What is branding and why is it so important for a musician?

Branding can mean many different things... It can be style, it could be the aesthetic press shots are taken, it could be the imagery used in your logo, the grading or colourisation in a film clip, a colour palette used over tiling in your instagram feed, a desire to showcase more of your personality in content, vlogging, merchandise to suit your music, the look of gig posters, hidden messages for fans in content, consistent themes throughout your visual imagery and so on. There are so many ways to brand your music. Branding doesn't have to mean selling your soul to becoming a different person or artist. It's just colouring in what you may have already sketched, unknowingly. Although some artists need more help to adjust to the new demands of the content potential new fans or existing fans are viewing. Why is it so important for a musician to have branding? It's the first thing a new or existing fan usually will see. As content is an ever changing format, choosing one can be troublesome. Tiktok is doing amazing things for creators at the moment and musicians in particular. With its virality coming at no extra cost in advertising, it's a great way to test your new content idea. Tiktok is primarily a video content app. A common misconception, is that it's an app for teens. While that may be partly true, we are now seeing an older demographic adopt the platform. This will only continue as the wider public accepts tiktok as a mainstay amongst the social media giants (if it already hasn't worldwide!) With tiktok's rise in popularity, instagram certainly felt left out of the market. So we've seen a real organic push from Instagram to compete with tiktok, particularly with instagram reels! Organic free boost here we go!! Tip for tiktok - As it's virality is starting to fade and as a company it looks as though it will soon start charging more for advertising. Virality on the app still exists. Just be consistent, it may take multiple on brand posts to get some real traction. Some things to think of before posting is.. - Is this in line with my brand visually? - With people's attention span getting less and less. Can I make this piece of content capture their time within the first 5 seconds? - Can I show more of my personality to my audience? - Phone camera's are perfectly acceptable, but are you using an outdated phone with no definition after exporting? - Do you have a content strategy in place? - It's better to experiment and see if you are comfortable posting certain types of content - Make mistakes, its okay and part of the process! Post away! You will soon get into a habit of consistency. - Content fatigue is a real thing, it's okay to have a break and reassess if things are working. - Look into what other artists you love are doing and make it your own. If we think just how competitive the music industry is, it can be daunting. With 50,000 songs being added to Spotify every day, how can your project stand out... I will always preach the idea - 'treat your branding, as much as you do your music'. Although we feel so attached to our music being the be-all-end-all. We forget that our audience likes to be entertained in other ways. The question of how you want to entertain them, is entirely up to you. If you are willing to entertain on stage, why are we neglecting entertaining on other platforms? It doesn't have to be torture... Have fun doing it. Embrace it. Challenge yourself creatively. Do something you, yourself would be into. There will always be great music out there. But unfortunately the ones being lost are the ones who don't consider how important branding is as audience habits change (I was one of them!) As a musician myself I neglected just how important branding could be and what it could mean for our project. I was so focused on just the music angle, I forgot that our audiences habits are changing constantly on a daily basis with the content they are consuming. Fans are leading more heavily into social media for music discovery. Most of the general audience out there are visual learners of visual discoverers. Youtube (a free service) has 6 times more subscribers than spotify. Looking at how branding also affects audience growth, streams, video views on analytical level is insane. It really does do wonders to helping your music career develop. There are so many ways to brand yourself as an artist, you probably are already intrinsically doing something related to branding, you just maybe don't realise. Sometimes it takes looking outwardly to see how the audience may view your content to accurately review your brand. If you are looking for branding options or a way we can help your story as an artist, book in our FREE zoom call consultation (45 mins) and we can see if we can help get your branding Built by musicians, for musicians.