 So the rare moment I'm not working on a record, podcast, or a marketing plan, I'm often on the phone with some of my friends in the music business. A weird thing happened this past week when I was talking to three different friends who work in either A&R or marketing at Big Indie Labels with top tier artists. They were all complaining about the exact same thing which shockingly doesn't happen very often. But the funny thing was they were all complaining about what they agreed is the most effective marketing tool possibly in the history of music. One would think they'd be thrilled that they have access to what we were all seeing as one of the biggest opportunities to blow up a musician's fan base ever. Yet they were pretty annoyed about it. So this video, I'm going to explain to you what the opportunity in marketing is and why these music business suit types are so annoyed and how you can use it to your advantage. 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 I know what you're thinking. It's not like me to veil all this mystery in a video and not just come out and start barking my thoughts at you. But I think a proper setup sometimes gives a little bit more of a payoff. And despite the fact that I've been really trimming down and hating the gym lately, think of me as Santa Claus and you being the kid wanting to receive their gift. Okay, so let's let the cat out of the bag a little. For the past five to seven years, I don't think you could find anyone who really has their head in the music business who would disagree that getting a good playlist placement is the greatest marketing opportunity to ever exist for artists both big and small to grow a fan base very fast for the amount of money it costs, which really is the price of 30 to 60 minutes of labor usually. And how huge that payoff can be is unequaled. And yes, we could go on and on about how these fans from Playlist are engaged all the time and building a fan base takes more than just Playlist. But let's be real, the artists who do figure out how to engage them and build off the opportunity have never had a marketing opportunity quite as egalitarian and low on cost, where you could put in very little work and get huge opportunities with a small budget. It's by simply having a good song really bubble up to the top. It's unprecedented. It would take a real contrarian to argue this. And I know I'm basically inviting this in the comments. So type away, Virgin. Okay, but I'll be honest. I'm not so thrilled with the direction of a lot of the big playlists are going. Since there's a trajectory I see in the music business over and over again in all the years I've been watching it, is that a new tool comes out that really flattens the playing field between DIY artists and those on the big labels. And in time, it always goes back to the big labels asserting their influence and opportunities and squishing down the DIY and smaller indie artists, and they start to diminish. And sadly, I'm seeing that in Playlists now. Now, many of the Playlists I follow have more DIY artists and small indies than ever. And the editors really do have an egalitarian editorial policy that doesn't seem to be overly influenced by the majors. But many of the Playlists that are bigger, with a really huge audience, seem to be becoming nothing but the boosters of the biggest indies and majors, with little exception. And that's a bummer. Now, I'm not going to say all hope is lost. In fact, if anything, I still see tons of small artists that I work with getting on Playlists that help them build a fan base. But I'd also be lying if I didn't see a trend I don't love of big label power really starting to take up all the oxygen in the room. But as I was just promising a minute or so ago, me and my colleagues in the business are seeing an even bigger marketing opportunity than Playlists that is immune to the big indies and majors taking over that literally every artist on a big label won't shut the f**k up about. It is making my label friends totally miserable. That opportunity is what I'm calling artist page visibility. Here's what I mean. Ever since Spotify started showing the artists on features, remixes, and split releases on the artist they're paired with page, this has become the greatest awareness tool for an artist ever. It is literally a cosine on the greatest real estate in music marketing history. As you can see on the screen now, here's a few examples of an artist being featured on another artist page. Not only can fans hear the artists on the song and enjoy it, they can see who it is and with one click explore if they would like to go deeper with that artist and become a fan. And if you're failing to see why this is possibly the biggest marketing opportunity in the history of music, think of it like this. Whenever you ever had someone in the mood to listen to music and while they're vibing and loving a record, they can look down as they wonder what to listen to next and as they just had a great experience listening to a record and are in the mood for it, they see another artist who is involved with that great experience right there staring at them pretty much begging them to get a click and keep the vibe going. If you think of this way, I know tons of you love to spend your money on Facebook ads. You think they're an effective use of your money but no Facebook ad catches someone while they are listening to music in the very player and puts a name and suggestion into the mind of a listener like hearing that artist on a song they like and the invitation to explore more is right in front of them. That's unprecedented and it exists on the artist page, the album page, or single page of the song and any playlist that song is added to which makes it explosive since if the song gets added to a big playlist is there giving visibility and breeding familiarity with the artist's name. And so as we all know it takes fans four day times of seeing a name before they explore who it is. This is crucial and for the simple investment of working out a collaboration deal between the artists this is an insane marketing opportunity that now exists for everyone. And here's the other big reason this is so huge it's forever. So much music marketing is so temporary it's like actually depressing these days but for as long as the artist is relevant and getting listens that artist's name on their page and on their collaboration is there. But let's look at what this looks like today. For many artists it's just doing features or collabs you write the song together or sing on it and then it's credited together as long as you do the tagging right in your upload. Obviously remixes getting tagged as an artist is huge and many labels and management now target producers that are similar to