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Episode #005: Find Your Niche – The Difference Between Failure & Success

Important things to remember:

  • The way to build an audience is to focus on a micro niche.
  • Your niche should be something that already exists.
  • The best way to go big is to start small. If you don’t get narrow, you will get lost.
  • The goal is to be accurate, not creative.

Revisit the Highlights:

01:19 – Why you need to find your niche

06:07 – What a niche is not

09:32 – How knowing your niche helps you target your audience

12:18 – How to know if you’ve found the right niche

Need more help finding your microniche?

Savvy Musician Academy, the online musician, Leah mchenry, facebook for musicians, music career marketing, music industry education

Episode #004: Top 10 Social Media Tools for 2018

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of tools out there that you could be using to help you take control of your online music career. In order to control your music career, you need to organize it. Knowing which tools to use and how to use them is imperative. These tools can help save you time, money and a lot of grief.

 

Important Things To Remember:

  • Marketing is making what you are doing predictable, repeated and scalable.
  • Have some social media posts planned, but leave room for spontaneity.
  • Post more selfies. People want to know who you really are.
  • Let people into your process.
  • Your fans are expert marketers. They will tell you what they want.

Listen to the List:

07:47 – Canva – For graphics and design

09:47 – Adobe Spark – Create video graphics for social

10:44 – Post Planner – Find, Plan and Post social content

15:27 – Facebook Live – Let your fans into your life

17:57 – Facebook Pages App – Manage your page on the go

19:43 – Facebook Polls – Ask your fans what they want

22:51 – Evernote – Organize your notes

24:46 – Dropbox – Store and backup your work

29:00 – Mailchimp – Organize your email list

33:00 – Getemoji.com – Get emojis that grab people’s attention

 

Episode #003: How I’m Planning a Multiple 6-Figure Music Year

Treat your music like a business and get business-like results.


Nobody feels like waking up before the sun to go to the gym but when you make a decision and then follow through, eventually you see the results. The same can be said about your music career. If you wait on inspiration to plan the business side of your music career, you’ll be waiting a long time and you’ll be broke even longer. That’s why Leah walks you through WHY you should plan, and also HOW you should plan while using her own music career as the example.

IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER

  • Get help!  You can’t (and shouldn’t) do it all on your own. Get help with graphics and web design. Get help with your merch.
  • Your revenue goals should make you uncomfortable.
  • Set your goals and reverse engineer them to give you your daily action steps.
  • Writing your plan down gives you vision and motivation.
  • Big goals create actions, actions create progress, progress makes your business happen.

REVISIT THE HIGHLIGHTS

Why take time to plan?

3:25 – Get direction and a clear path

4:33 – Every Action must have clear purpose (even experimenting)

5:00 – Keeps you motivated

6:00 – We need a target

6:34 – We need a big goal

How should we plan?

7:55 – Set annual goals

9:12 – Setting revenue goals – The goal should make you uncomfortable

14:05 – Set project goals

18:00 – Set release goals

18:45- Setting quarterly goals – Turn quarterly goals into a to-do list

Helpful tools to help you get organized:

Evernote, for notes on the go

Asana, for team management

Google sheets and Google Docs for planning and budgeting

Episode #002: The 6-Figure Music Map: Pt. 2

Once you’ve nurtured your culture and mastered your free traffic, it’s time to start building your Fan Generation and Engagement Machine. The beautiful thing about this machine is that it works while you hang out with your kids and it works while you sleep. You still have work to do, but now you have help. Just like any other machine, all the parts are important and they go together in a specific order.

IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER :

  • Fan Generation and Engagement Machine functions best once you’ve mastered your Artist Identity Infrastructure.
  • Focus on the superfans. They will keep your music sustainable by putting their money where their mouth is.
  • An email list is an asset and is worth money!
  • Retargeting helps target people who have already shown interest in you but may have been distracted or busy the first time they came across you.

