This episode of the IAMN: I Am Northbound podcast is brought to you by The 4D Songwriter: How to Dominate the New Music Industry. Get your copy of this game-changing book at the4dsongwriter.com.
Episode Summary
In episode #26 of IAMN: I am Northbound, Jayson (who is still on holidays) takes you on a journey through the three most popular segments of 2019 (so far);
How to Rise Up in the New Gig Economy, How to Be a Music Artist in a Town with No Music and Is Social Media a Music Artist’s Only Option?
How to Rise Up in the New Music Industry
In this segment of IAMN: I Am Northbound, I revisit one of the most popular segments of the show, How to Rise Up in the New Music Industry. I dissect an article that claims to have the best advice for music artists, and give my opinion on whether you should be listening to it or not.
Overview
Being a music artist in this day and age does not need to be as complicated as people think.
The first thing you need to understand is that you need to be your own record label (and stop chasing one if you are, they won’t sign anyone that can’t do their job for them in the early days).
Here’s the basic overview of what is required from you;
1. Authenticity is everything. In order to get any new fans, you will first need to be authentic. I’ve said this a thousand times and I’ll say it a thousand more: Authenticity leads to connection, and connection leads to true fans.
2. Refine your skillset. You need to be bettering yourself, every single day. There’s a lot more to being a music artist than just writing music. How about how you conduct yourself in interviews? How well spoken are you? What about your stage presence? What about your endurance? Can you do a two week tour, playing shows every single night and still sound as good on the last night as you did on the first?
3. Learn to adapt to new situations. Things change, usually unexpectedly. It’s the music artists that complain about these changes that don’t move forward. Those that adapt, adapt quickly and make significant ground toward their goals.
4. Focus at a targeted niche. You will never see good results from trying to get ‘everyone’ to listen to your music. Find your niche. Find where the people that listen to that niche like to be. Then, promote your music there. That’s how you find high-quality listeners.
5. Learn to get things done yourself. You can’t rely on anyone else. You must always learn how to navigate alone.
6. And lastly: always be accountable.
How To Be a Music Artist in a Town With No Music
In this segment of IAMN: I Am Northbound, I want to revisit one of the most popular segments from the show, How to Be a Music Artist in a Town With No Music. A lot of people in my position avoid answering questions like this. It’s quite a difficult question to answer. Yet I know a lot of my followers are aspiring music artists in countries or towns that don’t support music, so I wanted to do the best I could to answer this question.
Overview
It may seem difficult, but promoting your music in a town that doesn’t support music is not impossible.
Your location — your town, your city, where you were born or even the circumstances you were born into — can’t stop you from reaching your music dreams. In fact, they can actually do the opposite if you leverage them correctly. You might be ‘just another music artist’ from your town, but to someone that lives in another country, you’re different.
Access to the internet is essentially your power. That is all that matters. If you have the internet, you have the power to be promoting yourself at will. However, promotion with no strategy could annoy people, so make sure that you go about it properly.
If you are ‘just another music artist’ in your town, aim your focus at a distant country. To them, you will be special and worth checking out. This point of uniqueness can be leveraged to pull in a whole new bunch of people. If you notice certain people in a certain country are interested, stay focused on building your audience in that country. Don’t try to promote everywhere at once.
If you want to play locally in your own town, however, you will need to add more to the live performance than just music.
Your town might not like music because they haven’t been exposed to a good live show yet, so you could essentially be the first step in the right direction.
When you put your live show on, add elements to the show that will get people talking — word of mouth is your best friend.
This could be a world of things. So, to find your unique, organically-viral idea, as yourself: What can I do or add to this show to get people talking about it?
You Can’t Find Fans if your Hashtags Suck
In this segment, I want to revisit one of the most popular segments on the show, Is Social Media the Only Way to Promote Music? Yes, social media is incredible. In fact, I don’t think we have learned how powerful it truly is yet. But, everyone knows this, which means everyone uses it and it becomes overly competitive. So, don’t neglect the offline strategies — people are dismissing them, which makes them even more powerful and even easier to stand out!
Overview
Social media is obviously the greatest tool for a music artist. There’s no denying that. Never before has a creative had access to an entire world of promotion and networking in their pocket, available to them 24/7.
But social media quickly becomes crowded, as many music artists are all fighting for the same attention that you are.
Which means that they will neglect the offline methods — or not even consider them in the first place.
Trying to stand out amongst the sea of online noise is quite difficult, but doing things offline (like sending someone a physical letter, for example) allows you to gain the attention you desire.
So, don’t neglect the offline methods.
Now, obviously, there are a million ways you can do promotion offline (usually it’s more constrained to a local area), so make sure you think about it and are always coming up with new and innovative ways to stand out from the noise.
You also should be networking, every single day. Find people in your local area that you can collaborate with and get to know them. Invite people out for a drink or a coffee and discuss how you can do big things together.
Your goal is always to serve, so don’t ever approach people with a ‘what can you do for me?’ attitude, or you’ll be wasting your time.
There are a lot of opportunities for local exposure out there (for example, local newspapers might like supporting local artists), so try to find out what you need to do to make an opportunity like that happen.
Focusing on a refined area or niche like this will always bring bigger returns.
Then, you can take those returns (a feature in a newspaper, for example) back to your social media and use it as leverage to stand out amongst the noise.
You can watch this episode above or on IGTV.
Or you can listen to it on your favourite podcast platform!
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