How to Create Your Personal Brand as a Musician?

A personal brand is not something special. Individuals from different areas who want to succeed, become recognizable, and increase their global presence work on developing personal brands. First, you invest in promotion and content creation to make yourself recognizable, and later, your reputation works for you. You receive solid offers from advertisers, and you are invited to perform on big stages and concerts. You work with world-class distributors and share your music with listeners worldwide.

Major components that make a successful personal brand for musicians

It all sounds great and promising, but every musician must cover a long path to become recognizable. You have to set yourself apart from average artists with small engagement and show listeners something they won't find anywhere else. Still, what exactly should be done to brand yourself as an artist? Let's find out together.

Benefits of Developing a Personal Brand as a Music Artist

What Can You Offer as an Artist?

The first step on the road to your brand identity is understanding your unique selling proposition. Simply put, you must identify the unique values and qualities that make you stand out from the rest of the artists. If you have already started publishing music on multiple platforms, take your time and think about what differentiates you from other artists. It may be your unique style of music creation, your trademark opening sound, or something else. Don't ignore this part because later, it will be the basic element of your personal brand. Think of a phrase or a word that inspires you and use it at the beginning of your songs. If you will perform on a big stage, such a trademark will blow the minds of your fans. 

Learn Your Audience on Spotify, SoundCloud and YouTube

One of the initial steps in building a strong brand identity is to create a strong online presence and build a brand by understanding your audience. You have to know who listens to your music, why they choose to do it, and what encourages them the most.

Let's have a look at Trap Nation - a world-known music brand that publishes songs on multiple platforms (YouTube, Spotify, and SoundCloud). This brand publishes remixes of famous tracks as well as original songs. For example, you can find three different remixes of one track. They also have a strong Instagram presence, posting trending content and making announcements of the latest releases.

If you proceed to their Spotify profile, you will find several playlists (for example, best remixes of 2023, the chill music compilation, and other mixes from various categories). These are their official playlists that receive massive engagement on every platform.

Make Yourself Recognizable

A recognizable brand is one that can be spotted among dozens of similar users pretending to be popular. Every brand that wants to gather a huge number of fans, receive solid engagement, and become recognizable by producers and sponsors should become recognizable. To achieve that, you have to put some effort into improving the visual part of your profiles. It's not only about social media but about all music platforms. If you ask any mid-range musician about how to get more plays on Spotify, you will hear about profile customization. 

It's essential to update your pages with trademark profile images and background pictures (if needed). You must also remember to write a description, which is also part of a strong online presence. 

Since people don’t know who you are, you must provide as much information as possible. Add links to social media profiles and share information about music platforms where you publish your music.

When people meet your profile on the network, they want to know who you are and what type of content you share. Your brand should reflect your personality or represent your character (if you don't want to be presented with your real name). People may not know Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, but they definitely know 21 Savage for a Bank Account, Runnin, and other mind blowing tracks that went viral almost immediately after the release. 

One of the ways to build a strong visual identity is to create trademark pictures for your tracks and albums. You represent the leitmotif of the track and make listeners memorize your trademark, so they won't miss it in the feed next time. 

You can create such pictures yourself using AI-based apps or hiring a concept artist to craft such images. Consistency matters at this point because you need to build a strong online presence across all platforms.

Remain Active All the Time

Constant activity should be your constant focus when developing a personal brand. To maximize your presence, you engage with your followers, post content, organize live events, and go live with streams on Instagram or Twitch. It's not surprising that influencers and bloggers who represent other niches do the same. 

Developing a YouTube channel is also important. It’s a powerful platform that boosts your engagement and opens more opportunities to share your content. Moreover, YouTube channel development gives you another source of income as you get paid for views of your videos and shorts. 

For the first time, it gets complicated because you may spend hours creating content for social media besides recording music and posting it on platforms. You have to combine social media activity and keep it up on the music platforms. If you consider Spotify as the main platform for sharing music and developing your brand, you can try these 8 features to optimize your marketing strategy and escape the loop to get on top of the genre.

Moreover, it makes sense to invest in developing your personal brand by getting paid promotions from professionals. Specialists who have worked in the music industry for years and helped hundreds of musicians build a strong brand.

Sometimes musicians get stuck at the bottom, and the only way to move forward is to get an organic push. You can do this by purchasing one of our promotion packages.

The idea is to receive engagement from real listeners who are interested in your music. Depending on your current listener count and goals, you can choose the package you want to get. 

Brainstorm for New Ideas and Look for Better Approach

Constant work on building your personal brand in music is not only about posting, creating, and engaging. It's also about analysis, and the constant evolution of your personal approach should become a part of your brand evolution. 

Check reports and stats on your profiles (Spotify for Artists and SoundCloud Next Pro grant access to advanced analytics and allow musicians to know more about their engagement). Activate tools for advanced social media analysis (for example, Sprout Social) to track engagement and understand what formats work the best. Trends are evolving at the speed of light, and you never know what meme or video will go viral next. Analyze the activity of other musicians and see what they offer to you. By analyzing their activity, you can understand what trends are dominating in the industry and what you can use for your own strategy.

Social media is not just an option to show what you do. It's a powerful tool that allows musicians to find new trends and ideas for their content. Moreover, they can find connections and collaborate with other artists to grow their audience.