How an Up and Coming Musician Can Gain a Following

Today we talk about:

- Creating profile on music sharing platforms

- Using Facebook, Youtube and others to gain a following

- Sharing your music with content creators

Christian: [00:00:15] Hey,what's going on? Welcome to episode 7 of The Marketing Natives. Today we'retalking about how an up and coming musician can gain a following. Now morespecifically, we're going to talk about creating profiles on things likeSoundCloud. We're going to talk about creating non-music profiles maybe likeYouTube, and we're talking about sharing your music with maybe content creatorspeople like BitBranding over here. Hollah! Anyways, before we started thisepisode, I want to do us a favor real quick and give us a little review. I meanif you're on episode 7, you probably listened to a few of our other episodesand just give us an honest review and let us know how we're doing so we cangive you better, bigger, more awesomer content.

Aaron: [00:01:06] Nice.I'm going to use that word awesomer.

Christian: [00:01:07] Awesomer.

Franklin: [00:01:07] Moreawesomer. You have to add the more awesomer in there.

Christian: [00:01:11] Yes.You have to, I mean.

Aaron: [00:01:14] Allright, let's jump into this. Franklin, what's number one here?

Franklin: [00:01:17] OK.All right. So, I'm taking point on this one, and I'm going to go ahead and I'mgoing to say why I'm taking point this. It's because I don't listen to theradio, specifically because I like listening to music that nobody else has everheard and actually having that- actually having that social clout to say, hey,have you heard of this guy?

Christian: [00:01:37] Dude,I do the exact same thing. I loved doing that like, oh, hey, have you everheard of so and so? It's like, no. Wow.

Franklin: [00:01:44] Exactly.The reason why. Well, the place where I find most of mine is on SoundCloud, butthere are two other places called, like, ReverbNation and AudioMag. This givesthese upcoming artists the ability to, like, sit down at their computer like wedoing right now, record their music, edit it the way that they want to, andgive it out to the public to actually say, hey, tell me what you guys think andactually, like, get their music out there without the, I guess you could say,the tape and- the tape and the borders and everything else that goes intoactually releasing music right there on that platform.

Christian: [00:02:27] Dude,I've got a story here, and I was telling Aaron about this. In Puerto Rico,obviously there's that- there was an underground movement in the 90s withreggaeton and all that which is just, you know, Latin hip hop basically. Butright now, there's a new wave of artists or account coming out, and I'm tellingyou, there's, I mean, tens, 30, 40, 50 artists within like two years that havecome out of Puerto Rico that that underground reggaeton movement, but they'vebeen so successful because of platforms like SoundCloud, ReverbNation,AudioMag, and all that because of, you know, them giving away this music forfree. It's easier, more accessible for them to just create a following onlinethan it was, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago when they had to record tapes,CDs, and deal with a bunch of other people in the middle, you know?

Franklin: [00:03:14] Exactly.The whole entire, like, keep the tapes in the trunk of your car kind ofmentality. Instead of doing that, you can sit down at your computer, hitupload, and boom. There it goes.

Christian: [00:03:24] Yep,exactly.

Aaron: [00:03:25] Right.So, I think the biggest thing with this is, yes, the profile is important. Idon't know which one. Maybe they have a better opinion on which platform wouldbe the best to start out with, but I think the biggest strategy is to just goafter one. And what I was telling them kind of in the meetings or talking aboutthis in the minutes for this show is to pick one platform, do it well, andthink like a marketing company first and then think like a musician. So, Iwould go to SoundCloud. For example, if I were starting a new band, I would goto SoundCloud and put my profile out there, create me profile, put out music,and then I would market the heck out of it instead of trying to put it on allof these things and then I have to time the market it. So market first. Youhave to have a good product first. That's very first, but have a good productand I would market the heck out of that product, and then expand to otherprofiles instead of trying to be on every profile and then, you know, nobodyknows about you. I think this is a route where you get on every profile thatmost musicians do, and if you are better at marketing than them, you're goingto win.

Christian: [00:04:30] Yeah,and just to reiterate what Aaron said, get on one platform, do it really well,and market, I think Aaron said if I'm not mistaken, the crap out of yourself.

Aaron: [00:04:41] Isaid a heck.

