Have you recently decided that you want to pursue your passion for music, but have no idea where to start? If you’ve been doing music as a hobby for a while now and you want to get more serious, you’re in the right place.

In this blog, I cover all the major pieces and beginning steps you will need to know to start your music career as an independent artist. Although this guide caters more towards performing artists, singer-songwriters, bands and rappers, a lot of this can still apply to producers and instrumentalists as well.

Even if your end goal is to sign with a major music label, you’ll still need to take these steps to build your foundation. Just know that in the current climate of the music industry (thanks to the internet) you are no longer dependent on music labels to make a career in music, especially the majors. You have the freedom to do it yourself and have complete ownership.

The downside of pursuing music as an independent is that it’s not easy, and it takes a lot of work and patience. Not only are you responsible for the creative, but you also need to run the business side while being in charge of your own artist development. It can be overwhelming, but I hope this blog will be a good starting point for you and serve as a road map for laying the foundation of your path toward a career in music.
 

1. Make sure you have a way to make a living (day job)

 
In popular culture, we romanticize leaving everything behind to pursue our passion in a big city like Los Angeles or New York City. Unfortunately, more often than not, it’s more fantasy than reality.

It’s not smart to drop everything and try to make a living off music right off the bat. If you’re financially well off or have built up a strong following through another industry then maybe this doesn’t apply. But for the rest of you, your priority should be to do something that pays the bills to keep you afloat while you do music on the side.

Some might like the idea of going all in without a backup plan because they feel the pressure to survive will help motivate them to make it doing music full-time. Hey, it’s your life, but not what I would personally advocate.

Before the internet, if you wanted to pursue music, your best hope was to move to a big city and try to get the attention of A&Rs (artists and repertoire) in order to get signed by a label. Fortunately, those days are basically over as you no longer need labels to get started. However, this also means that just about anyone can try to pursue music, creating a noisy and competitive environment.

Since we all have bills to pay and other adult responsibilities, don’t feel like having a day job is a negative. I know artists who work a 9-to-5 and then do music on the side. They still release albums and perform at shows in the evenings. While some were fortunate to be able to jump straight into music without having to work a day job, everyone’s situation is going to be different. Success in the music industry has many different paths so embrace your unique journey. This transition into a full-time musician is a long process so make sure you have ways of sustaining yourself.

“Not being able to make a full-time living off of music does not make you less of an artist or does not make your art less viable.” – D4

You can put a day job to work for your future by interning or working in a position related to music (venues, merchandise, marketing, labels, music schools, etc). Even teaching music as a side gig to supplement income could help as well.

Lastly, while you still have a day job, learn the different cash flows and opportunities involved in music. The main ones are live performance / touring, selling merch and music licensing. Understanding and maximizing these options improve your chances of transitioning from your day job to doing music full-time.
 

2. Have goals and a plan

 
Do you have a good idea of where you want to go with your career?

You really need to understand what you want to do and have a good idea of how to get there. If you don’t, you need to research and ask people. Set goals and have a plan so you’re not wasting time.

Some people may want to just make music to get sync licensing deals for commercials or movies. Others want to be a performing artist who tours the world as an independent. Maybe you just want to produce tracks for other artists or score music for films. Maybe you want to be signed to a major label or even create your own label, band or collective? Or maybe you’re not mobile so you want to build a career as a musician on Twitch. There are a lot of different routes and lanes you can go on in music.

Not everyone will have the same goals or aspirations. It may take some time to realize what your long term goal is, and it may even change as you gain more experience. But once you have your end goal, you gotta reverse engineer it.

Keep in mind, the purpose of this blog is to broadly outline the different elements you need to think about to be an independent, performing artist and songwriter, but of course, most of the points still apply for which ever path you choose in music.
 

3. Treat your music career as a business

 
Whether you like it or not, starting a career as musician is like starting a new business. Once you start earning money from your music, it transitions from hobby to business. Part of the artist development process is learning how to operate your own business and hopefully turn your hobby/passion into a sustainable living.

In a traditional sense, your music is your product, like physical copies of your music. But even that is changing. Your brand has now become the commodity you monetize through your merch and tickets to see you perform. Regardless of the form your product takes, you need to operate as a business entity. There are different music business models you can implement, so it’s important to be aware of what they are and find what works best for you.

This means, at some point, you will need to:

• Develop a marketing strategy
• Identify your target audience or niche
• Understand and apply branding
• Allocate a budget for marketing expenses (social media ads)
• Handle accounting so you can file taxes for your music related-income
• Protect your assets (music)
• Build a team around you
• Map out a business plan
• Consult with a lawyer to help with contracts

If you plan to pay others to handle parts of your business and marketing, it is important you still educate yourself in these areas and know what to expect from them. You may hate the business aspects, but you still need to be informed and educated to make the right business decisions for your career.

Even if you know you have skills to excel in the business side, it may not be the best use of your time, as it takes you away from focusing on making music, so you will still need to surround yourself with a strong supporting team.

For bands or music groups: You will need a band agreement to decide on things like splits and percentages for copyrights over original song compositions and gigs, etc. This will need to be done in writing. You should use contracts and written documentation to detail copyright ownership, band operation agreements, payment expectations, rules, decision-making processes and other important procedures.
 

4. Keep making music and improving your craft

 
It sounds obvious, but it can be quite challenging in today’s music climate.

To combat the oversaturation of content and competitive climate for attention, speed has become a huge factor when it comes to making music. By speed, I mean how often you can release music consistently to stay top of mind and keep fans engaged. It may be challenging to balance the business and creative sides to produce quality music, but that has become the cost of entry.

Your success in the music industry ultimately starts with how good your music is. A good song can help jump start your career, but you need a strong brand to keep fans emotionally connected and push out songs consistently to build off the momentum.

Don’t fall into the belief that talent alone can sustain you, as there are other more important factors, like work ethic, branding and promotion. Talent matters to a point, but if it doesn’t translate into “good” songs that gain exposure, then it won’t take you far.

Promoting your music is arguably as important as making the music itself. Your priority is to make quality music, marketing it through various channels is second. The good news is that you can keep pushing your songs to new audiences, even if it’s an older release because it’s always going to be new to someone.

With that being said, don’t get complacent. Keep refining your talents and skills. Whether it’s singing, rapping or producing, keep practicing and learning. Never stop developing as an artist!

Russ is an Atlanta based rapper known for building his fan base from the ground up by basically releasing a free song every week for 2 years on Soundcloud. In addition, Russ produced, mixed, mastered, engineered, written, and perform the songs all by himself. His efforts eventually led him to a brief record deal with Columbia but he is now fully independent and has become a global star.

It is a bit extreme to do all that yourself, so this doesn’t mean you should try and copy what he did as it’s not feasible for most. However, if you want to improve your chances of making it in music as quickly as possible, that’s the route you may have to take. My recommendation is to go at a pace that you’re financially, emotionally and physically comfortable with.

Lastly, make sure the music you do put out has good sound quality (unless the style of music you create is meant to sound raw or unpolished). Although I don’t know much about the technical aspects of making music, I do know mixing and mastering your songs matter to make it sound good in different speaker systems. We have the ability now to record music easily using personal laptops with quality equipment in the right acoustic setting, but make sure to have someone knowledgeable and skilled handle the rest if you don’t know what you’re doing.
 

5. Network and be community oriented

 
Your network is your net worth. More often than not, it’s all about who you know in life, and the music industry is no exception. The longer I work in music as a professional, the more I see opportunities come from knowing the right people.

One of your first goals should be to develop relationships in your local community and music scenes. You can network in your neighborhood, city and school by knowing the different music venues and establishing relationships with other local artists and people involved in music.

You can also think of it as building a local support group to help you stay motivated.

Of course, you should be doing this online as well as in person. The internet isn’t just a place where you find fans. There are networking opportunities, but you just need to know how to approach it. Don’t just put up music and going around spamming people to listen to it. Instead, find relevant online communities to be active in and support artists similar to you. This way you can meet other artists to collaborate with and possible industry connections that may help you in the future.

The goal with networking is to build relationships, meet artists to potentially collaborate with and find possible people who may be a good fit for your team like a manager, photographer or even booking agent. You will need a team, but chances are you’re not going to be able to pay people early on so you need to work with others who at your same level and believe in what you have to offer. I was that person who needed to find artists to help. In fact, the first artist I started working with was an artist I met through college.

Remember, relationships are key to success in this business, so start developing them locally.

6. Establish your online presence

 
There’s a difference between making music as a hobby and making music as a profession. Just like in business, presentation is important. Part of treating your music career like a business involves presenting yourself as an artist to take seriously. If you come off as amateurish, people can subconsciously associate you with lower quality and someone not worthy of attention. This is why having good quality visual components (photos, graphics, videos) is key to a strong online presence.

Photos

When starting out, invest in a professional photographer to get high-quality photos of yourself, or band, that you use for your bio, website and social media. If you’re lucky, you might have a photographer friend that could hook you up. Make sure to communicate with them and plan out how the specific shots are going to be used ahead of time.

