 So there's always this weird thing, every idiot on the internet loves to run to a comment section and say A GREAT SONG is the greatest marketing tool as if it's the most profound piece of knowledge ever dropped as opposed to the obvious thing every single person over the age of 18 knows. But while that's true, the under discussed thing is that if you have a great song you still need to get people to hear it and part of that is pitching to those gatekeepers who if they let you in will allow the song to get heard by enough people that your great song will have enough people hear it who will then tell others about it so it actually spreads. Whether this is playlisters, writers at websites, or even the director you really want to pay tons of money to who gets lots of requests, you need to get them to read a pitch and actually hit play to hear that song. So in this video, I'm going to tell you how to write that pitch so doors get open for you and the world starts to hear your song. 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 this is part of my series on how you talk to your community and while you don't have to watch the previous part of this series to get what you need from this video, you really should watch them since in the other parts they complete the puzzle and will teach you how to find the people you pitch to. So if you want to go deeper, I highly suggest you do this by clicking the link in the description or clicking the link when it comes up on the end screen. So whether we're pitching a blogger, Spotify for an editorial playlist or an influencers playlist or someone you want to get on your team, the first thing we need to do is establish an angle for the pitch. There are two routes I generally go down and what I encourage all of you to do who've never done this before is to explore both paths I'm going to outline as it will help you get to know yourself as an artist better and when one isn't working out, you should try switching to the other path and alternating to the other choice. So what are your two angles? The first is telling someone what's exciting about you. If this pitch is done well, it can excite the gatekeeper enough to listen to your song and give you opportunities. The second is creating curiosity and getting the reader to cross what we call the curiosity gap and listen to your song since their curiosity has been peaked and they want to hear what it sounds like. So let's first talk about how you get someone excited at a pitch since it's my optimal mode of pitching. Knowing what makes you special and how to sell it to other people is what opens doors for musicians. I would even argue that a lesson I've learned is when I wonder why a mediocre band gets bigger than another band that is just as mediocre as them, more times than not, the band that's getting better opportunities is better at selling themselves. Well, many people perceive this as connections. There's some truth to that, but the sale of what's exciting about them I think has become more and more important in recent years and those connections get made because they're getting more opportunities. So before we even pass go here, I need you to figure out what is exciting about you because this is where these pitches often fail. Even when the music is good, more often than not, the pitches here are, we rock, just listen to our track. This will get your fist pumping like Paul E.D. after a few monsters, pimp. Now I know a lot of you always ask for exact examples of this, but the very problem that makes this difficult is this is what artist development is and you can't make one that works for everyone or else it wouldn't be exciting. When you hear about artist development, a lot of time people think it's just making a good music video or the A&R throws them in with a mixer who's really good at their job. What it actually is is the artist figuring out how they are the optimal version of themselves and what their strengths are and how to describe it to people in a way that gets other people excited and trust me, this is even more crucial when you blow up than the level you're at. Since every time you're trying to get an opportunity when you're a huge artist, whether that's getting on a tour or playing an award show, you have to know the exciting artist pitch that will get you ahead of all the other huge artists who are also exciting and trying to get the same opportunity and you want to be the one they choose. And let me tell you, when you're wondering why an artist got an opportunity compared to another, oftentimes it was the pitch or that they had a better connection to the person making a decision. So many musicians say they want to figure this out and they hate promoting themselves, but the fact is understanding this helps you make better music and become a more optimized version of yourself as well as being good at pitching yourself. But let's get some practical advice for you here. Let's talk about what a pitch that gets somewhat excited to listen looks like. You need to ask yourself what's exciting about you and if your answer is you don't know, you were basically someone who expects to get a reward without doing the work everyone else did and that's a bad way to be. So for each person this is going to be different, but try to get in this mindset. Ask yourself if someone told this to me about an artist, what would make them hit play? Ask yourself what's an inventive creative way you can describe your music? What's something you have going on that few other artists do it and tell people about that? Here's a few types of vibes you could go for. If you thought Travis Scott and the baby were getting people riled up, you haven't heard what we're doing. Just wait till you hear the lyrics for our latest track. In Cell Hype Beast has written seven songs with seven different artists, all of which have over a million streams. There's countless tweets from when people hear this song that say they want to burn their local police department down. You want to be bold and a little hyperbolic and really sell this thing. I mean you do have to deliver when they hit play, but you know some exaggeration really does help. You can also go the route of showing other people care about you. Well if you write every big dog in our business know what this big dog doing, it's probably going to trigger people thinking you're full of it. But telling people you collabed with two other artists that are somewhat well known really can open a door. Especially if this person knows those artists, this can trigger excitement especially if the person you're pitching knows your community and these are artists of note that will help open the door. But let's go over what's not it. Since there's some things I see artists do when they're writing pitches or Spotify bios that are not it chief. If you weren't in a semi-popular band before this or a famous actor, telling people the members names is the opposite of exciting in a quick pitch. While it may be exciting to the townies at the local pub that Jim Gallucci and Perry Rosenbaum have come together to make a musical panoply of songs reminiscent of Radiohead before they discovered bleep bloops, I gotta say no way outside of the five mile radius of your high school is going to find that exciting and frankly I doubt many people there will either. Focus on describing your sound and approach you take to music or something that makes