 Hi there and welcome to my under construction YouTube studio dash office. One of the questions musicians are constantly leaving my comments is, how do I even figure out what I sound like? And for that matter, they don't know what their micro genre is. And sometimes they don't even know what a micro genre means. And they don't know how they can find other artists that sound like them. And normally in most of my videos, I would mock them in this because let's be honest, it's how I get laughs on this channel. But I actually have a lot of empathy for this. When you don't make easily identifiable music or if your music is in a more broad genre, it can be super hard to find the other people who are doing it. So in this video, I'm going to tell you how you find out what you sound like. So you can find community and describe yourself to people so they understand what you sound like, as well as find micro genres for your music. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to 10,000 fans. And this is muse formation. So one of the reasons I get this question all the time is because I talk so much about how if you find community, it's so much more effective than buying ads or for that matter, just about any other promotion. Since as I've said many times, if you research the way most artists blow up, it's because they find community and people in their community lift them up. And if you haven't watched my video on finding community, many people say it's one of my most important videos. So if you haven't watched it, you should fix that soon. It'll be on the end screen or it's linked now or in the description below. Let's also get real. This is important because not only does it help get other people interested in you, but also finding smaller artists in your genre and then targeting them as I describe in that video is how you effectively build a fan base. If you don't know other smaller acts in your genre, or even micro genre, and you're unsatisfied with how your promotions are going, I find this to be one of the number one reasons promotions are going bad, because you're basically walking in the dark. So that's why we're about to talk about this and why it's really important. Now, one of the biggest obstacles to finding what you sound like is objectivity. Let's be honest, we've all talked to a musician who's delusional about what they sound like. They'll be like, I don't know, we don't sound like anything. And because you like this person and don't want to be rude, you think to yourself, well, you guys kind of sound like periphery if they had a terrible singer. And just as fun is when somebody says, I don't know what I sound like, and then you think to yourself, you're basically like Lil Uzi Vert if he hadn't gone through puberty yet and had weak beats. Now, I know I said I had sympathy for these musicians and here's how I show it. It's easy for us to all know what our friends' music sounds like because we aren't as zoomed into the details as them. When you're the one making the music, you know every detail that went into it. But to the outsider, they're not zoomed into that one time you used a didgeridoo on your trap beat. So now you feel like a world music star. But to the outsider, they just hear a sound and didn't think of it as a big deal. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage for you. You see, when you need to describe your own music, getting help from other people can often iterate on top of what they see, because you know what makes you special and deep. But it's also helpful to know what people think that aren't as zoomed into you or paying as much attention to music as you do. But so you may be wondering, what good does this do you? Well, being zoomed into your music can help you describe what's exciting about your music. And that is one of the most important things you can do. And if you want to learn more about that, watch my video on how to write a Spotify playlist pitch, which is linked in the screen now or in the description below. I get into all the details of how to figure out what's exciting about you. But back to why this is helpful. When you make your own music, you can see some details about your music others may not see. But since we're communicating to other people, they have to understand it. So you need to go outside of your friend group and talk to others and make sure you're not making a fool of yourself when you describe yourself by talking only in terms that make sense to you. So if you're having trouble describing what you sound like, recognize it's a very human thing to be bad at. And accept it's okay that you don't have a clue. You're too close to it and accept you need help. So where do you go to get that help? Well, friends, we're lucky we have this thing called the internet. So let's get started. So while we may have been locked down for nearly a year, your local community is always one you should be participating in. But I think people have valued it less now that there's no live shows. So I encourage everyone to always try to join Facebook group of musicians from your city. Or if things are going really bad, your state. Hello, Wyoming. And these groups, you can start to see where other people play and get other hints about community. And most often these groups have a day of the week where you can put up your music or get feedback. And this can be a way to hear what strangers think you sound like. I should say this is often like putting together a puzzle. Lots of the feedback you get on how you sound are going to be puzzling and downright weird sometimes. But eventually you'll recognize a pattern of what people compare you to and give help in describing your sound. But what I often find at this stage is oftentimes people will describe you by comparing you to an artist you don't even listen to. And that's often a hint to get a look at that artist's Spotify and read their bio and how they describe themselves and listen around to the artist on their fans also like list. And make sure you're familiar with everyone since getting to know that is how you know which artist to target and how do you find your community. This is how you put the pieces of the puzzle together. After you've gotten that feedback, it's time to hit Reddit where nearly every genre has a subreddit and a weekly thread you can post your music to to get feedback on it. Just make sure you give back though if you do that and also give thoughts on other people's music since Reddit is a community that has only helped of everybody's participating. It's also super okay to say you don't really know what you sound like and ask the people in these communities. They will often point you to a subreddit you may belong on a little bit better than the one you're posting on and this can help you find community. Your next step is to go to SoundCloud which is my favorite place for finding really small artists you fit in with and what hashtags you should be using to describe your music and what your micro genre is. SoundCloud is where people go to find new music and they have an algorithm that serves them lesser known artists much better than Spotify does. So what you do is you search the other artists you've found so far on Spotify, Reddit and Facebook and start entering them in and look at the hashtag they fall under and start looking if you belong under those hashtags as well. Our last step is to go on Bandcamp where we can see the tags and hashtags where each album has associated with them and you can then search through those hashtags and see if your music belongs on them. After this you have hopefully found a bunch of micro genre artists you can use to start using as a target for your music and continue down this rabbit hole. Then after that it's important to go back to SoundCloud, Facebook and Reddit and search out where the artists and micro genres you've found along the way are discussed and become an avid member of all those communities since that's where you're going to make the connections to the other artists you collaborate and do cool things with. If you like this video please like and subscribe and most of all get notified since I'm about to drop a bunch of my most important videos on promoting your music in the next few weeks. As well please let me know in the comments if you have more questions since there'll be a follow-up video on this in the future where I'll answer your questions and if you haven't watched my video on how to find community it's linked on the screen now or you should watch that playlist on how to go from zero to ten thousand fans. One last thing two weeks ago we lost the producer Sophie who was one of my favorite music artists and literally had life-changing effect on me musically. If you've ever wondered what is with all the weird sound effects I use in my videos well 99% of them are from her sample pack. If you're not familiar with her music I really encourage you to go check it out and do a search she's one of the most influential people in music and it's a really sad loss. R.I.P. Sophie thanks for watching.