In today’s letter you’ll get:

• An understanding of the big picture of music marketing on social media (part 1)
• A simple, actionable process to help you become more creative (part 2)

Part 1 leads into part 2.

Once you learn about where to focus for your marketing to work (the ‘what’), I’ll point you to the relevant ‘how’.

Let’s get straight into it.

Part 1: The two sides of music marketing.

I spend a lot of time with musicians identifying and solving marketing problems.

And what I’ve noticed is that most musicians are close to making things work… but they’re missing a piece of the puzzle.

Maybe they:

• Understand how to make good content
• Or they have a solid plan
• Or their ideas are great…

But they can’t see how everything fits together.

Let’s change that.

In the first part of this letter, I’ll help you understand the two major sides of music marketing on social media.

Once you understand this, you’ll know how to identify where you need to focus to fix your broken marketing.

Structure and creativity.

Let’s zoom out—away from the details of what makes a good music post, or how to set up ads, or a 17 step release plan.

And instead let’s look at the big picture of successful music marketing.

There are two sides to it:

#1: The ‘system’ side, which you can think of as a machine or an engine that’s designed to generate results.

#2: The creative side, which you can think of as the ‘juice’ or ‘fuel’ you feed the system to make it run.

So you’ve got a cold, unfeeling ‘machine’ that runs—a system to generate results…

…and then you’ve got the creative ‘juice’ you feed into it—this makes it yours and breathes life into it.

These must work together; one can’t function without the other.

And this brings us to where many musicians are struggling:

We need some human, some machine.

I often speak with two different types of struggling musicians in my consultations:

• Musicians on the ‘system’ side—they believe all they need is to set up a system (a machine) and everything will work.
• Musicians on the creative side—they believe if their content is creative, that’ll do the job.

You will rarely succeed without both activated: The system side and the creative side.

On one hand, musicians who are only focused on the system might have a setup that should work…

But it doesn’t, because the ‘juice’ (creativity) they’re putting into it is poor quality.

On the other, musicians who are only focused on the creative side might have the artistic charm to make an impact…

But they lack the structure to make consistent, measurable progress on social media.

And of course musicians without either are in a world of hurt.

Marketing yourself on social media is not just a cold, mechanical process. Nor is it only a structureless, emotional creative pursuit.

It’s both; it needs the structure and the right creative juice to run it.

If you don’t have both of these sorted, you’ll likely go in circles.

Your system will fail you.

Your creativity will go unappreciated.

Think about it like this:

You have a guitar, which is the system that can help you ‘get results’ (make awesome music). And you have you, which is the creative force you put into that system to make sure it runs well.

A guitar without a great creative player is nothing, right? It’s just an instrument. And a guitarist without a guitar isn’t much use either—because how will you bring all your awesome ideas to life?

This is music marketing: A structure to get results + the creative juice to fill it & make it run well.

Like making good songs, marketing requires:

• Awesome creativity
• And then the organisation of that creativity in such a way that it produces the results you want (a system).

If your view of or approach to marketing right now is: “I just need a system”, you’re missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Or if it’s: “I just need to show up, be me, and be creative”, you’re also missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.

The musicians who succeed on social media embrace both sides.

They inject creativity and emotion into their marketing but they also have a system.

And maybe you’re saying: “but I do do both. I have a system and I always try to be creative with my marketing.”

That could be true, and it might be you need to work on improving one or the other.

But what’s much more common is musicians are missing one of these sides, whether they know it or not.

So let’s talk about how you can audit yourself, figure out where you’re going wrong, and what you can do to fix it:

Part 2: Where do you go from here?

Your first step is to identify what you’ve been focusing on and if there are any major components missing.

• Are you only focused on the system, without putting thought or energy into the creative side?
• Are you only focused on trying to be creative on social media but without structure?
• Or are you posting the sake of posting with no real direction?

Be honest here. It’s the only way you’ll make this work.

And to be clear: Simply posting your music is not being creative.

Your music is creative, of course.

But in the context of social media, the creative part is the way you communicate or present the music.

This doesn’t have to be complex.

But understand social media isn’t Spotify or Bandcamp.

Your music needs strong visual representation—and in a way that fits with the platform.

So get real with yourself. Are you missing one crucial side of marketing in your strategy?

If so, your next step is to set up the other side.

I’ve talked about the system side plenty, so I won’t go over it in detail here (if you want detail, you can read this).

But this is the system side in a nutshell:

• You need to be able to produce new stuff on a consistent basis
• You need a source or sources of reliable traffic
• And you need a way to get all this traffic (people) to stick.

Setting up a system isn’t complex, but it’s not appealing to the ‘creative side’ musicians.

