Most DIY musicians and producers aren’t necessarily in the position of setting up expensive music videos and visual campaigns on a regular basis.
Still, there’s a strong demand for solid content to be spread across various social media channels, and ideally a growing crowd of supporters anxious to see new material by artists they dig.
One thing that many artists neglect, is the fact, that there are a bunch of possibilities of creating great, quality content without investing loads of money in set-up or external services.
Just like creating album artwork or shaping the other periphery around the music, these ideas can help diversify the artists image while delivering fun, fast give-aways directed at a content-hungry audience.
So, lets dig in and uncover some of those hidden content ideas:
Make the process visible
Simple yet powerful – taking your own music and deconstructing it to its basic elements, making it accessible and uncovering the process behind the creation. You can do this via video format, just breaking down some insights on how you developed a certain song, production or texture.
Imagine explaining to a good friend how you created that sound, what the key-factors were and how you built it from scratch. By doing so you uncover the mystery of your musicianship, turning the process into something very human and understandable. Its a great way of communicating on an eye-to-eye level, sharing something quite fragile and therefore conveying a sense of trust.
You can also do this when preparing a song that isn’t out yet. Teasing an ongoing production by uncovering only bits and pieces increases the potential of sparking some serious interest. Try dropping some awesome hooks / grooves / ideas without the context of the complete song, see what happens and how your community reacts to it.
Create mood playlist or inspirational playlist
An absolutely awesome tool and fast way of creating engaging content is setting up playlists on various streaming platforms and sharing them with your audience.
There are 2 reasons why this is a fantastic idea:
1) It’s incredibly fast content generation
2) It shows where you come from, musically.
What you dig, listen to and what inspired you to create your own sound. Setting up a stunning playlist is a great way of presenting your taste and deep understanding of musical contexts.
Try out different platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Soundcloud, and see which works best for you. Also keep in mind which platform might be best suited for your audience.
Team-Goodies
Working on a release that you might drop quite soon? Don’t hesitate to release various elements of your internal release planning – like preliminary tracklistings, artworks or maybe even timings.
All of these little puzzle-pieces form a grand-picture while conveying a sense of an ongoing process. It let’s your supporters move up close, giving them a firsthand look at the status quo and how things are about to unfold.
Live-Streaming Jams
If you haven’t played around with live streaming yet, for example with Instagram live or Twitch, this might be a great moment to jump on to the band-wagon.
Take an everyday jam for example – with all the mishaps, glitches and fun little moments or even question marks up in the air. Those are the things that lend a true, human footnote to an otherwise immaculate production.
You could also stream songwriting sessions. There’s probably nothing more real than that – giving an intimate insight into the inner workings of your musical process. Maybe even sharing a stroke of genius with an attentive audience.
If that song hits the airwaves, some of your fans can actually tell their friends – yeah, I was there when that happened. How cool is that?
Handwritten facts your audience might not know about you, connected to your music
A cool little gimmick that can produce some sweet content while loosening things up might be something like inside facts or hidden facts.
Think about it – the things an artist usually shares are quite obvious, like releases, photographs, artwork, visual periphery etc. How about sharing some facts or insights that have the potential of actually raising an eyebrow.
Like a one-sided Q&A: let your audience know when and where you picked up your first instrument / whats your favorite post-gig meal or beverage / whats your favorite hometown place / which venue are you especially looking forward to, and why / which artist are you totally digging right now / what was the last concert you went to / etc.
You can generate TONS of awesome facts and insights on the spot, in one brainstorm, or even on tour, while waiting for a soundcheck to start.
When it comes to visualizing the facts – try asking the question in the text-body of the posting, for example: Last concert that blew my mindThen write the answer on a simple post-it note, take a photograph and upload the handwritten answer: Kanye West, NY
Simple as that!
Try some of these ideas or just have fun generating your own – you’ll be surprised of how easily you can create engaging content right there, on the spot.
The ForTunes App is available for free on the app store.
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