Download the Music Map >> Here <<

REVISIT THE HIGHLIGHTS:

3:50-  Fan Generation And Engagement Machine

9:15 – Paid Traffic -Don’t pay for traffic if you haven’t mastered free traffic.

9:50 – Facebook Ads

13:00 – Retargeting – Most people need to see things multiple times before they take action.

16:45 – Email Marketing –Think of email marketing as relationship marketing.

18:41 – Copywriting – Using written words to motivate people to act! This includes headlines, email titles, and social media posts. How do you use our words to motivate people into action?

22:35- Artist Identity Infrastructure recap

Episode #001: The 6-Figure Music Map: Pt. 1

Making a record and putting it on the internet doesn’t guarantee that anyone will discover it. By finding your micro niche and nurturing your culture, you can help stack the odds in your favor. By building a culture and nurturing your fanbase, you can use social media to find a group of super fans that are enthusiastic and loyal. All of these things can create a music career that is scalable and sustainable. But how does that actually work? Feeling lost? That’s why we made you a map …

IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER.

  • All of the steps mentioned work together and have a specific order. Try not to get impatient. Take one step at a time, and do each step well before moving to the next step.
  • A handful of passionate fans is more impactful (and profitable) than lots of lukewarm fans.
  • Social Media is meant to build your culture and your community. Remember that people come for the product, but they stay for the community.  
  • Branding is more than a logo. It is a consistent culture across all social platforms.


Download the Music Map >> Here <<

Revisit the highlights

0:00 – Introduction.

4:00 – Why the Sustainable Music Map?

4:40 – First things first. Quality music.

  • It seems obvious, but it needs to be said.

6:35 – Finding your  micro niche.

  • It’s better to be a big fish in a small pound.

15:10 – Utilizing free traffic.

  • Don’t pay for traffic until you master free traffic

22:58 – Importance of building culture.

  • The difference between success and failure lies in how you develop your culture.

24:00 – Branding

  • It’s who you are and what your music represents. Consistency matters.

26:25 – Launching Online.

  • Who are you launching to? Does anyone know you exist?

30:30 – Artist Identity Infrastructure.

All of these points are imperative for building you artist identity. This is the foundation you build your house on.

Are the New Facebook Updates the Apocalypse for Musicians?

 

If you’re a musician, artist, or content creator and you pay attention to what’s happening on Facebook and your page, you’ve likely seen your engagement and reach drop dramatically over the past several months. It’s no secret that Facebook has been reprioritizing the newsfeed to encourage more interaction from friends and family rather than pages for businesses, brands, and media.

 

Mark Zuckerberg recently posted his mission to “fix Facebook” as part of his New Year’s resolutions. We all wondered what that meant.  On January 11th he posted[1] specifically what those changes will be.

 

He stated that Facebook’s top priority is the user’s experience and well-being. Translation? Less passive scrolling and more meaningful conversations. In order to make Facebook feel like it’s time well spent, posts from pages will be demoted while posts from family and friends they feel users are likely to interact with will be promoted.

 

“The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups,” says Zuckerberg. “As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

 

Read his whole post here.

Facebook News elaborated on Mark’s statement:

 

“The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.[2]

 

Whoa, hold on.  Does this signal the beginning of the end for artists, bands, and content creators who rely on organic traffic and engagement to spread the word about their craft?  Already, people are alarmed and running to their Facebook bunkers with their marketing tinfoil hats.

 

As a fellow independent recording artist, I want to help calm the storm, demystify what this means, and share exactly what I’ll be doing to make this work for my music brand.

 

It also should be pointed out that if you have anything to sell — music, merchandise, art, etc. ––– it is still vital that you still use a professional business page to stay compliant with Facebook’s terms of service. Additionally, you need a business page in order to advertise, as well as get the benefit of Google’s SEO bots, which spider public pages, and in turn allow your page to be ranked in searches (unlike personal profiles which do not get spidered). So don’t think that you need to switch to using your personal profile to continue building your brand (which could get you banned).

