 You know what I realized over the years is that a lot of artists have a really hard time with comparing themselves to other music artists and I used to not get it but now I kind of do right like you don't want to let their artists influence your musical decisions maybe you don't want to box yourself in or just start to get discouraged because you're looking at these artists and that's fine when it comes to the creative process but when it comes to music marketing everything starts with having an idea of whose music fans will resonate with you and that does require you to think of yourself inside of a box while I think of yourself in comparison to other artists um and other sounds so you can figure out what direction to push yourself in and if you're one of those artists that does have a hard time doing that then what I'm going to do in this video is give you some really practical easy tips that you can do to start to better create a targeted artist list so your marketing can become a one top tier super saucy and you can find those music fans that you're looking for and if you're new to the channel my name is kory i'm a music marketer co-founder of country brand agency we work with artists like 24k golden nick d alexa capelli macy gray tom the mailman and a bunch of other really dope artists and my goal is to give out all the marketing sauce that I can so that you can make your music dreams an actual reality now with that being said let's go ahead and get into the video so tip number one is to ask people around you that's right super simple ask people whose musical opinions you trust who does your music make them think of right so what I would do is I would play them the song that you want to market and just go like hey bro like who is this song that you think of and as you're doing this take notes of artist names that come up a lot right so if you ask five different people who do you sound like or who does your music make them think of and all five people say call that black and call that black needs to be in your target artist list right if all five people say Olivia Rodrigo or drake then Olivia Rodrigo and drake need to be in your target artist list the benefit of this is that music consumers don't think about comparing artists the same way that artists think about comparing artists right like it's a little offensive to you guys at times but music consumers naturally do it right like we naturally put people in those boxes so if you have people around you that aren't thinking about music from an artist perspective but are thinking about it from a consumer perspective then they can become a really good go-to source for getting those recommendations on who you should be targeting now I did say take notice of the names that come up a lot but also just take notice of any names that these people say right these names may become artists that you put on your supplemental target artist list and maybe people who you just try a little marketing here and there so that fan makes you see how people resonate with and it may help you feel out that list much better because once again music consumers are really easily able to compare artists to each other in a way that music artists typically aren't able to so use your friends your families your little cousins your aunties your mom as a resource in that regard so that you don't have to think about it too hard now tip number two is to use a tool called chart metric then chart metric is a data analysis tool I've talked about it on this channel before it's really popular with music marketers and labels and publishers and people who just really like to see data and see a lot of things from the back end so what I'm going to do is actually go into chart metric and show you how you can use it to help you build out your target artist list so what you're going to do is you're going to log into chartmetric.com um creating an account if you don't have one if you do just log into it and then once you're here you want to go and search out artists that you do have a good idea of that you think their fans will like your music this can come from tip number one where you've been asking people around or if you just have a good idea you understand already then you can start with them um another tip that I don't know where it fits in this video so I'm just going to give it now is think about your own musical influences most artists that I know their music is usually a combination of artists that they like right so if I hear artists that likes like Travis Scott I don't know like Gucci and like Olivia Rodrigo their music tends to be a really weird mix of like all the stuff that they like right so think about it that way if it's if you have a hard time um comparing yourself or if you don't have friends for whatever reason to ask their opinion on think about who you like as a music consumer and then start from there but assuming that you do have an artist that you know you can compare yourself to what I want you to do is I want you to come into chartmetric and then search their artists out so I'm going to do SZA just because she's already right here and once you're in chartmetric you'll see a little artist profile where you're able to see like all their streaming growth all their social growth um you can see like what positions they are on certain charts but the section I want you to pay the most attention to is the fans also like section up here in the top right right so if you look at scissors you can see they have Kalani, Jena'iko, Her, Ella May, Summer Walker, Kali Uchis, Georgia Smith, T'nache and a bunch of really other cool r&b artists that um the data is starting to associate her and her music with so if you're someone that's building got a little bit of ground zero you can look at your target artist list and then start to go look at who their social platforms and their streaming data are comparing them to and one aggregated place within chartmetric so if I was an r&b artist who felt like SZA was on my targeted artist list but I didn't know where to go from there I will come look at this fans also like section and go like okay cool I should be targeting Kalani, Jena'iko and Her and Ella May and Ser and Victoria Monet and all these other people that are listed