Video Tips & Tricks For Your Music Marketing Strategy

When it involves music promotion, video is king. So, we requested our buddies and consultants at Rotor Videos for his or her recommendation, suggestions, and methods on tips on how to streamline your music video advertising and marketing technique. Here’s what they needed to say…

What movies ought to musicians be making to advertise their music?

Video is probably the most thumb-stopping format you should utilize on social. And it may be used to advertise every kind of artist actions—like album and single releases, IRL occasions, merchandise gross sales, new episodes of your vodcast or sequence, contests, and so forth. But these all are inclined to fall in to certainly one of these essential video classes, which each unbiased musician wants of their music advertising and marketing toolkit:

• teaser movies
• promo movies
• music movies (official audio, music and lyric movies).

What are some video creation suggestions that artists have to know?

Every sort of video has a distinct job to do for the artist, so the vital issues to recollect when making them can fluctuate.

TEASER & PROMO VIDEOS

These are your secret weapons for making a excessive quantity of movies you have to increase music promotion and get seen on-line. They’re brief movies (often 15–30 seconds lengthy) that present straight-to-the-point messaging about upcoming plans or present/just lately reside initiatives (assume Coming Soon, Out Now, New From, and so forth.) Their magnificence is how simple and inexpensive they’re to make. Here are some do’s and don’ts:

• Include textual content // On social, most movies are mute by default, so promo textual content communicates your message when audio can’t.
• Keep textual content temporary // 30 seconds isn’t loads of time to get an thought throughout. And you have to go away the textual content on display lengthy sufficient for it to be learn. A very good information is to restrict your phrase rely to 1 phrase or much less per second. So in case your promo goes to be 15 seconds lengthy, then your complete phrase rely must be 15 phrases or much less.
• Include a backing monitor // These teasers and promos are about you, so make certain to characteristic your personal music in them, even when the promo/teaser isn’t for a launch. When it IS to advertise an upcoming or new launch, use the hook of your monitor to make a right away and memorable influence.

What subsequent?

Don’t make viewers guess what you need them to do after they’ve seen your teaser or promo. Include a name to motion — that brief instruction on the finish that prompts them to work together not directly. (Buy Now, Stream On, Download, Follow, Subscribe Now, are all examples.)

Remember your shapes — Many artists make movies within the horizontal (16:9) format, which is nice for YouTube and perhaps Twitter. But let’s not neglect that there are a bunch of different distribution channels on the market the place panorama movies look fairly crap — particularly on cell (shrunk down to suit the display, black bars, and so forth). And talking of mobile habits, it’s vital to do not forget that 70% of millennials don’t trouble flipping their mobiles horizontally when watching movies. So create each teaser and promo within the shapes the look greatest on the social channels you employ.

Make sq. and vertical variations in order that they all the time take up the utmost out there house on social channels — like sq. for Instagram and Facebook feeds, and vertical for Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, Tik Tok, and so forth. Fill the body so that each one eyes are on you!

MUSIC VIDEOS

This is the basic fashion that our brains instantly soar to when somebody says music video. Full-length official music movies are nonetheless as vital as ever for constructing a fanbase and music promotion (due to YouTube). Here are some suggestions and recommendations:

• Be inventive // Take your time and make a video that showcases your model identification in addition to your musicianship.
• Know your route // Do you need to go summary to evoke a temper? If so, perhaps use visualizer clips or animations. Do you need to inform a narrative? Then you’ll have to movie or discover clips that work collectively to construct the narrative.
• Personalize it with you // Appearing in your music video is a good way to indicate followers your persona and allow them to get to know you. Include footage of you performing the monitor, dancing, or performing as a personality in your narrative.
• Personalize it with house // Another nice option to personalize music movies is just to shoot footage round your city. Stock libraries have loads of actually nice, top quality footage, however they’re not going to have clips of your native bar, that iconic mural or signage your neighbourhood is understood for, and so forth. Clips like these can increase the authenticity issue and talk lots to followers about who you might be.
• Be visually constant // If you combine extremely shiny hi-fi footage with janky lo-fi footage, your video could come out wanting like random clips in a blender.

For a extra skilled look, one choice is to make use of clips which can be all from the identical shoot or footage assortment. That will be sure that the lighting, filming fashion, movie high quality, and theme is constant in each scene. If you have to use clips from a number of completely different sources, attempt to choose ones that share visible qualities in frequent, like end (all lo-fi or all hi-fi), mild ranges, or color tones. Another trick is to use filters throughout modifying to tie your vary of clips collectively (like tinted overlays, or making the whole lot black and white).

• Tease them // If labels put out press releases each time an artist launches a brand new music video, then indie artists ought to observe that cue and be hyping up their very own music movies. Tease its launch weeks upfront with promo movies, sneak peeks of snippets, and date countdowns. Not solely does it construct anticipation and improve the attain of your new monitor, it additionally means that you can develop and deepen your relationship along with your fanbase.

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Sharpen your abilities…

How To Promote Your Music Video in 7 Easy Steps

Creative Ways To Monetize Your Live Streams

How to Prepare for Video Distribution

5 Ways To Increase Your Reach on TikTok

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LYRIC VIDEOS

On YouTube, lyric movies are a sensible option to get nearer to the 10K threshold you want with a view to monetize your content material with advertisements. The extra content material you publish, the extra views you accumulate. It’s a easy components. Some followers love studying the lyrics to songs to allow them to sing alongside, and which means they play these movies again and again—which will increase each particular person video views and your channel’s lifetime views. Here’s what we advise when making them:

• Make one for each monitor // They’re so quick and cheap to make, there’s no purpose to not. Plus, they provide each monitor its personal likelihood to shine.
• Release them earlier than your music movies // Use them to check which tracks are fan favorites earlier than you determine which songs to create official music movies for. That additional little bit of perception may give your music video a significantly better likelihood at performing nicely by way of attain and engagement.
• Think of fonts like individuals // Typefaces have personalities, identical to individuals. Helvetica is accountable and businesslike. Comic Sans is harmless and casual. When selecting your lyric video’s font(s), consider it like casting the lead character(s) in your video. Which character greatest represents that music or that little bit of the music? If it’s a grime monitor, a fragile swirly cursive most likely gained’t be the suitable selection for the starring position.
• Watch for readability // Fans can’t study your lyrics if they’ll’t learn them simply. So readability is essential. Text’s time on display, placement, and distinction with the background can all have an effect on readability.

Try to maintain textual content on display at the very least 2–3 seconds for those who can, except there’s an excellent inventive purpose to flash phrases up quicker. For the background, select clips that don’t distract from the textual content. That’s to not say that you should solely use strong colour backgrounds. It simply signifies that for those who use video clips with loads of motion, texture, or sample in them, then be conscious of textual content placement and distinction.

Always (no matter whether or not you employ a strong colour or video clips) make certain your sort colour is mild or darkish sufficient to obviously stand out in opposition to the background. That’s distinction (for instance navy textual content on black background and off-white textual content on white background are low distinction (dangerous for readability)). And for those who assume your textual content is somewhat powerful to learn with no matter movement or sample is behind it, simply drag it to a much less busy part of the display.

• Mask up // No, that’s not a COVID reference. Masked textual content is reversed-out textual content. It’s the place a black layer is put over the background video, and the scene is barely seen contained in the traces of every letter. It’s one other option to emphasize key phrases and add visible selection to your lyric video.
• Go massive // Again, the lyrics are the hero right here, so set them massive and make them the star. And change it up. Make some phrases additional massive for extra emphasis in the event that they’re key phrases in your lyrics. Make others smaller if it fits. There’s no rule that claims all your textual content should be the identical dimension all through.
• Spellcheck and proof // Purposely selecting to spell phrases incorrect to suit the slang or a dialect is a legitimate inventive selection (like turnt or ‘bout to), however unintended typos and errors like utilizing the incorrect there, they’re, and their can look unprofessional.

How simple it for artists to make these sorts of movies in Rotor?

Very simple. — We’ve damaged it all the way down to easy steps that you could full in minutes for those who’re making a promo video, and in underneath an hour for those who’re making a full-length video:

1. Upload your monitor.
2. Pick the modifying and results fashion you need to apply and the video form you want (sq., vertical, horizontal).
3. Point and click on to pick out the clips you need to use (both your personal footage or from our library).

From right here, you possibly can let the app work its magic! Rotor’s Audio IQ will ‘hear’ to your music, robotically lower the whole lot collectively, and apply visible results to match the rhythm, depth, and tempo of your monitor. If you’re making a lyric video or teaser/promo video, observe the fourth step: Add display textual content overlays and customise fonts, colour, dimension, and so forth with the simple styling menus.

Seems too good to be true… What’s the catch?

There actually isn’t one. — Artists can create a variety of movies to advertise their music beginning at simply $6/video. And there are subscriptions for anybody seeking to make extra movies/month for much less. That’s arduous to beat, particularly contemplating that our app handles all of the advanced modifying bits for them, to allow them to give attention to feel and appear, and it permits them to make use of our library of over 6,500 premium video clips and animations at no additional value.

How can Symphonic members get began?

Jump on over to our Symphonic x Rotor web page, create your free account. You can experiment as a lot as you want. There’s no cost till you need to obtain your completed video.

Let’s get to work!