There’s an interesting concept in music that I think a lot of people like to avoid like the plague: marketing in music. I think that a lot of artists tend to believe that they have to make music for the love of it. That in NO WAY can they think about how they’re going to actually sell it, or else they would be “selling out”. First of all I’m not even quite sure what “selling out” means. If you want to make music as a hobby that’s great and good for you for sure. But don’t think for one second that because you’re not selling, that you haven’t sold out.
Selling out is a concept that changes in description depending on who you ask. If selling out is about making music to make money, does that mean that you’re equally selling out by refusing to involve marketing in your music making process? You’re basically selling out to the idea of making money from your music. But don’t you think that selling music should be a part of your music process?
Your music might not be marketable. If you’re asking yourself whether or not your music is going to do well, you should first ask yourself what exactly makes your music unique and special when compared to other artists? Making great music about the topics you personally want to shed light on is part of the process. You should feel free to make music about whatever topic you want, and you definitely don’t have to succumb to creating music just for the radio. You don’t have to do that at all, and when I talk about marketable music I am certainly not talking about the radio.
On the radio you hear a lot of music that sounds a lot like the next song that’ll come on. There’s tons of similarities and so trying to sound like them doesn’t exactly make your music marketable. It’s much more about what makes your album or song stand out from others in the same field.
The THEME of your music, meaning the topics you write about and how you write about them, is what makes your music marketable. You should be appealing to a certain niche audience so you can promote the song easily in those niche settings. A song about gay rights would gain a lot of traction easily if promoting to the right social groups, such as Facebook groups and others.
The same goes if you make a song about racial discrimination, cops in America or around the world, or virtually any other topic that has major traction in today’s trending topics. You can find ideas on what groups you want to make songs about by going to Google Trends and figuring out what people are searching for on a daily basis. But this kind of niche marketing research is what’s going to separate your music from countless others.
