5 ways to make your music stick out

Think fast. What is the one thing that you really want as a com­poser and/or music artist?

My guess is to get out of the haystack.  There are too many nee­dles and most of them are dull.

I mean, geez. There is a TON of music in the dig­i­tal pipeline. 10–15 years ago, dis­tri­b­u­tion was a con­trolled entity. If you wanted to get dis­trib­uted, you had to nor­mally be signed to a record label.  Obvi­ously this is no longer the case. How­ever, one thing does still hold true. Just because the pad­locks on the doors to dis­tri­b­u­tion have have been busted off, doesn’t make it any eas­ier. The glut of music out there is insane and the con­sumer is over­loaded with mediocrity.

I’m not a pes­simist, by any means, but I am a real­ist. I’m a pos­i­tive thinker and I’m all for envi­sion­ing suc­cess. How­ever, you gotta be real. Suc­cess isn’t some­thing that “happens.”

So, with this in mind, let’s focus on some real, tan­gi­ble things you can do to help your music (and your brand) really stand out. And one more thing…I’m assum­ing that your songs are great!  That is just a given, and a com­pletely dif­fer­ent topic.

1. Stop down­play­ing song arrangements

Song­writ­ing can be a weird process. You’ve heard of all the sto­ries about bands writ­ing some of their biggest hits in 10 min­utes. And although this is true, they rarely men­tion all the arrang­ing and pro­duc­tion that went into mak­ing that song stand out.

As a pro­ducer, I know first hand, that this area is often avoided, which is unfor­tu­nate, because a good song arrange­ment can make a world of difference.

There are two areas to assess when focus­ing on song arrange­ments. One is the song struc­ture. Per­haps the song is miss­ing a bridge or maybe a mod­u­la­tion. These are things you have to work and exper­i­ment with. The other is more pro­duc­tion ori­ented, such as instru­men­ta­tion, vocal deliv­ery, mix­ing and effects. This part of arrang­ing is very impor­tant, par­tic­u­larly when piec­ing together not only the instru­ment parts, but the sounds and tonal­ity of those instru­ments. For exam­ple, a dig­i­tal delay on a cer­tain gui­tar riff, or re-creating a cer­tain gui­tar tone from the 1960’s. Another area is ad-lib vocals which can really add a dynamic ele­ment to a song that would oth­er­wise, be bland. These things all add to mak­ing the song mean­ing­ful, which will cre­ate an emo­tional con­nec­tion with your fans.

2. Get the best record­ings of your songs, period.

My kids would tell me, “thank you, Cap­tain Obvi­ous.” But if it was so obvi­ous, why is there so much crappy sound­ing music out there?  Really…take the time to get the very best record­ings of your music. You may not be able to afford a full-scale, pro­fes­sional stu­dio (although I do sug­gest you uti­lize a pro­fes­sional stu­dio, for at least part of your record­ing), but you do need to con­nect with a stu­dio engi­neer who has a com­plete under­stand­ing of DAW’s, track­ing, over­dub­bing, mix­ing and how to uti­lize com­pres­sors, lim­iters and the use of effects.  You’ll also want to get your songs pro­fes­sion­ally mas­tered. Don’t just get any­one to do this for you!

3. Focus your niche and define your USP

You can’t be all things to all peo­ple. If your music encom­passes many styles, it’s going to be tough to con­nect with fans. In his book “Music Mar­ket­ing Press, Pro­mo­tion, Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Retail,” Berklee music instruc­tor Mike King says that “folks need a point of ref­er­ence that they can iden­tify with. If a band is all over the place in terms of gen­res, it’s very dif­fi­cult to build a fol­low­ing and cre­ate the all-important emo­tional con­nec­tion with the fans.”

By default, fail­ing to prop­erly define your niche, places you in the push mar­ket­ing cat­e­gory. Push mar­ket­ing is what is says – lit­er­ally push­ing what you are pro­mot­ing onto peo­ple with the hopes that some­thing sticks! This is the old school way that record com­pa­nies used to pro­mote their artists. If you fig­ure out who your fans are and what they like, then your mar­ket­ing gets eas­ier – and you are able to “pull” them in. Big difference.

Defin­ing your USP or what is known as your Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion, is essen­tial if you want to stick out over the noise. What is it that you do, that makes you dif­fer­ent? How you can sum that it up in one phrase?

Even though USP’s are often syn­ony­mous with busi­nesses, isn’t that what you are? The best thing about defin­ing your USP, is that when some­one asks you to sum up who you are in one sen­tence, you have it. It’s a no brainer. Plus, it helps you to bet­ter focus your marketing.

3. Sell the artist, not just the music.

Any record exec­u­tive will tell you that these days, record labels are no longer in the record busi­ness…they are in the artist busi­ness. The rea­son is that records (a generic term for any record­ing) aren’t sell­ing like they used to – this is an obvi­ous when so many have resorted to steal­ing them. Records are no longer a pri­mary source of revenue.

So, start think­ing in terms of con­nect­ing with fans – rather than merely push­ing music. Music is a big part of what you do, but as a vet­eran A&R man recently told me, “We’ll prob­a­bly never again be able to sign some­one on tal­ent alone.”

If you truly want to stick out, you need to imple­ment direct to fan strate­gies. Look at it as form­ing rela­tion­ships with your fans – which gives them more of a buy-in. This is a much dif­fer­ent con­cept than the old days of merely releas­ing a sin­gle and show­er­ing it in mil­lions of pro­mo­tional dol­lars, while cross­ing your fin­gers in antic­i­pa­tion that it will catch on.

4. You gotta look good (and be relevant)

No, I’m not just talk­ing about the gel you use in your hair (although that is part of it). Mar­ket­ing con­ti­nu­ity is nec­es­sary when pre­sent­ing what you do. Logos, web­site design, mer­chan­dise and other pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial should not only look pro­fes­sional, but also have sim­i­lar­ity to cre­ate and sus­tain your brand. If you go off in too many direc­tions, you won’t cre­ate an iden­tity — which will work against you. Also, the pre­sen­ta­tion and look you throw out there needs to be rel­e­vant to your fan­base, or you will fail to con­nect. This stream­lines with #3, in that you have to under­stand who you are mar­ket­ing to.

5. Perform…well and often!

Noth­ing replaces a great live per­for­mance. If you want to build a sub­stan­tial fan­base, per­form­ing is where your fans are truly going to get that emo­tional con­nec­tion with you. Per­form­ing live gets new fans hooked — not only to your music, but to you as an artist. This is where they can see and expe­ri­ence who you are as a per­son. A great live show will entice peo­ple to  head to your web­site and fol­low you in social media.

Under­stand that per­form­ing is one thing, but putting together a mem­o­rable live show is quite another. This involves many fac­tors and should not be taken lightly if you want to really have impact on your audiences.

Sub­scribe to us via Email