Social commenting to make a hit song
Over the past few months, we’ve seen multiple figures within the industry complain that the music industry is no longer profitable, and they wish it could go back to how it used to be. In reality, it’s more profitable than ever before. With brand partnerships and Facebook advertising for events taking centre stage, it comes as no surprise that we’re undergoing a shift in the landscape of social media and the overall entertainment industry. Therefore in this article, we’re going to discuss how to use relevancy and social commentating as a way to build your fanbase and create a hit song.
Over the past few years, multiple musicians/producers within the entertainment industry have “popped” simply because they were in the soundtrack of an influencers YouTube video or collaborated with them on a project. After all, they were strategic and placed their tracks where the attention of the end consumer was. In order to achieve something similar, I suggest mapping out a list of video genres that your music would suit. For example, tropical house music works great with travel videos in a tropical destination. Then, get in contact with several hundred influencers offering to use your music in their videos. If the piece of content goes viral, your music does as well (think of “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd as an example). It’s that simple.
Now more than ever, artists are able to make $10k, $100k, or even more simply off the back of Spotify streams and brand deals. With opportunities like that laying around, it’s pretty hard to claim that there’s no money in the industry anymore. There’s no requirement to work a “normal job” in order to financially sustain your passion. Instead, it’s simple economics: network with the right people and have talent in order to generate wealth. If you want to become relevant within the music industry, you first have to be on platforms that your audience cares about. For example, if the majority of your fanbase is under 20, consider getting accounts on Snapchat, Musical.ly, and Instagram, and collaborating with influencers on those platforms to build your following. Likewise, commenting on relevant topics within your music is a great way to gain attention. One of the best examples is Mashd N Kutcher. By remixing trending topics such as “Mans Not Hot” and “Shooting Stars”, they catapulted their music into the spotlight of the music industry. As a direct result of their remixes being featured by lots of viral pages, their following grew to over 1.2 million Facebook fans.
If you wanted to become relevant within the general social media community, it is highly recommended to collaborate with influencers regularly featured on viral pages such as “Unilad” and channels on the YouTube trending page. After all, in a world dominated by a mobile society, that’s where the attention is. People are on their phones whilst commuting, in class, at work, in the kitchen, and pretty much everywhere for that matter. If you’re a singer, you could even use the Facebook livestream feature to do a mini-concert for all of your fans. During the broadcast, do a few covers of trending topics so that people understand your relevancy, and thus share it because it’s entertaining. Essentially, you want to deepen the relationship between yourself and the fans and create engaging content that attracts new fans towards your music.
Right now on the news, there are multiple stories about the potential summit between North Korea and the USA. What’s stopping you from making a related song about peace between the two countries and then using Facebook’s targeting tool to target the YouTube link towards people in the United States and South Korea? That’s just an example – but the same concept applies to pretty much anything: content & effective distribution.