Will You Put Me On? A Guide for Artists Looking For a Platform
by Phil Chard
This is a guest post by Silas Beats
Sometime back, I got asked why I hadn't built a platform that would help upcoming artists to be "put on" as it were. I told the guy that asked that there were platforms he was already using, but wasn’t taking full advantage of. A lot of musicians that I come across are of the opinion that there are gatekeepers that they need to suck up to or impress in order to get to the top. This is the story that upcoming artists have been fed for ages. They get told that if they make the correct connections and get placed on the correct platforms that they will blow up. Musicians then seek out record labels and managers to find the platforms that will bring them success. There are other ways.
People tend to tell you that you’ll get similar results to everyone else’s, but only if you take what they say as law. For instance, that if you're looking for a label to release your music, you have less of a chance of scoring it big regardless of how much you believe in your craft. Sometimes it pays to go against the grain.
Colour-social-media-icons-squareImagine you owned various platforms on which to express yourself. You could post a picture of your cat on one or a video of your music-making process on another. With time and effort, you'd get a sizeable audience to interact with across these platforms. Wouldn't this be ideal? Owning your own platform/s has so many benefits that it would be silly of you to overlook this method totally.
To build a following on these platforms, get on-line and grind for 4 hours every day. Spend an hour making videos on your phone and taking pictures and then start posting and commenting. Spend time on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube trying to build a community by posting and interacting with other people's content on a deeper level. Talk to people with similar interests. Make an effort to reach out to new people every day. You don't need huge numbers of views to start off with. You're most probably going to get 10 to 20 views on your videos and 1 or 2 likes on your pictures. When you do written posts you may not even get a single interaction. This is how things start, but they won't remain this way forever. You need to reach out to people daily. It's a tireless job that can leave you (very) frustrated at times. The rejection you'll get will be disheartening and you'll want to quit, but should you persevere long enough with building up these online interactions, you'll start to notice something...
Do’s And Dont’s
Do not spend hours tagging your friends on social media. You'll be left frustrated and you won't want to continue past the first week because you won't get the interactions that will build your platform. A technique I believe musicians should adopt is jump on any social media platform and search hash tags related to their industry eg. #rapmusic #studiolife #musicproduction and comment on the content that pops up. Get stuck in for 30 minutes to an hour and just comment on everything that relates to remotely. Say something about the speakers or the program the person is using to record. Comment on the fishbowl in the background or on the artist's cap or hoody. A few days of this should do the trick to start seeing any sort of results. When people react positively hit them up via private message or get their e-mail address and start the conversation. Repeat.
If you're a musician and you're in need of a platform to showcase your talent and hard work, why not try build your own via social media and let your profile or account become the platform. Let me know what you come up with and whether you gain any new insight by following these steps. I'd love to know what results you get.
Silas Beats is a blogger and music producer. You can follow him here