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 #27 of IAMN: I am Northbound, Jayson talks about;
How to Get People Listening to Your Music, a Clip from the iSingMag Interview and How to Stop Spinning Your Wheels.
How to Get People Listening to Your Music
In this segment of IAMN: I Am Northbound, I talk about how you can get more people listening to your music. A lot of music artists are currently damaging their own chances of growing their audience by promoting their music incorrectly. I want to show you how to fix that.
Overview
1. Add Context
You can’t expect people to listen to your music without context, yet so many music artists make this mistake.
I see (on a daily basis) music artists consistently spamming DMs to people to ask them to check out a new song.
The person on the other end of the message won’t listen to anything without a reason, so give them that reason!
2. Provide value first
This is how you build the context you need for someone to follow through with a request to listen to a new song.
You need to let your audience know that your music will improve their lives in one way or another.
Let them want to seek your music out…
…instead of feeling as though they’re being forced to listen to it.
3. Release music in balance
There’s a big discussion these days about whether you should release frequent singles or hold off for a full-blown album.
Personally, I believe the answer is somewhere in the middle.
But I advise you to not listen to anyone who’s telling you to spam your listeners with as much music as possible.
They will simply lose interest and your marketing will become ineffective.
4. Don’t spam
No one listens to anything that is being forced down their throat.
If you can build that reason why first, you won’t ever feel like you’re begging your audience to listen to you.
5. Show behind-the-scenes content
This is a cheap and easy way to provide a sense of context around the music.
It’s definitely not as effective as the other ways, but it will at least give you an advantage over someone who is just spamming their latest track.
6. Ensure it is high quality
Low quality recordings are never listened to the whole way through (unless you’ve completely nailed the context surrounding it).
Make sure to stay focused and only release music that is the best representation of who you are as an artist and the vision you’ve got for your music.
How to Find the Reason Why
In this segment of IAMN: I Am Northbound, I want to show you a clip of a recent podcast interview I did with @isingmag. The whole episode contains an hour of absolute gold, so make sure you go and check it out (It’s on Spotify). I talked a bunch on that show about content that I haven’t even released here yet, so if you want the total early advantage, go check it out!
Overview
A lot of music artists are wondering why people aren’t listening to their music.
Getting play counts up seems to be one of the biggest challenges of today’s industry.
Yet, believe it or not, the solution to getting people to listen is NOT to throw more music at them…
…or ask them repeatedly to listen to it…
…or DM-ing them links to your tracks.
It’s working on giving them the ‘reason why’.
Why should they take time out of their day to listen to your music?
Sometimes this ‘reason why’ can be found by providing additional context around the song.
Perhaps you tell the story of why you wrote it?
That might be enough to get some people to listen to you.
However, that will likely only get people listening to your current song —
And your goal is to make people listen to all the music you release in the future, right?
For that, you’ll need to answer the following question:
How do you want a listener to feel when they listen to your music?
If you can answer that question, you can find the reason ‘why’.
The most common answer I get from music artists is ‘I write songs to make people happy’.
But there are a million other music artists trying to do that, so you still haven’t separated yourself from the crowd.
The further you refine your ‘reason why’ you write music, the more powerful ‘reason why’ you’ll have for people to listen to you.
Then, once you’ve found the reason, it’s all about getting it out there.
Make sure you tell it to your audience, as you can’t expect them to figure it out for themselves.
How to Stop Spinning Your Wheels
In this segment, I want to answer the question I had submitted to me recently; ‘I feel like I’m working at my music every day but making no progress. How do you convince yourself that you’re really making progress and not feel like you’re spinning your wheels?’ This is a super common question, so I wanted to provide the answer here so that it can help you, too.
Overview
I had a music artist send me a question this week;
‘How do you stay motivated when you feel like you are spinning your wheels and making no progress?’
I totally understand this question, because at times I feel the exact same.
A few years ago, before I had learned what I know now, I would ‘spin my wheels’ every few weeks, and make no progress forward.
It would only take a few days of this before I had lost all motivation and momentum.
So, I totally get it.
But it’s easily navigated.
There’s a principle in business called the 80/20 rule, which suggests that 20% of what you do is responsible for 80% of your results.
More or less, this means there is a whole lot of stuff you are doing that isn’t efficient or worth your time.
If you can remove all of that out of your day, discover what actually IS responsible for bringing you results and focus on that, instead, you’ll see far bigger results, from far less effort.
Secondly, use the Pomodoro technique.
Once you’ve found the tasks that do bring results, find a Pomodoro timer (it’s just a timer for 25 minutes), turn it on and focus only on that specific task for 25 straight minutes.
Remove all distractions. Do nothing else other than that specific task until the timer runs out.
Then, take a short five-minute break before starting the timer again.
This technique is used by many successful businesses to increase productivity and it is especially useful in this age of social media and distractions.
A lot of the time, the reason you’re not getting your work done is because you never commit to the task at hand and are always distracted by everything around you.
Lastly, and most importantly, understand the most fundamental truth of the music industry:
This is a marathon, not a sprint. You should not expect overnight results.
And you don’t win a marathon by running fast, you win by not slowing down.
Keep that in mind.
You can watch this episode above or on IGTV.
Or you can listen to it on your favourite podcast platform!
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