Christian: [00:04:41] Oh,the heck? I like crap. I mean, I don't like crap. Anyways. Yes, very, very,very good point. Excellent point. And then besides SoundCloud, what's the nextplace that they should be on?

Franklin: [00:04:56] Like,they need an accent to that though, and this is going to the second point.

Aaron: [00:05:02] Britishaccent? What do you mean?

Franklin: [00:05:02] NotBritish accent. Like an accent color. Something that is going to bring them outor giving them an opportunity to share a different part of this journey. Whichgoes into the second point which is, like, you need to create a non-musicspecific social platform. Something like YouTube or Vimeo and, of course,Facebook.

Christian: [00:05:21] Right.Obviously.

Aaron: [00:05:23] Right.So, I think one big thing with this is that if you're going to get on thoseprofiles, these are like the traffic sources to drive traffic to yourSoundCloud. It's the traffic that people need to know to find out about you.This is where you can market yourself, but you should do it in a unique way. Wewere talking and a great way to do that is to start- If you do YouTube, a vlog.Absolutely. Document your journey. If you do it on Facebook, tell people aboutyou being a musician. Why are you unique? Why are you different? And tellpeople that story, and you can get into advertising all that later. But bywatching you on Facebook, they're going to be curious and be like, oh, I'mgoing to go check out this guy's profile on SoundCloud or his website orwherever it's going to be.

Christian: [00:06:05] Yeah.I think- and this is kind of weird because on our first point, I said that theInternet has made it so much accessible to a lot of people, but then nowadaysit's so accessible that it's almost like overcrowded, you know, the amount ofartists that are coming out. But I've talked about this in our tip for tipepisode, and something that you have to do and basically that's what we'retelling you with these points that we're talking is creating a package.Creating this package of I don't only create music, but, hey, now I'm actuallycreating vlogs. I'm actually doing this, and I'm part of this package. I mean,my music's awesome because that's just, you know, what you do, but besides yourmusic, you have to have the look, you have to have the style, you have to have,you know, the videos, you to have, you know, all these things in place in orderto be really successful and stand out.

Franklin: [00:06:54] Exactly.And not only stand out, but it also gives people the ability to attachthemselves to you and the story of you coming out. Like one of my favorite musicartists- well, he's not one of my favorite now, but because I'm from Louisiana,that the story about how Master P actually started No Limit Records. Heactually would make his mixtapes, and that he would record the music for hisartists and that what he would do is ride around New Orleans in the trunk ofhis car and actually sell the tapes out of the trunk of his car. He would goget the CDs made and sell them out the trunk of his car. Like actually knowingthat story actually attached me to him. Like, you know what? I think I kind ofwant to, like, listen to this even though I probably wasn't supposed to at theage when I was supposed to, but thinking about it in the way that if we hadknown or if U2 was out around that time, I'm guaranteeing you that he wouldhave had a camera out there following him around the city of New Orleansselling those tapes. That would have actually made him more of, like, one ofthose people, like, hey I'm checking out Master P's full album today. If theywere available back then.

Christian: [00:08:04] Yeah.And we're talking here about vlogs, and, you know, something- another greatmarketing strategy, I guess, behind, you know, a new up and coming musician isto, you know- I was over here thinking as marketers will be to expand yourreach, and something like you could do and that ties back to vlogging is a lotof vloggers use music for their entro, for the outros, even throughout theirwhole video. They use a lot of music. So a good strategy for you to, you know,gain that following is to partner up with some vloggers, to partnered up withsome content creators, and share your music, and, you know, be heard by a ton,a heck of a lot more people than you would've done if you would have done it byyourself.

Aaron: [00:08:46] Right.Gary Vaynerchuk actually has on his vlog, he picks up people. I mean, hisvideographer's, personal videographer D Rock, reaches out to people onSoundcloud and says, hey, we're looking for a song like this or who can send usthe best music? And you never know which kind of vlogger will pick you up.Obviously, not everyone's going to be able to pick up like Gary Vaynerchuk andget in front of millions of people, but even a vlogger who has 10,000followers, that's a lot of people that your music can be in front of. And youdon't make anything off of that, but you get so much exposure, and they needthe music too.