out because their worlds overlap so it's going to be a good way for me to pull fans out of that space right but then also get in front of fans through artists who I may have never thought about on my own and you can do this with a bunch of other artists right so if we go type in someone like I don't know let's look at Drake and see who Drake's list is right we can see here that chartmetric is saying his fans also like J. Cole and Migos, Lil Wayne, Future, 21 Savage, Big Sean right a bunch of other like really mainstream rappers so once again if you can at least get a little bit of a targeted artist list put together either through your own thought process um through your friends and family who you're asking or just through however you put it together then chartmetric can become a really easy way for you to put that target artist list together because you can search those artists out come to their fans also like section and then rinse and repeat from there right so I may go like okay cool I'll target Drake fans I should also target J. Cole fans then let me click into J. Cole see who J. Cole is being associated with oh cool Kendra Lamar A-side Rocky Big Sean Two Chainz etc etc right so once again chartmetric can become a really easy way for you to put that list together once you have at least one or two artists to kind of start with now if you're someone that's familiar with chartmetric you know that it is typically a little pricey right it usually starts at $140 a month for the premium plan around 1400 for the year if you want to just drop that back like that um but they have rolled out a new artist plan recently that has made it a lot more affordable and a lot more accessible to the typical indie artist so if you look here on my screen you can see that artist plan is only $10 a month or $100 a year and within that you're able to subscribe up to three artists so this is great for a solo artist that's really only looking to track themselves or if you're like a manager or a label with a small roster then this plan will work for you as well and within it you get most of the basic features oh chartmetric you're able to see the 28 days of historical database um basic data access on on a bunch of artists in the platform and you can use it to put together that targeted artist list that I just talked about um for really cheap right so that's pretty dope I wanted to plug that I'll link to chartmetric in the description below if there's something that you want to check out it's a tool that me and my marketing team use a lot to build targeted artist list for clients when we're running marketing campaigns and it's just gotten a lot of the legwork out the way for it so I recommend it I stand by the 100% check it out if it's something that you can that you can afford and want to budget into your marketing tools and tip number three is actually a little bit of a visualization technique right so you gotta follow me here you gotta stay with me what I want you to do is I want you to close your eyes and I really want you to close your eyes you see mine to close close your eyes right and once you get them closed what I want you to imagine is imagine you're at a concert and you're performing for an artist that is much bigger than yourself what artist would that be where you feel like their crowd wouldn't boo you right so for example if Taylor Swift were to open up for a Kodak Black I'm 100% sure that crowd would boo her you know it would get ugly in the venue and it just wouldn't make sense and the same thing would probably happen if you flipped it if Kodak Black open for Taylor Swift their crowd would probably boo him you know what I'm saying like and it wouldn't make sense so think about it this way right think about what artists would you be able to open up for at a show or a concert or a festival and you feel like their fan base will resonate really well with you this has been a visualization technique that I get a lot of my clients to do especially the ones who have a hard time comparing themselves to other artists and it usually works right like most artists you have an idea of like whose crowd you would love to go perform in front of and that's no different than thinking about whose artist do I want to market myself to so I can pull fans away from their fan base this is the exact same concept so use that technique it works you know I'm saying if the other two don't work really well if you just think about it who could I perform for or perform and open for and their crowd wouldn't boo me off the stage and make me feel bad and go home and cry at night so there it is guys those are my three tips on how you can put together a better targeted artist list especially for those of you who have a hard time comparing yourselves to other artists who have a hard time putting yourself in the box and and just using that to move in in a good direction and like I said like creating that target artist list is where most marketing campaigns start I don't know what to do or where to run the ads or what influence to use if I don't have a good idea of like whose fan base we're trying to tap into and no matter how big or small of an artist you are you're always going to need to target the artist list because there's always somebody out there with fans that you want you understand that you want to come listen to your music and music fans are complex bro there's overlap you understand so don't look at it like oh just because um you know I make trap rap music but I make it kind of poppy they're like 21 savage fans wouldn't like me they might you won't know that until you start running the marketing and you know put them on your target artist list anyway and see what happens from there other than that if you like this video please like and subscribe share this with somebody that you feel like needs to hit his information and then also let me know what is your target artist list look like who do you have on your top five your top 10 what artists have produced good results for you and your marketing campaigns drop in the comment section below I would love to check it out and see how you guys are already thinking about your music marketing campaigns with that being said once again my name is Cory and I'll see y'all next time