It’s important that the photographer captures different compositions (close-ups vs long shots with white space) and orientations (portrait vs landscape) so that you can use photos in the right places. For example, a close-up portrait style shot may be great for a bio. But if you need to use that photo for a Facebook or Twitter cover photo that requires a landscape (widescreen) composition, parts of your face may be cut off when you have to crop the photo to fit.

Graphics

Another area is graphics. Early in your music career, you might not have money to pay a graphic designer so you’ll have to do things for yourself. For graphics you might need like album covers, merch designs, flyers and even logos, I highly recommend this FREE app called Canva. (Affiliate Link)

Canva is a great tool because it’s easy to use and you can basically create anything you’ll need in their free plan. However, if you do want to try their paid plan to access even more template designs, they have a free 30 day trial. I personally use Canva when I don’t want to use Adobe Photoshop for certain things.

Website

In addition to setting up your social media accounts and optimizing them, you should also have a clean and professional website. I personally use WordPress and Squarespace for my clients, but there a lot of different options out there.

If you’re not tech-savvy, then something like Squarespace (Affiliate Link Disclosure) is what I highly recommend over Wix and Weebly. Plus, they offer a 14 day free trial with no credit card needed if you wanted to try for yourself. Use my affiliate link with code D4MUSIC10 to save 10% off your first subscription of a website or domain.

Start by registering for a domain name, ideally something that is the same as your social media usernames for consistency. Here’s a great tool to use to check for available domain names:

https://namechk.com

Can you get away with just using social media? Sure, anything is possible, but I don’t recommend it. Instead of a website, some artists now will use link in bio services like Linktree as a temporary replacement and that can work too. The way I look at it, it’s all a numbers game. There are things you can do that are not required, like having a website, but they will improve your chances of being successful.

There may come a point where you need to get publicity or coverage. Remember, people or organizations with large audiences tend to get a lot of requests, so they need to have a system to filter out who they write about or promote. Creating a good impression with a website and a strong brand can help. Only having a SoundCloud account as your main online presence just doesn’t put out a good impression.

7. Know yourself well to establish your artist/brand identity

 
You need to establish who you are as a brand to make it easier for people to identify and distinguish you from other artists.

This may be hard for some, but a good way to understand who you are is to establish who you are not. You need to know this to market your music to the right audience. Often times, you’ll want to reach people who are like you, that’s why I say you need to know yourself or have self-awareness. Establishing your brand and identity helps potential fans decide if your music resonates with them. Remember that your music is not for everyone.

Is your brand a static entity? No. I believe your brand or artist identity can evolve and change, just as we normally do as individuals. But it’s important, especially early in your career, to start with something that is authentically you to build around and commit to it.

Think about your story, angle, hook or nugget (as Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR Music says) that helps you stand out and makes you different. It should be an authentic part of yourself that makes it easy for people to associate and connect with you.

The tricky part is to try and sum up what you’re all about in a short line or sentence. Identifying yourself as a ‘female rapper’ or ‘guitarist from New York’ is too vague. What can people expect to hear from you? What kind of scenes, subculture, hobbies, lifestyles or interests are you into aside from music?

All this boils down to communication and clearly stating who you are through your brand, so that you can hook the fans who resonate with your story and music. Identify and communicate that one ‘thing’ that someone can latch on to and reflects a part of your fan’s identity.

For more help on branding, I recommend checking 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.

8. Build up your own value to leverage what you need

 
Sometimes it can take that one popular tastemaker, blogger, playlister or influencer to get you the publicity and exposure you need to get your career going. These are basically people who have a large audience of followers and can get your name out there to accelerate the growth of your fan base. Assuming, of course, that you have really good music that is worthy of attention.

For most artists, a random request to these individuals asking for promotion will often get ignored. So how do you get their attention? Think about what’s in it for them. How does talking about you or promoting your music benefit them?

Unless you know them or have connections, industry people are less likely to do you any favors just out the goodness of their hearts. No matter how good you think you are, don’t ever feel like you are entitled, especially if you haven’t proven yourself yet.

It’s important to understand what value you possess as an artist and how you can leverage it to get others to talk about you and promote your music. If you’re just starting, you won’t have leverage so you will need to build and provide value first.

In today’s music industry, value usually starts with offering your music for free to build a following.

The value you possess could be that you have really good music that makes influencers look good in front of their audience for discovering you.

Maybe you have a large, engaged social media audience that can get the blogger or popular playlist additional exposure.

The same goes for the local press and bigger media outlets. These entities have an audience as well that they need to engage. So if your story is unique enough with different angles that they can work with, that’s a value to them.

It’s important to think about this perspective and not just about what you want. The music itself and the audience you’re able to build from it is your leverage, and not solely your talent. Your brand and story can also be leveraged.

This concept even extends to potential team members, managers, booking agents, promoters and even labels taking notice and wanting to work with you. It also governs the relationship that you have with your fans.
 

9. Know the basics of music copyright laws

 
One aspect that can get easily overlooked is protecting your music. To avoid this, you want to make sure you properly copyright your work.

I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t offer much more advice, but do your research. Technically, your music is copyrighted when it is created and made into a tangible form (written or recorded). However, registering your music with the copyright office can offer further protection and help provide evidence that you are, in fact, the originator of that work.

With that being said, it’s not entirely necessary or urgent to worry about this early in your career, but know your rights.

Copyrighting your music prevents you from becoming a victim of copyright infringement (intellectual property theft). I was told by someone who used to be an A&R for a major label that they would scout for songs from lesser-known talent and check to see if the songs were copyrighted. If they were not registered, they could replicate and essentially steal it. This was a long time ago so I imagine it would be much more difficult to actually take someone’s song as their own in the digital age. But, the main point is to take precautions and know your basic rights as a creative.

For producers, if you make beats and use samples to create a derivative work, be sure to know what you can or can’t do to avoid potential legal action.

If you’re in a band or group, you will need to figure out how you want to split ownership over the musical compositions you create together.
 

10. Find opportunities to perform live

 
Unless you want to be someone who solely produces music behind the scenes for other artists or for licensing, you need to find opportunities to perform for the experience.

Live performances are more important than ever as an income source with record sales not at the same levels as it was decades ago. For upcoming artists, it’s an opportunity to convert people who may have not heard of you into paying fans/supporters in the future.

The idea is to get practice performing for others live, whether in person or on live video. Be comfortable in these live environments and continue to improve. Just like with any other skill, you need practice and experience to get better.

Feedback is important too, so you know what to improve on. If possible, record your live performances to watch later. Also, watch live performances of your favorite artists and study them.

If you’re not at the level where people pay you to do shows yet, start developing your performance skills at family gatherings or open mics in your community, schools, churches and local businesses. Once you get comfortable, you may consider applying for one of these free live performance discovery platforms for more exposure.

Eventually, you’ll want to hire a booking agent, but it’s safe to say that you’ll need to be able to get shows on your own first to show promoters and talent buyers that you have people who want to see you.

11. Think about building your team

 
I touched on this in a few of the previous points. If you really want to take your music career seriously, you will need a team. You may be one of the few artists who love running the entire business operation and manage to do it well in addition to all the creative, but it would be difficult to grow this way. You will need to find competent people you can trust and hand over control to in order for your music career to flourish in the future.

Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re just starting out so I wouldn’t focus too much on this yet. I feel you still need to be hands-on and know how to do certain things yourself. The idea is to eventually outsource jobs or tasks that you’re not the best at or would take away time from focusing on your strengths.

In the back of your mind, you want to assess new people you meet or even those already in your network that could potentially be a part of your team as you grow. Ultimately, you want people who are willing to grow with you, grind it out with you and not just trying to take advantage of your successes.

Here are some people you need to consider on your team as your career grows:

• Managers
• Booking Agent
• Marketing Strategists
• Photographer and Videographer
• Assistants
• Entertainment Attorney

12. Know how to distribute your music online

 
You can begin gaining traction for your music career by posting your music on Soundcloud and Youtube, but you’ll eventually need better distribution, especially if you want to be taken seriously. To get your music into major outlets like Apple Music, Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Music and many others, you need a music aggregator (music distributor).

Popular online music distributors to consider are:

• DistroKid – This is what my clients use and what I recommend for others. Use my affiliate link to get a 20% discount when you sign up. Why affiliate links?
• CDBaby
• TuneCore

These are sites that allow you to get your music on the major streaming and digital sales platforms and don’t require going through record companies. They will vary in costs, fees and tools, so do your research before deciding which to use.

Not only do these services help get your music onto selling and streaming platforms, they offer admin publishing services that help with collecting royalties. This is covered below.

You’ll probably want to get physical copies of your music pressed as well. One of the leaders of this industry is Disc Makers, but I found their prices to be a bit more expensive compared to the other competitors. Be sure to do your research and get recommendations from other artists.

13. Understand the various ways you earn royalties from your music

 
This is an area that can be confusing and complicated. I did my best to simplify music royalties in this blog here.

As a recording artist, music producer, songwriter and/or music composer, you may have various income streams you can collect from your music (assuming you own the copyright to the songs) when it’s played or used in different situations. For example, if you put your music on places like Spotify, Pandora and Youtube, you are owed money or royalties from those platforms when someone streams your music.

Different types of royalties include:

• Mechanical
• Performance
• Synchronization

It may not seem important early on when you’re just starting out, but you will need to look into joining a performing rights organization (PRO). A PRO collects publishing royalties generated from your music when performed live, which can be an important income stream to help sustain artists. You only need to sign up with one PRO.

For those in the United States, it’s either ASCAP, BMI or SESAC for traditional performance royalties.

• ASCAP
• BMI
• SESAC
• SoundExchange (for digital performance royalties)

The difference between ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and SoundExchange.

Different countries have their own organizations and processes, so you’ll have to Google to find out how it works in your area.

Lastly, you should know that there’s a service you can pay for called publishing administration that helps collect all your publishing royalties on your behalf. Technically, you can do it yourself, but it can be a tedious process that is probably easier if someone else handles it. It’s important to research and find what works best for you.

Here are some places to start:

• SongTrust ($100 one-time setup fee + 15% commission)
• CD Baby Publishing Admin (15% commission)
• TuneCore Publishing Admin ($75 one-time fee + 15% commission)

14. Focus on video content to grow your fan base

 
This is a new section I added for the 2024 update. Even back in 2018, video content was important but now we see it’s much more needed than ever. But more specifically, short form video content.

We should all know by now that people’s attention spans have gotten incredibly short in our current swipe culture. It should be no surprise with the popularity of TikTok and Instagram Reels that short form video is the way to potentially grow your audience and engage fans. Even YouTube is embracing this shift with their version called ‘Shorts’ for videos one minute or less.

As a new musician today, it’s very rare that audio only will get you on people’s radar unless you’re able to get a good playlist placement on a streaming platform like Spotify. But even Spotify is leaning on visuals on their platform with short 8 second video clips to accompany your songs (Canvas) and testing a Tik-Tok-like video home feed on their app called ‘Clips‘.

Ultimately if you want to promote your music, whether organically or with paid social ads, you’ll need good video content that is ideally optimized for the platform you’re posting on.

This also means that your traditional music video (horizontally shot, minutes long) has become less relevant for newer artists. Even for many established artists, spending thousands of dollars on a standard music video just doesn’t make any financial sense anymore. With how much streaming pays these days, the return on investment is going to be very long unless it somehow becomes a viral hit. Plus, most people aren’t going to watch the whole thing, especially if it’s over 3 or 4 minutes long.

This is not to discourage anyone for wanting to do a traditional music video for artistic reasons. But if you don’t really have a fan base yet, I would be very careful with spending a lot of money on a highly produced video. Instead, I would explore and get creative with short form, vertical video content. For examples, check out an album release campaign I ran.

The good news is that you don’t need anything polished and with high production value. You can actually just use your smart phone.

15. Be prepared mentally for the long haul

 
Don’t get discouraged. It’s a tough industry that, in my opinion, got even tougher. Just because your first song received 25 streams on Youtube, all of them from your friends and family, doesn’t mean you won’t one day be in the thousands. It really does take time and work to get your name out there and build momentum. Don’t worry about others are doing or have done. Go at your own pace that you’re comfortable with.

You will get turned down, won’t get a response, ignored, rejected… maybe even ridiculed. It’s part of the journey. I’ve been to shows for artists who I work with and it’s sort of embarrassing at times, but it’s a humbling process that makes the wins much sweeter.

It will be challenging. It’s a juggling act between the creative and business side while trying to make a living. For some, it’s also getting a college education and raising a family.

But you don’t have to do it alone. In addition to being active in your local music scene, you most likely know at least one musician friend or family member you can reach out to them for advice.

Remember, the best way to be prepared is having the right mindset. This includes getting out of the “shortcut” mentality that leads to impatient behaviors.

Many musicians out there have big dreams to “make it big” and make music their full-time career. The problem is there are so, so many scammers out there who prey on impatient and naïve musicians. Even some of the smartest and experienced musicians fall victim to their scams too. Just know that most of these people hitting you up on social media and emails are scams. How can you tell? Make sure you read up on my blog about how NOT to get scammed by “music promotion” companies.

16. Be ready to invest in yourself and learn

 
Part of starting a music career is realizing that it starts with investing in yourself first. Whether it’s time or money, you have to be willing to put in the work to learn and get things done.

In order to build your career, you will need money, whether it’s to have someone build your website, pay for studio time, get CDs pressed, hire a designer for your merch or transportation to get to venues to perform. Again, it’s just like a business. You have to be willing to put up the capital and bet on yourself. If you can’t even invest in yourself to make sure you come off as a professional or ensure your music is high quality, how do you expect fans or anyone else to invest in you?

Not only financially, but also be ready to invest time into learning.

As they say, time is money. If you’re not investing money, you’re investing time into the creative aspects of music production or learning the business. You will be doing a lot of learning so prepare yourself. Unless you have a lot of disposable income and you can pay a bunch of people, you will have to do things yourself.

This is one of the big challenges of being independent because the responsibility of artist development is in your hands. No matter how talented you are, most musicians who have been doing music as a hobby will not have the full package needed to make it as a full-time professional. Because a music career encompasses so many areas, it takes education and experience to develop. You won’t need to be an expert in marketing, entertainment law or accounting, but you need to know what to look for in others and what to expect from their services.

One option is to take online courses to help with artist development. A site I recommend is SkillShare (Affiliate Link) which offers all types of courses (including music and business) for as low as $8 a month. They are offering a free 14 day trial to take as many premium courses as you want within that period. If you cancel before that, you don’t pay anything. If you’re interested, sign up now to start your free trial at SkillShare. Read my full disclosure to learn more about affiliate links.

Hopefully, everything outlined in this blog gives you a big picture perspective of what you need to do to get started in your music career. I provided links and additional resources for you to explore in some of the sections, so be sure to check those out.
 

What’s next?

 
This is a very thorough list and I hope it’s not discouraging. With all this in mind, take things one step at a time and start setting the foundation of your career. The best advice I can give is just create as much music as you can, release it and have fun with it.

Additional Blogs to Read (Just Starting Out)

• How To Choose The Best Stage Name For Musicians
• FREE Essential Online Tools For New Independent Artists Getting Started
• Simplifying The Concept Of Marketing For Musicians
• The Basics Of Branding For Musicians
• How To NOT Get Scammed With “Music Promotion” Services
• How To Market Your Music With Little To No Budget (Resource For New Artists)
• Want To Grow Your Fan Base Effectively? Think Funnels. Fan Funnels.
• 4 Steps To Find Your Target Audience Or Niche As A Musician To Grow A Fanbase
• Income Streams for Musicians Guide: How To Survive as an Independent Artist
• How to Create Short-Form Videos to Gain New Fans As A Musician

Additional Blogs to Read (Emerging Artists)

• The Ultimate Single Release Checklist For Independent Artist
• Going Viral On Social Media: Full Campaign Breakdown For Musicians
• Beginners Guide To AI For Musicians: How Artificial Intelligence Can Boost Your Music Career Now
• Spotify Playlist Guide: How To Improve Discoverability For Your Music
• 44 Music Blogs To Submit Your Songs For Exposure… But Is It Worth It?
• Different Ways To Get Exposure For Your Music As An Independent Artist
• 5 FREE Live Performance Discovery Platforms For Musicians To Apply
• Beginners Guide For Filing Taxes As A Musician
• 8 Time Saving Tips For Musicians
• 10 Ways For Independent Artists To NOT Get Booked For Shows
• Music Copyright Basics: Do Musicians Really Need To Copyright Their Songs?
• Music Royalties Simplified: An Income Source All Musicians Need To Know
• How To Promote Your Music: The Best And Worst Strategies And Tactics
• What Merch Should Independent Artists Make That Fans Will Actually Buy
• How To Submit Your Song For Spotify Playlist Consideration
• How NOT To Pitch To Music Industry People: Avoid These 10 Common Email Mistakes!

Recommended Person to Follow:

Who Is Gary Vee And Why Music Artists Should Follow Him
 

The post 16 Essential Things You Need to Know to Start Your Music Career in 2026 appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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.

EXPOSURE. It’s what all artists want right?

After investing so much time into creating the music, you want to make sure it gets in front of people. How can you get your music in front of new potential fans? Maybe you’re unsure of the options you have.

A few people have reached out to me and asked about how to get more exposure. To me, there’s really no big secret.

The goal of this blog is to simplify the most practical routes to get more exposure for your music. It’s less about secret tactics or hacks, and more so about an overview of all your options you have to get your music in front of new people.

I break down getting exposure into two general categories:

• Channels you can control / Building your own audience
• Leveraging other people’s audience

Channels you can control / Building your own audience

Market music properly and make it accessible

 
If you’re putting out good music and doing your due diligence to get your songs out there and making it easily accessible. The more places people can get to your music, the more likely you can expose it to them. This will largely depend on what music business model you follow or what your views are regarding giving your music for free.

Optimize your social media channels and make sure you use hashtags and proper tags so it can be discovered.

Don’t just post the song once and move onto the next thing. You really have to promote it multiple times (not too much where you become spammy), but also re-purpose the song into different content like videos.
 

Keep making music consistently

 
One of the biggest challenges with getting exposure for your music is that there’s just so much competition. Attention is hard to come by and the fact is not all artists have the ability to gain a lot of exposure.

Mediocre songs will get a mediocre response. Getting exposure often starts with a really good song that people will want to share naturally that resonates with listeners. It could be because it’s something that has a unique sound. Or it could be something that generates some controversy, intentionally or unintentionally (Hobo Johnson, Rich Brian, Post Malone).

For example, look at what happened with Lil Nas X with his hip hop country crossover hit “Old Town Road”.

There’s a lot of musicians out there that want things to happen quickly, but most don’t want to put the time, energy and money necessary to be a successful independent artist.

At the end of the day, you’re still going to need to make a “good” song so keep creating. Even songs that are really good will fade and fans will just jump to the next one. To keep up with the current state of the music industry, you have to be able to keep putting out new content consistently.

By putting out more music, the opportunities you have to get exposure increases the chance for something to catch on. Look at Russ for example. It’s not to say it is absolutely necessary to go that extreme, but your chances are technically increased with each new release. It’s a numbers game.

In case you’re new to the music business, just remember it’s better to put out singles and EPs rather than 10+ track albums.
 

Activate your current fans by word of mouth

 
Your current fan base is also a powerful tool for word of mouth exposure. We are more likely to trust and listen to a good friend’s recommendation. As the artist, you just need a really good song or video that fans naturally want to share with their own social media network and tell people they know in person.

I don’t know about you, but most new artists I hear about are from friends or people I know. It could be a direct recommendation, like “you need to check them out,” or passively from hearing the music they are listening to in a car ride.

Keep in mind, platforms like Facebook don’t want you to instruct your followers to like, comment and share your post because it’s considered “gaming” their algorithms. As a result, you can be penalized with your post’s organic reach.

If you’re just starting off and you don’t have a strong fan base yet, you’re going to need your friends, family and network to share.
 

Performing live

 
Every time you perform in front of a live audience, you have an opportunity to reach new fans.

Especially when you’re relatively new, you may end up doing song cover gigs at a bar or be the local opening act for a more established artist. It’s not as exciting as being the headliner of your show or going viral, but every new fan you connect with in-person counts and it all adds up. You just have to remember that pursuing music requires having a long game mindset. Don’t underestimate the real-life connection. Quality over quantity.

The most logical starting point is finding opportunities to perform in your community like local businesses, open mics, schools and art collectives. Once you feel good about your live performance skills, you can try doing gigs for Sofar Sounds, which hosts intimate, live performance events in 346 cities around the world.

The way it works is Sofar Sounds hosts a show at a local business with 3 curated musical acts that are a mystery to people who request tickets for a specific day. You get a 20 – 25 minute set that helps you with some exposure in your city, opportunity to sell merch and they will even compensate you now for performing. (When I first heard about them years ago, they weren’t paying anything while run by volunteers. They were heavily criticized for their practices, but it looks like they’ve changed their ways.) You can find out if Sofar Sounds is in your city and apply to perform here.

Also, when you’re performing out in public, you’ll have people record you on their phones and that’s another bit of exposure when they share with their network.

This is an extreme example, but it should get the point across. Lauren Jauregui shared some Instagram Stories of Butterscotch’s performance for Forbes Under 30 Summit 2018 in Boston to her 6+ million Instagram followers:

As you can imagine, Butterscotch got a nice influx of followers from this exposure. Most of the time, the average artist won’t be performing in front of others who have a massive social media following, but you never know who may be watching. If people are amazed at what you do, they are more likely to give you exposure to their audiences because it carries a level of social currency.
 

Short Form Videos: TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels

 
It’s no secret that TikTok is powerful social media platform for virality and expanding reach of your content to new people. With the massive user base, the different challenges (Open Verse Challenge) and the Duet feature, it’s easier to get more exposure now with the right video.

Instagram Reels operates similarly as a TikTok competitor and it’s clear that they want more people to use this feature. So when it comes to social media and looking for more exposure and reach, you should prioritize creating content for Reels over making regular posts and Instagram Stories.

YouTube Shorts has also entered the mix as their way of competing with TikTok in the vertical, short form video realm.
 

Pay for Social Media Ads

 
Platforms like Facebook and Instagram Ads are powerful tools to get targeted exposure at scale when done right. I am a big advocate of this approach. I’m currently working on a free eBook that will go in-depth on how to use Facebook and Instagram ads.

Yes, the downside is you need a budget dedicated to ads. I know money can be a challenge for an upcoming artist, but this is what you should be willing to invest in if you are truly serious about making a career out of music. As an independent artist, you are operating as a small business and paying for ads is a business expense you need to invest in.

After all, getting exposure organically from posting on these platforms is usually not going to cut it most of the time. Your content would need to been found through hashtags or things like Instagram’s Discovery tab, but usually, that’s not enough when so many others are doing the same thing.
 

Leveraging other people’s audiences

Artist Collaborations

 
One of the most basic forms of tapping into other people’s audience is through collaboration. Work on projects with artists that have an audience where you can cross-promote. It can start with artists in your local city or community.

In some cases, you can pay for a more established artist to be a collaborator or feature on a song. This way you’ll get exposure from their fans when your song appears on their Spotify artist profile.
 

Traditional Channels (TV and Radio)

 
Because of the internet, these traditional platforms aren’t as powerful as they use to be for exposure. Reality shows like America’s Got Talent helped to launch careers for many artists like Butterscotch back in 2007.

Even with reality talent type shows, they don’t seem to move the needle much as much as it use to for artists, unless you’re an extraordinary talent that the world has never seen. Someone I knew of, a friend’s brother who stuck around on the “The Voice: Season 9” for a few rounds, didn’t blow up as you would think with all that prime time exposure.

More recently in 2019, another singer I knew of from Sacramento went on “The Voice: Season 17” and was able to gain thousands of new followers before exiting in week 4.

Butterscotch was asked to do a few of these type of shows again in the past year or so. I watched the numbers of many of the contestants to see if the exposure in the competition helped increase their social media followers. Nothing noticeable, but of course, it depends on the show.

Many contestants from the first season of Netflix’s music reality show “Rhythm and Flow” saw sizeable bumps in their followings, even those that didn’t make it in the final rounds.

Radio is in a similar boat. As an early millennial, I stopped listening for over 15 years now. I imagine for younger generations it will continue to decline. In this day in age, playlists are the new radio. This is not to say it isn’t still possible to get exposure through traditional radio, but it’s not something I would focus on.
 

Retail Stores

 
Retail stores and local businesses need a specific public performance license to legally play copyrighted music in their stores. In other words, a business owner can’t just play music from their personal Spotify account for in-store customers. Instead of going through the hassle of obtaining licenses from different Performing Rights Organizations (PROs), they can pay a company that specializes in music streaming services for businesses.

One way to get your music into retail stores is by paying a service that can pitch programmers who control the playlists for these specific business streaming companies. What’s In-Store Music does just that. I’ve never personally used them, but it would something I’d consider for the right song. It’s free to pitch, but it costs $1,500 for each accepted song.
 

Local Community and Organizations

Sync Licensing Opportunities

 
Getting your song in a commercial, film, TV show or even video game is excellent way to get more exposure. It’s not easy, but it can be a great opportunity if a music supervisor finds your song is a good fit for the project.
 

Publicity and Press

 
Another typical route for exposure is through music blogs, online communities or local press. You can let a blog or online magazine get an exclusive to premiere your new music or video. If you have an interesting story, you might be able to get the press to cover it. For a list of 44 independent blogs that accept song submissions, you can check them out here.

Depending on where you are in your career, it may be useful to invest in a publicist who can get you into higher profile blogs and press opportunities.
 

Playlists

 
Getting your songs into popular curated playlists on platforms like Spotify, SoundCloud and Youtube is another way to get exposure for your music. Editorial playlists where the platform (like Spotify) has a curation team in-house may be a bit more difficult to get into, but you can easily submit your song to Spotify to be considered on their playlist. Best of all, it’s free!

You can try pitching to individual playlists if you can dig for their contact info somehow. Just keep in mind you’ll need to have something to offer them too, like the exposure of their playlist to your audience.

For more detailed information about how to get exposure for your music on Spotify, check out my Spotify Playlists Guide.
 

Pitch your music to Youtube channels and live streamers on Twitch

 
Youtube Creators and Vloggers could always use music for their videos. If they have a larger audience, it could be a good way to get more exposure. Before you pitch, just make sure the style or genre of music you do actually makes sense for their content. It would definitely help if you become an actual fan of their channel first and build up the relationship beforehand rather than doing it out of the blue.

Twitch.tv sees an average of 15 million active users a day. I don’t ever use Twitch or watch others play video games, but I know having your music play in the background while streamers are playing is another route to get exposure. Depending on the type of music you do, this could be a viable strategy.

Just keep in mind that platforms like Twitch and YouTube are strict about copyrighted music playing the background of live streams without proper licenses. This is considered copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). You will need to work the licensing out with anyone who wants to use your music.
 

Go Viral

 
There have been a lot of artists who have hit the exposure jackpot called virality.

Lil Nas X took over the world with his record breaking song “Old Town Road.”

Hobo Johnson went viral after posting a Tiny Desk entry video for a song called Peach Scone. I don’t think anyone ever expected that he would get put on the scene because of this video, but it happened.

Going viral is not a feasible strategy, but if you want to learn more to increase your chances, here are the 6 principles you need know.

Virality can even happen from something not even related to music where you become super famous on someone else’s platform for some random reason. You then can use that platform to create an audience for pushing your music. An example is Bhad Bhabie who became famous for saying the catchphrase “cash me outside, how ’bout dat” on Dr Phil as a 13 year old trouble maker. Although pursuing a music career was probably not her initial intent, she got a major label record deal because of her clout.
 

Conclusion

When you really assess the options you have for exposure, the X factors for exposure comes down to your content, your network and your brand.

At the end of the day, if you’re not putting out good songs:

No marketing is going to help.

No one is going to want to collaborate with you.

No fan is going to want to promote you.

No Facebook ads are going to save you.

No blog or press is going to cover you.

Be aware of all the options you have available and use them when you can. At the end of the day, all the exposure in the world won’t do anything for you if you’re not putting out music that gets someone’s attention.

The post Different Ways to Get Exposure for Your Music as an Independent Artist appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

In business, a sales funnel (or similarly a buyer’s journey) is a process that consists of different stages or touchpoints that potential customers pass through as they become more interested in your products and services until they reach the desired action or sales transaction at the end.

As artists and musicians, your customers (or fans) go through different stages as well to take the ideal action at the end of the funnel, which is typically to buy your music and pay to see your show. However, instead of sales funnels, I like to think of it as a fan or relationship funnel when talking about music.

The purpose of this blog is to introduce the concept of the fan funnel and explain how it can make your marketing efforts more efficient and effective for building a fan base as an artist.
 

Why are Fan Funnels Important for Artists?

 
If you want to make a living off music, you need to treat it as a business. Part of the business is choosing the best music business model for you and knowing how to build a fan base within that model to market to them effectively.

The fan funnel is the process that you want your typical fans to take as they build trust with you, and develop a deeper connection to your brand. The goal is to get to them through the bottom of the funnel and make a transaction.

The problem is fans don’t just empty out their pockets for artists that easily anymore, especially when you consider how record sales have been declining for over a decade.

Before the internet, your big source for music discovery was the TV or radio. If you liked a song or an artist, you went out and bought the single or the album. There was no social media or place where you could really interact with artists directly.

Now that the internet has provided so much easy accessibility to everything, the fan funnel and fan journey has become a longer process before a transaction takes place. There are just so many more options and distractions that it makes building a fan base more challenging. This means you will need to put more work into the fan relationship before they will support you financially.

I think it’s important for musicians to be aware of this process and visualize the various stages that a person goes through to become a fan. It will help you prioritize and make better business decisions.
 

What Does a Fan Funnel Look Like?

 
The optimal fan funnel will usually stay relatively static for each artist depending on their goals, strategy and audience. In reality, the fan journey (the process that each fan actually takes to become a paying fan) will always vary in some way for each artist.
 

Establish a Goal

 
First, you need to determine what your main goal is and the path that potential fans will need to take to reach that goal. This path consists of stages or touchpoints that contain their own micro-goals that lead fans to the main goal. You can look at these individual stages as mini funnels within a bigger funnel depending on which path they take. So each objective you meet, means you are that much closer to accomplishing your overarching goal.

Although it’s not labeled, think of all the space outside of the funnel as the general population. However, you cannot technically reach everyone, nor should you want to as it defeats the purpose of “marketing,” so you need to begin at the first stage of the funnel.
 

Target (or Awareness) Stage

 
At the very top of the funnel, you have the Target (or Awareness) stage that represents the various channels in which your target market can become aware of you and potentially be interested in your music. This part of the funnel is focused on attracting or targeting a specific market or demographic of people who may be interested in the products or content you have to offer as a musician. People can be funneled into this stage from different sources:

• Someone else’s social media post
• Word of mouth like a friend recommendation
• Your Facebook or Instagram Ads
• Doing gigs for new people
• Playlists or music streaming services
• Coming across your content (like a video on YouTube)
• Depending on how fans enter into your fan funnel, their specific path and the touchpoints they encounter will vary, but it will still follow the same general flow as shown in the graphic.

I mentioned before that each stage in the funnel can have its own micro-goals. An example of a micro goal in this stage could be a social media follow so you will want to provide the appropriate content or offer to get initially into your funnel. For example, one way to get people into the Awareness stage is by creating videos of you covering songs by artists that potential new fans are searching for with a similar sound to your music. In the video, you can offer the cover song as a free download (just be wary of copyright laws regarding cover songs). From here, you can go about it in 2 general ways:

1) Basic tactic: Require them to follow you on a specific social media platform in exchange for the download on a service like Show.co, Toneden or Unlock.fm.

2) More advanced: Provide the download link to the song for free on your website with no friction (meaning you’re not making them give you something in exchange). However, you need to have a Facebook pixel on your website so that you can tag them so you can push Facebook ads to them later. This is definitely a more advanced tactic that requires a larger following and a budget to be effective, but I just want to put it out there as an example of what is possible. From here, you can push ads to follow you on Facebook or follow up with another free download like an EP in exchange for an email address.

Engage (or Nurture) Stage

 
In the middle section of the funnel, you have your Engage (or Nurture) stage. Most fans will stay here the majority of the time. This stage is like the hangout spot where you grow your relationship with your fans by providing them content and music. In turn, they engage with you and show interest in what you do. As a result, you build trust and support.
Read more about engaging and nurturing fans in this blog.

An example of a micro goal here would be to get an email address. If fans are enjoying your music and social media content, they may want to get more content from you directly, so they will readily give you their email. To entice them, you can offer something like a free download in exchange for an email address, which ties into the example above. For more ideas on collecting emails, check out 5 Most Effective Ways Music Artists Can Build An Email List.
 

Convert (or Action) Stage

 
At the bottom of the funnel, you have the Convert (or Action) stage where your goal is to have fans make some kind of sales transaction. This can be to buy your music, merch or ticket to a show. Once this transaction has taken place, they end up back in the Engage / Nurture stage, despite the fact that’s not how actual funnels work. However, once they reach through this stage, the process starts over again.

As I alluded to earlier, people who spontaneously come across your music are less likely to jump into the transaction process, especially with how music streaming is dominating how we consume music now. So you can’t be in the mindset of churning out sales transactions. If you are, here’s why you need to stop thinking transactionally.
 

How to Visualize Your Fan Funnel (Examples of a Fan Journey)

 
As mentioned earlier, not all fans will have the same fan journey and not everyone will enter your fan funnel the same way. What your goals are and where you are in your career will help determine the right strategy for you to grow your fan base.

Here’s an example of what a general fan journey may look like and how it resembles the stages of a fan funnel:

1. A friend tells you about this artist they really like.
2. You search their name on Google.
3. You find their YouTube channel or SoundCloud account and listen to some songs.
4. You like what you hear so you go to their website to learn more about them.
5. You notice they are on Instagram and Spotify, two platforms you use the most, so you follow them.
6. Over time, you start to listen to more of their songs on Spotify. You occasionally see some of their posts on social media and engage with them.
7. Down the line, they have a new EP they are offering for free in exchange for an email address. You like their music so you do it.
8. Months later, you receive an email that they are going on tour in your city.
9. You go to their show and it was great. As you walk out, you notice some merch so you buy a shirt and a CD.

From this example, you should be able to visualize what this fan funnel would look like and have a basic understanding of the processes that need to be in place to make this funnel work.

Imagine if you didn’t have a website or have your music on Spotify. Or what if you didn’t have a process to capture emails or even a mailing list? You may have potential fans slipping through the cracks and not even realize it.

Here’s a slight variation of the fan journey that comes from a different source. As short as it is, it is entirely possible.

1. You check out the opener at the show of your favorite artist.
2. You listen to their music and like what you hear.
3. You notice they are on Instagram and Spotify, two platforms you use the most, so you follow them.
4. At the end of their set, they mention that you can download their latest EP for free by signing up for their mailing list. You sign up at the merch booth after.
5. Over time, you engage with them on social media.
6. Months later, you receive an email that they are going on tour in your city so you go.

Lastly, here’s a totally different fan journey that comes from Facebook or Instagram Ads.

1. You scroll through your Instagram feed before you sleep.
2. A music video playing in an ad from an artist you’ve never heard of catches your attention.
3. You click on their profile to learn more about them.
4. You like what you see from what they’ve posted so you follow the artist on Instagram.
5. Over a span of a year, you randomly engage with them on social media.
6. One day, you see an Instagram ad from that artist announcing a new album with a special offer.
7. You go to their website to buy the album and you find the album on Spotify to listen.

The main point is you need to have your marketing systems in place. Not only to get people into the top of your funnel, but also to facilitate the nurturing process to get them to take action. The fun funnel is what helps you visualize and complete the process.
 

Conclusion

 
By segmenting fans into different stages of a funnel, you’ll know what type of content to create depending on what specific goal you may have at the time. For example, if you need to raise brand awareness and get people into the top of the funnel, you’ll want to create content like covers to get the attention of people who don’t know who you are.

