 So we all know the most effective way to market music and have all the other hustles and promotions you do be as effective as possible is to have a great song with a great music video. It's the most common information you'll hear anytime you post on a message board about music promotion. Get so many people ignore how it actually happens. Since we know great music is the best marketing tool and an amazing music video that complements helps make every bit of effort you do easier and go even further, it's important to get that working. In this video I'm going to talk about a detail of what you do to make it so your songs will be better and your music videos and everything you do will be even better. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from 0 to 10,000 fans and this is Muse Formation. So now that it's getting close to a year since I started this channel there's some wisdom I feel like I haven't put enough emphasis on. Since I've gotten so caught up in making videos on Spotify promotion and all the other things that are really fun to do yet this advice is actually some of the key to what I've seen open the doors to be the big moment for so many artists. When I was working at Warner Music Group one of the things that I was charged with was interviewing some of the new signings and talking about their story of how they got to be signed by one of the three major labels. Shockingly, it wasn't sliding in an A&R's DM saying you know what it is or making Mark Zuckerberg even more rich by buying Facebook ads. So often that story happened because they worked with a collaborator who they bonded with and it either made content that got them a notice of a large audience or that collaborator then introduced them to someone else who opened a door for them and got them on one of the biggest labels or a huge fan base. One of my hottest takes, and boy do I have a lot, is that the number one way people fail their music is that they stay insulated and don't explore how much better their music could be if someone else produced or mixed it or even if they do that if they did some research to find someone who's good at doing that and even if they do work with someone else finding someone who's really good at doing this instead of the person who's closest or easiest to work with them in their proximity could open huge doors for them and really make their music come out better. So many musicians have a ton of potential that doesn't get realized because they don't do research at all to find the right people to work with instead just do what's easiest by working with a person that's close to them. They don't seek out the people who could show them new ways to see themselves that can unlock how they can become an exceptional artist that people are drawn to and want to listen to all the time. Which brings me back to another thing that I learned at Atlantic Collection Records. One of the techniques they do to get artists who are young and green to become amazing artists is to have them collaborate with lots of different people. Whether it's writing songs with other songwriters to learn the tools and techniques they use to working with different producers to just hang out with other artists and talking about what they've learned and the journeys they've been on in their career. They make sure that their artists get and talk to so many different people. This could even be working with different directors and designers who help show them how they develop an artist's image so that they can find who they are themselves. Being around highly creative people to understand how to bring out the best in ours is so much of what makes great artists great. And inversely, when you sit in your mom's basement and don't reach out and work with other people and don't learn new tools, you don't make connections that can open doors and you don't get the help of people who know more than you. It's really amazing what it can do for an artist so much of the time when someone else sees the lens to bring out the best in ours that makes them really finally click to others. The epiphanies that are brought from working with different people and finally seeing the way they can be presented really is some of the most crucial thing to figure out how you make yourselves work as an artist. And this can be from a producer, a song co-writer, a vocalist, a music video director, mixing or mastering engineer, or even a merch designer who finally shows you the look that you should be using around your music. Oftentimes, what this looks like in an artist's career is they reach out and they find a person who opens doors for them whether it's a connection or to making music videos or videos or art that starts being what an artist finally starts bonding with through their music. Just think about a lot of the art you've appreciated in your favorite musicians. It's often from an artist finding someone who compliments them well and then they do something that finally clicks and really opens up a new creative door for them. But it's even more than that. Oftentimes working with new people teaches you who you are and you learn more about your vision as an artist. It teaches you the skills as you learn from collaborators and all the more common it makes you a better artist since the person you're working with is skilled in one area and they often fill in the blank that you are lacking and it makes you more of a complete artist when you work with them and present it to the world. Now if you've never done this this can be really intimidating and you might be wondering how you do this. Let's go back to my video on finding community which is linked in the card on the screen now or in the description below. In this video I explained that you need to identify tons of artists who are similar to you in size or a little bit bigger and put them on a list of what I call targets. We then want to research everything about them and this includes who is on their team and this research is some of the most important time you will take as an artist and so many people will tell you when you read interviews with your favorite artists they'll talk about doing this research and it's a lot of what brought them to finding all the ways that they became a full artist. We then want to research everything about these artists and find who is on their team onto who they work with. Since if you hear their mixes sounding great maybe you should try a song with their mixer. If their music video is amazing you should take a meeting with that director and talk to them. This research will often show you who you should be talking to on the business side too but that's a story for another time. But this does take time you don't want to just find 10 artists who are just like you. You need to search through SoundCloud and Bandcamp and Spotify Playlists and other places you can find artists at your level and research them on a very regular basis. In fact I would be doing this for a few hours every single month. Take in their content and then keep track of what they do that's good in a spreadsheet. Then when it comes time to work on a song and you have a blank that you need filled whether that's a new mix of something or a new video you can then look up who you liked and then revisit the things that you found inspiring and see if that's the right person to work with you. But here's the thing so many people tell me Jesse I've already done this and it didn't work out the person didn't write back to me listen you got to write to a lot of people for this to work out and finding a fit is not easy just like dating isn't easy and you don't go on the first date after you become single again and it always works out great. You need to go around and shop around it in date a little. Don't get discouraged from a lack of a response either. In fact work past it. As you may have heard me say before I've never managed any of the successful bands I managed when they first asked me the first time. In fact it was usually the fifth time they asked me that I finally said yes and then we ended up working together and building a fan base for them. Oftentimes if you haven't reached out to someone at the right time and the key is to stay on the person's radar until the right time comes. They may be super busy now but not as busy in a few months or they may not click with the song you just sent them but they may click with one that you send them six months later. Persistence as long as it isn't annoying and burdensome is often rewarded. The other thing I see people get discouraged about during this time is thinking people are too big to work with them or too expensive. Yes many people will be out of your budget but writing for a quote never hurts and I'll tell you why. First off so many people think creators cost way more than they do for a variety of reasons. I always think of Steve Albany's story that after he made Nirvana's humongous hit album in utero that once that was done he worked less than he ever did in his career at that point since so many people assumed he was now too big for them to work with him. I've been through this too. I've been told by countless people that they think I'm too expensive to work with when I actually keep my rights as affordable as possible since I love working and don't want to be sitting around waiting for people to be able to afford to hire me. Assuming someone is out of your price range or for that matter they won't hear you and get excited about what you do makes it so nothing ever happens in your career and that you end up sitting around and missing all the opportunities. Shoot your shot as the kids say and reach out and remember to keep being persistent and going for the people who you want to work with and who you find inspiring. To close this video out I also want to leave you with this thought. I can tell you this if you get the chance to talk to so many of your favorite artists I'm sure they will tell you that some of the people they have collaborated with opened their mind creativity or made their song so much better and it made a breakthrough for them that made them the artists they are today that you love. It's part of every artist you love story so make sure you do more than settle on the first person you meet with to collaborate and expand your boundaries and try to find the best people possible to open your creative doors so that your dreams don't get let down. Thanks for watching. Am I missing anything? Is there any other way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them so leave them in the comments since I answer every comment in every post. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like subscribe and get notified and I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with how to promote your music and how to make songs you're happy with in the future. I have a Facebook group linked below that is only helpful information no playlist or con artists only artists having helpful discussions allowed. If you want to learn more about me work on a record with me or check out any of my books podcasts or anything else I do go to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on all the socials. One last thing there's two playlists here one is on how to grow your fan base from zero to 10,000 fans and the other is on how you make songs you're more happy with and the other is on how you promote your music with Spotify and the other is specially chosen to match this video or you can hit the subscribe button below and stay tuned as I have tons of tips for musicians.