their artists to do remixes as this effectively gets their artist on that artist page and remixes were always effective marketing but now are bigger than ever with artist page visibility. This is why you are seeing a huge resurgence of artists doing remix records again. After that trend had slowed down for years it is ramping back up and it is effectively gets a whole new life for a record as people see the artist name pop up on the other artist page and can juice streaming numbers immensely for them as well as monthly listeners. But it's not even just remixes that are trending. One of the things I've seen recently is collab releases where two artists team up for a whole collab release. As I was writing the script I was actually banging one as I happened for weeks. Glaive is an artist I've been on about since before he even had a hundred thousand streams but Eric Doa never did it for me. But after cranking their collab EP record for a week a funny thing happened and I'm now jamming Eric Doa more than I do glaive solo work and I'm all in on him now. But even smaller cosigns are happening more and more. I mean Phoebe Bridgers just signed a group I really enjoy called Muna to her label and sure off they now a collab between the two of them where they can do some audience expansion with one another. But let's also talk about how this works in a more rock orientated world where having someone else sing on your song and doing collabs with other producers is not really the vibe. I think of how effective this was back when I was a wee lad into punk rock records. Bands would constantly release split seven inches or 12 inches. I mean I literally bought hundreds of these where one side would be one artist and the other another artist that they were friends with and this is how I would discover a lot of my favorite groups. Both of their fan bases would buy these as they toured across the country sometimes separately sometimes together and in turn spread the word about both artists and they'd exist in record stores where people would buy it because they see the one artist they like and then discover a new artist. It is definitely argued that some bands who did less promo and touring got popular on the backs of just doing these split releases with artists who were actually out there touring their asses off. But these releases didn't usually involve the artist playing one another song since I know a lot of you are not so into having other artists on your songs and listen I get it. I actually don't really love in rock when some other singer comes into the song out of nowhere it kind of kills the vibe for me like 99% of the time. But doing split releases where you team up to spread awareness with one other dates back all the way to the punk scene of the 80s and this is now an effective marketing method you can now do to effectively trade audiences with like-minded members of your community. But I want to show the dynamics of this some more. I think of the genius of 100 GeX breakout record 1000 GeX. There was a pretty genius move in their tagging since both Laura Less and Dylan Brady of the group make their own solo material and produce songs so they tagged their artist pages individually which set up tons of visibility for both of them as their own artists. Even though when they came on the scene no one had any clue who the two of them were except under the moniker of 100 GeX it gave visibility of their previous work and set them up to spread their future work even bigger as that record has such long legs and is still being talked about so much years later. I then think of like the producer Blood Pop. Well I have no idea how when he first came on the scene convinced Justin Bieber to allow him to be a featured artist as a producer on the song Friends but this crosses over to his profile because he's tagged on it and does big things for him. By the way if this video is giving you value please like subscribe and get notified as this is what we talk about here and you definitely don't want to miss a video. So I know some of you are skeptical of what I say so let me put this in perspective. My friend who's a product manager aka like a marketing person at one of the biggest electronic music labels says she now spends 75% of her time securing and negotiating features and remix and that literally is the majority of her marketing budget is now that since they see that money is spent better than music videos or anything else they've actually shrunk the budgets for outdoor and print ads in favor of features and remixes that's how in on this labels are now. So why are the label employees mad about this you're probably wondering since I brought that up. Well it requires them to do work that has an actionable result. When the artists are saying who can we do collabs with or remixes or split releases it's something the label actually has to deliver on and do for them and we all know well if you've ever been on a label you know that's not always their favorite thing to have to do actionable work. They have to do work in brainstorm and let's be honest this is tough work convincing people to do things they'd rather do other work than having to ask managers and label reps to link and build all day. So I know some of you are thinking what the fuck Jesse this channel is all about marketing yourself for those of us who don't have 10,000 fans yet this doesn't seem like you. Let me yet again point to one of my most important videos in this curriculum on marketing your music it's my video on how you find community this teaches you how to find the similar artists to you to do collabs remixes features or split releases with it's linked on the screen now are the description below is truly must-match material and one of my most important videos and I want to be straight with you on how you do this effectively don't set your sights too big and just approach huge artists that's not actually how this gets done if you find like-minded artists who are working hard this is an investment in both of your future growth and let's be honest fans gravitate towards communities where they feel they can potentially belong and linking and building and doing something with another artist demonstrates that community and can be a great investment in gaining more fans doing collabs in any of these forms can grow your fan base no matter how big the artist is as long as those artists are going to continue to grow since once you do this growth your growth and their growth is tethered to one another and that's exactly what makes this such a huge marketing opportunity okay that's about enough of me going on and on if you have thoughts feelings etc leave it in the comments and please like and subscribe and get notified since this is what we discuss here