I was telling Alli the other day that I kind of hate marketing.
Ironic, I know. But here’s the kind of stuff I hate: Think about how frequently the adjective healthy is used to market products.
Now, tell me what it means to be healthy. Does it mean to…
- Run a marathon
- Bench press 315 pounds
- Win the 100-meter dash
- Free solo El Capitan
- Live to be 90+
- Spend your days marketing music and your evenings complaining to your wife about how dumb marketing is
Probably not the last one, I guess. But otherwise, if you asked a random person about the healthiness of the above bullet points – i.e., “Is someone who can run a marathon healthy?” – they’d probably answer favorably.
And yet no single body would be able to do all of those activities.
If you can run a marathon, you almost certainly can’t bench press 315 pounds. If you can bench press 315 pounds, no way you’re climbing El Capitan. And if you’re free soloing El Capitan, honestly, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t live into your 90s.
Now, I’m not grumpy yet; I’m willing to accept that the same word can have a bunch of different uses. But what drives me bonkers is when marketers latch onto a term that’s buzzy (like healthy) just for its positive connotations, then spam its usage without ever clarifying what they actually mean by it.
(Seriously, watch a commercial and listen for the buzzwords. It’s wild.)
You can’t just try to “be healthy” and then expect to be able to run a marathon while bench pressing a mountain.
If you want to actually achieve an outcome, you have to optimize for that outcome, specifically. And many outcomes that are marketed as essentially the same thing are really mutually exclusive.
Here’s why this whole concept matters for you and your music.
I get asked all the time whether or not some given tactic is “worth it.”
- Is playlisting worth it?
- Is TikTok worth it? (No.)
- Is paying me a bunch of money to manage your Meta ads worth it? (Yes.)
- Is building your own website worth it?
- Is activating Discovery Mode worth it?
- Is SubmitHub worth it?
- Is radio worth it?
My answer, almost always, is, “I don’t know. What do you want?”
Alli and I have been watching Daisy Jones & The Six.
It’s a TV show that documents a fictional 70s rock band, and if you’re wondering whether or not you should watch it, I’d say that its 69% on Rotten Tomatoes probably does it justice.
Anyway, there’s this scene where a big shot (but very nice) record producer asks Daisy what she wants from the music industry. This is before she’s made any sort of name for herself.
Here’s her answer:
“I want to make a record. I want people to listen to it over and over again until it breaks. And then I want to make another one.”
It’s such a great answer. It’s also such a terrible answer.
Because the reality is this:
If all you know is that you want a fanbase, then you don’t really know what you want at all.
Yes, we all want people to hear (and love) our music. Nearly all artists want fans.
But I think the term build your fanbase is the music marketing equivalent of the term be healthy. It’s inarguably aspirational, and it’s also totally meaningless without more context.
Do you want to…
- Tour theaters?
- Tour arenas?
- Not have to leave your home?
- Get your music in a movie?
- Get a million streams?
- Make money from your music?
These things aren’t all mutually exclusive, of course. But neither are they obviously complementary. For instance, I’m working this year to get a million streams on my tracks. So I’m running Meta ads and building playlists, and I’m doing it all with the assumption that I’m going to lose a good chunk of money.
If my goal was to make money with my music or get a song placed in a movie, I’d do an entirely different set of things.
Here’s the point of this rather rambling rant:
