Tag: Instagram

Treat Twitter like a visual medium & sync your Instagram posts to it

Posted on | by Bas Grasmayer

Here’s a little hack I use to share my Instagram photos to Twitter automatically.

Many years ago, Instagram decided to disable its Twitter cards integration, meaning photos posted to Instagram and then shared on Twitter, no longer showed up as an image but instead just as a descriptive text + link. It’s a common strategy for social startups to first leverage other platforms by making highly shareable content, and then slowly making content harder to share so that people spend more time on the platform itself (where the platform can actually monetize them through ads).

For years now, Twitter has steadily been growing into a visual service, instead of a service of status updates and link sharing, and tweets that include images getting higher engagement. Yet many still treat it as the service it once was.

Sharing to Twitter from Instagram with the app’s native functionality is near-pointless. It leads to very low engagement, and you’re typically better off manually making a photo post to Twitter. But why do the same thing twice if you can easily configure a solution where all you have to do is post to Instagram.

Step 1: register with IFTTT

IFTTT is a service that lets you connect different services and automate behaviours between them. The name of the service is an abbreviation of “If This, Then That”, meaning that if one thing occurs in one service, something else is triggered elsewhere.

In our case, that thing that occurs is you posting a photo to your Instagram account. What’s triggered elsewhere is that your Twitter account will post the Instagram photo as a native Twitter photo post with a link to the Instagram post.

Step 2: create a new applet on IFTTT

When you create a new applet, you’ll see the service’s formula structure explained before.

Click on +this and select Instagram. Connect your account, and then choose a trigger. If you only want to share specific posts to Twitter, you can do so through the use of a hashtag that you only use on specific posts. Since I only post every couple of days or less, I’m selecting “Any new photo by you” since I don’t see a need to limit what I’m sharing to Twitter.

In the next step, +that, you select Twitter, connect to the service, and then pick Post a tweet with image. You can customize the tweet text in case you want to add text to your tweets. Keep in mind that any text in the caption you use on Instagram will be abbreviated to make room for the other text. You will see this:

Click Add ingredient and select Url. This way, each time you post a photo from Instagram to Twitter, it actually links back to your original Instagram post, which may help people with placing comments, or converting your Twitter followers to Instagram followers.

The next field, Image URL, should read SourceUrl. SourceUrl is the direct link to the image on Instagram, and Twitter needs this link in order to repost the image. Changing this will break the applet.

Step 3: finish your applet

Think of a nice, easy-to-understand title for your applet and hit the Finish button. You can choose to get notifications each time your applet runs, which means you get notified each time a photo is posted from Instagram to Twitter.

Step 4: see if it works

When you go to My Applets,  you should see your applet. Here’s mine on the left:

When you click on it, it will open a bigger version of it. Click on the cogwheel and you get a screen to configure the recipe. I’ve cut up the screenshot, but if you’ve followed all the steps, you should see something like this:

Make a photo, post it on Instagram, and see if it works. (it may take a while for it to appear on your account)

All done!

Happy posting.

For some examples, I’ve previously set this up for my friends at Quibus and Knarsetand, and I’ve also got it set up for my own Twitter account.

The Instagram Stories rulebook (and 20 creative ideas for your short form videos)

Posted on | by Bas Grasmayer

Instagram Stories are the most important development in social media right now. I’ve previously explained why, but the key point is that the short format expiring content makes it fun to create, share, and engage with people who share their moments.

My two articles about Instagram Stories had loads of people getting in touch, following me, and sharing their own strategies. I’m also delighted that I inspired some to take the medium more seriously and get to work on it. In this article I want to go a little deeper to help you achieve more success through it.

Defining success on Instagram Stories

Everyone has their personal goals for social media. I do it just for fun, to keep friends engaged, and to keep my network connected by staying top of mind. I have varying reasons for posting individual story items, but there’s always a bigger picture.

Let’s define success by exploring what failure looks like.

Failure is when you post such low quality or inconsistent items that your audience stops caring. Maybe they mute your story to stop it from appearing at the top. Maybe they stop tapping your name, which causes Instagram to put you towards the end of the top bar. Being inconsistent, low quality, or plain boring will result in a loss of viewership over time.

