These are the Essential Assets you need to Promote your Music Career
To match the level of quality found in modern media, there are a few skills and tricks to market their music successfully. Dayna Young of Fred and Augustus and FANDA offers a guide,
by Dayna Young of Fred and Augustus and FANDA
Connecting the dots between how you sound and the visual aesthetic you present is an incredibly important marketing tool for musicians. We live in a visual age. Therefore, if you don’t have a visual identity that aligns with your sound, there’s every chance you’re losing potential fans and not gaining them. If you want to stay ahead, you need visual content to market your music to your desired audience. These are the essential assets you need to promote your music career.
- Video in 2021 was predicted to be more than 82% of online traffic.
- Content shared with images receives more views and shares than non-image-related content. Think of any online group you’re in where someone will post about a topic and add an “image for visibility” on their post.
- Images are proven to help your marketing convert.
The five most basic essential assets you’re going to need are:
- Artwork
- Still shots
- Video content
- Logo
- Typography, fonts, brand guidelines, or color palette
Then, depending on what you’re promoting (for example, a song versus a tour), some common general assets produced from this list above include:
- Website design
- Single or album art
- Tour poster
- Social skins
- Music Video
- Visualizers
- Animated videos
- Lyric videos
- Song Commentary (a short video that explains the meaning behind your song)
- Behind-the-scenes photo or video
- Livestream
- Trailers
- Interviews
- Tour diaries
- Gifs or memes
What you create and implement as part of your marketing campaign will depend entirely on what you are promoting. If you’re promoting a new song, you might have a lyric video, a music video, your single art, a song commentary, behind-the-scenes still photos or video, and an artist interview. When you head out on tour to promote the single, your content might shift into a trailer, interview, or tour diary, to name just a few options.
Tools
Chances are you are marketing your release on a limited budget. which means you’ll need to be savvy with how and where you spend your time and money. There are a number of ways you can create much of the content listed here in a cost-effective way. Let’s look at some of the options, including what they do (as described by the companies themselves).
Image Creation Tools
- Adobe Spark: “Adobe Spark is an integrated suite of media creation applications for mobile and web developed by Adobe Systems.” It comprises three separate design apps: Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video.
- Canva: “Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content.” The app includes templates for users to use. The platform is free to use and offers paid subscriptions such as Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality.
- Image Quote: Image Quote is a mobile app (for both iOS and Android) that helps you add words to a graphic background, creating a new image asset.
Video Creation Tools
- iMovie: “With iMovie for iOS and macOS, you can enjoy your videos like never before.” It’s easy to browse your clips and create Hollywood-style trailers and stunning visual clips.
- Animaker: a “do-it-yourself video animation software.”It allows users to create animated videos using pre-built characters and templates”.
- TikTok: a video-focused social networking service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts a variety of short-form user videos from genres like dance, comedy, and education, with durations from 15 seconds to three minutes. You can create your content in the app (and use their photo and video editing tools) or off-app and upload it directly to your account.
- Instagram: a “photo and video sharing social networking service.” Much like TikTok, you can create your content in the app (and use their photo and video editing tools) or off-app and upload it directly to your account.
Animation Tools
- Boomerang: “Create captivating mini videos that loop back and forth, then share them with your friends,” according to the app’s description on Instagram. You can export these boomerangs and use them on other platforms as social media content.
Meme Creation Tools
- iMeme: a “meme generator for Windows and Mac that lets you quickly add captions to popular internet memes.”
GIF Creation Tools
- Ezgif: a simple online GIF maker and toolset for basic animated GIF editing; you can create, resize, crop, reverse, optimize, and apply effects.
- Giphy: an “online database and search engine that allows users to search for and share short looping videos with no sound that resemble animated GIF files.”
Other Resources
- Lyric Videos: Fiverr or Facebook Groups can be great places to find low-cost lyric videos.
- Song Commentary: Ensure you film yourself horizontally and centered in the frame, then use iMovie to do any light editing needed and to cut your horizontal footage into a vertical asset for use in stories, reels, or other 16:9 aspect ratios.
Content and asset creation are two of the most important aspects of marketing your brand and your music. What you talk about should be visually supported at all times, and that means you’ll need a range of these assets to do so. In fact, having a strong, visually appealing aesthetic will go a long way toward aligning your brand with your sound, helping to ensure the first impression that potential new fans have of your brand is a harmonic and cohesive one.
Dayna Young is a music marketer with 10+ years of global experience in music, entertainment, and leading creative teams to success. As the Founder of Fred & Augustus, and FANDA she provides marketing resources for artists seeking to grow their online profile and engagement, with a focus on developing existing and new revenue streams. Ultimately, what gets her out of bed in the morning is the knowledge that she’s creating opportunities for artists.
