plenty of artists who are known as good storytellers. Nas, Scarface, Biggie, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, to name a few.

There are other musicians who play the violin with hip hop:

• Nuttin’ But Stringz
• Damien Escobar
• Eric Stanley
• Daniel D

Branding is really about taking aspects of yourself that are authentically you, regardless of how “unique” it may or may not be, and making it into your own.
 

Key Takeaways

 
– Don’t be afraid to explore to try something new like Black Violin did and combine different elements. Be creative and take a different approach.

– Something Slick Rick talked about on the cruise was pushing boundaries. Part of the spirit of hip hop in the early days was being innovative and doing things differently, so have fun trying new things. You never know what could happen unless you try. An example that stands out to me is Tierra Whack. When I think about the dominant sound of hip hop today, it all just sounds the same to me. Tierra Whack is someone who, in my opinion, sounds just like every other young rapper/singer, but she creatively presented her music and storytelling in a way that stood out.

– Embrace your differences. As a young British kid, Slick Rick naturally stood out in the New York hip hop scene. Rather than hiding it, he ended up building an iconic persona, and to this day, no one else is quite like him. Remember that there’s always going to be a market for being different. Think about why someone like Hobo Johnson blew up.

– Think about the life experiences that shape the person that you are. How can any of those things transfer into your artist identity and develop into a brand? Sometimes you might not think there’s nothing interesting about your life, but you need to develop the self-awareness to know what could resonate with others. Or, you can talk to someone. Like I’ve said, everyone’s life story is unique, so it’s about how you creatively communicate and tell it.

– Don’t underestimate the power of having the complete brand package where all the branding elements consistently tell the same story. Both Slick Rick and Black Violin, to me, have that complete package. Even the album titles for Slick Rick (The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, The Art of Storytelling) and Black Violin (Classically Trained, Stereotypes) tie into their brand.

– Lastly, be memorable. After all, that’s the goal of a good brand right? Because there’s so much competition now, you really have to stand out. If not musically with a new sound or concept, try visually.

 

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If you found this blog useful, check out my Branding Guide for Musicians eBook. I took my ‘Basics of Branding for Musicians’ blog series, rewrote parts of it and combined them into one convenient guide. I also included a branding workshop section to provide further help in establishing your brand that you can only find in this eBook.

The post Developing Your Brand from Life Experiences: Artist Lessons From Slick Rick and Black Violin appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

You hear it often in regard to branding. I have even said it in my previous blogs. Because there’s so much competition for attention in the digital era, you have to be able to distinguish yourself to stand out. You need to find what is “unique” about you.

I realize now that this could be misunderstood.

Yes, the concept of branding is to essentially distinguish yourself as unique compared to others… at least to public perception.

However, you shouldn’t have to figure out what makes you unique.

The fact is you are “technically” unique as you are. No human, even if you have an identical twin, will ever share the exact same combination of life experiences, social interactions and genetics as you. Does that automatically make you interesting and special as an artist?

Probably not – which is why you’re here. But the way I see it, the focus should be less about figuring out what is “unique” and more about how you will stand out and appeal to specific people who find you interesting.

For the third part of the branding series for musicians, I will address 7 key points about this idea of uniqueness in branding and why you should rethink it.
 

1. Your brand can be multifaceted.

 
Some of the artist questions I’ve been getting emails about have to do with figuring out that “one thing” that will make them super unique and interesting. Theoretically, for the sake of simplicity and clear communication, a good brand tends to have “one thing” that stands out and sticks in people’s minds. That one thing makes it easier to set expectations about who you are.

At the end of the day though, we are all multifaceted people. Some people, even within your target audience, will resonate more with different aspects or identities of you than others.

You can explore different parts of you to see what sticks for your branding. Don’t get caught up with this idea that you have to have this “one thing”. It will help to highlight or focus on one thing as a priority, but every artist is different so see what works best for your circumstances.
 

2. You’re unique, but your branding angle isn’t.

 
When it comes to defining your brand, what you choose to highlight is rarely ever going to be truly unique. Don’t get caught up in finding that one perfect thing that no one else is. When it comes to that branding angle, it’s okay to be like so and so. There are a lot of artists who are potheads (Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Cypress Hill) or have dealt with drug addiction (Macklemore, Eminem, Eligh) at the forefront of their brand. This shouldn’t stop you from going in that direction if that is true to who you are and it supports your goals as an individual.

You can approach different angles by combining them in some creative way. Just saying you are a rapper or singer-songwriter from so and so is pointless. Don’t be afraid to be more fine-tuned with your niche. My good friends AstraLogik are a music duo who are Filipino, gay and life partners with each other. Their brand is a mixture of these things that make them unique and multifaceted.

Branding isn’t always just about what you are or what you’ve experienced. It could be based on the creative, political, economic or social pursuits you are working towards. If you care about social issues like homelessness, your brand could be based on opening up your own homeless shelter. It could be based on things you are working towards, which can make for an interesting story.

It could even be based on presenting your music creatively like Tierra Whack did with her album Whack World.

Some people fall into a branding angle much easier because they do have some really interesting life experiences that make it natural. Good examples are Slick Rick and Black Violin. For others, it can take time to develop. This leads to the next point.
 

3. What makes you unique will take time.

 
Establishing your brand identity is the foundation of building yourself as someone who is unique. The reason why I feel you shouldn’t obsess over that “unique” angle earlier on is that I believe that it can take time for your “uniqueness” to manifest.

Yes, you do need to eventually be able to build your brand in a way that is distinguishable and somewhat unique. However, there shouldn’t be pressure to do so right off the bat, especially if you’ve only been in music for less than a few years.

It’s possible to stumble into some life event or opportunity later that may redefine your brand.

Your brand identity can and should be a work in progress. Even with a good brand, you still need patience. Just because you’re not famous in 2 years, doesn’t mean you’re not unique enough. Trust the process!
 

4. The sole purpose of branding isn’t to be different.

 
Sure, one big part of branding is making yourself distinguishable. But you aren’t establishing yourself as this super unique artist just to be different. The goal is to stand out AND draw people into you as a brand they resonate with.

The other part of branding is to develop a deeper emotional relationship. This is often done by doing the opposite of being “different,” which is showing how you are similar to those you want to reach. After all, presenting yourself as someone who is relatable is what helps people feel more connected to you.
 

5. Don’t overthink it or try too hard. Ask for help.

 
A good brand isn’t one that is the most unique so don’t get stuck on trying to be so different. If you’re overthinking it, then it’s probably not going to be natural.

I had an artist reach out to me who had trouble figuring out his brand because he felt there was nothing interesting about him. I had him fill out my brand assessment questionnaire (coming soon) and learned he had a bunch of interesting angles that could be taken.

This is why something like self-awareness is important. You might not think you are interesting, but sometimes you’re not the best judge of that. Try getting an outsider’s perspective and ask people you know what they think may be interesting about you.
 

6. Don’t just state it, follow through and live it.

 
It’s one thing to say you’re this and that when defining your brand, but it’s another thing to show and live it. Branding is less about what you say you are and more about what people see and hear.

If you say you are a mental health advocate or a political activist in your bio, make sure the content you push on your social media channels shows it. A big component of branding is creating and maintaining a public perception that reflects an authentic part of you. This is why it can take some time as well to develop it. Branding isn’t something you set and forget.

Branding is about owning your narrative. It’s highlighting what makes you who you are and embodying that in everything you do. What ultimately will make you unique is how you transform that angle into your own.

When you are figuring out your brand, you’re trying to set a foundation and an expectation for others. That can be difficult in itself, but the harder part is you have to live it, which is why it should be authentic.
 

7. Branding alone isn’t going to save you.

 
To expand on the first point, I get the sense some artists get too obsessed with finding that one unique thing. They feel it’ll make or break their career. Just like talent alone isn’t going to carry you. You still need to have talent, put in the work and create amazing music. Super cliche but it’s true. Success involves many factors so don’t let this aspect of your brand slow you down.

I stress branding as being massively important in today’s climate, but it’s not the magic pill. Figuring out that one branding angle isn’t going to magically take your music to the next level. Your main focus should be on making music.

Branding is a long term investment, not a shortcut or a tactic.
 

Conclusion

 
If you found this blog useful, check out my Branding Guide for Musicians eBook. I took my ‘Basics of Branding for Musicians’ blog series, rewrote parts of it and combined them into one convenient guide. I also included a branding workshop section to provide further help in establishing your brand that you can only find in this eBook.

The post The Basics of Branding for Musicians: Figuring Out What Makes You Unique appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

In the last 3 months, Hobo Johnson has:

• Reached 700k+ Facebook followers (up from a few thousand)
• Gained 256k+ Youtube Subscribers
• Sold out shows all over the U.S. and U.K.
• Reached #11 on Billboards Heatseeker’s Chart
• Had at least 4 of his songs at the same time on Spotify’s U.S. Viral 50 Playlist
• Booked his first big festivals – Bumbershoot in Seattle and Outside Lands in San Francisco

In the world of virality and mainstream artists, this is relatively impressive. But to the average independent artist, this is an astronomical feat for a 20 something-year-old adult from Sacramento.

How did he do it? It was all thanks to this video he released with this band The Lovemakers on March 7, 2018:

It wasn’t a hot recorded song or album that propelled him to internet stardom. It was a NPR Tiny Desk submission video recorded in what looks like someone’s backyard in Sacramento.

After watching the video, you may be inspired to create your own Tiny Desk submission, but don’t expect the same success.

The fact is Hobo Johnson is a one of a kind artist with his own unique energy.

This story hit home for me, because I currently do live in Sacramento where Hobo Johnson is from. I’ll be honest and admit I underestimated Hobo Johnson. I’ve known about him for a couple years before this happened, but it never occurred crossed my mind that he was capable of this kind of success.

In this blog, I will share what stood out to me about his story that I think other artists can learn from.

Note: The quotes you see are actual comments people have left related to Hobo Johnson. I find that reading and studying comments is very insightful.
 

1) Going viral is still NOT a viable strategy.

“Literally watching this man rise in just the past 2 weeks blows my God damn mind.”

As inspiring as his story is, trying to go viral as a way to become “successful” is not an effective strategy. It’s much harder than it seems.

However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t study the various factors or characteristics of a video that can increase the likelihood of something you create going viral. This is a good habit, because it shows you what makes great content that people want to share.

Take a look at 3 artists who have gone viral in the past few years (I tried my best to not include hip hop artists).

2015: Post Malone with White Iverson:

2016: Rich Brian (Rich Chigga) with Dat Stick:

2017: Clairo with Pretty Girl:

If you’re not familiar with these videos, I would watch them and pay close attention to what elements or characteristics these artists have and what stands out in their songs and videos. I will touch on some of these things in this blog. After watching, you should notice reoccurring elements in Hobo Johnson’s song and in each of these 3 example videos.

The fact still remains that you shouldn’t sit around and bank on trying to manufacture a video or song so it will go viral. But, if this is still a channel you want to pursue, there are key elements that can increases your opportunity. If you’re interested in learning the science of going viral, check out my other blog.

One last point. Hobo Johnson even said himself that he was caught off guard that this was the video out of all things that caught on.