So, this implies that success means you have a captive audience. An audience that checks in at least every 24 hours, over a long period of time.

Success metrics

  • Time between sharing & viewing: do people check in once a day, or does a large proportion view your stories within the first hour of posting? The latter could imply stronger engagement.
  • Average daily viewers: this should grow over time if you’re doing well. Could also check average viewers per story.
  • Direct replies: are people responding and sending messages in response to your stories?
  • Conversion: location-tagging and adding hashtags to stories exposes your stories to wider audiences — do they end up following you and becoming long-term viewers?

A general rule book for Instagram Stories

I don’t really like rules, but I see some typical behaviour that just doesn’t work, so I need to draw the line. It’s pretty easy to make good engaging content, and pretty easy to avoid making dull content. So let’s do this. 💪

  1. ‘Never’ repost stuff you’ve already posted as normal Instagram photos to Stories.
    People will have seen it. Instagram Stories is not for old content. Stories is for fresh content. The other way around is fine: save your Stories to your camera roll, and then repost it as an Instagram post a day later. Not all your Instagram followers see your Stories, but nearly everyone who watches your Stories will also see your Instagram posts.
  2. Focus on keywords, not long texts.
    Text should be no longer than maybe a sentence. If it’s a sentence, make sure to use good keywords, so people get what you’re saying in the blink of an eye without actually having to read it. People flick through stories fast, so if you’re posting any text longer than that you are posting useless content.
  3. Video > boomerang > static images.
    In terms of what’s interesting content, video usually wins. It’s the most engaging, gives the most information, the most emotion. Uninspired boomerangs are pretty dull, so get creative. The reason why I put boomerangs at this step in the content hierarchy is because Instagram seems to favour them in Explore feeds when you’re location-tagging and hashtagging stuff.
  4. Tag your stories!
    It gives another dimension to your stories, so people can check out the location, what else is in the hashtag, or the person you’re talking about… but it also exposes your content in the Explore tab. This can easily triple or quadruple any individual story item’s audience.
  5. Keep it personal & regular.
    When you follow someone who regularly posts stuff, multiple times a day, you really get a feeling of connection. So that’s what you should be doing. Involve people in the part of your life that you don’t mind sharing. If you’re a musician or band, forget the same old shots of the audience at your gig or the “so excited about this new release” screenshots. Explain why you’re excited by talking into the camera, give people previews, take people backstage, show your journey towards a gig in the weeks leading up, and then on the day itself. Tell the story!
  6. Follow other people’s stories.
    The easiest way to get Stories wrong is by not understanding what they’re for. Check other people’s stories at least once a day! Pay attention to what’s interesting and what’s boring to you. This is something that will change with more long-term engagement, so make it part of your daily media habit if you want to take this medium seriously.
  7. Get creative.
    Repetitive content is what kills long-term engagement. So be creative.

20 creative ideas for Instagram Stories

I’m constantly thinking about what I can be posting, and drawing loads of inspiration from the people I follow. Here are my favourites.

Music

Music builds connection.

1. Take a video with music playing from your phone’s speakers. It captures the audio really well, and sometimes the best annotation for a view or moment is a song.

2. Take a screenshot of something that’s playing. Sounds dull, but if you’re posting a couple of items per day, it will blend in well. The screenshot makes sure people who have their audio disabled will understand what you’re sharing. A phone’s lock screen screenshot will also tell people things like the time of day, and whether you love living on the edge and riding that final 2-3% of your battery.

3. Take a video of a music video. I’ll get back to this further in the list, but sharing small clips by filming a YouTube clip on your laptop is surprisingly engaging… just make sure it’s interesting and not a video that everyone has already seen recently: unless for some reason the fact that you’re watching it is interesting or funny.

4. Use other music sharing apps. Some apps allow you to export small music clips, like Sounds, you can consider using them. But beware: super-polished content will feel like ads and is not very engaging.

Filters

Instagram has some basic photo filters you can use, which you can activate when taking a selfie (e.g. the virtual masks that stick to your face as you talk).

