Content curation platforms like Wakelet can provide a one-stop shop for emerging musicians looking to build their brand as Misbah Gedal explains
Few industries on the planet have experienced more radical change in the past 10 years than the music industry. It’s safe to say that for the emerging musician, the Internet can be a pretty overwhelming place – especially given the number of platforms they need to be on at any one time. It takes quite a lot to stand out from the crowd these days, and marketing yourself as an artist is harder than ever.
The problem with multiple platforms
In my role at Wakelet I’ve had some amazing conversations with emerging musicians from across the world. And they all have the same issue. With their content hosted on so many platforms, which one should they be directing their traffic to? Social media is a great way to interact with fans and make announcements, but as for the actual music itself, a lot of the time it’s spread out across Soundcloud, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and mixtape platforms. As a musician, this can make it difficult for anyone to find all of your music in one place – especially if you have different formats of music on different platforms.
In addition, when speaking with booking agents, record labels and management companies, it’s important to present an organised and engaging narrative. It’s essential that you showcase your music, social media presence, interviews and magazine features all in one place. It’s difficult to do this through an email and, quite frankly, a list of 20 hyperlinks does little to get people interested!
When I show Wakelet to people in the music industry, the first thing they usually say is, ‘How did I not know about this before?’ Being able to take content from different platforms and easily thread them together into a story is invaluable, essentially replacing a website for many people. By making a Wakelet profile, you can create beautiful looking collections of your music and showcase your journey in one place. It’s a free, easy, and convenient way to keep track of your career, engage your fans, and build your brand.
Tell your story without distractions
One of the first musicians to join Wakelet back in 2015 was a rapper from Denver, Colorado called Jay J Pierce. He summed up Wakelet perfectly. ‘It ties everything together for me,’ he said. ‘I know that the majority of people don’t have much of an attention span and will get side-tracked if you let them wander too much! I think it’s extremely important to keep the traffic in one spot if possible!’
He raises an important point. The Internet has become a hotbed of distractions. YouTube’s ‘up-next’ algorithm does little to help emerging artists as it usually recommends similar music from a totally different artist. The same applies to most other platforms, which are great for discovery but can also guide listeners away from your music rather than to it. Creating an artist page on Wakelet solves this problem, allowing you to organise your music in the way that you want people to listen to it, without any noise or distractions.
I’ll be writing another blog post describing some of the experience I’ve had working with emerging musicians. In the meantime, if you’re an artist looking to clean up your online presence and tell your story better, give Wakelet a try – it’s free!
