I attended a music business workshop this weekend on how artists can diversify their revenue stream; I was hopeful for some insight on how to better run my band, a local doom metal outfit called Chaosmonaut. I have been trying to learn the do’s and don’t’s of business and marketing in relation to the music industry, and how I can apply that to my band.
What I got instead were mostly empty business platitudes that were not helpful at all. A couple of the more pointed statements I often see in the music business or influencer crowd are about authenticity and branding. While these seem diametrically opposed to each other, it is important to realize that actual authenticity is less important than the appearance of it, which I call ‘Branded Authenticity’.
The points that the presenters were making are the classic hallmarks of Survivorship Bias, where these successful artists mistakenly attributed these points to their success, without really understanding the other factors required for them to make it. Both of the successful artists pointed to good branding and transparent authenticity as the keys to their success; from the perspective of a successful person, these appear to be key, but for the millions of us living our authentic lives without mainstream success, it rings hollow.
It isn’t hard to find people on social media broadcasting fully authentic snippets of their lives; after all that’s what social media is for. The actual reality is that what consumers want is the appearance of authenticity, not the actual thing. A point both came up in the seminar, and on a Tiktok video I recently watched; in the seminar it was discussed how Kanye West paid millions to air a commercial filmed on his iPhone much like you or I would do; this approach gave an air of authenticity and broke the standard that we expect to be advertised to in the Super Bowl.
Of course, this only works if it can leverage the multimillion dollar media empire of a well-known celebrity. On the TikTok video, the influential producer asked his audience to decide if they liked his videos better if recorded on the phone, or with a fancy hi-def camera and microphone; the users chose the phone video because too polished feels like an advertisement that causes the audience to immediately skip the video. The creator already had his audience before the choice was ever made, and now the audience explicitly told the creator that they wanted the authentic feel of the phone video, regardless of the content.
Personal Branding, on its surface seems to be antithetical to authenticity; after all, it is a crafted version of a person designed to help sell a version of that person. Stephen Pressfield says this in his book, “The War of Art”:
The professional identifies with her consciousness and her will, not with the matter that her consciousness and will manipulate to serve her art. Does Madonna walk around the house in cone bras and come-fuck-me bustiers? She’s too busy planning D-Day. Madonna does not identify with “Madonna.” Madonna employs “Madonna.”
Stephen Pressfield
One of the artists in the seminar, who also designs fashion, told the audience that every day, he lives his brand. Going to the grocery store, he wears his clothes that define his brand, so that a chance encounter can spark a conversation and potentially be profitable. This person has incorporated his brand into his own sense of person.
Branding Vs. Authenticity in the Age of Social Media
This brings an interesting dilemma of how much the brand must be integrated into the person, and how that is advertised to the world, and somehow still be honest with yourself.
We enter this interesting space where an artist must know their audience, and design their brand to have the largest impact. The most successful artists have been able to weave their brand with authenticity in order to be as relatable as possible to their audience; we don’t actually want to see Taylor Swift sitting down to pay her taxes or mow her lawn (maybe, I don’t know, Swifties are weird that way); and at our core, we know that a billionaire musician really has little in common with the every day women that are her audience. We do know, though, that Swift knows how to craft her public image such that a well-crafted appearance of authenticity *is* her brand, regardless of how accurate that actually is.
This is not Taylor Swift
On the surface, this may appear as a criticism, in reality this is just the business of art; and a successful artist treats this as a necessary part of the skillset required to be successful. Even in heavy music, we know this is true. Once artists leave the stage, the grimrobes come off, Matt Pike puts on a shirt, and Chelsea Wolfe probably wears something with color when she goes to hang out with friends and family.
Of course, every one of us understands that all of us are not our full transparent authentic selves in every environment anyway; we dress and talk differently to our bosses than we do to our children. Every facet of our lives has us focusing on how we present ourselves relevant to our audience. We may want our spouses to see us as intimate and sensitive partners, but we want our bosses and coworkers to see us as hard driving competitors, and children to see us as playful companions.
These can all be true in the disparate environments we find ourselves in. We can be authentic and honest in each of these situations while understanding how our audiences are likely to respond. Maturity is learning how to approach these situations in order to achieve the ends that we want. In the case of the metal scene in particular, there is a lot of pressure to “live the lifestyle”, so successfully separating these parts of ourselves without being accused of being a poser or sellout becomes a challenge.
On the other end of the spectrum are the artists that use personas; characters that are obvious to the listener as being not the same as the artist. Gwar, Prince, KISS, Behemoth, and Ghost are prime examples. While this has the advantage of maintaining some anonymity; a lot more effort is required to make it work; there are no half measures here.
For the rest of us, weaving authenticity into your brand becomes tricky; to be successful means you must be interesting, while still being relatable. This means that there is now a choice to be made regarding what elements of yourself that you decide to accentuate and present to others. This in itself is its own artistic craft, and one musicians should not shy away from.
After all, we all write music to inform us of ourselves, why not let that process expand to the non-musical aspects of our performer’s life? Instead of branding being seen as a marketing lens designed to dupe customers, it can become part of the artistic performance to connect with like-minded people.
Branded Authenticity is a fine line to walk; if your branding is too aggressive or too obvious, people will immediately be turned off. Too much transparency into everyday mundanity, and you are no longer interesting. Success appears to come when we put effort into our presentation, and treat it as part of our craft. It becomes less like marketing and more like a living art performance.
Embrace it.
–Joe Turmes