5. Get creative with filters. They’re there to make it easier to make fun or quirky content.

6. Use Snapchat filters, but post on Instagram. Snapchat has the best filters, and they regularly update them, adding new ones. You don’t have to post on Snapchat, just save the Snapchat Story to your device and then import it to Instagram.

7. Use filters in ways they weren’t intended. Faceswap with paintings, apply face filters to people on TV… get creative.

Surroundings

Your surroundings are more interesting than you may think… and there’s more waiting for you to find once you start looking for it. You should be documenting what you see and what piques your interest.

8. Street art and graffiti. Particularly stuff in original places.

9. Nature, grass, and parks. When people check Instagram Stories, they’re likely to be inside… so why not bring them outside? I personally really prefer film over static shots here, because you can capture wind, rain, animals, movement, and sound, and really share that special moment.

10. Going somewhere? Do a timelapse. The iPhone’s default camera app has a timelapse function, and if Android phones don’t have this, I’m sure there are apps for it. Hold your phone in front of your body while you’re walking and convert that 3 minute walk from the metro to the office into a 10 second clip.

11. Friends and people. Netflix founder Reed Hastings once answered that the most consistent thing they see in their data is that people really like stories about people. So bring some humanity into your stories and make it about more than yourself.

Pin text and emoji

If you put text or emoji into your stories, you can pin it to stay attached to a certain item in your video. You can have loads of fun with this.

12. Attach a surfer to the soap in your bath or sink. You can do this before taking a bath or doing the dishes. If you have some foamy soap, run your hand through the water and move it around while filming. Then attach emoji to the foam floating on the water.

13. Zoom in to pinned text. If you are doing a story with a lot of zooming, you can tag text to something you zoom in on. At the start of your story, the text may be barely noticeable until it’s fully zoomed in. Works with emoji too.

Use creative photography or video apps

Here’s two I like:

14. The Pantone app lets you tag certain colours. It’s a pretty nice way to highlight colours in your environment and share to Instagram.

15. Hyperspektiv lets you distort your reality. A very trippy app that lets you make interesting glitchy and psychedelic videos. Powerful, so you can spend hours inside the app, making all kinds of interesting content.

What are you doing?

Share what you’re doing.

16. Watching a music video.

17. Watching a documentary, TV show, or interesting movie.

18. Going to a concert or another type of public performance.

19. Flicking through an art book or going to a museum.

20. The fish tank in your local Chinese restaurant.

Just don’t overdo it: make sure content is not too similar.

21. Food? It’s a clichĂ©, but if you’re able to take a good picture of your food, you can share it occasionally. But keep in mind that it’s usually not the food that’s important: it’s the moment. Involve people in your narrative. A plain beer is boring: a beer after a hard day of work is already more interesting. Capture the moment.

 

Hope this helps you up your content game. And if you’re wondering about how I’m doing it on Instagram (despite not necessarily being the best example), follow me: @basgras

Four of the biggest opportunities for the future of music consumption

Posted on | by Bas Grasmayer

A reflection on key trends in music, tech, and user interfaces.

Soundcloud is saved, for now. On top of whatever strategic decisions they make to be able to attract follow-up investments, they face the difficult task of preserving their user community’s trust and winning back part of the trust they already lost. Tumultuous times are ahead, which will be frustrating, but also very exciting as it creates opportunity for new innovation and startups to claim their piece of the pie.

Underserved early adopter: the Myspace moment

Back in April I wrote about the fact that music is about to experience another Myspace moment. What I mean by that is that when Myspace hit decline, as it lost its community’s trust, new platforms got a chance as early adopters bailed and moved on. Musicians started building up audiences on Facebook and Twitter, and sharing their music on Soundcloud.

Now we see another Myspace moment: Spotify is focusing on mass audiences, and the prime early adopter platform has a distressed community due to the continuous struggles that Soundcloud has faced over the last years.

