Competition in Music and Comparing Yourself to Others

When I was in high school I watched an interview with Tyler, the Creator where he talked about how he approached his music career in the beginning years. Although the interviews seems to be deleted, (I can’t find it after a week of searching) the message has stuck with me throughout my music experience.

The part of this interview that I remember is when Tyler talks about separating himself from other local artists at the time where he was just getting started. He compared himself to a local sneaker business. He says if he was a local sneaker store, he wouldn’t view his competition as the other local stores across the street. He would view his competition as the industry leaders such as Nike and Adidas, and would adjust his business strategy to try to target their audience.

This was the approach that I tried to take while I was starting my project, Cheyenne Dan. When planning my social media strategy, I looked at social media accounts that I was the most engaged with and tried to do similar posts as them. I would look for inspiration from accounts that weren’t necessarily indie bands or even music pages. We created an interesting social media presence and it separated us from other band accounts. I tried to create an online persona that goes beyond just the music to keep our audience interested and engaged.