First, make music people want to hear. Meeting industry-standard quality is a prerequisite for having an actual career. You can get away with it [not meeting quality standards] at high levels when you have dedicated fans.

If you want to be commercially successful you have to identify an audience and create value for them.

Just because you have a high-end record with top tier production, mixing, and mastering, does NOT mean that it will perform well if marketed poorly or not at all. Targeted marketing is important. Marketing amazing music to the wrong audience is bad marketing.

Figure out your “character” and create a “character profile” for your target audience.

Create content that connects with your “character” and hand-deliver to groups, hashtags, pages, etc, that they live in. Interact with people one on one.

e.g. For a politically conscious synth wave project, because of the political bent, we would regularly take footage of world events, use video editing to make them look extremely retro, and then back them with original synth wave music and attach some kind of existential blurb on top. We used memes that said things that our target character profile agreed with. We would write blog-style posts about issues that our audience deals with.

Brand Identity sample questions

• Who are you as a creative? What defines you as an artistic idea?
• What has led you to become this way?
• What value do you want to get out of your career as an artist?
• What value do you want to get out of your own music?
• What value do you want your fans to get out of your music?
• What unique stories about yourself can you tell that will resonate with people?
• What lifestyle would you like to see your music provide for you?
• What personality issues do you have that will make it hard for you to have a music career?
• What personality traits do you have that will help you succeed in music?
• What is your long term mission and vision as an artist?
• Who do you want to be 5 years from now? Why?

Target Market sample questions

• What does your fan do for a living?
• How old are they?
• Are they mostly men? Mostly women? Nonbinary?
• Where do they live? Why do they live there?
• What are their hobbies? What kind of value do these hobbies add to their life?
• What do they like to eat? Do they cook at home a lot? Eat out?
• Where do they hang out online? What social media platforms?
• Who are they fans of on Social Media? Who are they engaging with?
• What are their favorite types of entertainment?
• What are their favorite shows? Movies?
• What other artists are they listening to?
• What videogames (if any) do they play?
• What political issues are they passionate about?
• What do they hate talking about?
• What do they love talking about?
• What kind of religious values do they have?
• What has been a chief circumstantial struggle for them?
• What has been a chief personal struggle for them?
• What’s the biggest lesson they’ve had to learn about themselves?
• What’s the biggest lesson they’ve had to learn about others?
• What are their goals in life?
• What are the primary roadblocks to those goals?
• What do they do that they don’t want anyone to know about?
• If your fan was going to tell you a secret, what would it be?
• How trustworthy are they to their friends and family?
• How successful have their romantic and personal relationships been?
• Why have their relationships been the way they are?
• Do they do drugs? With what level of seriousness?

To find out more about music coaching services, reach out and book a free consulting session by contacting me.

 

References