More often than not, it would appear that artists achieve viral success when it’s unexpected. I have yet to come across an artist who has gone viral because they intentionally were trying to or knew they were absolutely on the right path to becoming a viral success. Authenticity is so important nowadays that we can detect bullshit and people who are trying too hard.

You don’t need to go viral to be a success, but sometimes it just takes that one song or video to trigger a chain reaction for everything that you’ve worked for to come into fruition.
 

2) You can do something different and still become successful being yourself.

“He is definitely talented and different.”

I’m sure we’re all familiar with this message, but I think it’s important to reinforce in today’s society. It’s easy to get caught up in trends and conform to what is popular, especially in music.

For several years now (thanks to the internet), we’ve been seeing a shift with all types of different people becoming popular who don’t necessarily fit into the typical mold, more so then in the past it seems. There’s a market for all types of people who are: awkward, not physically fit, weird, quirky, dorky, gay, goofy looking, scrawny, shy, unattractive, have different body types or strange styles, dress funny or don’t conform to gender roles.

Because we have the ability to become our own media company (a Gary Vee reference) via social media, there’s more room for diversity and opportunity for different niches in music.

Hobo has created his own distinct sound and style that resonates with others like him. There isn’t anyone that I know that comes close to his voice.

This shift is a sign. People like different. In other words, there’s more opportunity to be accepted for who you are because it’s easier to find and connect with people who are like you through the internet.

This doesn’t mean intentionally trying to be different or over the top just to gain attention. It needs to be authentic, which ties into the next point.
 

3) People really appreciate vulnerability and authenticity.

“I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety my whole life and I think that’s why I enjoy his art. Not too often you see people these days being vulnerable on purpose.”

I think artists and musicians put themselves in vulnerable positions in varying degrees through their lyrics and performances. Music has always been an emotional and personal outlet, but I think we’re seeing a higher level of it now.

Even Kanye West has openly talked about his addiction to opioids, insecurities of being overweight and bipolar diagnosis.

When you really open yourself up, I feel it makes it easier for others to emotionally connect with you and relate to your music. It puts you on the same level as your fans. In a culture of superficiality and status, vulnerability brings out a layer of authenticity that people can trust and resonate with.

Some topics are so sensitive that we are taught not to talk about them, like insecurities, addictions and mental illness. In western culture, discussion of these topics can be seen as a sign of weakness that brings about shame and embarrassment.

There is social pressure to present an image of ourselves in a positive light on social media all the time, because we think that’s what others want to see. I see this quite frequently in artist bios.

Of course we want to highlight our achievements and accolades, but I believe sharing the struggles and challenges we experience are just as important because it makes for a good story. To me, music is about connection and oftentimes as Hobo says, “not feeling so alone.”

Eligh of the Living Legends, an artist whom I work with, is someone who openly talks about his addiction to heroin and is now 12 years sober from all substances. His brand has grown organically around sobriety, and many of his hardcore fans really relate to him, especially ones who deal with addiction themselves. Many of them will reach out to ask for advice and guidance. Because he allows himself to be open and vulnerable, he’s developed a deeper relationship with his fans.

Although Hobo Johnson’s persona can come off as slightly exaggerated, it’s clear that he’s coming from a place of real life struggles when he touches on topics of loneliness, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression and the hardships of growing up in a broken family. How he expresses his emotions clearly resonates with his fans:

“He sounds like he’s on the verge of a mental breakdown… hella relatable.”

“Dude, lyrically your analogies are the shit. They’re honest, creative and still very relatable. You have a lot of endearing qualities that really make you seem very much like the rest of us, shy, awkward, maybe a little ADD. Heard Peach Scone the other day and became an instant fan.”

“It is refreshing to finally hear someone that brings up inner emotions and someone who is so real and in your face and no bullshit. I’m happy there are still people like that left. I like the idea of putting your life in a song and just blast it all out in the open.”

“I have to say, the main reason I am a fan of you, Hobo Johnson, is that you’re real. Your emotions and lyrics are raw and extremely relatable. You’re very very unique. Seems like you have been through a lot of shit in your young life, and I have as well. That’s why I can relate so well.”

Hobo has a unique energy that even if you don’t necessarily relate, you can respect the art and what he brings. Although I knew of him before he blew up, I was never a fan, but I did appreciate his emotionality and vulnerability.
 

4) Nothing gets people talking more than controversy.

“I honestly don’t know if this is rubbish or pure gold. This is like the 100th time I’ve heard it as well.”

We know that beef and controversy in music helps get people’s attention and sell records (back when people use to buy them). In our social media driven world, anything polarizing that gets people debating and arguing is great for exposure and social transmission.

Not that Hobo Johnson is a “controversial” artist, but he has definitely stirred up a lot of discussion and even confusion about the type of music he does.

Common questions and issues that often come up when talking about Hobo Johnson:

• Is this really hip hop or rap?
• Is he a rapper or slam poet?
• Is the song good or trash?
• Is he creative or creepy?
• In Peach Scone, is the crush on his friend scary or unhealthy?
• Is he misogynistic?
• Is he actually talented?
• Is he exaggerating too much?

I think part of this “controversy” has to do with this concept of music genres being challenged from crossover artists and blending of musical styles. Apparently people have a problem when artists don’t have clear genre lines to define and categorize them.

Hobo Johnson has described his style as “low-fi hip hop with folk-punk influence.” A similar thing happened with Post Malone when he first came on the scene and people tried to describe his music. Although he calls his music “genre-less,” others have called it a fusion of hip hop, country, grunge, R&B and electric folk.

As a result of his popularity and apparently ambiguous nature, Hobo Johnson has received a lot of negative attention.

“I keep seeing his name on Facebook, but I have no idea who he is and why he’s getting so much negative attention. He keeps getting death threats, his apartment was broken into and his mom possibly being doxed…”

Here’s what his critics had to say:

“This is just awful. I cringe every time I hear his voice which is all the time because these videos keep getting passed around. Stick something sharp in my ears instead.”

“This shit is garbage. Fake deep. Creepy and cringy shit from some weirdo stumbling over his words and staring oddly into the camera.”

“The musicians don’t have much talent. Neither does he, and all he talks about is being in the friendzone. It’s fucking dumb.”

“Seems like nobody’s allowed to have a negative opinion or critique on this man’s music without an 80 comment reply of people calling that person a dick or an idiot for having an opinion. This kid has some lyrics I can dig, but his exaggerated emotions to give off his persona feels forced …. Like birthing a child forced.”

As you would expect, his fans will defend him and share their perspectives:

“I don’t understand how people believe the lyrics to Peach Scone are misogynistic. It seems like the opposite to me. What I got from the lyrics is that it’s about a man who loves a girl who is in a relationship with someone else. Even though it hurts him, he realizes that he wants her to be happy. The lyric towards the end… I just hope she doesn’t get hurt…is probably my favorite. It shows how much he cares for her.”

You often hear sayings like, ‘you know you’ve made it or become successful when you have haters’. I use to think it was silly, but from a marketing and branding perspective, it actually makes a lot more sense to me now. Hating, controversy and debating get people worked up. As a result, they comment and share more.

You also hear the saying, ‘any press is good press’. Polarizing views feed into social sharing and give you more exposure. This doesn’t mean you should create controversy on purpose to gain exposure, but be aware of its impact.
 

5) The power of social proof and influence is powerful.

“I went from not knowing who tf u were, to wtf is this??, to “ehh its ok”, to “Peach Scone” being stuck in my head and now I’m a fuckin groupie all in a matter of 48 hours. Seriously love you right now! Your music speaks to my soul lol 1.7k people felt the same.”

By now, we’re all aware of the power of social proof. It’s the reason why most artists obsess over how many followers or subscribers they have on social media. You know you are being subconsciously judged by the numbers displayed on your social media accounts.

It’s all about shaping a favorable image to those who don’t know you. We often associate these vanity metrics as a sign of quality. However, it’s not as influential as we might think, because it can be easily faked.

The one thing you can’t fake is when thousands of people share your content, and that’s powerful social influence. People shared that Peach Scone video on Facebook 130k times. The actual share number is even higher, because it doesn’t take into account the people who shared it after that and the shares of the Youtube video.

When things go viral and get passed around like the Hobo Johnson video, there’s a lot of interesting social science going on. What others think can influence our own perceptions of what we think is a “good” song.

You might think that anything that is “good” would naturally become popular or successful, whether we’re talking about music, books, art or movies. Historically, this has not always been the case. Many famous artists and authors have been passed on and rejected many times in their career before making it big. Why is that?

Matthew Salganik, a Princeton Sociologist, conducted a study to understand that very question.

In the experiment, he set up a website where people could listen and download music for free. It contained a list of songs from new, local artists that no one had heard of. Song order was shuffled and participants could see what others had liked and downloaded. Over 14,000 people were randomly placed into 8 different groups, or worlds, that all started with the same initial conditions.

Theoretically, the best songs should be the most popular in all 8 worlds. However, that was not the case. Some songs that were the most popular in one world, were one of the least popular in another. The conclusion was that quality or talent alone isn’t a predictor of success. Social influence plays a big role as well.

In most cases, social influence isn’t enough to make something that is actually “bad” be considered “good” or vice versa. The experiment showed that quality was correlated with success. While it may not completely change your perception of what is “good,” it’s enough to tip the scales to get people to pay attention rather than scroll past it in the news feed, especially when it is seen frequently.

This is only a brief rundown of the study. You can read it in full here:
http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/musiclab.shtml

This is why shared content is powerful. When people share your content and it goes viral, we interpret it as being too difficult to fake. As viral marketing expert Jonah Berger states, “Social influence only works when other people’s opinions or behaviors are observable.” In the context of the experiment, we take into account what others think and do to shape our own preferences.

“This randomly came up in my Facebook feed: hated it, couldn’t stop watching it, COULDN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND MISSING IT FOR DAYS. Found it on YouTube bc I remembered the lyrics, have replayed it 5 times.”
 

6) Even with more exposure, you still need to build your brand.

“Maybe Hobo Johnson will use his music to become some kind of bad ass mental health advocate.”

It seems like many artists out there think that exposure is all they need to become “successful.” To be exposed or discovered is a short term thing. You need people to actually stick around for the long term. This is where your brand comes in.

In my opinion, having a strong brand played a big role for Hobo Johnson becoming a viral sensation and resonating with so many people.

I won’t touch too much more on branding, since I talk about it in a bunch of other blogs. However, the two things I want to point out is that his brand comes from an authentic place and it is consistent.

Hobo Johnson’s persona may seem a bit exaggerated, but at the core of it, it is still an authentic extension of who he is. A self-deprecating, neurotic guy who deals with insecurity and being in the friend zone.

His brand ties very well with his story about getting kicked out of the house and living out of his 1994 Toyota Corolla at the age of 19 – hence the name Hobo Johnson (Real name is Frank Lopes).

For as long as I’ve known of him, his brand, look and style has been unchanged. Same voice. Same weird look. Same delivery and awkward sense of humor. Look back at all his stuff and you’ll see the same consistent characteristics of who he is.