 

Make no mistake: this change will certainly affect organic traffic on our Facebook pages and the type of content we promote.

 

Here are my “pay-attention” bullet points of what Zuckerberg is saying is important to Facebook:

  • Meaningful relationships
  • Friends and family
  • Well-being and happiness
  • Sharing personal moments
  • Connection and intimacy
  • Feeling less lonely
  • Physical and mental health
  • Conversation and discussion
  • Community

 

These are words and principles I pulled right out of Mark’s post. These are Facebook’s “new values,” which tell us everything we need to know about the type of content and interactions we need to aim for and strive to create as artists and content creators.

 

What we want to focus on is how to make these changes work for us rather than fight against us. Instead of crying in our coffee over algorithms and reprioritized news feeds, let’s choose to say, “Ok, these are the changes. How can I adapt and pivot to make these changes enhance what I’m already doing?”

 

According to Facebook Newsroom, in order to have your page shown in the News Feed the page’s posts must “prompt conversations between friends.” That means between people and people they know — not people and the page. Posts that people don’t react to — even video — will see the biggest decline.

 

Facebook can afford to do this because the newsfeed is overcrowded and they can pick and choose what goes into the feed. So in other words, the cream will rise to the top. As I’ve been learning and experiencing and teaching fellow musicians — regardless of what the algorithms are doing –– the key to success on Facebook is to post better content that make people want to engage. This has never been more important than now.

 

What we should do

 

I’m going to share what you should stop doing and start doing –– effective immediately.

 

STOP scheduling every single post.

In the past it was well known that posting more times a day allowed more people to see and interact with our pages, since people are on and off Facebook at different hours. The standard social media recommendation was to post up to ten times per day, or every few hours. This became rather daunting for musicians and artists, so many of us turned to scheduling apps like Hootsuite, Edgar, Buffer, PostPlanner, and others. While it may still be useful to schedule certain posts, Facebook is hinting that spontaneous posts which elicit meaningful discussion will be shown in the feed. Take the hint.

 

START being more spontaneous.

I will schedule 1-2 posts per day (if that), and make sure that each post is more meaningful, entertaining, inquisitive, or somehow conversation-stimulating to my fans. Beyond that, I will post spontaneous “mini blog-type” posts, personal thoughts, more text, and photos that I think will resonate with the culture I’m creating around my music. I also pay attention to the pages I’ve liked in my own news feed, and whenever I find something amusing, thought-provoking, or entertaining, I often will spontaneously post that to my page on the spur of the moment. I believe this will really work well if you’re posting often, at least every day. If you’re only posting once per month, I don’t think anything is going to work for you. You must be present, and more importantly — you must be relevant.

 

STOP posting links to your website and music shop.

Anytime you post a link to your website, music shop, even iTunes — the reach is abysmal. Facebook definitely punishes posts that try to take people off of Facebook and try to get people to do something like buy a song. Even posts that are just a photo (which worked really amazing for a while) are being demoted. My best guess is Facebook sees it as self-serving and one-way. It’s almost the equivalent of walking up to strangers in a mall and shouting “Buy my stuff! Buy my stuff!” It just doesn’t go over well. Facebook wants their virtual community to be more like a real-life community. We would never normally walk up to someone and just say, “Here’s my website.” That would be weird and inappropriate. Instead, in real life, we get to know people. We find out what we have in common and develop rapport. Then later on, we talk about what we do for work and perhaps tell them about our website if they are interested or ask. That’s what Facebook is going for.

 

START doing more live videos.

