Neither Tom nor I sent you an email last week.
Shoot. I’m sorry.
I think that’s the first time we’ve both skipped in like a year. It’s a case of shameful neglect, but we did have an excuse, at least…
Tom (who is on the left, wearing what is, in my opinion, a quality sweatshirt) visited Alli and I last weekend!
Ostensibly, he flew out to help me lead music for a youth group retreat; he also came to hang out.
It was fun. I think it’s the first time we’d played music together in like five years, and I really enjoyed it.
But on getting back to Denver on Monday, after spending the weekend trying to match the energy of 100+ teenagers, I promptly folded in half like a camp chair and slept for an hour. Tom fell onto my couch and played eight straight games of Madden 16. Neither of us made any sort of motion toward writing an email.
So, here we are, one week and zero newsletters later. I’m sorry to have missed you last week, and it’s good to be back.
With all of that said, I don’t have a long newsletter in me today, either.
So I’ll just give you one short piece of advice that you really should follow if you want to have any hope of effectively marketing your music.
Here’s my advice:
Get good artist photos.
That’s it.
It’s stupid simple, I know. But it’s also super important, and far too many artists overlook it.
I used to run a music blog. You’d be surprised to know how many of the submissions I received featured:
- No artist photos, or…
- Text-heavy illustrations that were clearly made with no consideration for the dimensions of social profiles, or…
- Awkward, semi-blurry headshots that made my sophomore yearbook picture look natural and suave.
Please: If you don’t have good photos, go get some.
Bad photos make everything else an uphill battle. It’s like wearing a sweatshirt and Crocs to a job interview; you’ve got to crush everything else just to have a chance, and even so you’re probably not getting hired. Good photos make marketing way easier.
I’d go so far as to say that you shouldn’t pay to run ads or get press or do anything, really, until you’ve paid someone to take good pictures.
I am in no way a graphic designer or photographer, so take the following with a hefty grain of salt.
But in my opinion, good pictures…
- Feature the artist / band. It’s just much harder to make connections with an audience if you don’t show your face. Marshmello and Daft Punk are exceptions, not the rule.
- Are well lit. They shouldn’t look like they were taken in a doctor’s office under flat, fluorescent lights. They should almost always have interesting shadows.
- Fit the platform on which they’re used. They shouldn’t get cropped at weird places.
- Don’t have a bunch of text. This is a pet peeve of mine: Don’t include text in your Spotify banner image. I know you want to promote things – “New album coming soon!” – but it almost always looks cluttered, and it gets cut off on different screen sizes, so people miss it anyway.
If you’re asking yourself, “Are my photos good?” then honestly, I’d say it’s probably worth paying someone to make them better.
I really don’t mean for all of this to come across as harsh.
(Seriously, I have no room for judgment, considering my first album cover was a picture of $5 sunglasses placed crookedly on a railroad track. The entire rationale for this image was that we mentioned railroad tracks in one song and, inexplicably, I thought it was cool.)
I just want it to be helpful – so that when you market your music, you get better results.
As always, here’s wishing you good luck.
– Jon
