Hi Friends,
During my decade working as a music publicist, I would prepare our artists for the bio writing process by asking them these two questions:
Why could anyone in the world find themselves in this music?
Why are you the only person/s who could have made this music?
It can be kind of scary stepping into that place of authority, as the only person who could have made a record anyone could relate to.
But people don’t like your music because you want to be famous. People like your music because you’ve gotten a sublime download from the ether and it means something to them.
Create Authority
In order to take a chance on your music, listeners need to have some sense of your authority to make that music. Embody the message of your music in the story you tell about yourself as an artist.
Your origin, setting, identity—how do those things color your ability to channel the emotional message of your music.
Does the context of who you are align with a familiar story of where a certain sound/feeling might come from (example: preacher’s daughter rebells and wields her virtuosic vocal chops to deliver heavy roots rock ‘n’ roll)?
Or do the elements of your story stand in contrast to what you deliver (example: Anchorage-born artist makes an impossibly sun-drenched surf record)?
See if you can create your own sentence that’s like this
[location] [reductive descriptor about your identity or upbringing] makes [describe music]
See if you can find a way to make your version of this sentence either surprising/novel OR something that makes clear sense. The key here is tweaking the reductive descriptor and origin. This can make magic, even and maybe especially if your story is kind of boring.
A band like Weezer can go from:
Four white guys play smart pop rock (boring)
to
Four nerdy white guys make rock anthems (unexpected)
Conversely, my last band with my awesome ex-husband was
A Portland slow-core husband and wife duo called bed.
Based on that description, you immediately know what the band sounds like and if you like that kind of music, you’d probably check it out because… sad married people with hardcore vitamin D deficiencies are probably gonna be pretty good at making some sad, slow music.
Again, your brand sentence can be fresh and unexpected or it can present as a sure-fire go-to for whatever music is being delivered, but you should be able to tell from the sentence which one it is.
The Brand Formula
A compelling music brand begins at the intersection of who you are and what you make.
Any marketing effort that’s disconnected from either of these things will feel hollow, uninspired, and ultimately bore people.
A strong understanding of who you are and what you make and the ability to communicate those two things is the essential jumping off point for making it easy for the right fans (and only the right fans) to get interested in what you’re doing, and stay interested.
But first, there’s one more critical magical element you have to learn about and define: your fans.
Becoming an expert on your own fans
So how do you do this? Get curious about your fans, even if you only have a few of them. How did they find out about your music? What other bands do they like?
Do they wear big oversized t-shirts? Dress in all black? Do they have a twisted sense of humor? Maybe this means you’re ordering mostly 2XL shirts in black with a sick, specific inside joke on them that they’ll wear around all the time.
Or maybe they’re all vegan goddess babes and you decide to host acoustic beach concert meetup singalongs every full moon.
Cultivate ways to spend time with them and make things for them. Whether or not you make money in this business is ultimately between you and your fans. Your relationship with them is the most important professional relationship you have. All other professional relationships are ones you develop in service of your relationship with your fans.
There are many challenges facing music makers today, but we’re also living in an era when you can communicate directly with the people who support your music.
So do it, okay?
Marketing can be anything
Now that you know who you are, what you make, and who your fans are, it’s time to try plugging that into different formats. Does a Portland slow-core duo do TikTok dances? Probably not. Do they create emotional long-form minimalist music videos where you slowly watch flowers bloom but then there’s some other cool meaning too and you’re crying by the end? I don’t know, but yeah, probably.
The world is full of endless opportunities to be creative and get people interested in hearing your music.
There’s a band here in SF called The Happys who puts up physical signs all over the place that say “listen to The Happys on Spotify”. I think it’s brilliant. And you’d better believe I’ve checked out their music.
Think about how much better of a strategy that is than dumping money into a Spotify playlist campaign. They’re targeting local music fans, who are infinitely more likely to go check the band out, buy a t-shirt, sign up for their mailing list.
Marketing can be busking. Marketing can be stickers. Marketing can be hosting your own sick, curated events in art galleries. Marketing can be merch that that’s got such a bold, interesting message that people passing on the street stop to look up what it is.
Your artist name is a marketing asset. There’s also band here called Gumby’s Junk that’s gotten a lot of attention, in no small part due to their delightful gross name. A name like that is easy to remember and you can’t not want to know what it sounds like.
The most important thing is to find ways to connect that reflect who you are, what you’re doing, and who it’s for.
Try stuff and eat shit
But before you begin, here’s a pep talk.
All marketing is a process of public trial and error. This applies to the largest, most successful corporations on earth, to your solo marimba project, and to everything in between.
If you’re going to create an interesting and engaging brand around your music, you’re going to have to get comfortable trying different things and some of them aren’t going to work. Learn to embrace public failure.
I personally have failed publicly, quit projects I started, and ran weird ideas up the flagpole so many times that it’s impossible to count at this point. I’m not some wild beacon of success, but I’ve also had a 20-year career in music, enjoyed varying degrees of professional success, written critically acclaimed records, shared stages with many of my heroes, and started successful companies. I have survived every failure and so will you.
And you won’t have those wild successes without some big flops too. That’s just part of the game. Dreaming and thriving and growing is ugly and messy. As an artist, you have the right and responsibility to fuck around and find out.
Paid subscribers, I’ll see you Friday at 12 pacific for our weekly Q+A session! Unpaid subscribers, please consider joining as a paid subscriber and hanging out each week as I help you and the artists in our group strategize and solve the trickiest challenges of their careers! Feel free to come with a question or just hang out and soak up information you can apply to getting your own project off the ground.
Thanks so much for listening today! I hope this post was helpful to you.
See you guys next week!
Cass
Seattle neuroqueer artist makes soundtracks for your existential crisis. - like that? 🤓🎸
I wanted to name my band GODS……Grumpy Old Dudes Sebastopol….. the other grumpy old dudes didn’t like it😎