you unique from the 60,000 artists or posting music each day that a stranger would be excited to hear. If you think writing songs from the heart or the old school is exciting, you're definitely not using your imagination. We gotta do better than cliches here and what really works here yet again is to get somewhat excited and cliches are not exciting. Okay, let's go another route though. Let's try to write something that will make the reader be like wow I want to hear that or ooh what's that sound like? So finding a way to describe your sound that's intriguing will make the reader click because their brain is spinning at the thought of what you said. I mentioned a curiosity gap before and when we write headlines in media and as you may know my day job involves this we have to make the headline exciting that they jump the curiosity gap which is not just mmm I know what that sounds like already or two that's just not that interesting I don't care to click on it so here's some ideas on how you can make someone jump the curiosity gap. If periphery had the pop vocal choruses of Taylor Swift you know the first time you heard a hundred gecks and you wondered how anyone could combine those sounds well in cell hypes takes that ethos one step further you've heard of math rocks complex rhythms will ayahuasca edge break go the opposite way by making the simplest most minimal songs that still entertain listeners all of these make you wonder what could that sound like now the biggest problem with this method though is that music is highly emotional and specific so that person you're pitching isn't necessarily intrigued by the curiosity you've peaked because they really don't care what it would sound like if you mix the cure with ska then they aren't going to actually be curious this is why I prefer trying to get excitement from the gatekeeper since even if the music is not for them they will give more of a chance to something that just sounds exciting since they want to make sure they aren't missing out on something they should know or an exciting opportunity but just say you're across a bob dillon and john mayor isn't exciting there's tons of people who have that extremely insufferable playing wonder wall on an acoustic guitar in a corner at a party vibe you have to find some way of describing this that will make someone say oh I gotta hear what that sounds like no one is thinking that when you're across between kodak black and roddy rich inspire the listener to be like I have to click this this is gonna sound crazy and if you really don't have much depth here to go past these obvious comparisons and you're getting no listens you may have to start to question if you're developing your music enough that anyone would want to hear it this is a two-way street here people even the people who a lot of people regard as just writing great classic songs have some way of describing themselves that's exciting and have figured out sub-angle to take to music that makes it exciting to people who listen to it okay so let's say you figured out your angle here but there's something I want you to do next I want you to write it five different ways now I know a lot of you are giving me the look like the teacher you kind of liked but who just crossed the line with totally out of the line homework assignment but hear me out this is literally one of the things where you could put in very little effort and it goes really really far I mean if it goes well your whole life can change course so getting this as tight as possible really does matter I want you to make sure you've done this pitch in as many ways as it can be said and it's phrased as concise and perfect as it can be that I want you to show it to a couple of people because I've read your pitches before and the word coherent or tight doesn't always come to mind so if you have a loved one or a team member who has a command of what the English language looks like I implore you to let them see it since this may be the difference between failure and success okay so now that we have a tight pitch you need to set it around it and here's some tips for knowing how you do this effectively for the different types of people you'll be pitching if you're pitching a potential team member let's keep this under two paragraphs the first paragraph should be the most exciting stuff about you and if you have any good metrics let's remember business types love metrics these days there should be a call of action at the end as in an ask like if you're looking for the director to direct your next video make that clear and the same goes for pitching potential managers or influencer playlists but really here's the formula introduce yourself with the pitch tell them your most exciting metric whether that's monthly listens who you've clapped with or the 26 people have tattooed your best song lyrics on them find something that shows enthusiasm toward you and then make the ask and drop a link to your socials and where they can listen to you and be sure to leave your contact info it really is that simple don't overthink it but I'm sure you're wondering about Spotify editorial playlist where you pitch in the Spotify for artist page this is a long subject I've made a video on already so if you want to go down this rabbit hole I don't have enough time in this video so please head to the description for that okay and type for some last secret sauce whether it's emails that go to junk or sometimes my assistants put things in the wrong folder or I don't feel much urgency from the email it really is the follow-up that gets through to busy people especially since for so many of them the go-getterness is appealing and there's sometimes a feeling that you're missing an opportunity when someone has the ambition to follow up with you but pro tip as I deal with publicists who pitch me all day to get their clients booked on the insanely popular podcast I produce I see the tricks of the best of the game and here's what they are they follow up in short enough time that it won't be unfamiliar but not so short that it's psycho it seems the sweet spot is three to five business days and trying to time that follow-up to not be a Friday when people are crabbing to get out of the office or Monday when they're buried under emails from the weekend increases the likelihood your pitch will get through greatly and remember people you're going to pitch these people again in the future so maybe if they didn't bite on the exciting pitch the next time you either tighten that up or you go with the curiosity pitch pitching isn't a one-time shoot your shot type of thing as much as an ongoing thing you will do till you have a relationship with someone and they are a part of your community okay if I missed anything in this video on the third week of every month we do a Q&A to answer user questions so you should leave them in the comments as I'd love to follow up on this on this channel this is the type of stuff we discuss so if you're interested in that you should definitely like subscribe and most of all get notified so you don't miss my most crucial videos I post for helping you build a fan base I answer every comment below that doesn't ask why my nose is so stuffed up on the screen now is a video on how to build your community or how to get your music noticed as well there's one last one on how to blow up on Spotify in 2022 click and keep learning thanks for watching