Branding & Marketing As An Artist — Pt. 1
So many artists have music that is more than deserving of radio air play, thousands of soundcloud followers and having their music heard by millions, yet are unable to do so for two simple reasons, poor branding & marketing.
Marketing & branding are crucial as an artist to help you reach the myriad of platforms, countries, people and just exposing your music to the masses. So many artists are none the wiser to the branding and marketing aspects of building your artist portfolio. Hopefully this will help you out.
Building Your Brand
When building your brand as an artist across social media, whether it be your Soundcloud, Facebook fan-page or your Instagram, it’s pivotal that you have a clean image. So many things come into play here from your artist name, to your bio, and through to your brand image (Profile pictures, logos, etc). For example, a name like “DJ HardStylez” or “Bassdrop” is immediately going to raise some eyebrows, and not in a good way! Think about generating a name that is meaningful to you, perhaps a combination of your real names, a nickname, a spin on one of your favourite sports stars, all of these help to create a more personable artist brand.
Having a clean logo, character or really just anything that is professional is important. No one wants to see a roughed up image, low quality, and poorly designed. It makes you look unprofessional as an artist. Having a professional brand image is a lot more important than many people care to admit.
Compare these two Soundcloud profiles.
Working on your biography, describing who you are as an artist as well as building personable social media platforms are also important on your quest to build a strong artist identity. Having a descriptive bio (keep it short and sweet though, don’t write paragraphs after paragraphs, people will quickly become disillusioned), interacting with your followers, and giving back to them through free downloads etc are great ways to do that. I
Marketing Yourself
Marketing yourself as an artist is imperative if you want to grow your fanbase, have your music heard by millions and generally be successful as an artist. Networking with anyone relevant in your community is SO crucial and the potential returns on your time invested is huge! So many artists don’t take the time to talk to network owners, partners, other producers, producer pages or engage in forums, or Facebook groups and that is a huge mistake.
Speaking to relevant people you come across opens up many doors that you may not have had access to prior. Opportunites for collaborations, releasing on networks, chatting to label A&Rs, there is so much potential there, you just have to take the time to build those relationships.
Huge networks are available on Soundcloud for almost every genre you can think of and their platforms can enable you to reach hundreds of thousands of people with your music. For example, networks like Timeless, SoNice, Tasty, EDMlead, FutureHouseRecords, are just a few of the networks that are easy to talk to and great for aspiring producers looking to get a foot in the door. There really is hundreds of great networks, it’s just about finding the one that suits your sounds and aspirations the most.
We’ll be back with PT.2 in a few days!