If you’re one of them, know this: Once you set this up, you get to be super creative and people will actually notice.

So what about if you’re on the ‘system side’?

You may see marketing as something more detached from creativity.

Or you may feel the creativity of your content doesn’t live up to the creativity of your art.

If this is you, read on.

There are lots of things you can do to improve the creativity in your marketing.

To get you started, here’s one of the best and biggest (and simplest) processes that will help:

Step 1: Give yourself high quality materials to work with.

The better your input, the better your output.

If you’re filling up your mind with low quality content, media, ideas, books, whatever… guess what’s going to come out of you?

To feel and be more creative, consume better stuff:

• More creative content
• Amazing books and videos
• Music
• Anything that fills your mind with high-quality inspiration.

You don’t have to stay within the music world either.

Venture out into different areas and draw inspiration from them.

You might do this already to help you make great music: Read books, watch movies, get inspired by life.

Do the same thing for your marketing, your content.

This is an easy and fun step—no excuses! 🙂

The more creative seeds you fill your mental garden with, the more creative trees will grow.

And you might be like: “Alex, I do this all the time, this is boring advice and it doesn’t work for me.”

Well, that’s because of what you’re doing next.

Step 2: Create space to join the dots.

You may be one of those musicians who does consume high-quality stuff for inspiration.

But what do you do with it?

There’s no point taking in high-quality stuff if you never create the space for your mind to do something with it.

Once you’ve filled your mind with enough creative inspiration, you need to disconnect.

Creativity is combining existing things to make something new.

To help this process—to generate amazing ideas—you need to let your mind wander.

Let it roam free for a while so it can make connections between everything you’ve consumed.

This does not mean distracting yourself with your phone, TV, or anything like that.

That will only keep you stuck.

Instead

• Go for a walk with no agenda. Let your mind think about whatever it wants.
• Or meditate and do the same.
• Or write. Dump whatever comes into your head onto paper.

When you do this, your mind starts connecting dots, coming up with creative solutions.

You know those random moments when you get a genius idea out of nowhere?

You can make that happen on command.

You can make yourself more creative intentionally.

Is that not one of the most exciting things in the world?

Most musicians don’t create enough space to do this.

They have limited time (often because of 9-5 jobs) and they think the best use of their time around that is to grind.

Great attitude, but wrong approach.

Grind half the time, disconnect the other half.

Constant grinding feels like productivity. Strategically alternating between the grind and recovery is real productivity.

So let yourself disconnect.

And when those genius ideas pop up (which they will), make sure you capture them.

Step 3: Lock in to bring your ideas to life.

Once you’ve got some genius ideas from your disconnection session, it’s time to execute on them.

To turn creative ideas into high-quality marketing material, you need laser focus.

No distractions.

It’s you, your genius ideas and a clear goal: To get shit done.

This is the opposite of letting your mind wander; this is being so focused that you drop into flow.​

It’s in this state that your genius ideas will become real.

You’ll be able to produce content that’s way better than what you thought you were capable of.

You lose all sense of time and space, becoming one with the work and with the universe.

Flow is one of the closest things to magic you can get.

You know those music making sessions when you’re totally absorbed? The ones where everything you make is pure gold?

You’re probably in flow.

And if you want your marketing to shine so your music gets heard, get into this state when you’re making content.

You might have a negative perception of marketing and/or content right now.

You might think it’s soulless, boring, or taking you away from creativity.

Or you might be wishing you could inject more creativity into it but didn’t know how.

Now you do.

​Here’s a more detailed breakdown of how you can go about being more creative with your marketing.

Ok, let’s bring it back and wrap it up.

If you access your creative powers and set up a solid structure within which to channel it…

You’ll be unstoppable on social media.

Many musicians are close to done with marketing themselves on social media.

They work hard, get no results, and conclude it’s not worth it.

I get it and I feel you.

But rarely have they sorted both crucial sides of their marketing.

Because once you have everything in place, good things happen.

This combination of system and creativity covers all bases:

• The stuff you put out will be awesome
• People will actually see and hear it
• You’ll find more enjoyment and fulfilment on social media
• And you’ll finally see that this is possible.

You can do this 🙂

I hope this gave you something to think about today.

Don’t forget how much power you have as a human and as a creative.

You’re capable of creating worlds and changing lives.

You just need the right structure within which to do that, and the right energy to make it all happen.

If this helped or you think it could help someone else, I’d be super grateful if you sent this to them.

Let’s spread the knowledge and encouragement as far as we can so we can all flourish.

They can sign up to the newsletter here.​

All the love and talk soon,

Alex