The Marketing Challenges and The Steps to Solving Them
by Tod Turner, CEO, Intercept Music
I co-founded Intercept Music to address a critical challenge facing all indie musicians. I wanted to give them the very necessary tools and resources to increase spins, generate more downloads, build their fanbases, and track key business metrics — while staying focused on the creative parts of their careers.
If you are a music act signed to a label, congratulations! It means that your label or management is providing you with these crucial marketing resources. On the other hand, indie musicians must fend for themselves; most are not signed to a full-service label, and according to Intercept Music’s recent Indie Musician Survey, 80% manage themselves.
“I can see that thought bubble forming above your head saying: Is it too much to ask if I can have just four minutes of those 27 hours to play my song?”
After an indie musician has written great songs, recorded them perfectly and rehearsed an entertaining live show, the overriding objective is to rise above the noise and up to the ears of music fans, a marketing task that’s brimming with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
What do I mean by “noise”? We humans are living in a media-saturated world. With the advent of mobile communications, most people are connected to media for nearly every waking moment. There’s the daily grind of emails, texts and social media postings from friends, co-workers and others you follow. Then, most experts agree, the average person is exposed to 5,000 ads per day! Think about every message, posting, website or ad you saw in the last 24 hours. How many of them can you recall?
That’s noise. That’s the challenge that all music artists – indie or otherwise – must overcome each time they drop a new song or sell tickets to a show. It’s daunting indeed, so allow me to make you feel a little better with a great fact: people love music! According to Nielsen, the average person listens to music for 27 hours per week. Music is a salve to the brain. It allows us to set the “noise” aside, including while multitasking.
With all those hours of weekly music listening, I can see that thought bubble forming above your head saying: Is it too much to ask if I can have just four minutes of those 27 hours to play my song?
I never said it would be easy. Getting people to focus on a media message is a tall order. Advertisers spend billions to rise above the noise. Veteran music makers commandeer other aspects of media, whether it’s hosting a YouTube channel, creating headphones, battling on social media, or judging other artists on a competition show. However it’s done, it’s clear that even the biggest of the biggest music makers cannot just release a song and expect it to grow organically.
Having said all that, yes, it’s possible to get people to invest some of their precious time in your song, but it requires an investment of your creative skills – along with hard work – and maybe a little luck on marketing.
Here are five characteristics that I’ve seen in most successful music makers. Adopting, practicing and perfecting these traits will not guarantee success, but they do provide a solid foundation.
How Music Makers can Rise Above the Noise
1. UNIQUENESS – What do you, as a music maker, that makes a music fan sit up and say: Who is this? Looking back 60 years, virtually every successful, enduring music artist surfaced with unique songwriting, instrumental, vocal or production talent. Artistic influences are essential but adopting someone else’s style is not a long-term career strategy.
2. PERSISTENCE – Ed Sheeran toiled as a busker, music student and club performer before getting signed and becoming the world’s most popular pop star. He would have toiled longer, he says, because writing and performing music was what he was born to do.
3. PASSION – You can’t be persistent if you don’t have passion for your craft. Music fans will see through to your core faster than you’ll ever understand. Make sure you’re in this business to please yourself before you attempt to please others because you can’t fake passion.
4. EXPOSE YOUR WHOLE SELF – Fans will invest in the three-dimensional you more than they will your great voice or deft guitar work. Show who you are as a human, through your songs, your actions off the stage, or ideally, both.
5. BUILD A GREAT TEAM – You can’t do everything alone. Build a network of smart, wise people you trust, and listen to their advice.
Allow me to run a commercial about our company: We are made up of smart, wise, trustworthy people with a singular goal, to provide the guidance and tools that help you with the marketing and business angles; that way you can dedicate more of your valuable time to creating great music. Drop us a line and we’ll tell you more.
Tod Turner grew up in the Pacific Northwest. One of his fondest memories was as a member of his high school’s swim team, where he learned about persistence and teamwork. He launched into the software industry with a goal of helping to simplify the way businesses work, including audio conferencing technology used in Skype and WhatsApp. Today, as Intercept Music CEO, Tod combines his lifelong passion for music with his ability to develop solutions to restore creative time to music artists.