Today is called DIY, artists Marketing and Brand, and Building a Foundation for Success. now it’s DIY artists, but I would apply many of these practices and what we’re gonna talk about here today to songwriters, to producers. So hopefully we’ve got everyone covered, and I’m gonna try and delineate some of those differences as I move along. So, so, yeah. So welcome to the, DIY artist, marketing and Building a Foundation for Success Masterclass.
My name’s Jeff Nedza. I’ve been working in the entertainment business my entire career.
I took care of and did all the marketing for Marvel Animation in Canada, which is great ’cause aside from being a musician, I’ve always been a huge comic book geek, and I’m proud to admit that. And in around the time Universal acquired EMI music, I transitioned into a role where I picked up my more notable roster. This is when I was assigned the Rolling Stones. The Who, Queen, Rob Zombie, who else see there, slash this is assigned guitar right there.
had the pleasure of doing domestic marketing campaigns for all of those artists and, and many more. I also handed domestic marketing activities for certain films like George Harrison’s Living in a Material World. It was produced by Martin Scorsese Eagles, history of the Eagles and Nirvana Montage of Heck. working with US roster was incredible. but, you know, sometimes working with acts that big are not necessarily as challenging, and I really wanted to get involved in artist development as part of the reason I’m involved in the TSA.
Now, you’ve likely heard Martin or other people in the TSA talk about the numbers floating around about music being uploaded into the music platforms.
The DSPs, as we call them, digital service providers, Spotify, apple, YouTube, music, Amazon. The amount of music being uploaded into there daily is daunting. It’s an estimated a hundred thousand songs uploaded a day to Spotify alone. Now, as an independent artist, music writer, songwriter, producer, that’s likely crossed your mind, and it’s probably daunting. How are you going to cut through? How are you gonna stand out from the crowd?
knowing, knowing the amount of music on any given day is, really important to set yourself up for success. How do you cut through this crowd? How do you stand out? How do you set yourself up for success? And again, that’s why we’re here. We’re here to talk about building a foundation. Now, I don’t mean the foundation in terms of a fan base that comes after this.
This is first, think of this foundation as must haves. These are understandings about you as an artist, you as a songwriter, you as a producer, and how you’ll present yourself and your art to the masses. These are the elements of you and your music that you need to be able to clearly define, explain, and inevitably showcase. For the purpose of this masterclass, I’m going to zero in on your brand marketing, marketing channels and some of the tools that you’re gonna need for those channels prior to presenting yourself and your music to the masses.
now I did say this is the first set of tools. This is not a definitive list. This is merely a starting point. And I’ll leave it to you to toss Martin for part 1, 2, 3, however many we could go. I could go for quite a bit on this one. so whether your end goal is to establish yourself as an artist, songwriter, or producer, defining and setting up your foundation is the key to setting yourself up for success and meeting those goals.
Your foundation is the base. It will act as the guide for your tactics and the campaigns you’re going to create to reach your intended audience, right? So what we all wanna do, reach an audience grow, being, whether that’s new fans or collaborators or someone seeking your services as a producer, how do you get yourself into the position to do this?
Well, the answer is marketing plus branding, branding plus marketing. And I’m gonna switch over and share my screen here. Well see that. Good. Okay. So marketing and branding.
Branding and marketing, the answer lies in your ability to effectively and successfully brand yourself and market yourself. Now, I appreciate, that these two can be really similar. and as a new artist and a do-it-yourself scenario, navigating this is gonna be overwhelming, or it can be overwhelming. You are after all one person.
But if you understand the difference, difference between the two and how they work together, it’s really pretty straightforward. Okay? So we have branding activities that happen within branding here, and, the other side activities that happen within marketing. understanding the difference between the two and how they work together is pretty straightforward. And you alone can set up this foundation. You can create both a solid brand and an effective marketing plan.
And besides, nobody knows your art better than you do. So you are in the perfect position to create and understand both your branding and your marketing. Let’s start by understanding the principle differences between branding and marketing. ’cause I do think a lot of confusion lies here. Are they the same? Are they different? How do they coexist and support each other? Is branding and marketing? How, how do they coexist?
Well, they need each other. They rely on each other. If branding is a seed, marketing’s like the soil and water. The seed needs to grow and become something. And we all, as artists, songwriters, producers, we all wanna grow. We all want to grow our art, our profile, our streams, ultimately our streams, correct? I am going to assume absolutely. Understanding, defining, and establishing your brand is often the key to effective marketing.
It’s integral to the strength of your foundation. Remember, this stuff makes up your foundation. Okay? You gonna switch slides here? Now look at branding and marketing. This is sort of a definition of each one of these things. Okay? So what is it? Marketing? Marketing is the link between an artist and a fan, whereas branding, branding is the strategy that creates an impression or an impact on your audience or your fans.
What’s created first, your branding’s created first, your marketing comes second. And I’ll explain why that is in a minute. What is its intention? Marketing creates a desire to buy, stream, like, or follow. Whereas branding sets an artist apart from the others. This separates you from everybody else. what’s the strategy? Brand marketing brings in or attracts fans.
Branding retains them, ideally long term. What is the strategy? Marketing strategy? The result is sales streams, likes, follows, and success. Branding, branding, strategy, results in reputation. And it says here, I will go into that a little bit more. Marketing is short term. Branding is long term.
So now think of branding as your why. You know, why are you the hot new and you’re seeing, or in your genre, why are you the hot new writer? People should be writing with branding creates value and builds loyalty.
It is your voice and your persona. Branding represents your core values, okay? Branding represents, branding story looks at, at, at the feel of and how your materials will look. It becomes your style. branding creates reasons why people, fans feel connected to something. In this case, your art, you as the artist, us the creator, and the craft.
So thoroughly, effectively, sorry. So thoroughly and effectively branding yourself. What can you expect to achieve? For example, I identify with an artist. I share their core values. I look, I like their look. I like their sound. I like what they represent. I like the people or other brands they associate with. Okay? Those are all things I think about artists. I like.
How do I come to these conclusions? Marketing, marketing delivers these points of connectivity. Example, let’s say we’re all collectively scrolling through TikTok, and we come across our Instagram and we come across an artist talking about their passion for surfing, okay? And there’s a song playing in the background. We also kind of like the song, and we’ve all probably done this. We all think surfing’s cool. I like surfing. We like the song in the background too. We are drawn in.
We’re curious. What else do we have in common with this artist? Curiosity gets the better of us. And now we’re on the artist profile. Click okay. We are now potentially one click away from either following the artist, a win for the artist, or following the artist’s link to their music. Another win. We have all done this before. Everyone who spends any amount of time on social media discovering music’s likely done this marketing in this instance via what’s called channel marketing, which I’m going to explain.
And content marketing, which I’ll also explain has brought us one step closer to retaining a fan.
