Artists are successful when they do two things well: create songs that mean something to us and push them out where we can find them. In our many years of working in branding in the music industry, we can share this insight safely with you all: one of them they like doing, and the other, not so much.
Creating engaging content of high enough quality for the online presence is hard and time-consuming, and many artists don't find it particularly creative or interesting. But I think something is changing. The phones and the apps on the phones we now have become a lot easier to use, but beyond that, the output is simply on par with whatever studio equipments they might have been using anyway.
When somebody like Selena Gomez drops full music videos (not just lyric videos or teaser trailers) shot on the latest iPhone, something has permanently changed.
Granted, it's top of the line, the new iPhone 11 Pro which does indeed have a heck of a camera. But Selena might be making a point to newer artists that the equipment doesn't matter, just do your thing. PetaPixel calls it a demonstration of what can be achieved with "a little bit of ingenuity and artistic vision".
In the same vein, artist K. Flay release a 'vertical video' made entirely of clips of her singing along to her latest track This Baby Don't Cry all filmed with a different Instagram Story filter.
There was another clever little piece of campaigning K. Flay did that we found out from someone who super enthusiastically was like "omg, have you seen the new K. Flay Spotify video clip??"
For those who haven't seen it yet, Spotify now allows the artists to have a few second video play on loop while the song plays. "She put her whole concert schedule on there!!!" added the enthusiastic friend "and I totally would have gone to see her but our Europe dates didn't line up!".
What a clever way of using the medium available to her to share with her true listeners what she's up to. We're obsessed with this.
It's almost like these two artists, Selena Gomez and K. Flay, are finding ways to make our discovery as the audience of the work itself a creative outlet in it's own right. Not one that competes with the song and the show and the art, but one that supports it.
And we're obsessed with it.
Please, if you see other cool examples of artists using tools everyone has access to in a new and creative way, send it our way. This is our jam.
