Recently Instagram rolled out a new feature that lets users discover stories by location from the Explore tab.
If you have a music video recorded at recognisable locations in a city (the larger the population density, the better), go do the following:
- Cut short clips from your video and optimise them for tall displays (ie. vertical view (portrait), as opposed to horizontal view (landscape);
- Every day, post a clip tagged to the location where it was filmed;
- Don’t forget to add some branding, so people can easily follow you (e.g. your Instagram handle, which people can tap on).
Don’t overdo it: remember that your existing followers are also going to see all these clips, no matter where they are.
You can even get more creative about this. Go to different locations in a city, record short clips, and mash them all together into a larger video, to be released when you’ve actually recorded all the clips.
[if you end up doing this, I’d be happy to feature you on the MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE newsletter which goes out to 1,500 industry people, up until top exec levels, and is growing every week — bas@musicxtechxfuture.com]
Some more thoughts about music & video:
I think too often, music videos are separate products from the music itself. Now, in a digital landscape dominated by Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook-hosted videos, it’s important to marry the two. You can try conceptualising the video, before the song. You can work on both at the same time.
I think the idea of experimenting with Instagram or Snapchat stories as a creative medium for music really forces you to mix the two. And you just have to worry about holding people’s attention for 10 seconds at a time, rather than creating some storyline that demands an attention span of a few minutes.
More on video:
- Like MC and DJ: an audiovisual alliance for the digital age
- Pioneering the relation of music and video: a look at the digital innovators
(bit shorter format this week — on my way to Midem. See you there!)