This creates opportunities for concepts such as:

  • Connecting groups of music listeners based on music taste or curiosity:
    • Soundcloud‘s struggling with this due to its failure to keep its search & tagging feature useful as the amount of content grew over the years, and they killed their groups feature;
    • Spotify has deprioritized user-created playlists and removed messaging functionality.
    • TheWaveVR could be one of the startups to fill this gap.
  • Collaboration and feedback:
    • If people are leaving Soundcloud, they need to take that somewhere else.
    • Audiu, which was one of the hottest startups at Sonar+D this year, could play a big role here.
  • Promo services for people who need an easy way to share music to journalists, labels, etc.

You could come up with a lot more ideas and find startups striving to make a meaningful impact there.

A third device in our midst: the Voice User Interface (VUI)

I’ve recently been playing around with an Amazon Alexa I ordered. At first I was skeptical and thought it would always feel awkward, but you get used to it fast and the convenience of a voice-controlled device in the living room (and other rooms) is bigger than I expected. I thought all those times you have to grab your mobile phone, or look something up on the computer, were minor and infrequent inconveniences. Now, the VUI has embedded itself into my life and all kinds of small habits, patterns and every day rituals.

VUIs are going to be the third device: first came PCs (plus laptops), then came smartphones (plus tablets), and now we’re going to get a third addition through voice-controlled devices like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple‘s Siri-based devices, devices in the car, etc. Perhaps this is why Tesla is in talks to do a music streaming service: music is the way into these spaces.

So what happens to the way we browse and explore music when we take the visual user interface away? What place does the smartphone get? What place does the laptop get? And what behaviour extends to our smart speakers?

What happens in AI is very important for VUI apps, but also for chatbots.

Conversational interfaces: the rise of messaging apps

Messaging has frequently been called the next major platform. It enables chatbots, which are apps that live on conversational platforms (this is a trend that’s also strengthened by VUIs). Some of the biggest social platforms to rise up over the last decade were primarily messaging apps, such as  Snapchat, Whatsapp, Telegram, and Kik.

The next step of the social web is messaging, but smarter than the AIM, ICQ, and chatroom phase of social. Facebook is positioning Messenger in such a way that it can live as a platform on its own.

Read Music Ally‘s write-up of the chatbot panel I moderated at Midem.

Short-form video

I urge people to try out Instagram Stories and figure out what it takes to make good content for it. Short-form video content is so important in an age of short attention spans. Some of the hottest platforms to emerge among teens in the last years have been Snapchat and Musically, both limiting the time-length of videos being shared on the platforms. It’s fun, fast, and requires low commitment: making users share and explore more content.

I firmly believe this is going to change the way we write songs and structure them. We’ve already seen how the streaming playlist economy made tracks shorter, with people moving the vocals to the start of the track in order to make skips less likely. In the next years, the video story format is going to strongly impact music.

Instagram is another platform that may fare very well from the decline of user trust in Soundcloud‘s community.

 

I’ll be discussing more of these trends in my newsletter, which goes out every week on Monday. Sign up to stay in the loop.

I’m a millennial and I share more music through Instagram Stories than any other medium

Posted on | by Bas Grasmayer

The top row on Instagram excites me. I check Instagram more often & only bother scrolling down the feed once a day, if I don’t forget. I’ve previously explained how Instagram’s Snapchat-cloned Stories functionality represents a great marketing opportunity for artists. Now I want to signify its broader importance to music, and social media in general.

Instagram's top row containing stories
Instagram’s top row containing stories

⚠️ You should be paying a lot of attention to Instagram Stories

Remember Facebook back in 2007-2010? Back when people were still posting Facebook updates in third person?

2008-style third person Facebook status update
2008-style third person Facebook status update

Back then, Facebook was so compelling to just post stuff to. It was useful and fun, despite having to write status updates in third person being kind of awkward.

People would post a lot. Interaction would be high. Much of what people were posting was public. Then everyone’s family started to join. Random people from different moments in your life started adding each other. And more recently I’ve been getting more friend requests from people I know professionally than LinkedIn invites.

Facebook is not fun anymore.

Facebook is useful, but it’s not fun. People are more careful about what they choose to post. And now, people who have been using the internet since the 90s are reaching retirement age. Your family is going to be on Facebook all day; watching you.

Just posting quick thoughts on Facebook makes no sense anyway. My Facebook used to be full of “anyone want to grab a drink tonight?” but now you can’t be sure if that message even gets seen by friends. Facebook is not a timely medium anymore. If you want to do ‘spontaneous drinks’ with random friends, you better post a status update 2 days in advance.

Instagram used to be fun

The thing people used to say about Instagram, was that that’s where all the young people fled as their parents and other relatives started using Facebook. It was fun, because it was actually instant: you had a sense of what friends were up to. The filters made it easy to make decent photos and have them look ok, or artsy, or whatever.

But over time, people grew aware once more that what they post is there to stay, started feeling self-conscious, and a lot of the fun faded.

Fun is why people create

When people are having fun they interact, they dance, they talk, they laugh, they share, they kiss, and they open up. This is why Facebook was so good: people were mindlessly posting things because it was fun. Then they became self-conscious. This is why Instagram was so good, but then people became self-conscious. And this is what Snapchat absolutely nailed with their ephemeral content.

I doubt Snapchat invented the idea, but their timing of launching an app where users can share moments that expire every 24 hours was perfect. Their augmented reality filters gave people a way to keep sharing, to keep creating, even when they were uninspired. Super fun.

How Instagram became fun again

Facebook, which owns Instagram, tried to buy Snapchat, but their offer was declined. I guess the Silicon Valley version of “if you can’t beat them, join them” goes:

“If they won’t join you, copy them.”

So that’s what they did.

Instagram became fun again. Their filters are slowly becoming better, but Snapchat still has them beat: it doesn’t really matter. Instagram has this ecosystem of personalities that are looking to get discovered, looking to bind audiences to them, and Instagram is a great way to get new people to find you.

You use image posts with hash tags to get people to find you (and those lame auto follow/unfollow scripts). Instagram models also use Tinder‘s Instagram integration: they just go match with a lot of people and then some of them will convert to Instagram followers. And then, through Instagram Stories you keep your audience engaged with you, at least once every 24 hours.

How I’m using Instagram Stories

I tend to watch all of my friends’ stories. I’ve never really cared for following personalities or brands on Instagram, but most of my friends do that, and they also check those stories.

I post videos and photos to my stories basically daily, and often 5 to 15 a day. You don’t worry too much about what you post: it expires, and if it’s bad you know that people can just flick through stories fast anyway. This gives incentive to create powerful content too: you know it has to be fun from the first second, and you know having some diversity makes people come back to your stories often.

Things I post:

  • ‘Moments’: being in the office on Sunday, travel, having lunch with friends, nice views, parties, etc.;
  • Hints: previews of what I’m working on (I actually added the title of this article to a story);
  • Calls: “anyone want to join me for…?” — it really doesn’t matter what the picture that goes with it is, as long as it’s fun and doesn’t confuse. I was looking for someone to join me to IKEA and I put that call in a pic with graffiti.
  • Time-lapse vids: these are a really fun way to put a lot of content in one short story and communicate action, e.g. moving from the office to a party on Friday;
  • Vids of vids: fits into moments, but basically if you’re at home watching artsy YouTube videos, weird Japanese commercials, memes, whatever, you can post quick snaps of that too — it helps with diversity & it’s FUN;
  • Creative: doing funky stuff with the filters, pinning surfers 🏄 to foam in the bath tub while the water flows, reality distortion like Hyperspektiv, using Pantone‘s photo app, etc.;

And then there is music.

Why I’m using Instagram Stories to share music

In that context, using Instagram Stories to share music makes so much sense, it’s so much fun.

When you post a 4 minute YouTube video to Facebook, nobody listens. Ok, maybe that 1 dude that always reacts with a lot of emoji, but nobody else. When you insert a short clip combined with an interesting visual into your Instagram Stories, you have a captive audience.

I wrote about Instagram Stories last month, and I don’t like repetition, but I’m so excited about this: the web is about doing what gets you the most attention, and the highest quality attention. I don’t know any other medium, other than my newsletter, that gives me a better type of attention than Instagram Stories.

