Music Brand - The 5 Steps to Building Your Own
Updated: Feb 21
A successful music brand can set you apart from the competition. With over 8 million artist on Spotify, creating your own look, sound and style will be something you'll want to invest some of your time in. Read on to walk through the 5 steps to building your own music brand.
What is a music brand?
A music brand is a unique identity you create around your music that defines who you are. It is created by combining elements such as your name, your music genre, your look, your logo, and your message to your potential audience. Your music brand should be immediately recognizable, memorable and should convey what makes you different from other artists in your genre.
1. Define your music brand.
A music brand is more than just a logo or a name. It’s the unique characteristics and specific identifiers that set you apart from everyone else competing for fans and listeners in the genre you play.
Before you start creating your music brand, you need to answer these four questions:
What style of music do you want to identify with?
What style of clothing or fashion statement do you want to identify with?
What message(s) do you intend to use to capture your audience?
What will differentiate your brand from other brands in the same genre?
After putting some serious thought and pre-planning into the above questions, creating your unique music brand should center around the answers. Your music, your logo, the cloths you wear, and the talk you talk should all resonate with the types of people who can relate to your brand message.
2. Define your target audience.
When defining your music brand, it's important to have a clear idea of who your target audience is. This will help you understand what kind of music you should be creating and how to market it effectively to the right type of listener.
Your target audience can be broadly defined by things like age, gender, location, and interests. To get a clearer idea of who your target audience is, try creating a buyer persona. This is a fictional character that embodies the qualities of your ideal customer.
Once you have a buyer persona, you can start to create music that appeals to them. It's important to keep your target audience in mind throughout the entire process, from songwriting to marketing.
If you're not sure where to start, try taking some time to research other successful music brands and see what they did to appeal to their target audiences. You can also look for ways to stand out from the competition.
Creating a strong connection with your target audience is essential for any music brand. By taking the time to define your target audience and create music that appeals to them, you'll be one step ahead of everyone else.
3. Develop a music brand strategy.
Once you have a clear understanding of who you are as an artist or band, and the audience you want to start attracting, you're ready to start developing a clear strategy for your music brand and how you intend to present your brand to your target audience.
Create a visually striking logo and album artwork that represents your music genre and musical identity. Consider color schemes, themes, and fonts that are unique and creative yet relate to the listener. Logos that represent the genre and style of the artist will shout out to audiences who enjoy that particular style of music.
Invest in professional looking photos. Don't skimp on the optics. Pictures that portray your musical talents in all its glory and genuine form will excite fans and bring new eyes on your band to take a look and listen. Save up a bit and hire a professional photographer to take hi-resolution pics to represent your best look as an artist or band.
Design merchandise consistent with your logo and branding. Merchandise is one of the most profitable sides of the music business. Having well designed t-shirts and various other types of popular apparel can have a major impact on your bottom line. Cool designs bring in cash so take the time to think through your design so it is consistent with your music brand.
Develop a strong social media presence for your music brand. Take the time to skin your socials with the same look and feel of the brand you intend to promote. Not having a consistent look and feel across all your platforms can cause confusion, foster distrust, and turn off potential fans.
It’s important that you remain true to yourself and your artistry brand. Don’t change who you are or what you believe in just to try and fit into a certain market or genre.
4. Be consistent with your music brand in your marketing.
Marketing your music brand is important if you want to build a successful career in the music industry. Consistency is key to your success. This will help you connect with your audience and build a loyal following. Make sure to post regularly and interact with your fans as much as possible.
Do nothing and you get nothing. Do a little and you get a little. But, build a consistent music brand strategy that reaches a larger audience and attracts more potential fans...golden. If you have a difficult time managing a consistent marketing schedule, consider hiring a music marketing agency to help you develop a social media content strategy.
Your music brand should be consistent across all marketing materials, website platform, social media accounts, landing pages and streaming services. Keep your music branding cohesive so that people can easily recognize it no matter where they see it.
And promote, promote, promote! Make sure you are promoting your music as much as possible. Get creative with your marketing efforts and reach out to as many people as you can using video, reels, stories, and creative brand specific content that gives clear calls to action to engage your music.
5. Refining your music brand.
From time to time you may need to re-evaluate and refine your music brand. Doing so ensures your brand identity and message continue to resonate with your target audience. A music audit of your assets using insights can help determine where your strengths and weaknesses are so you can make adjustments to your music brand strategy.
Some things to consider when refining your music brand include:
Does the target audience enjoy the music?
Does the content created connect with the target audience?
Does the brand message have consistency across all channels?
Does the music brand still represent the bands current goals?
Once you have a clear idea of what changes you need to make to your music brand to achieve your new goals, you can start working on the finer details. This doesn't mean redesigning your logos and changing your style or fashion, but more like assessing your current situation to see if there is any way to improve your music brand.
It is also important to have a consistent plan to reskin and rebrand your entire arsenal each time you gear up for a new music release or big event. Whatever you do on one platform, reskin all your socials and streaming platforms with the same consistent music brand.
Hiring a music marketing agency to help you develop your music brand.
A skilled music marketing agency can help guide you through the process of defining, developing, and delivering your music brand. From colors, fonts, and overall design elements across all of your marketing materials, to website and social media development and content creation for all your online assets, a great brand should help people to recognize you easily and develop an instant connection to your music, no matter where they see or hear your brand.
If you want to leave your music brand up to a skilled music marketing company like ours, hit the button below and get started.