WRAP YOUR ART IN THE MAGIC IT DESERVES
Don't leave your marketing and branding to soulless corporations
There are 1,000 moving parts in our world of music and design and art, and not one person has the map. If they did, they’d be rich beyond measure.
Let’s detour our “email marketing thing” away from the analytics and the stats for a minute (it’s October, after all), and surrender to the magic 🎃
I started working with photographer Gino DePinto in 2009 when I was running Noisecreep. Back then he was an intern with AOL Music. This dude toured with Korn and Sevendust when he was in a band called Dragpipe back in the day.
Dude is the sweetest, most humble, driven guy I know.
That was his magic.
Eventually Gino wasn’t an intern anymore, and these days he’s a hot shot Senior Photographer / Creative Specialist at Yahoo.
Yes, he takes great photos, but his MAGIC propelled him to where he is today.
Every band, artist, and celebrity we had come into that office, he put them at ease, got them laughing, and that made everyone’s jobs a million times easier.
What’s this got to do with your music, or your art?
Well, we’re all capable of our own magic, and that’s (hopefully) how we get places.
Jobs. Tours. Gigs. All that stuff.
It’s our relationships with the people we meet, in and around our particular path of our own heavy metal adventure.
This isn’t about open rates, impressions, CTAs, or any of the tech-hacks that anyone might try to sell you.
This isn’t about what camera you use, or plugin, or what school you went to.
This is about the magic of your music, which deserve much more love than whatever the fuck Apple Music is doing here:
This is about treating music videos as something valuable and sacred instead of a rectangle covered with pre-roll ads, and surrounded by algorithmically served distractions.
I get it, yes, you gotta be in those places, but you deserve more.
You can build your own magical kingdom with your art and music and design as the main attraction.
Set up a website, and have a dedicated page for every music video. Include the hand-written notes, the behind the scenes photos, the video bloopers, or whatever it is that aligns with your artistic direction.
And (ahem) include links for people to buy a shirt or cassette.
We think nothing of feeding the social media networks with all the behind the scenes magic, right? You can still do that, but don’t give it all to Twitter or Instagram.
Put those magical items on your own website, where it will serve and uplift everything you’re doing.
“Yeah, but Seth, no one goes to our website,” you say.
Well, what reason do they have to visit these days? Have you compared your site and what it’s offering to the thousands of photos you’ve uploaded to Instagram over the years? To the thousands of words and wit that you dumped on Twitter and Facebook for a decade?
Again I’m sharing this Tweet, because it should be our battle cry over the next few months heading into 2023:
“Have a dedicated website. Have an email list.”
It will be a rough year if all you’ve got is a seldom-updated Twitter account and DSPs with outdated band photos.
So share who you are in your space, with your own branding, with your our sense of style.
Do it on your socials, and lead your fans to your website, and your newsletter (so you can keep in touch).
Put your finest gems and photos and stories on your website. Go deeper, connect, and surround your work with the care and love it deserves.
QUICK BITS:
“Keep ignoring feedback and life will keep teaching you the same lesson."
From Atomic Habits author James Clear, from a recent 3-2-1 newsletter.
“There’s this tendency within the media industry to simply publish a piece of content, blast it out to all of your channels, and then move on to producing the next piece of content. The underlying theory is that those within your audience who are actually interested in the content will click on it and consume it.
That logic is heavily flawed.
From ‘Are you doing enough to recycle your evergreen content?’ Most of your fans don’t know about your older music, your online store, or your background. Don’t keep that shit a secret.
“As soon as you send something out into the virtual world, you’re sort of sitting on pins and needles waiting for a response. That alone—that kind of expectancy—is a state of hyperarousal. How will people respond to this? When will they respond? What will they say?”
From ‘The High Cost of Living Your Life Online’ at Wired (via Mimi).
GOOD TWEETS:
You make videos and art and music and magic - hey, so does AI now, too! This very minute, right now, what are you making that a computer can’t?
People are busy, and even your most devoted fans are gonna miss your last minute promo.
The year is winding down, so let’s get ready for more “touching base” and “wrap up” meetings!
DUE BY FRIDAY:
Need a kick in the butt? Here you go: