To answer this question, I think that we need to take a look on music business at all. Music busines works under the same rules as usual business does. You have a product – it’s your music. And you have your listeners – buyers. Your main task is to acquaint people with your product. One of the most important rules in advertising and sales: “The MORE people know about product – the MORE people will BUY IT.”
How will you acquaint people with your music – it’s your choice. There are a lot of ways of making this possible today. One of these ways – music video. It’s really great, personally, I adore watching music clips on MTV, VH1, Youtube, everywhere! But, people are always looking for something new. So, along with usual music videos we’ve got lyric videos. Shortly, it’s like a music video, while it needs less resources to make a such one. Just send your track, lyrics and ideas about the video to producer. And then – just get your video completely ready for a release.
Lyric video today – is not only a promotion thing. It’s just one of a way to release your track at all. Let’s remember how musicians may release their music:
Just a track on Itunes / Spotify / Soundcloud / Any other file hosting
Music Video (Usual Clip)
Lyric Video
Track Visualizer Video*
Just an audio with your image without any animations
That’s all! Not so many ways by the way.
Let’s take a look at every method in details.
- Just a track on Itunes / Spotify / Soundcloud / Any other file hosting
- Music Video (Usual Clip)
- Lyric Video
- Track Visualizer Video*
- Just an audio with your image without any animations
That’s all! Not so many ways by the way.
Let’s take a look at every method in details.
1. Releasing an audio as an only track is not the best idea. That’s pretty difficult to promote. Imagine that you’ve got your track on itunes, so, what’s next? How will you get new listeners for it? People don’t know about your link, and if they don’t know it – how will they buy it? Also, important, that listeners can’t even check your new track completely, just preview seconds.
2. Music Video is a very good way of presenting a new video. Along with an audio, viewers get your image and your visual idea (that you’ve put in a clip). But music video takes a lot of resources. You have to find a clipmaking team, to spend some time on filming, and to pay a pretty big sum of money. Of course, it’s a MUST in a music business. But sometimes it’s not the best time for it.
3. Lyric Video seems a really nice option. Production costs are much lower than with a real music video. Lyric Video allows you to upload it on any videohosting, so you are getting more markets where you may find new fans. It has all the benefits of music video (your image, your idea). If you hire a studio – you are saving a lot of time and energy. Plus some big companies has it’s own fan base, so you may get new fans there too. If your video is creative and professional – random viewer audience will spend much more time listening to your audio, ’cause they’ll check the visuals. And the more people are listening to your music, the more change that they’ll become your fans.
4. Track Visualizer Video is the most simple option, and will be good if you are on a low time (looks like our release is today but we don’t have anything!) and don’t have an ability to spend some money on video production at all. Yeah, it doesn’t have all the benefits of Music Video and Lyric Video, but it’s still better than nothing. You are still able to upload it on different video platforms and it isn’t static.
5. Audio with your image and without any animations. Come on, it’s 2016, it is not serious!
*Track Visualizer Video – is a theme of my another upcoming article.