“TikTok has now become a completely different part of our jobs that takes up so much time,” performer Taylor Upsahl told Business Insider in June 2022.
Back then, if an artist wasn't willing to shoot social videos, managers and record labels could turn to other marketing strategies. Hire influencers to add songs to your short videos, hold video contests to encourage the public to promote your tracks, ask producers for remixes and mashups, or use other creative approaches. There were also people promoting the album.
That is changing.
“I always remember the conversations we had at our early labels when we ran a TikTok campaign,” Ramzi Najdawi, co-founder of music marketing company ATG, told BI. “Labels would ask, 'Do artists need to lean in to create content?' And they were like, 'No, artists don't need to do anything.' I can't say it's essential now, but it's definitely an important element. ”
Ten music marketers who spoke to BI about their strategies said that by 2024, most artists will need to be directly involved in creating social content in some way.
reason?
Influencer promotions, centered around a few major creators and dozens of micro-influencers, have become more popular in 2020 as short video apps have become saturated with videos, making it difficult to get featured in feeds. is also much less predictable and often more expensive.
To make influencer campaigns work more effectively, music marketers ask artists to post original content first, creating organic interest in the song and allowing creators to promote it with additional videos. Masu.
“You can't just run a marketing campaign where you book a bunch of influencers to promote a song,” Ed Winters Ronaldson, founder of music and brand marketing company Strudel, told BI. Ta.
Instead, the company is working with artists and their teams to post videos and build initial traction on TikTok before bringing influencers into the campaign.
“If you can get your songs out there, that's very valuable,” Najdawi said.
The ongoing licensing dispute between TikTok and Universal Music Group has increased the need for artists and marketers to be proactive in their social campaigns, with some of UMG's leading artists opting instead to promote their official songs. He posts videos of live concerts and conversation-style videos.
Creative agency travels with performers
To gather more social-friendly content, record labels turn to creative agencies to follow artists on tour and create behind-the-scenes content for fans on social.
Cynthia Parkhurst, founder of creative agency Teammate, said she recently accompanied the Jonas Brothers on tour for that purpose.
“The idea is we want to bring the fans into the room,” Parkhurst said, adding that her team often shoots on iPhones. She says, “I want people to feel like they can see her friends and her person as she scrolls, not some deal where it's like a big pre-fabricated lighting setup.”
Parkhurst said these behind-the-scenes clips are sometimes filmed during music video shoots or late-night TV appearances, and are often over-performing.
“It’s kind of crazy to see an iPhone clip get almost as many views on YouTube as a fully-formed music video,” she said.
Mateen Kazemi, director of creative marketing and head of video editing at agency Prophet Media, said the pair traveled separately to tour with the Jonas Brothers to film content for Lawrence, the group's opening act. He said he went.
“Influencer campaigns don't really work the way people think they do,” Steph Rinzler, founder of Prophet Media, told BI. “In fact, it's much more valuable to invest in artists and visually build their art worlds around them.”
The days of passively promoting songs are coming to an end.
Besides comprehensive influencer campaigns, other passive strategies such as promoting a track in the background of a public-facing video such as cooking content or a close-up of slime should be avoided unless the song is extremely catchy on its own. , is becoming increasingly unreliable, said ATG co-founder Omid Nouri. .
Many marketers are now looking for fans of artists to create videos for song campaigns, rather than random influencers.
Megastars like Taylor Swift and up-and-coming artists alike engage with superfans, as it shows that building excitement for an album release can generate hype by tapping into a loyal fan base. Finding new ways to do things is a big focus across the music industry. and promote ticket sales.
“If you find an Olivia Rodrigo fan and commission content from them, it's going to go viral on TikTok, compared to asking a professional creator who does about 20 audio bookings a day. '' said Simon Friend, Chief Operating Officer. marketing agency Rounds told BI.
Sean Cain, co-founder of marketing agency Hundred Days Digital, similarly agrees that asking an artist's fans to push their tracks is a better way to reach a broader social audience through a large-scale influencer push. “It would be a more targeted approach than trying to do that,” he said.
“You have to understand these niche audiences to reach people, because you can't just spray it to a mass audience and really understand where this artist's core fans live. Because you don't get there in the same way,” Kane said. He said.