When you look at his content, website, posts and videos, there’s a consistent feel that really comes off as his own. Bad grammar, cheesy and outdated graphics, corny / amateurish style and totally not professional, which makes him more relatable. He comes off as someone who’s doing really badly at trying to fit in; unconfident, unsure of himself, but it plays well to his “hobo” persona.

Even the music video he released after blowing up is consistent with his brand:

“This music video is so oddly aesthetic since it’s the complete opposite…if you know what I mean?”

His tagline on Instagram reads:
Songwriter. Poemer. AbletonLiver. Piano Player Kinda.

His mailing list is titled “join our cult.”
https://www.hobojohnson.com/cult

This is his Kickstarter campaign from early 2017:
Kickstart Hobo Johnson’s Kinda Good Music Career
 

Additional Resources

 
If you’re interested in hearing more about Hobo Johnson and his story, check out the links below.

Interview with Anthony “The Needle Drop Guy” Fantano

DJ Booth Article: I Really Wanted to Hate Hobo Johnson… But I Couldn’t

Hipster Rapper Hobo Johnson Is Going Viral — & It’s All Thanks To THIS Music Video!

The post Going Viral: 6 Important Lessons Artists can Learn from the Rise of Hobo Johnson appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Unfortunately with so much competition for attention now, that number may be more. However, the idea behind this is to help dispel this notion that you need thousands or millions of fans to make it as an independent and that living off music is more attainable than it seems.
 

What exactly is a super fan?

 
They are the diehard fans that will buy everything you put out, rock your merch and come out to your shows. These are the type of fans you can expect to tattoo their favorite lyrics and make any effort to meet you. They want to support you every step of the way, as they feel emotionally invested in your musical journey. Your music strikes a chord with their lives and resonates with their own life experiences. Most importantly, they become one of your biggest marketing tools by promoting your music to their friends through word of mouth.

Super fans also feel a personal, deep connection to your brand. They support you because your music is a reflection of their own identities and experiences.

So, how do you make fans feel more emotionally connected to your brand?

In this blog, I will discuss 4 simple communication changes in how you interact with your fans that will increase the likelihood they will become super fans.
 

1. Speak directly to a fan, not as a group

 
It’s common to address your fans online as a collective group by saying things like:

“Hey guys!”

“Hey everyone.”

“Thank you all for coming out.”

The problem with this is it comes off as a broadcast message that people likely to tune out or subconsciously detach from since it doesn’t feel personal. When you’re more direct, fans are less likely to feel like another person in the crowd and are more likely to pay attention or engage.

You want fans to feel like you are speaking directly to them, whether it’s in person, in emails or in social media. This personal touch is more important now than ever because of the saturation of content and competition for attention.

For your emails and social media posts, tweak your language by using the pronoun ‘you’ instead of referring to a group of fans. Envision yourself as if you’re just talking to that one super fan you know.

This falls into the same concept I remember learning about for team building and leadership back in college. As the leader in a team or group environment, you always want to use the word ‘we’ as opposed to ‘I’ even if you are the only one taking action. It helps others to subtly feel more involved and a part of the group, which increases the likelihood that others contribute and feel motivated. This approach of talking to fans as individuals falls into the same idea. Fans are more likely to feel directly connected to you if you do this consistently.
 

2. Frame your messages to show benefits for the fans

 
Artists can come off as self-centered even if they don’t mean it. As a musician, the attention is naturally on you as the performer. You make music that people love, so of course it feels like the focus is on you. You may end up saying things like:

“It would mean a lot to me if you can support my next project.”

“It would really help my career if you came out to the show.”

“By sharing this video, it would really help get my music out and make me successful.”

Yes, your fans want to support you so you can succeed. However, it’s not all about you, but it can seem that way with the language you use. You can call it the “me me me” mindset. Instead, you need to always think about what’s in it for the fan.

Shift the focus in your language from how it benefits you and frame it in a way that shows how it benefits the fan.

This is a common issue even with artists I know and work with. It’s important to make fans feel like you need them more than they need you. In reality, you can argue that the truth is you need them more, because there are so many artists that they can pay attention to. You want the fans to feel like they are the hero in your story, not you. You are providing the soundtrack to their own journey.

Here are examples of how you would want to frame the message instead: (maybe not as corny or cheesy like I did)

“Please support this project so I can continue to make more music that you love.”

“Doing some new music at my next show. Come say hi and get a picture with me.”

“Help spread the message by sharing this video so we can make the world a better place.”

These phrases show what’s in it for the fan for taking the action that you want and ultimately benefit you as well. Before making a request or asking for additional support, think about what the fans want from you or what they would like to get out of what you’re asking for.

Simple changes like how you frame your message can help fans feel more important and more invested in your brand to become super fans.
 

3. Communicate the larger message through your brand

 
Often times, fans are drawn to certain artists not just because the music, but the message behind the brand.

As an artist, you’re telling your story through your brand and music. What should be embedded in your story is a deeper philosophical message or meaning. How would your music make the world a better place? What do you stand for that resonates with your fans? Does your brand help to push a deeper, larger narrative, that fans can emotionally latch on to?

If your music makes them see the bigger picture of how things should be, or resonates with them because of a shared belief or value, they are more inclined to develop a long lasting connection with your music. By supporting you and your music, fans are helping to push along or support a larger message that reflects their own personal beliefs or values.

For example, Logic is someone who advocates positivity, acceptance and equality for a better world. Not only does his music reflect this sentiment, he consistently talks about it and advocates his message through social media and even live performances. When you listen to his fans, many of them really resonate with this message. Fans of Logic not only support him because he makes music they like, he stands for something greater than himself.

When you communicate your brand in ways that resonate with the beliefs or values of your fans, you’re likely to get them to feel a deeper connection that leads them to become super fans.

As an artist, you really want to communicate in a way that makes fans feel they are a part of something bigger than just your music. If you are unsure about what your brand stands for or what your brand message is, check out these branding blogs to help you on the right path.
 

4. Engage fans with the intention of building relationships

 
This means setting time aside to engage with fans and making yourself accessible. As an artist, your fans may want to connect with you on a deeper level because of your talent or how your music impacts their lives. By acknowledging and engaging with them, it helps to humanize you and plants the seed of them potentially becoming a super fan.

Dedicate some time out before or after a show to talk to fans that want to meet you. Take photos and sign CDs if they ask. Respond to people’s comments or questions online. These small actions are a huge step in building a deeper fan relationship. I like to think of it as branding, providing long term value for fans even if it does not give you an immediate monetary return.

Early in your career, it makes more sense to engage with as many fans as you can wherever possible in an effort to build up those 1,000 super fans. As you become more established, you’ll have less time for it, but it doesn’t mean you should completely stop. As popular as he is, even Slug of Atmosphere (my favorite music duo) still meets fans outside of the venue for pictures before their shows. Not even as a meet and greet package, he just hangs out with fans: (these are actual clips I took)

This doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with every fan, but at least give them the opportunity to connect with you directly. Fans generally understand that artists are busy, so your effort will mean a lot.

On the other hand, you may be someone who is not very social or reserved, so it may be harder for you to put yourself out there. That’s okay too, because people like that can relate. Fans who gravitate to your music or talent may end up being people who are very similar to you.

Lastly, you never know how some fans may be able to help you down the road in your career. Don’t discriminate against the fans you choose to engage based solely on what you think they can do for you. You never know who a fan may know or what resources they have that you need.

One of the artist I work with, Butterscotch, had the opportunity to open up for one of her favorite artists, Thievery Corporation, because one of her fans knew she was a big fan. This fan, who worked for the Las Vegas venue Brooklyn Bowl, suggested Butterscotch as the opener and it happened.
 

Last night was magical! One of the best feeling shows in every sense. As I walked out of the dressing room, I ran into the founding member of @thieverycorporation, Rob Garza, and he remembered when we serendipitously met on a flight to New York a few months ago. As you may know, I'm a HUGE Thievery fan and I kind of freaked out just meeting him, so imagine how excited I was running into him again before I opened up for his band! We grabbed a photo and I ran downstairs elated and started anxiously pacing around, loosening up, and I could get a feel of how big the crowd was by how much noise they were making. I WAS SO READY! The stage went dark and I walked on stage calmly. I grabbed the mic, looked at the crowd and BOOOOM! I started beatboxing and they went crazy. From the first sound to the last note, everything flowed seamlessly. This was perhaps my best set ever and it felt SO GOOD!! I told the crowd how important this show was to me and I feel that Thievery fans are so in touch with the world, that they really felt me on another level. It was beautiful. @rasarmusic and I jammed out at the end and I loved having my partner in crime there for such a special night. When I walked back in the dressing room, the members of Thievery were so thrilled and embraced me in every aspect. I am so grateful!! I could go on with more details, but I'm about to board my flight back to Sacramento and get ready for my show tonight!! Love you. Photos by @artofsonia Special thanks to @theliqueband for supporting your girl, coming through with essential gear!

A post shared by Bᴜᴛᴛᴇʀsᴄᴏᴛᴄʜ (@butterscotchmusic) on Aug 5, 2017 at 1:14pm PDT

Conclusion

 
Reaching 1,000 super fans is not an easy task. By making these 4 tweaks in how you communicate with fans, I believe you’ll be more likely to earn the super fans needed to sustain a career in music. It starts with not only putting out good music, but giving fans a reason to feel more emotional invested in your brand and a part of your journey.

The post 4 Easy Communication Tweaks To Help Convert Fans Into Super Fans appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

One of the most important assets you have is your brand, and your brand’s effectiveness is determined by how well you are able to connect with people on an emotional level. Why? Because not everyone will listen to your music when they come across it. Instead, they will have to make decisions about you based on your name, online presentation, bios, descriptions and everything else that relates to you. If these aspects don’t get their attention or resonate with their identity, then they are less likely to listen to your music.

In this blog, I will go over the 4 general steps that are essential to help you build your own brand.
 

Step 1 – Develop Self-Awareness

 
One of the most important things you can do as an artist is to know who you are and understand yourself inside and out. More specifically, you need to know what makes you relatable and interesting so you can communicate that to others.

To have a deeper understanding of yourself, you need self-awareness. I like to describe self-awareness as the ability to objectively and honestly analyze oneself from a third-person perspective to understand one’s values, beliefs and behaviors.

To be clear, self-awareness is not a switch you can just turn on. Developing self-awareness occurs over a period of time and is somewhat dependent on being aware of the numerous factors that influence human development and this concept we call a “self.” I believe we all have some degree of it, but it may take external influences, like another person’s impartial perspective, to help you understand yourself better. Even if you don’t have strong self-awareness at this point in time, that doesn’t mean you can’t work on developing it.

It’s safe to say that, in general, we want to attract and appeal to fans that are similar to us. This requires some degree of self-awareness so that we can establish a brand that speaks to those fans. This is why the concept of branding works best when you understand who you are, and it makes it a lot easier to attract similar types of people as you to your music. Self-awareness is what allows you to be honest about your strengths, weaknesses and characteristics.

The better you know yourself, the more likely you can eventually figure out what makes you special so you can share that with the world. Remember, we are all alike in many ways, but everyone has their own unique journey in this world. You’ll need to take certain aspects of who you are that will serve as the foundation of your brand or artist identity. The next step is to take “who you are as a person” and put it into the context of “who you as an artist” to create your brand identity.
 