And my newsletter is basically professional. So if it’s just about friends, then Instagram Stories is the best for me.

Plus people engage! Instead of acknowledging you by clicking a meaningless like button or heart icon, they actually reply to your public stories. With words! Like human beings!

They’ll say: “wow, that’s such a cool track, I didn’t know you were into that too!” or “did you know they have a concert soon?” or “what is this? can you send me more of this?”

Media changes music

The record changed music. MTV changed music. Then the internet changed music by allowing the emergence of global undergrounds. The playlist economy changed music because producers now optimize tracks to lower the skip rate, bringing the vocals into the first few seconds of the track.

The Stories format could further affect music, because it stresses the importance of making an impact with a song, even if people hear just a few seconds of any part of it. Good music has that already, so fingers crossed: we’ll see much more great music made.

Follow me on Instagram: @basgras

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6 lessons from 6 weeks without net neutrality

Posted on | by Bas Grasmayer

My music consumption has been clearly impacted by the lack of net neutrality on my new mobile plan. Here are my key takeaways as a heavy user of music services.

This Spring, I moved from The Netherlands to Berlin, which means setting up new contracts for everything. While I’m still waiting for my flat to be connected to the internet (for 2 months already!), my mobile plan is keeping me connected.

My mobile provider Telekom, known as T-Mobile in most countries, is zero-rating certain partner services. So data consumed by streaming from the Netflix or YouTube bundles are not deducted from my 6GB / month data bundle.

I decided to give the bundle a try, as I think the EU will eventually declare zero-rating in violation of net neutrality (which means the telco should compensate me or release me from the plan). Net neutrality demands that you treat all traffic the same, and while they’re not prioritizing traffic of particular services over others in terms of speed, zero-rating does influence consumer decisions over what service they use.

Here are my main take aways of living without net neutrality for the last 6 weeks or so.

1. Zero-rating influences the services you use

This is beyond a doubt for me. When I want to listen to music, I now search music on YouTube (zero-rated partner) instead of through Spotify (not a zero-rated partner). I basically only listen to Spotify through offline synced music, and have stopped using it as a way to explore music – until I get WiFi at home, or Spotify gets zero-rated.

Telekom's current zero-rated partners
Telekom’s current zero-rated partners

2. Spotify’s stickiness is strong

Despite the fact that Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music, and Napster (Rhapsody) are all included in the zero-rated partners, I’ve somehow stuck with Spotify. I have so many years of history in there, that it’s hard to start using a different app.

I have a lot of friends on Apple Music, because they were the first major Western music service to launch in Russia and really double down on the market (as opposed to Deezer, which struggled to gain traction). Having lived there a few years, most of my friends are on there now. But having done 2 three month trials, I never really developed a feeling for the service. Can’t stand iTunes either by the way (I listen to files through VLC Mediaplayer instead).

But the key point here is:

Music is not the most important part of music services. It’s the behaviours around the music. For Spotify, the only service that has managed to help me find a new home for some of my behaviours is YouTube, but to move collection management to a new place: no way.

And to clarify that first statement: if you have all the music, and a lot of other services do too, the music is no longer the key point that people come to you for. People never had a music access problem: piracy solved that. The music access issue was an industry problem, not a consumer-problem.

3. It’s hard to dig into niches through YouTube’s mobile app

I’ve been trying to use the YouTube app as a kind of radio station, because it sucks to search for decent playlists in there. The problem with the Play Next function, is that when you start on something very niche, it sends you ‘upward’ to more popular tracks. So if you’re listening to underground trap, you end up on Migos after a couple of tracks.

Likewise for related music on particular music videos. You have to sift through unrelated recommendations that are related to your personal profile, rather than the particular thing you’re viewing, but even then, it directs you out of the niche and into the mainstream.

4. Netflix finally found its way into my life

I’ve never really developed a strong habit for Netflix, but it finally happened. Browsing the web, and reading article after article, gets tiring when you’re doing it from a small mobile screen (I’m on iPhone 5s).

Besides, I get ‘data anxiety’: am I using too much data? Will I have enough data at the end of the month? Better play it safe: Netflix.