Those of us who have already been experimenting with live video already know the power it brings along with the increased engagement and reach. Last summer I did a seemingly boring Facebook Live video from my home office/studio that lasted just over forty minutes. When I ended the video, I was shocked to see the reach was just over a quarter of a million people. This happened due to the simple and sheer fact that I titled my video as a specific question. By doing this, it elicited responses from my fans, and because my page is public, when my fans commented on my video, their activity showed up in the newsfeed of their networks. I hope that makes sense. You’ve probably seen this: you’re scrolling in your feed and see that your friend commented on another page. That’s all it is. But it only happens when the page is public, as opposed to when users comment on someone’s private personal page, which does not show up in your newsfeed or in the feed of their friends. So get people interacting with your live videos! Live videos get 6x the engagement of normal videos. You’re going see how much this helps. And when it comes to promoting our music and merchandise? Plug it in your live video. While there are several other ways that have helped me generate an annual six-figure income from music sales, this is one way I’ve found to be very effective.

 

STOP being a spectator on Facebook.

I get it: many of us creatives are introverts and not big risk-takers. We prefer to read and observe and carefully weigh what’s going on behind the scenes rather than be in the spotlight. It’s well known that artists struggle with the introvert/extrovert thing. Many of us have to force ourselves to get into character in order to pull off being the center of attention (and probably why many of the greats of yesteryear turned to alcohol and drugs to pull off things they did for years on stage). Fast forward to 2018: you cannot remain a social media recluse if you want to cultivate a fanbase and culture that results in a sustainable living.  If you’re not willing to come into the spotlight just a bit — even behind a computer or mobile screen — and show who you are, what you stand for, and the kind of culture your music represents — then you’re finished. End of story. Good-bye.

 

START building a culture around your music.

This is something I’ve been working hard at for the past year with my own music brand. It’s a huge topic that many have not really tapped into yet. Whenever someone says the word “brand,” musicians tend to think of their logo. Not so. Your brand is what people think and say about your music when you’re not around. Your brand is essentially people’s perception, which often comes down to a gut feeling. That makes it sound kind of esoteric or mystical compared to what we’re used to, but think of it in terms of first impressions, and it starts to make more sense. Once on my Facebook page, I asked my fans what word first popped into their heads when they thought of me and my music. I posted it along with a photo I wanted them to associate me with. The feedback was the most valuable data I could’ve ever asked for. I was able to go out and build a music brand around their perceptions, which was based off of single words! When you have a culture, you have a community and this is exactly what Facebook wants. What’s a music culture? In short, it’s a common theme or idea that brings people together. Culture and community are synonymous. I like to think of social media platforms as my own personal magazine that you’d buy from Barnes and Nobles. Only my music is the soundtrack. So, picture the images, the articles, the opinions, the politics, the worldview that your personal magazine would have… and you’ll attract more people just like you. Your music becomes the soundtrack of their life.

 

A few other things to consider with these changes:

 

Start a Facebook group around your music culture.

Both Zuckerberg and the Facebook Newsroom mentioned groups several times, and that meaningful conversations happening within groups will be promoted to the top of the news feed. Make it a community-centric focus. I’ve already started a group for my page where people can post things related to my music and the culture that surrounds it. The nice thing is that when you do have something to promote (say, 10% of the time), your members will actually see it.

 

Train your following to click on the “See First” button on your page.

Create some screenshots or a 30-second video on where that button is on your page, and let your following know about the changes and that if they don’t want to miss important details from you, to make sure they click that “See First” button.

 

Building your email list is more important than ever.

If you thought email was dead, think again. It’s for reasons exactly like this that I continue to build my list year-round. Anytime I release a new single or have anything share-worthy — I make sure I milk it. I use videos, advertising, and my social platforms to get as many new email addresses as possible. That way, no matter what happens on Facebook or any platform — I can still communicate and promote to my own unique audience — and no one can take that away. I will still continue to build my Facebook page and other platforms as long as they are effective, but I will also be very aggressive in the coming year with building my list.

 

Learning how to advertise on Facebook will become essential.