Or maybe you have a new album coming out soon. You want to build up your email list because you know reaching fans directly through email is more effective than social media. In this case, you would set up a process where you promote your best single on the new album as a free download on your social media channels in exchange for their email address.

The concept of funnels helps you visualize the process your ideal fans would go through and will help you hone your marketing strategy. However, in reality, this process is not always going to be linear as there are a number of different fan journeys and channels people can travel through. However, the better you understand the buyer’s journey, you will be able to prioritize your marketing efforts and make better business decisions.

The 3 big takeaways for this blog are:

• Being aware of the fan funnel that works for you based on own situation. This way, you can set up the necessary processes in place to nurture fans into loyal, paying fans.
• The fan funnel in the age of the internet is much longer than it used to be. This means that it takes more time to nurture fans to financially support you, especially when people are no longer buying music and prefer to stream it for free.
• Your job is not done once a fan completes the funnel. It’s an ongoing process for however you want your career to last.

The post Want to grow your fan base effectively? Think funnels. Fan funnels. 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.

Marketing, just like branding, is a fundamental component of business, so it’s vital that indie musicians do not dismiss marketing as something only big businesses or major artists need.

If you want to make a living as an artist or musician, you need to treat your music like a business. As with any type of business, you need to have a product or service to sell and customers to buy it. In this case, the product or service is your music, and marketing comes into play to help you find the right customers to buy your product.

When you Google the definition of marketing, here’s what you’ll most likely see first:

The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines it as:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

The following sections below will help to breakdown my definition of marketing for musicians. My goal was to really simplify what marketing is to make it easy to grasp so there may be more technical details that are left out.
 

The 3 Key Elements of Marketing

 
The way I like to breakdown the concept of marketing is into 3 key elements:

1. Knowing what value you provide
2. Establishing and communicating what makes you special/ unique (also known as branding)
3. Identifying the target audience who will most likely find what you offer as valuable

Successful marketing occurs when all 3 of these elements are in alignment in one cohesive strategy. It is important to understand how these 3 elements interact and depend on each other.
 

The Importance of Value

 
When it comes to understanding marketing, the keyword that stands out the most to me is value. Since value is subjective, there is going to be a specific group of people or demographic who will find your product more valuable, while there are others who will not. The group who does see your value is the market you want to reach, hence the word marketing.

For example, the value and brand receptiveness of a Gospel singer is not perceived the same to Christians as it is to Atheists. In other words, marketing requires you to choose a “market” or segment of the population you want to connect with by providing value, which should turn away those who don’t find what you offer as valuable. This is important because you can’t market to “everyone,” which is a common misconception when musicians are asked who they ideally want to reach.

As a note, when I use the word value, I’m talking about it in broad terms. Value, as it pertains to a musician, could reference a number of things like:

• Talent
• Personality
• Brand
• Your story
• How inspiring you are
• How well people relate to you
• The quality of your music
• How entertaining you are

Even though marketing is all about proving, communicating and providing your value, it’s not about talking about yourself. Marketing is about helping the customer realize what’s in it for them – how your music is valuable and meets their wants or needs. Customers, like your fans, view things from their narrative so you need to know how you fit into their story. To fruitfully market your music, you have to have a comprehensive understanding of the subjective value you can deliver and how the listener benefits from it. This is why understanding your product and how your product is perceived is crucial marketing when marketing it.
 

Know Your Audience

 
Marketing requires you to identify a segment of the population to market to. The better you know your audience or market, the more efficiently you can reach them. It’s about creating value that is relevant to your target audience.

Effective marketing requires that you identify the many characteristics of who your target audience is so that you can market to them and avoid those who are uninterested. When many musicians are asked who they want to market to, they respond “everyone”. Not only is it not feasible, but it is also very costly to try to market to everyone, which is why marketing requires you to choose a market or segment of the population and steer your marketing efforts to appeal to that targeted group of people.

Your target market is the group of people that should always be at the forefront of your mind before making major business decisions. Musicians who aim at a small, defined target market are far more likely to reach them.

If you need more help, check out this blog on how to find your target audience.
 

How Branding Relates to Marketing

 
While we are here, let’s quickly touch on branding and how it relates to marketing.

Branding is what makes the value you offer as a musician unique. It is what makes your target audience want to listen to your music and possibly become a long-term fan.

As an artist, your brand is why people listen to your music, see your live performances and buy your merch. It is what separates you from other musicians. Theoretically, without your brand, your music is just noise.

It’s easy to understand how important branding is in the marketing process, but much more difficult to establish a successful branding strategy. Often times, musicians don’t take advantage of branding due to some misconceptions they may have about it.
 

How Marketing is Done

 
There are a lot of ways you can go about marketing yourself as a musician – both online and in person. The effectiveness of your marketing efforts is based on how well you manage to engage your target audience. I won’t go in-depth, as that is an extensive topic, but here are just some general ways to look at how to market your music.

You can stand on the street and solicit your music to random passerby to solicit people to listen and buy your music. But ask yourself, is this really going to be effective to reach your ideal audience? On the other hand, you can pass out your music to people leaving a show or venue that plays similar music to what you offer. That tactic is much more targeted.

Performing at a local bar is a form of marketing, as you are demonstrating your value and your product. The demographics of the audience in the bar are going to influence how effective this form of marketing is. This is why who you associate with and the venues you perform at are important.

On the flip side, you open for an artist that share the same target market. However, let’s say you suck as a live performer. In this case, you have the right audience, but your live performance is not delivering value o your marketing is not going to be effective.

Putting your music on social media is a form of marketing as it allows people to see or hear the value you provide. How you actually go about using social media as a tool is going to determine if you get the results you were looking for. Going around spamming random people on Twitter isn’t going to be effective. Finding online communities related to the type of music you do and building genuine relationships is a more targeted approach.
 

Conclusion

 
Hopefully, this helped to clear up what marketing exactly is and why it is necessary for a successful music career. Even as an online marketer, it took me a while to really conceptualize what marketing is and the role it plays in business.

As an artist, you may not like the idea of marketing, but chances are you have probably engaged in some forms of marketing. When all is said and done, communicating your value through marketing will help set you apart from the competition and grow your fan base. Know the impact your music has on other people; it is powerful and touches listeners on an emotional level.

Other Ways of Looking at Marketing

I want to leave you with a few quotes related to marketing from other music marketing professionals that I like:

“Marketing should be a natural extension of the creative process, marketing comes out of your identity. Not separate from your music.”
– Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby

“Marketing is a strategic form of sharing.”
– Bob Baker

“You have one job as an artist. Use music to change the way people feel.”
– Kim Lajoie

The post Simplifying the Concept of Marketing for Musicians appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Having a website is an important step towards becoming a professional musician. Depending solely on social media is just not going to cut it for most artists out there. You need a piece of online property that you can call your own and have full control over.

If you’re creating your own website or having someone else doing it for you, this blog will provide a complete run-through of what should be on your website. If you already have one, this will help to make sure your site is optimized for a positive user experience so fans, writers and bookers find what they need.

Before you start diving right into it, take a step back to do some planning.
 

Getting Started

Find a Website Platform

If you haven’t already decided on what website platform to use or secure your domain name, that should be a priority. Here are some website platforms to consider:

• Squarespace (Affiliate Link)
• Wix
• Weebly
• Bandzoogle
• WordPress

Choose the Right Template

Depending on the website platform you are using, you should have plenty of templates or theme options to choose from that will help layout your site. Find a template that suits your current goals as an artist and the information you want to present.

When choosing a template, also think about how you want to present yourself. Make sure the template you use communicates how you want to be perceived and is consistent with your brand.

You might need to update your social media channels so that they have the same look and feel as your website. If your social media channels currently have the branding feel you want to communicate, model your website to continue that message so that your branding is consistent.
 

Gathering Site Content

Once your template is chosen, start to get all the web content together for the site by using the list below.

Avoid putting too much content on the homepage. Studies have shown that too many choices or distractions can confuse people and turn them away. Narrow down your content by focusing on what the goal for the site is. Do you want to build social media followers, add to your email list, increase video views, sell albums or promote tour dates? If you are trying to accomplish multiple goals, prioritize them so that you can focus on your main objectives without cluttering your site.
 

Don’t Be Afraid to Compare

See what other artists you like or who perform similar music to you have on their websites. Look with a critical eye and observe web elements you think work well and notice if there are common trends in your genre.

Now that you have basic steps out of the way, read below for the complete list of elements that should be on your website.
 

1. Social Media Accounts

 
Provide links to the social media accounts that you have. Ideally, you want to focus on the main ones you and your fans use. You don’t need to list every single social media account you have if you aren’t updating them all. Chances are, the top ones to link out will be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Youtube, Spotify and Bandcamp.
 

2. High Quality Photos

 
High-resolution photos are the main elements that make your site look appealing and professional. Make sure you upload photos that aren’t grainy or blurry. This may mean having professional shots taken or designating a photographer at your next show to capture good photos. In terms of dimensions, it will vary depending on where the photos are used on the website; however, I usually recommend 1920 x 1080 resolution as a starting point.
 