Step 2: Establish Your Brand Identity

 
With a better understanding of who you are with self-awareness, you can now establish your brand identity. This is done by strategically highlighting or enhancing an authentic part of yourself.

What I mean is we all have different identities, interests, beliefs, goals, statuses, values and characteristics that make up who we are. The idea is to decide on what angle, or angles, you want to be at the forefront of your “brand identity” as a foundation to build on. Over time, you can develop this brand into something that is unique to who you are.

Here are some examples of branding angles your brand identity can be based on:

• Sex, gender, sexual orientation
• Race and ethnicity
• Religion / spirituality
• Political / social change
• Social causes / activism
• Extraordinary talent
• Personal philosophy
• Mental illness (depression, anxiety, addiction)
• Highly accomplished (competition winners)
• Overcoming adversity
• Childhood experiences
• Surprises and the unexpected
• Uniquely creative
• Socially awkward or outcast
• Mysterious or elusive
• Family dysfunction
• The Romantic
• Love and relationships
• Sex symbol
• Funny, comedic and entertaining
• Self-deprecating
• Subculture / hobbies (video games, drugs, gangs, sports)
• Mission or goal oriented
• Lifestyle (nightlife, cannabis, vegan, club scene, fitness)
• Horror / Satanism

In some cases, your brand identity may not actually be who you are. You can be playing a character and even have multiple personas. MF Doom is a great example of this. I love it because of how well the story elements come together for his brand.

Your life experiences can play a big role in shaping the direction of your brand. Take Slick Rick and Black Violin for example.

To be clear, establishing a brand identity does not mean you have to confine yourself into a box and can no longer present yourself in any other way. After all, it’s natural for artists to grow and evolve.

Many artists grow out of their initial “brand identity” while others stay pretty consistent throughout their careers. The purpose and need for this is really about communicating who you are so the right people can decide if you’re someone they should be paying attention to.

Another aspect that should be considered in defining your brand is your ultimate goal, not just as an artist, but as a human being. What is the purpose you are trying to fulfill and how does music play a role in that? Does your brand support your why? When establishing your brand, I think it’s really important to make sure your goals line up with the path you take with your branding.

Once you have your branding identity down, you want to reinforce it with your public persona through the way you present yourself online and in public. As discussed in the previous blog, your brand identity is what you have control over. These elements include:

• Stage name
• Music style and lyrics
• How your website and social media accounts look
• What you post on social media
• How you dress
• Who you associate with
• Stage presence
• Lifestyle / cultures you represent

These elements should naturally manifest into your public persona so you want to make sure you maintain consistency.

If you’re in a group, you have a collective brand identity or persona. Your public persona should be used as a vehicle to influence and manage how the general public perceives you by emphasizing designated aspects of your authentic self.

To summarize, once you have your brand identity, you need to make sure all of your assets, how you present yourself and your music, reflect this identity. This helps to solidify your brand and make it more receptive to your ideal fans. Often times, people can pick up a lot of clues about who you are when they listen to your music, but not everyone will have that luxury so you have to communicate what makes you worthy of their attention through your name, bio, website and social media channels.

Now that you have your brand identity firmly established, you need to pinpoint who your target market is.
 

Step 3: Know Your Target Market

 
With a brand identity and persona intact, your next step is to market yourself to a specific audience. After all, marketing to “everyone” is not a smart or effective way to build a fan base.

In order to reach the people most receptive to your brand, you need to identify your ideal fans, because technically, without a target audience you can’t market effectively.

In order to accomplish this, you need to define your target market. Most likely, these people will be a lot like you. Identifying their characteristics and demographic information will help you narrow down your brand and provide a more strategic direction for your marketing efforts.

The more you know your ideal audience, the better you can cater to their wants and needs through marketing. To begin identifying your ideal fans and their attributes, ask yourself:

• What does your ideal fan believe?
• What are their values?
• What do they like and dislike?
• How do they see the world?
• What problems or needs do they have?

If you’re a pro-vegan musician, chances are the ideal fans you want to attract are those that would be most receptive to your message of animal compassion (aka vegans). Your merch could incorporate themes and messages related to veganism. Your social media posts would probably show the occasional vegan meal you had or articles about how bad the meat industry is to the environment. All these things are done to reinforce a brand image that is consistent with your brand identity. I use this as an example to illustrate the point, but a lot of times identifying your target market isn’t as straightforward.

Effective marketing comes down to proving, providing and promoting your value. Since value is subjective, your target audience must share the same values that are exemplified in your branding. Otherwise, they will move on to an artist that resonates with them more.

Check out this blog if you need more help with identifying your target market or niche.
 

Step 4: Start Branding

 
Once you know who you are and have identified what makes you distinguishable, you should be able to hone in on a specific market or niche. Once this is identified, you’re ready to start branding yourself. This means doing things in real life and sharing things on social media that reinforces your brand and how it’s perceived.

One of the many goals of branding is to create a favorable public image that aligns with your brand identity. It often means doing things that provide some form of value to your fans, but doesn’t necessarily have a direct or immediate monetary impact. Branding is an investment that can yield a larger monetary benefit in the long run.

For example, there’s a difference between selling a CD and taking a photo with a fan. You make some profit off the CD, which is great for an immediate gain. Making the time to take the photo with a fan and maybe even chat a bit, although you didn’t get paid for it, could end paying off more than the profit you got from the CD in the long term. The fan could post it on social media and spark people’s curiosity about who you are. Friends of the fan click to check out your social media profile, assuming you were properly tagged, and you successfully raise some awareness to your brand. And who knows, maybe they will even check our your music and become a fan as well.

A well-thought out brand might not start producing money immediately, and that’s okay, as long as your brand is building an emotional connection and trust. In an oversimplified way, since these two things don’t operate mutually exclusive from each other, marketing is about building your audience while branding is deepening your relationships with fans.

While branding does not have a solid metric to measure its effectiveness, the best way to quantify branding is by how much people are willing to pay to book you and see you perform. In short, your branding efforts will determine your ability to pull a crowd and essentially make more money.

Branding is doing things that don’t have a direct or immediate impact on monetary gain for your business but pay off in the long term.

Branding related actions you can do to deepen your fan relationships:

• Posting content or sentiments that resonate with your audience
• Responding and engaging with your fans on social media
• Signing autographs and taking photos with fans
• Offering free music
• Getting out in the community to volunteer
• Including your fans in your experience (like allowing them to choose your album name or help make decisions)

A strong brand is one that has synergy and alignment to the entire experience of the artist and is catered toward a specific audience or demographic. Most importantly, your fans can see themselves through your brand. People develop emotional attachments to brands and are drawn to those that most closely reflects how they see themselves and their identity. The best part is when a brand really resonates with fans, they become loyal and often will promote your music through word of mouth for free.

Once you capture your target market’s attention, the relationship begins. Use your brand to cultivate a relationship with your fans and interact with them so that you understand them, because the better you know your fans, the more they trust you and the more loyal they are.
 

Conclusion

 
Do you have to utilize branding to be successful? Have all successful artists in the past had full awareness and control of their brand? No. You can wing it and skip this part, but you’ll be leaving the success of your music career mostly to chance.

The thing about branding is that you can do it without even being aware of it. You are a brand regardless if you choose to acknowledge it or not, because pretty much anything you do as an artist influences how your brand is being perceived.

Often, branding occurs organically, but if you have awareness of the branding process, you can control it and use it strategically to deliver a cohesive message to reach your ideal fans. Branding will ensure that you net the right fans – those that share your values and beliefs – helping to ensure longevity in your fan relationships.

The reality is if you can’t even understand your own brand, how do you expect someone else to? There are just too many artists and musicians out there vying for attention that not thinking about branding puts you at a huge disadvantage.

Lastly, building your brand shouldn’t feel contrived or forced. To me, it’s about learning how to effectively communicate your authentic self in a way that allows people to be receptive to who you are as an artist.

“I don’t personally feel that music will be monetizable in a very foreseeable way. I think that we should focus on musicians as brands, and we’re lucky enough to use music as our brand builder, as our calling card. The future of the music business is learning to build brands around artists so that artists get to have equity in.” – Jewel

The post The Basics of Branding for Musicians: Setting Your Brand Foundation appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

“Your music is the last thing that matters. Once they listen to your music, your music it the only thing that matters.” – Lisa Lepine (Music consultant)

It’s normal to think that your music is the most important asset you have as a musician. I mean, it is but it isn’t. Your music is only important if you can actually get people to listen to it, and it’s become increasingly harder to get someone to press play for the first time in this new digital world.

Many think being a musician means throwing some songs on some social media accounts and hope that something will magically catch on. Yeah, that’s not happening.

The fact is, there’s just so much great talent out there competing for attention that it’s not easy for musicians to stand out of the clutter. With so many options for music and entertainment, people have to make judgments and decisions about what they may or may not like before actually hearing the music.

This means it is wise for musicians to invest time in effectively communicating what their music is all about, and what makes it special before potential fans even hear it.

To peak people’s interests, you have to put out written and visual signals to convince people to take that crucial first step. That’s only half the battle because after they finally listen to your music, it’s still not guaranteed that they’ll like you as an artist. However, the better job you do of communicating what makes you special and interesting, the more likely listeners will like what they hear and become a fan.

This is why branding and marketing are so important. It’s about effectively communicating why people should be interested and intrigued by you before they even listen to a single song. This is why establishing a brand is key to building a loyal fan base and a sustainable career as an independent musician.

In this blog, I will go over the basics of branding for musicians, so you can start thinking about how you want to create and build your brand in order to rise above the clutter and attract your ideal fans.
 

What is a Brand?

“Cause people don’t buy music in this day and age, they buy the brand.” – Logic

You hear this word thrown around all the time. And while we can all name our favorite brands, a deep understanding of what a brand is, I believe, not something the average person really thinks about.

We tend to think of ‘brand’ only within the context of business, but the concept of a brand can actually be applied more broadly. A brand can be a group, organization, individual person and even a city. As a musician, you are a brand as well, regardless if you acknowledge it or not.

There are a number of different ways of looking at a brand, so I will go through them all in detail to give you a complete perspective on what it is.
 

Brand Definition

 
Since the concept of a brand can be unclear, it’s helpful to use multiple examples when defining the term ‘brand’.

According to Wikipedia: A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes one seller’s product from those of others.

A brand is the essence that makes something or someone distinguishable. It is what makes you unique. You can think of brand as a reputation, shared beliefs or opinions about someone or something. A brand can also represent the emotional and psychological relationship it has with the audience or customers.

A brand is not a tangible or physical thing, but it can be represented externally through symbols like your artist name. Sometimes people will think your logo is your brand, which is partially true. Your logo is only a symbol or reflection of your brand, but not the brand itself. Your logo represents your identity, but the brand is the meaning or emotional response people get from seeing it.

Components of your brand can include your:

• Stage or artist name
• Logo
• Website
• Music
• Bio
• Physical appearance
• Style
• Colors you use
• Social media posts
• Video content
• Other artists you work with
• Who you associate yourself with
• Stage presence

Brand as a Promise

 
You can think of a brand as a promise that carries certain expectations.