This actually pulls me away from Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, and other social platforms. Which brings me to my next point.

5. Using YouTube as my default mobile music service is keeping me from social networks

The thing with YouTube is that it can’t keep playing music in the background, unless you are on a certain subscription that’s not available in Germany.

Because of this, I have to choose: am I going to listen to music, or am I going to write to a friend, see what they’re posting on Instagram, etc.

6. If I cared less about music, I’d switch services

The reason why I’m using YouTube, if not obvious by now, is because it’s a nice temporary space to do some of the things I’d prefer to do on Spotify.

But if I were less invested in Spotify, I’d 100% be using one of the partner services offered. I would not even consider any other options. And I think this goes for most consumers, who are not quite as heavy users of music services. It’s troubling: it gives ISPs and mobile operators a lot of control over the music, video, and social landscape.

And for one aspect of music, it already changed me over: I stopped watching live streams on Facebook and Twitch, and instead the only place where I watch live video is YouTube now.

Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince

Like MC and DJ: an audiovisual alliance for the digital age

Posted on | by Bas Grasmayer

The digital age is demanding for artists. Simply releasing audio is often not enough. You have to take care of artwork, video material for Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, and then you still have to figure out how to get people to actually pay you.

The time has come for a new band member – even if you’re just a bedroom producer. That band member is the visual artist.

The case I’m making is not new. It has happened before. On a tremendous scale. Back in the early days of hiphop, DJs needed MCs to hype up the crowd. As MCs moved center stage, they needed DJs to keep their shows dynamic, so these two different disciplines combined and allied. It was necessary for the format of that day.

Jazzy Jeff & Will Smith / Fresh Prince
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince: “He’s the DJ, I’m the rapper!“

The format of this day is audiovisual. It needs to compete in feeds, it needs to stop people from scrolling, and has to get them to unmute the video in order to hear your music.

Like the DJ and MC in the 1980s, the musician and the visual artist face similar problems today:

  • You need to get your work in front of people’s eyes;
  • And, outside of certain well-established business models, it’s challenging to monetize.

For the visual artist, you are usually the client, not the people who watch the final work. So they’re used to be commissioned to create their art. It’s you who monetizes the live performance and the recording. Teaming up creates the possibility to do both, together, like for brands.

Advantage #1: combining business models generates new revenue streams for the musician and the visual artist.

But before the business model comes getting your work under a lot of eyes. That requires honing your skills plus defining and refining your style. This can be challenging by yourself, but in partnership you can work off of each other. Instead of stepping in when a big part of the creative product is already finished, the visual artist can be involved in the creative process from the beginning. This has the effect that the music and video are integrated elements of the same work, rather than two separate works, and over time, the symbiosis between the artists develops further.

Advantage #2: music and video are interwoven elements, rather than separate works made at different points in time.

Advantage #3: the creative product is a new container uniquely suited for, and born out of, the digital landscape.

The song, as we know it, came from the record. We’re still thinking in songs, but it has lost its novelty as a format. While audio-only music is obviously not going anywhere, the most engaging material on social networks right now is video. Moving image is powerful — it took a while for video to take over the web, but with growing data caps, increasing network speeds, and great cameras and screens on our mobile devices, video has finally conquered the web.

What is also not going away is the live experience. In fact, it’s one of the most important revenue sources. Engaging live shows are hard if you’re a solo musician. If you’re a band, they’re tricky in terms of logistics, and possibly costly.

If you can do a live show with just 1 or 2 people the economics are much better. Bringing not just your own music, but also your own visuals that extend from the experience you provide on your site, your album artwork, and your audiovisual experiences on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media.

You should actually be able to charge a bit more for your bookings, because of this show element.

Advantage #4: the economics for live are better, and you get to offer a very integrated experience to fans.

Advantage #5: it gives a live, real-world experience to the visuals — which is something that may be trickier to achieve if the visual artist were on their own.

For some good examples of artist collectives who strongly emphasise this audiovisual fusion, check out NAAFI, ZZK Records, NON, and Meneo: