What is a Brand?
Your brand is the visual image and feel that your audience will match your music to. That connection brings a brand into place when thinking about you and your music! Think about the best musicians in history, they are all clearly identified by their brands forever in the minds of their audiences and their music of course!
Music Brands are Different from a Commercial Brands
Most commercial brands think about their branding from the outside in, meaning they research for an audience and build a brand to target that needs and that audience. Music branding works the other way around.
Brand first inside out and then bother to brand outside in. Let me explain, think deeply about who you are and what your music represents, and based on that, make designs that represent the core piece of your brand: YOU. When you brand this way, you will have found a purpose and a vision that is coherent with your brand. Never brand your music as a reflection of what people want to reach.
How is a Music Brand Created Nowadays?
Depending on your budget you can hire professionals to build up your music brand, get sponsored, collaborate with other bands, and more. However, must emerging artists decide to build their own brands independently from others. This means going solo on a journey to get your music out the public. Not the craziest idea, in fact, there are plenty of well-known musicians that got very popular on their own and then decided to join forces with an external business.
What Process do Indie Musicians Go Through to Create a Brand?
There are different processes different musicians decide to go through when building their brands. Some artists choose to collaborate with brands that support emerging artists like Boilerroom Budweiser, Levis Music Project, Redbull Music Academy, and more, look out for these!
But first things first, the very basic step to start a musician brand is to start out with a single. Every music platform will request at least one single in order to set up your account. This is your first hook you are to release into the world, so it better be your very best!
Focus on that one single and get the press talking. Help yourself promote your work using your social media to build hype for it. Make your single available for your audiences on every platform they commonly use or link back to your track! Collaborate on relevant playlists to get your single viewable for even a larger community.
The term brand has expanded to include the public image of a company or an individual. Such an image is a holistic take on how a company or individual is viewed. While you can't ultimately control that view, you can establish a clear picture of who you are and what you stand for as a solid base for promoting your musical identity and conducting your behavior.
8 Steps To Building Your Personal Music Brand
1) Create your personal brand vision
"The first step to creating your personal brand is to organize your thoughts and create your personal brand vision. This is the way you want yourself to be perceived by others and also how you want to live your professional and personal life."
2) Define your target audience
"Defining a target audience is a best practice for anyone that needs others to give them something. It might be a salary, an investment or money in exchange for a product or service. Whenever you need something from someone you go through at least some of the steps in defining a target audience."
3) Build up your online and offline assets
"Assets are the things you own that will communicate your brand message to your target audience. Assets are things like your own website and blog, but they can also be things like your Twitter username and your LinkedIn profile. Offline assets are things like business cards and or traditional newsletters that you send out."
4) Build your brand through outreach
"Outreach is the act of providing value to those that have established audiences filled with the people you want to reach. You provide value and in exchange they give you the chance to sell yourself to the audience."
5) Get free press coverage
"Getting press coverage can establish you as an authority in your industry. You can get access to audiences full of the people that can hire you as an employee, partner and vendor. Getting free press coverage as an individual can be a challenge, but it can be done and be done effectively leading to the opportunities you seek as you work to grow your personal brand profile."
6) Connect with mentors
"A mentor is someone that can provide guidance and friendship for your life. They might have experience in the exact life path you want to pursue, but that quality is not a requirement. Often, the best mentors are simply good listeners, educators and friends."
7) Monitor your brand
Patel shares tools and discusses ways to monitor your brand online. Remember that if you're going to work so hard on your brand you should also work to find out what people are saying and, ideally, thinking which goes beyond the immediate feedback people are willing to give you.
8) Be yourself
Patel brings things full circle with the reminder that though you are making conscious choices about presenting yourself in public that may sometimes require you to change your behavior or appearance, they should still be based in what makes you uniquely you.