Franklin: [00:09:19] Exactly.Like yesterday while I was working, I was just listening to one of Gary'svideos, one of his daily Vs. And I haven't been on Gary's videos for a while,but like, the music that he had, I had to go and watch it after I heard themusic. Like, the music made me stop what I was doing and go and say hold up, Ineed- because I know D Rock is going to put who- who put that music.

Christian: [00:09:41] Right.

Franklin: [00:09:41] Whothe music's from. I know he's going to put it there. So I went there, and Ilistened to that on Soundcloud. Like, I listened to that song probably about 15to 30 times. Y'all know that I'm bad about that. I'll listen to the same songover and over and over, and that made me want to subscribe to that guy'sSoundCloud channel right then and there. Like, he has some really amazingmusic.

Aaron: [00:10:04] Right.Nothing's going to beat if you- pardon the pun there because this is somemusic, but like, you have to have a good music. So none of this works withouthaving good music, obviously, but I didn't mean to make a play off that pun.

Christian: [00:10:15] Well,and to that, I mean, part of having good music is creating. Just keep creatingand keep putting out music. A lot of musicians nowadays think that just becausethey have, you know, these five songs and they think that they're the best fivesongs in the world, they're going to get famous out of that. Like no, you haveto keep going. Keep pushing your music, and just be passionate about whatyou're doing too.

Aaron: [00:10:37] Right.I think they gave an example before about John Legend. He made music for 13years before, and he had hundreds of songs, before he ever made it big. So, ifyou five songs and you think you're going to make it famous like that, like, noway. So I don't know. You just definitely got to create the content. Keepcreating those songs.

Franklin: [00:10:58] Andalong with that, the last thing that I think actually fits is collaboration,and I want to make this quick. If you make beats, you need to reach out topeople that rap, that sing, do spoken word, that record their audios that needmusic, you need to be sending that to them. Not looking for anything in return,you need to listen to their stuff, create something for them, and say hey, Isat down today and I created this for you. Here. If you want to use it and giveme credit, give me credit. If not, more than likely they're going to give youcredit and vice versa. If you are listening to someone's beat and you, like,man, that's nice, and you know that you have a pretty nice following, Iguarantee if you reach out to that person that makes that beat, they're goingto say hey, yes, go ahead and rap over that beat, and send it over to me. Wecan cross-promote. Because that's what collaboration is. Like, if that personhas a nice following or if they don't, if they have 26, that's 26 additionalpeople that you can get in front of that you don't already have.

Aaron: [00:12:05] Absolutely.All right. That's a lot of nuggets. Definitely-

Christian: [00:12:08] Yeah.Let's just- I mean, just to recap here. Number one, create a profile eitherSoundCloud, ReverbNation. Focus on one profile. Hit them hard, you know? Numbertwo, get on YouTube, get on Vimeo, get on Facebook. Start creating othercontent than just music. Maybe create a vlog. Number three, share your musicwith content creators. We just talked about vlogs so vloggers need music.Commercials. There's a bunch of other people that need music. So share yourmusic with content creators. And number four, collaborate. Get on somefeaturings. If you create beats, get some people to sing over your beats. Don'tjust put out beats and that's it.

Aaron: [00:12:49] Nice.Yes, I think they're going to get a ton out of this.

Franklin: [00:12:52] Ifeel like those are bars, sir.

Aaron: [00:12:54] Thoughtwhat?

Franklin: [00:12:54] Ifeel like those are bars.

Christian: [00:12:54] Mikedrop.

Aaron: [00:12:58] Itwas bars. Yeah. Don't drop these mikes though. Anyway, I hope you guys got alot out of this. If you would do us a huge favor as Christian mentioned in thebeginning, leave us an honest review. That's the key part. We want to know whatwe're doing right, what we're doing wrong, if you're getting value out of this,and then click that subscribe button so you can follow us on our podcastjourney. And then click those three dots in the right hand corner that'sallowing you to share this podcast and go share it with a friend or up andcoming musician.

Christian: [00:13:28] Yeah,and send us some music while you're at it.

Aaron: [00:13:32] Yeah.We need new music for all the stuff that we do.

Christian: [00:13:34] Soif you're a musician, you're listen to this, send us your music. All right. Seeyou guys next week.

Franklin: [00:13:40] Thisis-

Narrator: [00:13:42] TheMarketing Natives Podcast is a production of BitBranding.