Aside from learning to build a tight-knit culture and community around your music, advertising is the next, and maybe even more important, task to learn.  You do need to know what you’re doing so you don’t waste your money. I always tell people though, that before you start spending money on paid traffic, master free traffic. If what you’re doing isn’t getting you any results with organic traffic, throwing money at it won’t help.

 

 

Thank you for reading this post, I hope it helps you navigate these sometimes scary changes. If you felt this was helpful or informative, please leave a comment and share this with your friends!

 

For more strategies on creating a sustainable living from your music, follow me on Facebook (and click the “See First” button!) where I do regular Facebook Live videos and share my journey with you.

Musicians, don’t fret: get savvy and let’s crush 2018.

 

 

 

[1] https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571

[2] https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/

Top 10 Social Tools for Musicians That Helped Me Build a 6-Figure Music Business

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 There’s a million-zillion tools and apps out there, and 99.9% of the time, they don’t actually move the needle for us musicians.

This is a list of my top go-to tools that I constantly use that DO SOMETHING to help grow my music business. Some of them are big, some of them are small – but they get me where I want to go, time and time again.

 

1. CANVA.COM

A free social graphics maker. This toolis amazing!! Even if you are terrible at graphics (and really, I do believe you should hire a professional!), but you need a new Facebook banner or Instagram photo in a pinch and make it look like a pro did it…. This is your tool. They even have tutorials to help you get better at doing graphics. I use this multiple times per week, depending on what I’m doing in social media.

 

2. ADOBE SPARK

Really awesome video clip maker you can use for social media. You can do a slide show, images, or video with your own music, and upload to Facebook and other social platforms. It’s one of those tools you can definitely lose several hours playing around and having fun with!

 

3. POST PLANNER

One of the cheapest and easiest-to-use social media schedulers. It also helps you find new content to post, including popular articles, quotes, and images. It’s around $10 at the basic level. Pretty great!

 

4. FACEBOOK LIVE

NOTHING – and I mean NOTHING – will get you more reach and engagement like posting a live streaming video on Facebook. Don’t have a following yet? Don’t have fans? USE THIS free tool and sing or play live!! Make sure you go live on a professional page, and not your personal profile — then ask people if they liked what they heard to share or tag a friend…. Incredibly powerful.

 

5. FACEBOOK PAGES APP

This is really an essential free app I use multiple times per day to manage my Facebook page. You probably know I preach against using your personal profile for you music as it doesn’t benefit you whatsoever. This pages app helps you manage, post, and go live right on your page, as well as answer any incoming messages from fans. A must-have!

 

6. FACEBOOK POLLS

A really fun tool I use from time to time to ask my fans questions or get feedback on something, especially if I have decisions to make. I recently polled my fans on what kinds of items they’d like to see in my merch shop! I had hundreds and hundreds of responses. And it made my life so much easier when it came time to decide what to add next!

 

7. EVERNOTE

What would I do without this app in my life?? The number of notes I have is astonishing. I write everything this thing. From to-do lists, vacation details, to jumbled song lyrics, planning out my next album launch, and image clips from around the web I want to come back to. I use both the full version on all my computers, and of course I have it synced with the mobile app on my phone. I also use this daily!

 

8. DROPBOX

What musician can live without Drop- box? I keep ALL my important files in my Dropbox! I also try to stay extreme- ly organized by having a master folder for one thing, and then sub-folders, and then numbered sub-folders, so they appear in order.

For example:

So you can see, it’s good to have a system when you’re trying to find things! I have many folders that look like this, including for Photos, Social Media images, Videos, and more.

 

9. MAILCHIMP

Email is an asset, and Mailchimp is by far the easiest Customer Relations Management tool to use on earth. If you don’t have an email list, you’re missing out on SO MUCH as a musician or artist. This is how I maintain relationships with my fans and make a large portion of my music sales.

 

10. GETEMOJI.COM

My go-to resource for emojis when I’m writing fan emails, campaigns, or writing high-converting Facebook ads. I can copy/paste any emoji I want that makes sense and enhances my message.

XOX, Leah

 

For in-depth strategies on how to launch and market an album online, please see this introductory workshop to Leah’s full Online Musician program:

Why I Recently Deleted My SoundCloud Account

Savvy Musician Academy, the online musician, Leah mchenry, facebook for musicians, music career marketing, soundcloud

On the go? Listen to the audio version below!

You might be thinking to yourself, “What the heck, Leah? Why would you do that?”  After all, there are 175 MILLION SoundCloud users, and ten million of them are music creators.

 

So why on earth would I limit myself and my ability to give all these users access to my music?

 

One word: ROI.

 

OK, that’s technically three, because it stands for Return On Investment.

 

In one sentence: I never made a dime on SoundCloud.

 

As a musician whose goal is to make a living with my music, I found SoundCloud useless.

 

I’ve had these conversations with several of my students in the past. One, in particular, tried to argue with me. She said:

‘”Leah, I have over a MILLION listens on this one track!”

“Great!” I told her. “How many email subscribers did you get from that?”

“None.”

“How much money did you make from that?”

“None.”

“And do you have a way to contact all these new, raving fans who love this new track so much, so they can visit your website and buy your album, or maybe some merch, in the future?”

“Nope.”

 

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So, you see, I’m having to show people over and over again that, despite them saying they want to make a living in the new music industry, they are actually more obsessed with their EGO and the number of listens they get.

Those two goals are NOT synonymous.

 

I propose to you two options:

 

  1. You care about your ego and the surface number of likes/listens/fans
  2.  You care about making your music sustainable and making a decent living
     

One of those two can be true, but they can’t both be true.

 

SoundCloud is not evil, and there’s nothing wrong if you want to be on there. . . HOWEVER,  my challenge to you is, if you’re going to put your music up for free somewhere, do it with a specific strategy in mind.

 

Do everything purposefully and intentionally.

 

OK, so your music is on SoundCloud. WHY?
What’s your strategy for that?

Or your music is on YouTube. WHY?
What’s your strategy for THAT?

What’s the purpose?

 

As of right now, there’s no way to monetize your music on SoundCloud. They will be rolling out a new program in the future that apparently will allow monetization through ads, similar to YouTube’s ads.

 

That’s because they know artists can’t succeed on their platform, so why should they stay? That monetization program is not rolled out to the public yet, so, for now, I have no use for it,, and I have not found my fans there.

 

Where have I found my fans, and where have I found a good ROI?

 

That would be Facebook. Love it or hate it, there are two billion people there, and, without a doubt, YOUR fans are there too.

 

Every interest, every book club, every film, even local police and government agencies are on Facebook. It is not going away.

 

Now, a return on investment means that when I invest my time, my energy, or my money, I get MORE back than I put in. That’s how you know something’s profitable.

Facebook gives me that. I get new fans every single day – some of them are superfans – and I make new sales every single day from this one platform, which is why I spend 98% of my time there.

 

Now, I am a big proponent of being a big fish in a small pond and the idea that you don’t need millions of fans and followers to be successful.

But there is one thing that is very important on social media if you want to really build some momentum. That is, you need something called social proof.

 

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Social proof is the surface evidence that you are indeed legit. Despite the fact that there are thousands and thousands of AMAZING musicians and bands out there, if they don’t have the “proof” that they’re amazing, they’ll get ignored.

So I am not saying numbers are irrelevant; I am just MORE concerned with quality over quantity.

At the end of the day, we do need social proof, no matter if it’s just a few hundred people who think our music is the best thing since sliced bread, or tens of thousands.

The fact remains you need SOME social proof.

 

How to Get Social Proof

One way I’ve been building social proof is by allowing reviews on my Facebook page. It’s very similar to Amazon.com, where people give you a star rating from 1 to 5, based on how they feel about you, and they can also write text.

The reason this is powerful is that you cannot edit or delete these reviews! It’s very organic and raw.

