The Power of 3: How to Get People’s Attention
Now that you know your story (your brand personality and identity), have thought about your image (which should have helped you to establish your brand values), and you’ve attempted to encapsulate what that image means with a logo (the iconic representation that stands in for your story), it’s time to think more about how to deliver that content and share it with the world.
Your delivery is an enormous part of your branding, and the message it sends dictates how people judge its authenticity. That’s why you need an amazing band photoshoot, one-sheet, electronic press kit, band website, social media page/account (apart from your personal page), and two different band biographies (one short and one longer). YouTube is the No. 1 music discovery platform on the internet, so if you make music, you need to be on YouTube. You also need to investigate SEO (search engine optimization) services; this is the first step you should take to ensure that your music, photographs, website, and artist content can be found by search engines like Google.
I meet very talented musicians all the time who make beautiful and engaging music that deserves to be heard, and their only strategy to get people to hear it is to upload or publish it on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal Music, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, or a ton of other music streaming services. These are all equally great services to upload music to. But for people to really make the decision to listen to your song, they usually have to run into it in more than one place to be convinced that it’s relevant. Even then, they’ll have to choose it over a song they virtually cannot escape on the radio, TV, their favorite Netflix series, magazines, blogs, and in the overall culture of the larger entertainment industry.
Tagging all your friends on social media probably won’t get it done.
Sending unsolicited direct messages with just a link will likely get you ignored or blocked.
But don’t get upset! It’s not that people don’t want to listen, it’s just that music probably serves a different utility for them than it does you.
How to Stand Out
They listen to music when they want to dance or have fun, on their drive to work, when they have friends over on the weekends, or when they’re out at the bar or at a restaurant. They use music as a tool, or they run into music when it’s on the radio or in an ad on TV. You, on the other hand, probably make music because you have a more visceral, emotional connection to its content.
You’re an artist, so music is the soundtrack to life and you see it has a larger purpose.
Unfortunately, a lot of what people consider “good” is a kind of manufactured consensus. People often seem to call something “good” when there’s a general and overall agreement on what is valued or worth listening to (this a very circular concept).
I know that’s disappointing and there’s a lot of groupthink involved; however, many people read blogs and magazines and consume other media in order to lead them in the right direction. If you want to differentiate yourself from all of the other artists simply uploading their music, then the people who come in contact with your work (even the doubters and naysayers) will likely have to see it in more than one place. Wherever they see it, it will need to be shared by someone who isn’t you, and that person will need to value or authenticate your work by telling others your art is worth their time.
This leads me to The Rule of Three, or the Power of Three, which suggests that things that come in threes are more satisfying, more effective, and/or more memorable than other numbers of things (Carlson & Shu, 2007).
The Power of 3
When a writer is writing a story, repeating an element three times within the story makes it stand out to the reader better than just once or twice. The first time, the reader might notice the repetition but make no connection. The second time, the recurring element distinguishes itself, but the reader thinks it could be considered coincidence rather than thematic. By the third repetition, the reader recognizes the return of the element as central to whatever plot is being developed.
Make no mistake, people learn to value your music because they see other people valuing it. People make sense of your art by telling themselves a story about how “good” or successful you and your brand are.
Even if someone runs into your work in one place (say, on Facebook or in a tweet) and considers it impressive, they still might not think of you as an authentic artist. To them, you might just be a person who created a song that happened to appear on their social media timeline or streaming feed.
To take that next step, they might need to see your song shared and written about on a respectable music blog, talked about on a podcast or college radio show, and then hear it one more time in-person as you perform it at their favorite bar. Now, when they see it appear with thousands of likes as they scroll through their social media, something has clearly changed. If the relationship they had with your music was a movie playing on the big screen, they would have crossed paths with the same literary element three times but in three different ways, which establishes what we call a theme (also known as a controlling idea).
An interesting paradox begins to emerge: you’ll likely only begin getting local love when someone says something good about you nationally. That’s because most people don’t trust their own instincts, and other outlets help them confirm your authenticity. Tastemakers are given that name because they manufacture consensus – they give shape to majority opinions and provide people the right to think of things as aesthetically pleasing. Outside of sheer popularity, there must be some aesthetic value that offers competition to the status quo. After all, most of us know that what is popular is not always good and what is good is not always popular.
What you’re up against is staggering, because in all likelihood you’re competing with labels who pour a lot of money into making sure that everywhere you turn, you see and hear their artists before anything else. If you can’t afford to be plastered on a billboard, can’t place your songs where people will hear them (let alone on your local radio station), and don’t know who to contact to get that interview/freestyle on “Sway in the Morning,” you’re put at a disadvantage no matter how talented you might be.
In other words, you’re going to have to work harder for your credibility.
First Things First
Before you send your music anywhere, you’ll need some professional band photos that make sense with the story you want to tell about your brand. To get that gig at the bar, you’ll need an electronic press kit and a one-sheet. To get that blog to write about you, you’ll need two biographies as well as a press blurb and press release explaining what your song is about and how the release fits into a bigger project, such as an album or EP. Either that or you’ll need to hire a publicist (which most of the time is worth it but will cost money).
If you start off by developing some of the early parts of your branding and consider how people receive your brand as a story, then there are a couple of options and paths you’re now free to take. Even if some of these people don’t know you or recognize your name and/or music, if the actions you take are performed professionally, they might take a chance on you. If you place your work on blogs, websites, and in media publications where people are apt to run into your work more than once, they might even give your music a more honest listen, meaning you can bypass the struggle of trying to prove yourself to people who more often than not don’t think for themselves and are conditioned to doubt anything not mainstream.
Source: Carlson, K.A. & Shu, S.B. (2007). The Rule of Three: How the Third Event Signals the Emergence of a Streak. Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes (pp. 104, 113-121).