3. Access to Listen to Your Music

 
Enhance your site experience by giving visitors the option to listen to entire songs (not just snippets) directly on your website. New potential fans want to be able to hear your music to decide if they like what you offer without having to dig around or even go to another website. Depending on the website platform, you can upload music natively or you can embed songs using Bandcamp or Soundcloud. I suggest not using Spotify only because an account is required to listen. However, you should have a link to your Spotify to build your followers up as it is the #1 streaming subscription platform right now.

I have found that people prefer the functionality of being able to manually play your songs instead of music automatically playing when the site is loaded.

4. Link or Embed Your Videos

 
Make it easy for visitors to watch your videos by embedding them in your site the same way as songs so visitors don’t have to leave your site to view them. Having videos from live performances is helpful for bookers who want to get an idea of how you are live and may lead to additional shows.
 

5. Bio / Copy

 
Your bio and how you describe yourself are important so communicate what makes you unique, relatable and interesting. Aim for more in your bio than the standard information (where you grew up, who you are influenced by, etc). Challenge yourself to really dig deep into your brand and come up with a bio that makes you stand out.

Start your bio with an attention-grabbing statement or question to get the reader’s attention. Then move into unique information about yourself. Don’t feel that you have to focus on only the positive things about your life. Including the struggles and challenges you’ve had to overcome establishes respect for the reader and is more captivating to read. Place your long bio in the ‘About’ or ‘Bio’ pages.

Once you have a long version of your bio, condense it so that you have a 3 – 4 sentence short bio that you can use on your homepage or on social media. The short bio should sum up your music and what your brand is about. Ideally, your short bio should be placed above the fold or closer to the top on your homepage. This helps people know quickly if you’re an artist they have any interest in.

Your long and short bio can also include anything that adds credibility, like notable press or media coverage, higher-profile acts you worked with and major accomplishments. But don’t saturate your bio with these items so that it reads like a resume. Instead, work on balancing the information in your bio. Lastly, be sure to add a sentence on what you are currently up to or working on.
 

6. Design Elements: Logo, Graphics and Colors

 
Your website will need some basic design elements like a logo, graphics and a consistent color scheme. The absence of these items makes the website look uninteresting and boring. At the same time, you don’t want to overdo it with too many colors and photos either.

Your logo doesn’t need to be anything super fancy. For some artists, a text based graphic with a unique font can work. Some big name artists that use this approach include John Legend and Goapele.

If you need a logo or graphics, here are some options for you:

• 99designs – Freelancers compete with each other to design one for you
• Fiverr – Marketplace for freelance services like graphic design
• Canva – FREE User-Friendly Graphic Design App (This is an affiliate link for a service I personally use and recommend. Read my full disclosure here.)

For those who are on a budget, Canva literally has templates for every type of graphic you’ll ever need. Most musicians will get everything they need from their free plan, which you can sign up here. (Affiliate Link)

If you need a photo editor, try Pic Monkey.

Color schemes tools:

Your color scheme ties the branding of a site together. Some artists like to keep it simple and stick with black and white, but to make a lasting impression you will want to use a strong color scheme. Don’t just choose random colors you like; use the color scheme tools listed below to make sure there’s a good synergy between the colors while keeping the text easy to read.

• Coolors
• Paletton
• Sessions College Color Calculator
• Adobe Color Wheel
• Pictaculous

If you need examples and inspiration for color schemes, visit Website Color Schemes: The Palettes of 50 Visually Impactful Websites to Inspire You.
 

7. Contact Page

 
This is an obvious but highly important page to have on your site because you want to make it as easy as possible for people to reach you. Including a web form on your contact page will make it convenient for visitors to send you a message without having to send an email.

Don’t forget to list any contact email address on this page as well for people who may prefer to reach you that way. If you’re more established and have different people managing different functions, be sure to list all their emails and when they should be contacted (booking, management, etc).
 

8. Upcoming Shows/ Tour Dates

 
For most independent artists, live shows and performances are the main sources of income, so you need to make sure this information is easily accessible and updated.

If you use services like Bandsintown, you can embed your tour dates directly on your website. You can manage your shows on the Bandsintown platform, and it will automatically update across your website and social media accounts.

For more information: http://www.artists.bandsintown.com
 

9. Mailing List Opt-in Form

 
One of the most valuable assets a musician has is a mailing list of their fans. These can be most easily collected online since you don’t need to enter them in manually and risk typos or having to decipher handwriting. Make sure you have an opt-in form somewhere on the site so visitors can leave their email address, usually in exchange for something like free music. Learn more about how to collect fans’ email addresses.
 

10. Web Analytics and Facebook Pixel

 
Using a free tool, like Google Analytics, is extremely valuable for musicians and relatively easy to install. If you don’t want to use Google Analytics, there are other web analytics available to collect data about your web traffic. Most website building platforms will have their own web traffic analytics as well, but it won’t be as powerful as Google Analytics.

You can learn a lot of things such as:

• How are people finding your website?
• What channels are people coming from?
• Are sites referring a lot of traffic to your website?
• Are your visitors having a good experience on your website?
• How much revenue is your website generating through leads?
• What channels or referring sites are giving you the most leads?
• Are visitors finding the information they are looking for?
• Is your website causing issues for mobile or tablet users?

One of the best online advertising tools for musicians to grow their fan base is Facebook and Instagram Ads. A Facebook Pixel is a small snippet of code that you add to your website so you can track website visitors for ad-related purposes. One of the most valuable uses of their pixel is the ability to create a custom audience based on specific user behaviors and push ads to them or retarget them. I won’t go much deeper since this is a bit more advanced and technical for the average artist, but you want to least install the pixel on your website first. Depending on the website platform you use, they should offer support on how to add a Facebook Pixel to all of your web pages.
 

11. Links to Buy Music and Merch

 
You have the option to have an online merch store on your website as long as your platform has the functionality for people to place orders and pay online. Paypal and Stripe make this process easier and are the common payment processing options for online stores. However, they do charge fees for processing payments.

For WordPress websites, WooCommerce is a popular plugin option to create an online store.

I like Squarespace as an option because the e-commerce functionality is built into the platform so it’s easier to manage. You will need to have a business or commerce plan though. Squarespace charges a transaction fee of 3% on sales in the Business plan on top of payment processing fees. There are no Squarespace transaction fees for the Squarespace Commerce plans (Basic and Advanced).

If you don’t want to build this functionality into your site, you can sell your merch and music using a third party. For this option, you would provide links to other sites where fans can buy or stream your music. You can successfully market to your fans if you know what sites and platforms your audience uses the most and place your music and merch for sale there.

For selling digital downloads, try Bandcamp. To use their service, they take a cut of your sales, 15% for digital and 10% for merch.

For merch, try Big Cartel. It’s a free service for up to 5 items.
 

Bonus Website Tips

 
In order to create the best experience for your site visitors, incorporate as many of these tips as possible:

• Keep your site up to date. Keep content and contact info current. You could even change your site layout with new pictures or colors to match branding updates and new album releases.
• Include a page for press or an easy to find Electronic Press Kit (EPK).. Your fans are not the only ones visiting your site. Make it easier for bookers, promoters and writers to find all the relevant information and assets they need in one central location. At a minimum, you should include a bio (short and long), embedded music player, videos, hi-res photos and contact information.
• Create a ‘News’ section. This will give fans a central location to visit to receive updates. It also increases the probability that they will return to your site to find out what’s new. If you add a ‘News’ section, make sure you commit to making updates consistently. If this is too much of a time commitment, use your social media to inform fans of new happenings.
• Make sure your site is mobile optimized. More people use the internet on their mobile devices than they do on a desktop or laptop now. In this mobile dominated world, people expect to have the same experience whether they are on a PC, Mac, desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet.
• Ensure navigation is intuitive and straightforward. Don’t get overly creative with page names, so that it becomes ambiguous and confusing. Most sites will have the following: Home, Bio, Music, Video, Contact, Shop. Feel free to jazz up standard pages so that it reflects your personality, but also remember who you are trying to attract to this site.
• Don’t use popups to collect emails. Google may rank your site lower in the search results if you use popups for mobile devices. Popups are also annoying to many people and may turn them off of your site, so stick with the mail opt-in form to avoid these consequences.

Conclusion

 
Putting together a website can be a complicated endeavor, and a lot goes into ensuring the site looks good, is easy for visitors to navigate and provides meaningful content. By employing the elements discussed in this blog, you will have an effective marketing tool to help further your music career and cultivate long-lasting relationships with your fans.

If you plan to make the website yourself, I personally would use and recommend Squarespace (Affiliate Link) over platforms like Wix and Weebly. Although most of my website design experience has been with WordPress, I’ve grown to like Squarespace for how smooth the user experience is, their e-commerce integration and clean template designs. They do offer a free 14 day trial with no credit card required if you wanted to try it out. Use my affiliate link with code D4MUSIC10 to save 10% off your first subscription of a website or domain.

Here’s a website I designed for Amy D (Amy Dabalos) on Squarespace. I originally created a WordPress site for her (the website you see in the photo up top), but she wanted a platform where she can easily manage on her own so we switched over.