This might feel a little risky to you at first if you’re not feeling confident about your music yet, but, in my opinion, it’s the most powerful form of social proof you can have.

When you do a search for my music page, this is what you see in the search results:

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At the time of this post, I have over 1,500 four- and five-star reviews on my music page! This is really incredible and, if you read through them, they are all raving fans.

You cannot BUY reviews. This is 100% raw and organic.

This is what you need to build organic momentum on your page. Because, when people leave you a review or give you a star rating, guess what happens?

That activity shows up in their newsfeed, and whoever took that action just broadcasted that to their entire network. Do you know what you’ll get from that? More followers.

It’s like word-of-mouth marketing on steroids.

There are a few things you’ll need to know, if you want to start getting this viral social proof on your page, to make sure you have it set up right.

I created a free PDF to show you step-by-step how to do this, so you can start getting an ROI for the time and effort you DO put into your music. After all, if you’ve read this far, I know for a fact you ARE legit and your MUSIC is legit, and now we need to make sure your Facebook page reflects that.

 

Get your Facebook Reviews feature set up properly here:

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Why finding your musical NICHE is the difference between failure & success online

Savvy Musician Academy, the online musician, Leah mchenry, facebook for musicians, music career marketing, music industry education

 

On the go? Listen to the audio version of this post below!

One of the most frequent questions I get is, “Leah, how do I get my music to stand out?” 

That’s a VERY good question, and the right one to ask, now that we’re in the digital age of the internet, streaming, Spotify, and the like.

It’s a vast ocean of music out there, some amazing, some mediocre, and a lot of not-so-good stuff.

It’s gotten to the point that we’re dealing with a lot of white noise, and every musician is competing for the same eyes and ears!

As competition becomes more fierce and the internet becomes a more crowded place, there’s really only one breed of musician that will succeed, and that is those who have a strategy in place.

We’re going to steal the best strategy used by other online businesses. It’s called Niche Marketing. 

 

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WHAT’S A NICHE, YOU SAY?

A niche is a specialized market.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s start with a huge market: canned beverages.

From there, we go into a niche: a carbonated beverage.
From there, we go into a smaller sub-niche: energy drinks.
From there, we go into a micro-niche: sugar-free, all-natural, herbal energy drinks.

 

This is exactly what we will do to be successful and stand out in the OCEAN of the internet.

We’re going to determine our micro-niche

We start with our largest genre and then work our way down.

 

WHY DO I NEED A NICHE AND HOW DOES IT HELP?

It comes down to this:

You can either be a small fish in a large pond, or you can be THE BIG FISH in a small pond. 

Which do you want to be?

 

Which do you think is easier to become successful in? An ocean or a little pond?

Now you might wonder how this works if you have a popular, more mainstream genre.

Well, that’s indeed a very good question.

The same question could be asked if you were in the beverage industry and you wanted to make another carbonated drink. WHY do people need another energy drink?

 

You always start by answering the question of what is UNIQUE and DIFFERENT about that new product.

 

The same goes for your music.

 

SMA1

Does the world need another Coca-Cola? Probably not. But it does want new ways to consume canned beverages that are more healthy and that they enjoy just as much.

In the same way, we can solve a similar problem.

 

GIMME AN EXAMPLE

OK, say you make mainstream pop music.

Maybe all the pop music out there right now is boring or predictable.

Say you have a unique voice or play an instrument that is not typically used in pop, or perhaps you have some unique lyrics.

So maybe you combine pop with a few distinctive middle-eastern instruments that people don’t typically hear.

NOW you’ve got something with a twist that will perk ears up!

Perhaps your fans tell you it sounds like “World Pop” to them…

…OK, now we’re getting somewhere…

And maybe besides the catchy melodies and beats you typically hear in pop and your unique middle-eastern instruments, you also sing about certain topics that aren’t as typical.

Now people will associate you with more than just pop and beats they’ve heard before.

