HyperTribe as a whole offers us a really interesting perspective of the music industry and I am personally grateful for that. We get to sit with artists on a daily basis, to understand their concerns and issues around what is going on with their careers on a 1-to-1 basis and help them get unstuck. On the other hand we can listen to conversations with industry across the board and see things from a top down approach.
As an organisation we sit right in the middle of industry and artists and we can see which tactics work and which ones are just talk. The truth is the reality of getting fans and developing a fanbase is not a straight line. Music marketing as a whole just got a whole lot harder in the last 12 months. It is a hard slow burn of a task that a lot of musicians find a slog and a lot of labels and manager think can be solved with some posts on social media.
Over the last year we have seen a shift that has been accelerated by the fast content we consume online, from deep connection to quick fire entertainment. What this means for a music artist is that finding fanatic fans that are loyal and less flippant are harder to come by. Yes, more people can find you through TikTok but more people can easily unfollow you and not listen to the next single. Less people are vested in the journey and your development. This has a massive impact on the way artists have been developing as whole. More artists have to be a little more invested in their brand and what they stand for and capture those core values as quickly as possible.
The hook into being the brand and musician that you are as an artist, needs to be shown in under 30 seconds or less in video content. The creative and presentation of an artist has to be more reflective of who they are and translated in under 3 seconds.
Not only are artists having to dig deeper to find their niche and brand but they are having to look at retention of fans and followers. This means content production is more rife and the time actually spent creating music versus the promotion of it is almost equal if not more than it used to be. The question starts to become, are artists really artists and musicians anymore? And is allocation of music creation versus content creation going to get worse?
Well I personally have a more optimistic view that these issues will be relieved with smart tech in the near future. We are already seeing applications pop up that are helping musicians to develop content more useful for promotional strategies but they are often isolated in an artist’s development journey and don’t authentically fit with an artist brand. Hopefully this is a silver lining in the modern music marketing business.
If you are struggling with developing your social media and brand as an artist why not do a free assessment with HyperTribe by clicking here.