The post 11 Things Musicians Need On Their Website (Plus Bonus Tips) 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.

You may hate the business side of things (or just would rather spend your time doing something you actually enjoy), but don’t let that discourage you from incorporating these fundamental business concepts that will improve your chances of making a living off music. Here are 6 must learn business and marketing concepts that you need to know:
 

1. Target Market: Your Bread and Butter

 
Once you know who you are and what you represent, you will have a better understanding of what kind of people will like your music. If you are just starting out, then you should define the type of people that you think your music will mostly appeal to. This is your target market or your ideal fans. Of course, not everyone will fit into neat little buckets, but if you sampled your fan base you should be able to decipher their demographics, such as:

• Sex
• Age range within ten years (example 25-34 year olds)
• Occupation (blue collar, white collar, unemployed, student, etc)
• Lifestyle choices
• Income level
• Education level
• Ethnicity

You can also discover some behavioral characteristics, including:

• How they like to discover new music
• How they consume music (streaming, downloads, buy cds)
• What music sites, blogs, social media channels they visit

Putting all this information together will allow you to identify your target market so you know where to find them and how you can attract them. Your target market is your bread and butter, because these are the individuals who will be paying for your music and coming to your shows. It shouldn’t be too difficult to determine who your target market is, because often times they are going to be similar to you.

Once you understand who your target market is, you can market your music more effectively. This will save you time and money since you aren’t trying to be all things to all people or pay for advertising that isn’t going to reach potential fans. Start by finding out where do they hang out or spend time online. Find out what social media they use, blogs they read and websites they visit. This isn’t limited to the online space, so think about physical locations in your town or city as well. These would be the venues you want to try to play at.

Bottom line, know your ideal fan inside out. Create a picture of your target market, so that you can understand who you are trying to reach. Defining your target market often gets neglected but is one of the most important marketing concepts and will increase your chances of creating a sustainable career from music.

2. Fan Retention: Hunters vs Farmers

 
There’s a misconception that all you need is more exposure to be a success. The problem with only hunting is it costs more money to acquire a new customer (or fan in your case) then it does to retain one you already have. In fact, acquiring a new customer is about five times more expensive than keeping an existing one.

Because of this fact, it is not the best use of your time or money to chase after new fans when you have a robust fan base already built. It’s easy to get caught up in the mindset of always wanting more new fans. It may not seem like it, but neglecting the fans you already have is a costly business mistake. The amount of time, effort and money that it takes to win over new fans is why you want to keep your fan interaction consistent so that you can retain the fans you already have.

The main point to take away here is to engage your fans on a consistent basis. Always aim to deepen your connections and relationships with fans, and don’t just assume they will always stick around once they follow you on Instagram or Facebook. A fan’s like or comment is just the beginning of a long relationship. Just like your spouse or partner, this relationship will grow with patience, consistency and effort.

The key to success is in repeat business, and not the initial transaction. Engaging regularly with fans and maintaining consistency in your music will create life-long customers who will support you. Although it’s hard to come up with an exact dollar amount, the value of a lifetime fan is coveted and priceless. Not just from the money they spend individually, but also the potential for them to “refer” or recommend you to other people. So don’t think about each fan as someone who you can conduct a transaction with; think of each fan for their long-term value (put another way, how much money each fan contributes throughout your career).

Like just about anything in life, there needs to be balance between the time you spend seeking new fans and the time you spend engaging your current fan base.

3. Branding: Standout From the Crowd

 
Many artists don’t think of themselves as a brand, but as soon as you start putting music out, you are projecting an image. For better or for worse, people will start forming opinions about what this image represents. This is why branding is important so that people aren’t misinterpreting what you’re all about. Being in control of your brand as much as possible limits the amount of interpretation that listeners make on behalf of your brand. Of course, it’s unavoidable to be in total control of how others see, think or feel about you, but consistent brand messaging limits inaccurate brand interpretation or perception.

People judge just about everything based on its ‘cover’. Like the jacket on a book, your cover is telling people what they can expect when they see your website or when they hit that play button on Youtube. It’s important to have an impactful cover (aka brand) because your brand helps people decide if you and your music are interesting enough to listen to. It also signals whether your brand fits within their identity, values and how they want other people to perceive them.

Successful branding involves strategically highlighting an aspect of yourself so you can attract the people you want (your target market). Once you have established what your brand represents, everything you do should be inline and support the brand. To keep your branding consistent, you want to ensure that your online presence across social media platforms has a similar look and feel. You should consider customizing your URL, updating band biographies or uploading photos that support your brand. You could also have a logo or slogan that you use.

Determining your brand and then living it makes your customers feel like they know who you are and what they can expect from you. Artists without a strong and consistent brand do not last long.

4. Goal Setting: Milestones to Success

 
If you are serious about establishing yourself as an indie artist, you need to do more than just wing it. Booking shows, expanding your fan base and promoting your music involve detailed steps. Even after you have begun this process, how will you know if you are successful? Success looks different depending on the person.

Start with a mission and vision of what you want to do or accomplish as a musician. What does success look like for you? Is it realistically obtainable? Is it practical?

Once you have clarified your overarching vision and mission, you need to write down your measurable goals. Defining what you want to accomplish is paramount to actually accomplishing it. These measurable goals are more specific than your mission, and serve as a step-by-step guide to achieving your vision.

Once you have your list of goals, periodically look at them to see if you are on the right track or if you need to update them. Just like checking to make sure your marketing materials appeal to your target market, goals will help guide your business decisions.

How to Set Goals:
1. Decide what the “big picture” of what you want to accomplish looks like (aka your business objectives) (1-5 years).
2. Break each business objectives down into smaller, manageable goals that you will need to accomplish in order to achieve the big picture goal.
3. You can take it to a third level, by detailing milestones that will help you reach each goal.
4. Create a timeline of milestones and small goals and that you need to achieve (I suggest using Excel to speed up the process).

Make your goals SMART:
• S – Specific (or Significant)
• M – Measurable (or Meaningful)
• A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented)
• R – Relevant (or Rewarding)
• T – Time-bound (or Trackable)

Ensuring your goals follow the SMART guidelines takes a little more time, but it will really help you to narrow down your specific goals and focus on the steps you need to take to achieve them.
 

5. Create Good Product: The Importance of Self Awareness

 
There are many aspects to becoming a successful indie artist that it’s always best to remind yourself of what will make-or-break your musical career: putting out good music. Yes, good music is subjective, so not everyone has to think it is good, but your ideal fans (target market) must like it. The best marketing in the world cannot save bad music. If you aren’t consistently providing music that appeals to your fans and target audience, your career will stagnant.

Throughout your music career, and especially when you are just beginning your musical endeavors, people probably won’t hesitate to let you know what they think of your music. Criticism and even constructive feedback can be difficult to hear if you have become too attached to what you created and don’t want to accept that it may not be as good as you thought it was. In these circumstances, it can be easy to become defensive and shut down to what people are trying to tell you.

When you are too busy defending your music instead of thinking about if there may be some truth to the feedback, you will have a very difficult time evolving your music and improving. In order to avoid this trap, you have to be able to put your ego aside and evaluate yourself honestly and objectively. This will lead to greater self-awareness (being honest, open and objective with yourself), and will contribute to using feedback positively for the purpose of making good music.

You don’t necessarily have to act on what each critic chirping in your ear, but I highly suggest you take a minute to consider the feedback that was given. Make sure the feedback is from someone from your target audience. A person who listens to only classical or opera music probably does not have the right mindset to judge your rap song as someone who actually listens to hip hop. If you find yourself in a situation where you have invested time and effort in marketing but are still not seeing the progress you want, it may be time to re-evaluate your music. If this happens, make sure you are putting the most emphasis on feedback given by your target audience.

As an artist, you want to freely express yourself and communicate through your music without feeling like you have to compromise or cater to what other people think. At the same time, the music industry is still a business, so you need to listen to what your ideal fans are telling you and possibly adapting your music to meet the demand. Without paying fans, you can’t sustain a music career. This is why you need to find the right balance between being true to your own artistic expression and giving the people what they want.

I am not going to lie, it is really difficult to admit that your music isn’t as good as you believed it to be. But if you can step outside yourself, and put your ego to the side, you will be able to make the necessary adjustments. By practicing self-awareness, you will be able to keep a more open mind when evaluating your music. This will keep you on the right path to success.
 

6. Investing in Yourself: The Key to Growth

 
I feel one of the biggest mistakes emerging artists make is not investing money into their careers. If you’re constantly thinking of shortcuts and how to do things for free (or really cheap), you’re not going to make it very far.

Conclusion

 
Being an independent artist is like running your own small business. While it’s not necessary to have a business degree or background in marketing to be successful, it undoubtedly helps to understand some of the basic marketing and branding concepts.

At the end of the day, there is a multitude of factors that contribute to whether you can making a living off music. Retaining fans, knowing your target marketing, creating the right brand, setting goals, making smart investments and creating good music are all parts of the equation to establishing a career in music. You may not like the business aspect of being an independent artist, but understanding these 6 concepts will make sure you’re maximizing your potential to succeed.

The post 6 Must Learn Business Concepts for Musicians Who Hate the Business Side appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.