Does this make sense?

When you know your micro-niche, not only will people find you SO MUCH FASTER, but finding fans who are more than willing to become BUYING fans becomes exponentially easier. 

Why? Because they are true fans.

 

When you dig into a micro-niche, you either create a new market, or you home in on an existing one that tends to attract SUPERFANS.

And when you have superfans, making a living is very easy, doable, realistic, and achievable.

 

FOR THE RECORD…

Full disclosure: I did not know what my micro-niche was when I released my first album.

I just sort of released it without thinking about it. Luckily for me, I had intuitively combined my favorite flavors and influences to create a unique combination that worked for me as soon as I started to learn about niche marketing.

However, if you have already created music, it can become very tough to go back after the fact and figure out if you have a niche.

What I would rather have you do is consider what you already have, then consider what kind of music you’re currently making, and then consider where you might want to go with it. 

With that in mind, start looking at similar bands in your genre to find out if you’re making music too similar to them.

 

THE ULTIMATE QUESTION YOU MUST ANSWER

The ONE question you need to ask yourself is:  what’s my twist?

OK, so I make this kind of music. But what’s my TWIST on that?

 

What is the answer to that?

Well, that’s where the hard work comes in.

 

But once you dig in and start to home in on that, it will make ALL the difference between being a needle in a giant haystack…and being the haystack itself!

 

…It’s a tough question, I know.

We can go back and forth on it for years, but it’s often much simpler than you think.

 

HOW I FOUND MY MICRO-NICHE

For me, I took my biggest influences, which were quite diverse – European Heavy Metal and Celtic/New Age artists (like Enya) – and I squished them together and they had a baby:  my music. Haha! 

I also had a few fans and asked them what THEY thought. This was an important factor to consider, since I didn’t quite know what to call the music I made.

They repeatedly told me:

> Celtic Metal
> World Metal
> Symphonic Metal
> Fantasy Metal

….and other similar things. Now, they didn’t all say in perfect unison one specific adjective, but it started tilting me and directing me toward a certain niche.

 

I now call what I do Celtic Fantasy Metal. 

 

 

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THE KEY TO REMEMBER

The important thing about niches is that MOST of the time they already exist.

I didn’t make up a string of adjectives and then say, “Hey, guys! My micro-niche is red-flowers-moody-pop-chicken-dance-groove-blues.”

Uh, no.

A micro-niche is not a list of what you wish you were or a mood you’re in.

99% of the time, it’s a real niche that already exists.

You can tell because, when you type it into a YouTube search bar, songs and playlists with that exact title come up!

 

That’s a sure-fire way to know your niche is real.

 

THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE

There’s always that rebellious little bugger who has to break all the rules and make up something ridiculously cool that doesn’t exist yet.  (I’m kidding!)

 

Take, for example, these guys (who I just realized are on the same label as me – small world).

They even made a video “meme” out of their strange little micro-niche. They’re calling it “Dwarven Metal”.

I think it’s pretty obvious what it is before you even press the play button. 
Think Lord of the Rings. Think elves, trolls, hobbits……and dwarves.

So they didn’t just identify with a fantasy movie; they’ve gone much, much deeper and identified their music, brand, image, and lyrics with a mythical race! 

And if you think this might be too risky and you might be cutting out too much of the market…at the time of my writing this post, this video has gotten 3.5 million views in just over a month on Facebook!

 

THERE IS POWER IN GOING SMALLER

I hope this little article has opened your mind to the fact that it’s not all about becoming world-famous. It’s all about becoming famous within your micro-niche.

YES. This is how you stand out, how you get noticed, how you attract the RIGHT kinds of fans to you, who will ultimately BUY.

Welcome to the New Music Industry, where you have the power within yourself to “make it”.

 

Download today’s freebie on how YOU can find YOUR microniche! A simple PDF to help you narrow it down. Enjoy!

 

 

SMA1