This promise is essentially your brand identity and what you stand for. After all, you need to stand for something in order to deliver on that promise. Establishing this early on will help guide your business decisions based on the expectations you have put forth through your brand.

For example, if you project yourself as a pro-vegan musician because it is an aspect of your personal identity, you’re making a promise or setting expectations that you’re not going to eat meat or promote the killing of animals.

The brands that are able to follow through on their promises and meet expectations will earn trust and loyalty from their fans and followers. This trust will lead to a stronger emotional connection with fans, as well as strong fan relationships.

Contrarily, not following through on promises you have made through your brand results in a break of trust and often a lost fan. This means if you’re caught eating a double-double at In-n-Out Burger as a pro-vegan musician, your brand is going to be tarnished.
 

Brand as a Story

 
Marketing guru Seth Godin likes to talk about the brand as your story. Everyone’s story is different, but what makes people receptive to a specific brand is when they see parts of their own story within it. Have you ever had songs resonate with you so much that it felt like they were written specifically for you? That’s when a fan feels a deeper emotional connection to the brand.

When talking about a brand as a story, it doesn’t mean telling your whole life story. Think of your brand as more of a plot synopsis or the theme. The actual full story is what is played out through your interactions with your fans and what you do over the course of your life and career.

Seth goes on to say your brand is someone else retelling your story through their own perceptions, which is unfair because it’s based on another person’s perception, prejudice and lack of information. When someone brings up your name or brand, they are going to recall and retell it the way they understand it (brand image), which is usually never going to be exactly how you want it to be told (brand identity). The goal is to bridge the gap between brand identity and brand image through brand alignment.
 

Brand Components

 
To break it down, a brand has two general components:

1) Brand identity
2) Brand image

Brand identity is the narrative you establish and have control over. This identity is a reflection of the core values and beliefs that you’ve cultivated through your life experiences. It’s what you stand for.

Brand image is how the public or individuals perceive you. Brand image will vary for each individual who experiences and interacts with your brand, but perceptions of a brand can also be collectively shared. You don’t have full control over how your image is perceived and interpreted, but you can influence your image through the process of branding.

Once you establish your artist (or brand) identity, the goal of branding should be to make sure your brand identity is aligned with your brand image. This is called brand alignment. If there’s a disconnect, it indicates a problem.
 

What is Branding?

 
Now that you understand what a brand is, it’s time to get into branding. As you might have guessed, branding is the strategic process of establishing and building meaning to influence the perception of your brand.

According to Wikipedia: Branding is a set of marketing and communication methods that help to distinguish a company from competitors and create a lasting impression in the minds of customers.

The goal of branding is to create a consistent perception about who you are as an artist that strategically highlights specific elements of your authentic self to attract your ideal fans who resonate with you. Also, you want to align your brand identity and brand image to create a distinct and consistent signal that separates you from other artists.

I like to think of branding as having two parts, passive and active.

Passive Branding

The passive side is doing things to communicate your brand identity that doesn’t involve direct interaction with your audience. This includes a lot of the basic things mentioned above:

• Stage name
• Logo
• Website
• Music
• Physical appearance
• Style

Active Branding

On the other hand, the active part of branding involves you interacting with your audience directly to influence or reinforce your image while nurturing the emotional connections with fans. Generally speaking, I like to look at marketing as the active component of branding. This includes the type of content you post on social media.

I see branding as a form of strategic and simplified communication with a strong emphasis on brand alignment or making sure all the brand assets are communicating the same thing.

When setting the foundation of your brand identity, the idea is to communicate the following as easily and clearly as possible:

• Who you are
• What you do
• What you stand for
• Who you appeal to
• Is there anything that makes you special and interesting

Summary

Ultimately, branding is about how you make people feel about themselves when they engage with your brand. Choosing a brand is an emotional choice (most of the time), so your branding should elicit strong emotions from your ideal audience. Your brand should be a natural manifestation of your values and identity, but being strategically focused to make fans feel a certain way can be more effective.

Remember that as a brand, you serve as a signal or extension of someone else’s identities, beliefs and values. This is why people blast their music loud for others and proudly wear band merch. So the more clearly a brand or artist identity is defined, the easier it is for someone to resonate with it.

The biggest challenge is that not everyone is going to perceive your brand the same way, but it’s your job to consistently and persistently amplify your brand the way you want. At the same time, making sure all the brand assets are in alignment to communicate the same message.

The post The Basics of Branding for Musicians: Simplifying the Terms (Part 1 of 3) appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

I had the chance to see Chance the Rapper live here in Sacramento recently on April 27, 2017. Although I can’t say I’m a huge fan, he does make great music and a down-to-earth guy you want to root for.

Those who have read a few of my previous blogs know that I have referenced Chance a few times as the poster child for this paradigm shift that music should be freely accessible. Embracing this shift is a mindset and approach I believe will be critical to the future success of all musicians. Offering your music without a price tag and knowing that the days of records sales are dying so all musicians need to start adopting now.

Obviously he’s not the first person to offer his music for free, but he has been getting a lot of attention for it in the past because of everything he’s accomplished so far in his young career as an independent.

With all of Chance’s success, I think artists and musicians are curious to know what they can do to improve their chances of making it like he did. I don’t have much experience in the music industry yet to know exactly what it takes. But as a music fan who understands sociology, psychology and marketing, what I can tell you is that success doesn’t come from talent and hard work alone.

Chance the Rapper has demonstrated that the key to success is that there isn’t one key. In my opinion, reaching his level of success in music depends on a number of key factors and variables.

After watching him closely and seeing him live recently, here’s my list of 7 primary principles/factors I feel contributed to his massive success as in an independent that I feel other artists and musicians can learn from and apply.
 

Who is Chance the Rapper?

 
For those who don’t know, Chance the Rapper is a 24-year-old high school drop out from Chicago who has become one of the hottest rappers since blowing up in 2016.

What makes him special is that not only is he making history as an independent artist, but doing so by challenging the current music industry paradigm and dispelling the “traditional” way of how artists typically make it in the music business. He has achieved superstar status without having sold a single record, putting out physical releases and any label support.

Here’s what he’s done so far in his young career:

• Nominated for 7 Grammys and won 3 in 2017 (Best New Artist, Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Album)
• Became the first unsigned artist to perform on Saturday Night Live (December 15, 2015).
• His third mixtape release, Coloring Book, in 2016 was the first streaming-only album to ever receive and win a Grammy nomination.
• Coloring Book was the first streaming-exclusive album to chart on Billboard 200 (Debuted at number 8)
• Grew his social media following: Facebook (1.7 million), Twitter (3.79 million), Instagram (4.8 million), Soundcloud (1.5 million), Youtube (782k)
• Continues to sell out merch and tour dates (http://chanceraps.com/)
• Wrote parts of 5 songs on his idol Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo album.

1. Hard Work + Persistence + Patience = Groundwork for Success

 
As cliché and obvious as it is, I think it’s important to start off by saying you need to work hard and be patient if you want to make it as an independent artist. From my perspective as a music fan, it can take at least 5 – 15 years to really pick up steam and build a sustainable career in music. I would say Chance is the exception by being on the shorter of my estimation.

Chance wasn’t just “lucky” either. He made all the right moves leading to his breakout and laid the proper groundwork that lead to his success. Along with the music, he was known earlier on for being a very energetic performer, or as his manager said “Chance turnt the fuck up every night.” Because of that, people really wanted to see his shows.

I don’t know all the specifics of how many hours he put in, but I imagine it’s the standard hustle that we all need to put forth if we want to accomplish our goals. It should go without saying, but I don’t think it hurts to remind. One things for sure, he was really involved with music in his school and community. Chance participated in an after-school program called YOUmedia and at an open-mic venue called Young Chicago Authors.

The other component to hard work is having a goal, sound strategy and game plan to execute. After all, it’s certainly possible do a lot of hard work that does not contribute to what you want to accomplish as an artist.
 

2. MGM – Make good music.

 
Making good music is another obvious factor in Chance’s popularity, but notice how I didn’t say talent. Some might say talent is a huge factor (maybe the biggest), and I acknowledge that it is important.

While it’s clear that Chance the Rapper has immense talent, in the same token, pure talent is not the primary factor to making it in the music business. I’m a firm believer that talent, most of the time, is not something that is innate or a skill you are genetically predisposed to be good at. It’s something that can be learned, developed and harnessed over time through practice, persistence and patience, especially when starting at a young age.

At the end of the day, it’s the byproduct of that talent and creativity that really matters – good songs and music. It’s the X-factor of what allows artists to rise to the top and garner attention. Talent needs to be able to translate into tangible creative outputs that resonate with people. After all, how many of us really follow anyone who can only sing or rap really well but not put out any good music?

I don’t make music or have any musical talents myself, but I know that all the artists and musicians we love don’t hit home runs every single time. There’s trial and error involved too.

If you want a sustainable career in music, you must be self-aware and honest enough with yourself to know if what you’re making is actually good or not while be able to learn from the criticism. At the same time, you also need to have the persistence to keep putting your music out there when your songs don’t take off as you hoped.
 

3. Music accessibility over ownership. Streaming is the future.

 
When I was at the Chance concert, one thing that really stood out to me was how young his fan base is… also that they really love to smoke weed. I swear the average age felt like it was 18 years old, but was probably closer to 24 or 25.

Age is worth noting because of the trend with music streaming, which so happens to be more popular with Millennials and the Hip Hop / R&B genre. It only makes sense that the Chance the Rapper fan base reflects the demographic that is streaming music the most. Although musicians and artists are upset that the value of music has been on the decline, this idea of music being free is not a fad – it’s where the future is headed, Chance and his fans have embraced this change.

“Paid audio streaming services are growing in popularity, especially among under 25s. One-third of 16-24 year olds now pay for an audio streaming service.” – IFPI Music Consumer Report 2016

Chance the Rapper made all his music releases for free under the label of a “mixtape.” By doing this, he removed any barriers to access and discover his music so it’s easier to spread through the masses. (Update: To be fair, I later learned they he did try to sell a song (Juice from Acid Rap) earlier in his career, but it was taken down for sale shortly after. The song had a sample that didn’t clear and they didn’t want to be sued.)

He was ahead of the game. Having your music free to download is a marketing strategy that will be the norm as younger music listeners become accustomed to it and expect it. This doesn’t mean you still can’t sell physical copies of your record, but you may want to reevaluate how you distribute your music.
 

4. Be honest. Be humble. Be yourself.

 
One of the most captivating qualities about Chance the Rapper is how genuine and humble he is. He reiterated during a few moments in the show that he was a regular dude just like everyone else here. At one point, while staring into the crowd, he got emotional as he was going to tear up in amazement that so many people would come out to see him. To me, being honest and humble makes him so much more relatable and easier to connect with.

The other thing Chance the Rapper proves is you can make it being your true authentic self. Let’s be real, with the hat and overalls, I know I’m not the only one who thinks he looks like a Super Mario brother! He doesn’t really look like your typical mainstream “rapper.” Yet, people still love and embrace him for exactly who he is.

The great thing about music in the digital age is that there’s a market and niche for just about every sub-genre and category. You don’t need to fake the funk and cater to what is currently hot to make it. Stay true to yourself and speak your truth. Authenticity wins. There are so many angles and markets you can hone in on, which leads to the next point.
 

5. Focus on a niche. Build your brand.

 
The most obvious side of his brand is his faith in Christianity. Although he’s not branded as a ‘Christian rapper’ or artist, it definitely has a presence in his brand as there’s a strong influence of Gospel music in his songs and lyrics. As you would imagine, there was some subtle Christian symbolism on the stage for his show, but nothing too obvious like crosses. In other words, he’s found the right branding mix that works for him.

For Chance, his strong, consistent branding is one of the main reasons he’s been able to achieve financial success without selling a single record. Branding sells. It’s what fuels demand for your merch sales and live shows.

When I got there and when I left his concert, I paid close attention to how long the merch lines were. It’s clear that he’s built a powerful brand that resonates with so many people.

Find the branding angle that is the most authentic to you and go all-in on it. Know what you stand for, what you represent and what your message is as a brand. Some may be turned off by the idea of being a “brand,” but you may be holding yourself back. Ultimately, your music and brand are the true differentiators that will help separate you in a very saturated music industry.
 

6. Be about the people, community and fans.

 
I believe that when you serve your fans and community as an artist, you win.

Music and art are ultimately about the people who consume it and are impacted by it. To me, a great artist is someone who acknowledges this. Chance the Rapper embodies this idea of selflessness.

Based on his donations and activities in the community, we also know that Chance is a big supporter of the arts and music programs in public schools. He donated $1 million to Chicago Public Schools to support arts and enrichment programming.

Here’s a Facebook Live video he did to make that announcement:

We know that he cares about social issues that are prevalent in Chicago and many other urban areas:

Lastly, he also did something I’ve never heard any other artist do – he fought back against scalpers who were trying to price gouge tickets to his show. As a result, he managed to buy back almost 2,000 tickets from these scalpers to his won festival, and resell them back to fans at fair prices.

That story was from his last tour in 2016. He also did this again for the tour I attended.

After winning his 3 Grammys, he announced that he was going on tour again. As you would imagine, it was a good opportunity for scalpers to capitalize at the height of the hype as tickets were selling out across the country. He then posted this on Facebook about how he was getting tickets back from scalpers:

As a community-oriented artist who supports the arts, Chance knows how to leverage his success and build his music legacy. Most artists reading this are probably not at the level to donate $1 million, but getting involved in the community doesn’t cost anything except your time. Not only does it feel good to help in general, I believe there are advantages to taking a community approach as an artist.
 

7. Build a team ASAP. It’s difficult to do it alone.

 
At a certain point in your career, you will need to build a team around you so that you can focus more on making music. The scarcest resource you have as an artist is your time, so you need to find every way possible to free up more of it.

Your money can be scarce too, but buying yourself time by paying and recruiting the right people on your team will ultimately provide more opportunities to make money by giving you the time to put out more music. Chance didn’t have any label support, but he did have right people in his corner early on.

It’s important to find people for your team who believe in what you do, share your vision and handle the right tasks. While still a teenager, Chance got a piece of advice from Childish Gambino.

“Donald Glover told me when I was, like, 19 to hire a business manager,” Chance explained.

This was early in his career before all the financial success. Most people reading this may already know they will need to build a team eventually, but it’s probably sooner than you think. The problem is not having the money and or knowing the right people to trust for your team. That’s why networking is so important. Start with your local community because you’ll never know who you may find that may have the specific skills you need, like website creation, promotion and artist management.

Chance’s manager Pat Corcoran is perfect example of this.

After studying to be a psychologist and dabbling in concert promotion, where he met Chance, Pat dropped out of college in 2012 to manage the rapper full time. “I’m going to work for Chance until we’re headlining festivals and winning Grammys — or until I get fired.” He wasn’t a big shot, expensive manager. He was a former promoter and blogger in the Chicago scene. There’s a great documentary type video by Complex that goes in depth with Pat Corcoran of the story how his relationship with Chance began and how they grew together to this point now. Very cool and inspiring video I highly recommend checking out.

As of August 2016, he has 32 people on his team including musicians, merchandise, video, booking and management.

The main point is if you’re serious about music and your career is picking up momentum, you need to prioritize building your team. This means really assessing what you’re spending your money on and investing any money you can towards your career by hiring the right people for your team. Also, get yourself out there and network because you might find trustworthy people who want to grow with you and be willing to do the job for the experience.
 

Conclusion

 
Not only is Chance the Rapper an amazing artist, he’s become a role model not only for his peers and community, but also for other musicians who want to be able to have the impact he has in the music industry.

Just make sure to keep your expectations in check as following all these principles does not guarantee success. Scientifically and mathematically speaking, there’s so many other variables involved (upbringing, life experiences, family environments, socioeconomic factors, perception, geography) to account for. This means that it’s really about how you navigate the music industry and handle situations you do have control over. But I do believe that if you implement those 7 principles together, you’ll have a much better chance of making it in this changing music landscape.

You can see clips and photos from my Chance the Rapper experience on my Instagram post:

A post shared by D-4 (David) Nguyen (@deefur) on Apr 28, 2017 at 9:38pm PDT

The post Was Chance the Rapper lucky? 7 Principles Indie Artists Can Apply From his Success appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

The music industry is not the same as it was 20 years ago. You no longer need to be signed by a record label to actually have a legitimate career in music. Now, it is much easier to be an independent musician, but at the same time, growing a fan base and making a decent living from music is a challenge.

One of the problems in an evolving music economy is that selling records has become an unsustainable source of income for music artists. Buying music is becoming a thing of the past… at least as a form of music discovery. This romanticized idea of musicians selling music as a product is, strangely, fading.

Admittedly, selling albums was never the most important source of income for independent artists, but it took away a starting point for lesser-known musicians who don’t quite have the exposure to do well-paid shows and tours. In order to help open up or strengthen those other income streams, you need to develop your brand.

The number one priority for independent artists, specifically less established ones, should be to grow their audience and fan base. Your ability to do this is going to be based on the cohesiveness of your brand. It will require you to abandon the mindset of generating sales as your primary focus to one that is dedicated to nurturing your audience to create loyal fans.

In other words, stop thinking about sales and transactions (short term), and start focusing on branding and strengthening relationships (long term).
 

What does it mean to have a branding mindset?

 
Simply put, you value relationships over sales.

It often means doing things that provide some form of value to your audience and make your fans happy, but do not bring a direct or immediate monetary benefit to your business. Another way to look at it is as a long term investment, whether it’s your time, money or profits, for a larger return in the future.

Some things you can do to build your brand are:

• Signing autographs and taking pictures at the end of your set
• Responding to comments and questions on social media
• Engaging with your audience by interacting with their content
• Putting out content your fans like (not always have to be music related)

With a branding mindset, you are more invested in your fan relationships than generating sales. Your priority as a musician is to not only widen your audience, but also deepen it over time with a strong brand and consistently putting out good music. That’s how you’re going to improve your chances of financially supporting yourself with a music career.

On the other hand, when you have a transactional mindset, your priorities revolve more around what brings in the money through immediate sales transactions. If you thought getting into the music business would yield money from the start, you will be disappointed. A career in music can be fulfilling, but it’s not going to happen if you have a transactional or short-sighted approach. To put yourself in a winning position in the music business, you’re going to need to hold on to that day job for a bit longer.
 

What do I need for a branding mindset?

 
To make the most out of a branding mindset, you’re required to really know yourself (self-awareness) and establish a brand identity that is strategic for attracting the right audience for you.

Secondly, you need to provide value and engage your audience. You want to nurture the relationship you have with your fans by being accessible, interacting with them and giving them content they like.

Now is the time to adapt and transition to a long term mindset. If I haven’t convinced you yet, here are 7 reasons why embracing a branding mindset is essential to succeed in today’s music climate.
 

1. Music consumption patterns have changed

 
I’m sure you have all heard by now that record sales have been declining since the early 2000s. First, it was the MP3s and P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing networks. Once networks like Napster got shut down, BitTorrents took over as a way of downloading music illegally. Companies that offered legal digital downloads for music (iTunes) became more popular after news of major labels suing the crap out of people who got caught with pirated songs.

Now, even digital downloads are seeing a decline as music streaming subscriptions have become the next evolution of music consumption.

What we are seeing as a society is this gradual transition where accessibility is being favored over ownership. This technological disruption brought about by streaming services extends beyond the music industry. Movies and DVDs are experiencing a gradual decline in consumer ownership with services like Netflix and Hulu offering on-demand streaming at low cost. Other industries are being disrupted as well, like transportation (Uber) and temporary housing (AirBnB).

This shift into digital streaming has even changed how the industry evaluates certifications. In early 2016, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) changed its certification formula to account for album streaming numbers, which represents the next step in its legitimacy.

Unfortunately, the rise of music streaming leaves little room for the typical music transaction – record sales. From a practical standpoint, depending solely on sales will limit your potential to grow and sustain yourself through music.

Read more about how streaming is changing the ways we consume music.

As grim as it sounds for the future of the music industry, there’s still hope. A new model is emerging where music is no longer the commodity. Branding is going to be the key that will unlock more opportunities for you, which leads to the next point.

“And streaming, I don’t personally feel that music will be monetizable in a very foreseeable way. I think that we should focus on musicians as brands, and we’re lucky enough to use music as our brand builder, as our calling card. The future of the music business is learning to build brands around artists so that artists get to have equity in.” – Jewel

2. Branding sells: Musicians are becoming the commodity

 
Music consumption isn’t the only thing that has changed with the growth of the internet over the past decade.

With the decline of record sales, record labels have obviously needed to adapt in order to survive the changes in the music business and make back their investments in artists. “360 deals” became a popular record contract for this reason. In the past, traditional record contracts were solely recouping the investments record labels made in their artists through record sales, leaving other income streams untouched for the artists to take advantage of. Now, labels need a hand in all incomes streams including live shows, merchandise and publishing to survive in this business.

The same can be said about artists. Selling actual music is no longer the main commodity for making money as a musician. Branding is what will generate revenue in the form of live shows and merch. This is because an artist doesn’t sell music or CDs; they sell an experience. The experiences they provide weave an emotional connection and serve as a personal identity for fans to proudly wear.

If I’m emotionally invested in an artist, I will do whatever to support them, whether it’s buying all their albums, copping some shirts or seeing them live nine times, like I have with my favorite duo Atmosphere. That’s branding in action.

In order to maximize your gains from branding, you need to look at music as content and not only as a product to sell.
 

Music is content, personality is a commodity

 
As a marketer, I don’t think about songs, music videos, and albums as products anymore. I think of them as content. The real product is you and your brand, and the experiences or emotional investments you provide along the way.

In this new paradigm, your product is your brand and personality. How much people will pay to see you live and buy your merch is tied directly to your branding. Your product is yourself, and the branding you use directly determines if you sell (or don’t). I truly believe that if you can attract your real fans, they will support you financially, whether it’s by seeing you live or buying your shirts.

In our current technological state, we are overrun with entertainers, artists, Youtube personalities and vloggers. These content creators understand that releasing content regularly is essential to keeping an audience engaged. Musicians are naturally falling into this same category, so it’s important to release consistent content to keep your current fans happy.

Remember that music is content that is a means to an end, which is why it’s such a huge piece of your marketing and branding efforts. That end you’re working to reach is the ability to monetize your brand through different income sources like live experiences, merch (which include physical music) and sponsorships. So instead of looking at music videos as tools to sell song downloads or records, you can look at it as content for fans to engage with and help raise brand awareness when they share it.

With the shift to streaming music, I see new music or your latest album as content that ignites excitement to sell live shows and merch (where the money is).
 

3. There’s very high competition for attention

 
With the ability for anyone to put their music online, the competition for attention is higher than ever. It’s much more difficult now to stand out from all this clutter, let alone make a sustainable living as an independent artist. Not only are you competing with other musicians on social media, but you are also going up against other businesses, friends, family, celebrities, sports and cute animal videos cluttering people’s newsfeeds.

In order to succeed in this environment, you have to know how to set yourself apart instead of worrying about getting someone to buy your record.

Even though streaming presents its own obstacles, it’s actually for the better since it forces independent musicians to really focus on presenting something new and unique through their brand. A strong brand gives people a reason to pay attention and consider developing a relationship with you. Go all-in on your brand to truly understand what it is that makes you special and communicate that to your fans.

In addition to branding, you might need to change up your marketing strategy. If you haven’t made a name for yourself, you have to lower the barrier to discovery, which often means offering your music for free. While this directly goes against a transactional mindset, I would argue it is becoming necessary.

Some will say you shouldn’t put out too much free music, because it tarnishes your branding and conditions people to not pay for your records. I would argue that it doesn’t matter when you are still working on breaking into the industry.

You can read more about if you should give away your music free as musician.
 

4. We make decisions based on emotion, not logic

 
Understanding the role of emotions in business is important as it pertains to branding. Research has shown that humans make most purchasing decisions based on emotion. As consumers, we ultimately decide who we like based on how a brand makes us feel, rather than what is logical. By investing in branding, you are strategically improving your appeal to people’s emotions by presenting yourself as someone relatable or admirable.

Typically, after making an emotionally-driven buying decision, we come up with a rationale that supports the decision we made. This prevents or alleviates buyer’s remorse. Advertisers have capitalized on this phenomenon, and most of all modern marketing exploits this fact.

I think a lot of newer artists think that they can make “good” music and expect it to sell itself. I understand why that seems logical. But what people with a transactional mindset don’t realize is that the things we buy, movies we watch and music we listen to are not based on logic.

We rarely buy music simply because the artist is super talented. There are other elements that come into play that influence our decision. I know damn well we all buy music from people who are not the best singers or rappers in the world. Instead, they appeal to us through branding elements, like their personality, style and values.

The point here is that when you invest in your branding, you’re giving fans a compelling reason to be attached to you and your music. You are making a strategic effort to separate yourself from others and create a positive emotional response to your brand. After all, the cohesiveness of your brand is going to dictate your ability to develop emotional connections with your fans.
 

5. The lifetime value of a fan is worth more than an upfront transaction

 
I feel that in American culture we are conditioned to be overly focused on the short term and lack patience to see the larger benefit of investing long term. You can counter this by not looking at each fan as a potential album sale and thinking of each person in terms of their lifetime value instead.

Each fan can generate a certain amount of revenue for you throughout your career. By developing a stronger relationship with fans through your brand, you effectively increase their lifetime value. This is what I mean by the long term game. The amount of money you can make over time will increase when you focus on building your audience and maximizing exposure before concentrating on sales and transactions.

In business, it costs more money to acquire new customers, clients or fans than retaining the ones you already have. If you’re caught up always trying to procure new fans and neglecting the community you already built, you may need to revise your strategy as it doesn’t make any business sense.

Instead of constantly thinking about fan acquisition, shift to a more balanced approach of zeroing in on fan retention and loyalty. To accomplish this, you will need to focus on:

• Fan engagement and interaction
• Increasing accessibility to your music
• Releasing good and consistent content

Another benefit of focusing on fan retention is that lifetime fans give you repeat business and are your best advocates via word of mouth. This means you want to make sure the fans you capture stay loyal to you throughout your career. Branding and consistent content is the glue that will motivate fans to stick around.
 

6. Your audience / fan base is your most important asset

 
At the end of the day, your most valuable asset as an artist or musician is your audience. This is why it’s so important for your branding to speak to your fans and nurture the emotional connection they feel through your music. Since your fan base supports you financially and serves as a tool for word of mouth marketing, you have every reason to always have their best interests, needs and wants at the forefront of any business decision.

The main takeaway here: Your ability to create and grow an audience effectively will depend on the strength of your brand and how much you invest in fan relationships outside of just releasing music.

As you may have already experienced, it is no easy task to build and maintain fans’ attention. After you have built a robust fan base and have treated them as valued individuals, you can begin to leverage your audience to generate sales through different income streams.
 

7. The road to independent success is a marathon, not a sprint

 
I know from watching the independent artists I’ve followed for the past 15 years that it takes time to become established. The local artists I work with and meet can all attest to this. Of course, you’ll have the select few who blow up quickly in a few years, but it’s rare.

Music marketing experts and artists will tell you that this business is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re looking to cash in on an album without establishing a strong brand and audience, you’re heading towards disappointment.

Coming into the music industry with a transactional mindset will only foster dissatisfaction and frustration, especially with all the changes that have occurred in the industry. You need to make a name for yourself, create good music and have a track record of providing quality content before you can expect people to make any type of monetary transaction with you.

And this doesn’t just apply to musicians and artists; it goes for anyone trying to establish their own independently built business!

The biggest reason why a career in music is a lengthy and difficult journey is the nature of relationships. Relationships and trust take time to develop. Not just with fans, but with industry insiders including promoters, bookers, agents, artists, venues and producers. This circles back to why branding is so important for long term success.

Patience and perseverance are the keys to relationship building. In addition, you have to distinguish what the right priorities are that will help you achieve lasting relationships. Maintaining mutual respect and trust in your relationships is more valuable and will make you more money long term than getting one time transactions early on.

Success starts with the right mindset and some sacrifices; the money will follow.
 

Conclusion

 
There you have it. Seven reasons why a branding mindset is the way to go in this new music economy where record sales will only continue to decline. As music discovery is no longer dependent on consumers actually buying physical music, a transactional mindset is becoming less relevant.

Pursuing a career in music may seem more difficult now when you have to deal with a new set of challenges that prior generations of musicians didn’t have to endure. But that’s the price you pay for the freedom of being independent. As consumer behavior changes, indie artists need to pay attention and adapt to shifts in the industry to succeed. Adopting a branding mindset is going to be the key that allows musicians to monetize through multiple income streams in the long run.

With that being said, making those investments in your brand is more crucial than ever. Success comes down to relationship building and emotional investments. It takes time to build a strong brand, but that’s how you’ll survive pursuing your passion as a musician. After all, you want lifetime fans, not one time customers.

The post Stop Thinking Transactionally: 7 Reasons Musicians Need to Adopt a Branding Mindset appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Are you a new musician still trying to decide on a stage name? If you’ve been having trouble, then hopefully this blog can help.

Unless you want to perform under your given name, you should devote a considerable amount of time researching and strategizing what your stage, artist or band name should be. For a new musician, choosing a name to perform under may not seem like that big of a deal. However, you can avoid a lot of potential headaches down the line if you invest the time to research your preferred stage name.

A frustrating issue you may run into if you don’t do your research first is having to change your name. It can be a nuisance if you’ve invested a lot of time and money into an artist name, only to have to redo your efforts because of poor planning. You may have to change your name if you:

• Find your name and online assets are already being used
• Have a name that gets confused with other artists, businesses, products or organizations
• Realize your name is a trademark

Even having an artist name other musicians are already using can be annoying when releasing music. A common issue on digital music platforms like Spotify or Apple Music is having your songs mixed up with another artist profile using the same artist name or vice versa.

You may even realize many years later that your artist name doesn’t truly reflect who you are or represent your brand. It would be a massive hassle to change it and re-brand yourself.

To avoid these potential problems, follow the steps in this blog before finalizing your stage name.
 

Why is a good stage name so important?

 
Aside from a way of identifying you and distinguishing yourself from others, a stage name helps to establish expectations about your music.

You may not judge a book by its cover, but people will judge you based on your artist name, more often than not, before they even hear your music.

The stage name you decide to go with is symbolic of your brand. This brand is the public persona you project based on some aspect of your personal identity. Ultimately, a well-chosen artist name will support your brand and effectively communicate what you, as a musician, represent and what makes you unique. The name chosen to represent your musical endeavors should be part of a cohesive branding and marketing message. You want this name to set the right expectations.

For example, what type of music would a band that goes by the name The Grim Reapers perform? It would be very unexpected and odd if they recorded gospel or sugary pop hits. If The Grim Reapers sounded like a tween pop group, their band name would in no way align with the message it implies (dark, scary, possibly sadistic). Likewise, know that you will have to live up to your stage or band name. Having a good name will help set the tone for what listeners can expect from your music.

Now that you understand the importance of coming up with a stage or artist name that is relevant to your brand, here are the steps you should go through to come up with the perfect name.
 

Step 1: Brand Assessment

 
Before brainstorming names, it’s important that you take a self-assessment regarding who you are as an artist and how you want to be portrayed in the public. It is essential to establish your brand to help listeners distinguish you from other musicians out there and make you more identifiable.

If you have read any of my other blogs, you know how important branding is for a career in music. Everyone is going to perceive your brand a little differently, but your stage or artist name will help solidify the persona you are trying to project.
 

What Does Your Brand Represent?

 
When you are determining what characteristics will be a part of your brand – southern charm, hardcore lyrics, pot head, feminist, vegan, political, rags to riches story, etc – know that you will be expected to live up to these characteristics, because it’s how people connect with you.

So while it may seem enticing to write songs about events that haven’t happened to you (but you think your audience will relate to), it will be difficult to maintain that brand or persona long-term. This is because it is essentially a lie. Think Jamie Kennedy in Malibu’s Most Wanted.

What you should do is think about what makes you unique, and capitalize or enhance those traits. The characteristics that set you apart don’t have to even be that extraordinary. For example, someone used their birth name that is spelled offbeat to come up with the stage name Jef with an F. It’s a real plus when your name describes something that is meaningful to you (especially you are going to be asked about your name approximately 99,999 times). In this respect, choosing your stage name is akin to getting your first tattoo.
 

Tell Stories (Not Tall Tales)

 
To take it a step further, your brand should be based on your “story” (what makes you unique and interesting or what you and your band mates find meaningful). Once your brand starts to take shape, you can use your name as a method of creating and marketing your “story.”

Reflect on your past experiences as a band and as a person to come up with a name. Reminiscing on evocative incidents or strong beliefs that have helped bind your band together is an effective method to come up with a name.

Your brand, message and music are blended together to create your unique story. Your story isn’t just what you tell people. It’s more than that: it’s what they believe about you based on the signals and messages your brand sends out through your presence.

The ability to communicate what makes you unique or interesting is the greatest asset you have in the music industry. Everything about you as an artist should be a byproduct or manifestation of your brand or story – especially your name!
 

Know your target audience and culture you represent

 
Each genre of music has its own exclusive symbols and word connotations. Similar to The Grim Reaper example above, certain words or symbols are associated with specific subcultures and music types.

If your name has the words ‘black’ or ‘skull’, it may be associated with punk or metal. If someone was reading a list of recent indie artist albums, and they saw the name The Black Skulls, they would most likely assume this was a metal or punk band with screaming lyrics and amplified notes from the guitar and drums. It would be confusing if The Black Skulls sounded like Katy Perry.

Worse than confusing potential fans, is losing them because they misinterpreted your name to stand for something it does not. To avoid this, you need to be aware of the words and symbols of the genre or subculture your music represents, and those it does not. So when coming up with names, take this into consideration to make sure you are giving off the right cultural signals that align with your brand.

You also need to take into account how your name could be interpreted by people from other cultures and nationalities. Maybe you’re not expecting to be an international artist and aren’t especially worried how your name is perceived in other languages. But you should still take into consideration who your target audience is going to be, while making sure that your name resonates with their values and doesn’t offend them.

Step 2: Brainstorm Ideas

 
Now that you’ve done a brand assessment, it’s time to do some brainstorming. There are no bad ideas in brainstorming (as long as you are able to weed them out later). Write down any and everything you can think of as a potential band name. An odd idea may be the catalyst for coming up with that perfect name.

Here are some thought-starters you can use to begin brainstorming.
 

Variations of your real name

 
Going by your given name can work just fine and a lot of musicians do. Just to name a few:

• Kanye West
• Christina Aguilera
• Britney Spears
• Lauryn Hill
• Michael Jackson
• Gwen Stefani
• Whitney Houston
• Mariah Carey
• Lionel Richie

However, if your name is very common, popular or hard to pronounce, you may want to change it up to make it more unique and fit your musical endeavors. You will want to avoid confusion, especially if your name is being used by someone already famous.

Playing off your first, middle or last name is a good way to start. If you already have a nickname, that could be something to explore.

Here are some other ideas:

• Spelling your name phonetically (if it is hard to pronounce or to make it more original) – Kal Penn’s birth name is Kalpen Suresh Modi
• Incorporating numbers or symbols – 2Pac, Ke$ha, will.i.am
• Your first name or shortened version – Madonna, Beyoncé and Prince both use just their first name. NAS is short for Nasir.
• Only using your middle name – Aubrey “Drake” Graham, Robyn “Rihanna” Fenty or Helen Folasade Adu (Sade).
• Playing off your name initials – Enimem is based on the initials of his first and last name (M and M = Marshall Mathers).
• Scrambling your name or band members’ names into an acronym – Rae Sremmurd is ear drummers spelled backwards. NSYNC is the last letters of each of their first names.
• Using your real first name and middle name – Although Kendrick Lamar started as K-Dot, his full name is Kendrick Lamar Duckworth.
• Using your real first name and then making up a last name – Alicia Keys (Alicia Augello Cook), John Legend (John Roger Stevens).
• Capitalizing on a childhood nickname – Miley Cirus (“Smiley” shorted to Miley), Snoop Dogg (from “Snoopy”), Slug of Atmosphere (Shortened from “Sluggo”), Lupe Fiasco (childhood nickname “Lu” then added the rest from the song Firm Fiasco.)
• For hip hop artists, add “lil” to your first name. Apparently there’s 8,000 rappers who have done that. (Kidding, please don’t do this!)

Not based on your real name

 
One of the best parts of using all or part of your real name and then jazzing it up is that you already have the tools to come up with an authentic name. However, maybe your real name doesn’t inspire any ideas.

Sometimes your stage name could be no way connected to your birth name or even a nickname. It could be someone else’s name that is related to you or taken from someone you admire.

Take Travis Scott for example. His actual name is Jacques Berman Webster. He went with Travis Scott to pay homage to his favorite relative. His uncle’s name is Travis and Scott was his nickname so he just put those together to use as a stage name.

Another possibility is using an acronym based on a saying or a phrase you resonate with. The example that comes to mind is KRS-One, born Lawrence Parker. The name “KRS-One” stands for “Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone.”
 

Experiment with using poetic devices

 
Poetic devices may help to come up with a name that is catchy or meaningful. Some of the more common ones that don’t get to lengthy include:

• Metaphors: a comparison between two unlike things without using the words like or as (freedom is a bird).
• Simile: a comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind that uses the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ (free as a bird).
• Alliteration: the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words (big black bird).
• Repetition: repeating words, phrases, or lines.
• Symbol: an object that means more than itself and represents something else (a bird can be a symbol for freedom).
• Imagery: words used to create an image in the reader’s mind and appeal to our sense of smell, sight, taste, touch, or hearing.
• Allusions: an indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of historical, cultural, literary or political significance
• Homophone: I’m not exactly sure if this is the right term to describe this so please correct me if I’m wrong. The example that came to mind is Lil Uzi Vert. If you say his name fast, it sounds like ‘Lucifer,’ which is no coincidence. This is great from a branding perspective because his stage name matches his use of anti-Christ, Satanic imagery in how he presents himself. Not to mention, he worships Marilyn Manson.

Use a thesaurus

 
Ascertain distinctive letter arrangements the general populace has used sparingly. In other words, use a thesaurus to find original words. An online thesaurus is a good tool for researching other possibilities to plain and overused words.
 

Use the random band name generator

 
If it all else fails and you’re feeling desperate, leave it up to chance and use a name generator. Enter a word that has meaning to you, and the site will come up with some interesting possibilities. This might also help you in your brainstorming!

• http://www.bandnamemaker.com
• http://rigel7.com/bandomizer/band
• https://www.name-generator.org.uk/band-name/

Use AI to help brainstorm ideas

 
Try using an AI tool like ChatGPT or Google’s Bard to get some suggestions. Start with a simple prompt like “I need help coming up with an artist name. Please give me 10 artist name ideas for a hip hop artist.”

You can then try giving AI different parameters like your birth name, where you’re from or elements of your brand to see if it can give you something more unique.
 

Step 3: Research / Put it to the Test

 
Ok, so you went through the steps and have settled on what you think is the name of all names.

Before you start throwing your moniker on everything, there are a few considerations that your name must be vetted through. I want you to avoid, to the best of your ability, the potential issues that could result from an improperly or poorly chosen band name. You don’t want to find out later on that:

• Your name does not align with your brand.
• Online assets are already taken because your name is used by someone else.
• Your name is being confused with other artists, businesses, or organizations.
• It’s difficult for fans to locate you because of tricky spelling or pronunciation.
• Bookers or promoters feel your name is not marketable, or maybe even offensive, making it harder for you to get gigs.

With that being said, here are some things you should do to put your new possible stage name to the test.
 

Plug your stage name into search engines to see what comes up

 
You may be surprised that the name you thought was super creative is actually used quite often. The reverse is also true. You might get lucky, and a name you were worried might yield too many search results is actually usable.

In 2015, Band Camp came up with a do not use list of the 10 most common band names. Consider yourself warned:

• Atlas
• Apollo
• Bloom
• Nomad
• Paradox
• Moon
• Haze
• Zero
• Ghost
• Indigo

If you managed to avoid those common names, try typing your new stage name into a search engine to see what pops up in the results. Keep in mind that searching for your name through specific search engines, such as Google, will yield localized results based on your IP address. This could mean that your results are not accurate in letting you know if a name has been used throughout the country.
 

Search through music related websites

 
To dig deeper and see if your potential name has already been used, search for your name on websites specific to music.

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• Bandsintown
• ReverbNation
• CD Baby
• SoundCloud
• BandCamp
• SongKick

Keep in mind that the goal isn’t necessarily to find a name that is completely unique that no one has ever thought of or used. You want it to be different enough where you’re not having to compete with someone who is too popular or with a name that’s saturated, you can’t stand out.
This leads to the next two points.
 

Avoid any names that are trademarked

 
Make sure that the name you want is legally available. Visit the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to see if your potential persona is being used by anyone else. Also, search the online band registries and brick and mortar indie record shops to see if your name or a variation of it is already being capitalized on.

You may also want to invest the time and money to trademark your name, and avoid anyone else using it once you’ve become more established.
 

Check domain names and social media usernames

 
You’re going to have a website (of course), so it’s important to see if someone else is already using your ideal domain name. This is the other big reason why you want to avoid commonly used stage names.

Use a domain registrar like GoDaddy to see if you can secure a domain name that incorporates your chosen stage name. It is also a good idea to see if someone else has already taken the social media usernames using a similar name.

Lucky for you, knowem? can run your name through 500 popular social networks, over 150 domain names, and the USPTO Database to see if your name is in use. That saves you a ton of work!

If your ideal name and social media handles are taken, adding music, official or “the real…” are common variations to try.
 

Ask for feedback and people’s first impressions

 
Once you have some names down, I feel it’s very important to get another perspective. Ask your family and friends what they think of the name (or names if you haven’t picked one yet and are debating between a few).

If you know some people in the music or entertainment business, ask them. They might have valuable insight into how a promoter, booking agent or potential fan might interpret your name. Marketing companies use focus groups all the time to learn how others perceive a brand, product, and name. Take a cue from them and gather feedback.
 

Think about spelling and pronunciation

 
Symbols might be edgy in a name, like d3ath$tar, but they can make looking you up online pretty difficult. Long names might also make it hard for fans to remember your name. Find a balance between unique and not driving people crazy trying to spell or pronounce your name. See if you know the proper pronunciation for these bands.

Lykke Li
Common mispronunciation: Like Lee
How to say it: Licky Lee

Haim
Common mispronunciation: Hame
How to say it: Hyme or Hy-um

SBTRKT
Common mispronunciation: ess bee tee are kay tee
How to say it: Subtract

Bon Iver
Common mispronunciation: Bon Eye-ver
How to say it: Bone Ee-VARE

See the complete list here.

Keep in mind that not everyone may be as freewheeling as yourself. If your name has profanity or contains words that you wouldn’t say in front of your mom, you may cause your fans some discomfort when they mention your artist name.
 

Conclusion

 
I am sure these tips and tricks have given you a lot to think about and consider when searching for that perfect artist name. Coming up with one isn’t easy, but the time you invest now can save you a lot of headache later on.

Just to recap what you should be looking for in deciding on a stage name:

• It represents you and your brand well.
• It matches the genre or type of music you do.
• It’s not trademarked.
• It’s not already used by another famous, established musician or band.
• The domain name and social media handles are available.
• It’s not something that makes it challenging for people to search for because of how it’s spelled or pronounced.
• It’s not offensive or derogatory where other entities like promoters or venues have a problem promoting the name.
• It’s not so common that it would be easy for fans to get confused and difficult to establish some separation from other musicians using the same name.
• It’s a name you like and can live with throughout your career.

Once you do come up with the perfect name, be sure to secure the domain name and social media handles right away.

If you are looking for more inspiration, here’s a list of stage names from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stage_names

So what’s next? Here’s a good place to start:

16 Essential Things You Need to Know to Start Your Music Career in 2023

The post How to Choose the Best Stage Name For Musicians appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.