Great Storytelling Goes Beyond Your Band Bio

I’ve never liked to criticize others for restating/rewriting ideas that have been written already. In my experience, I’ve found that a certain wording or a certain timing can make the difference between the point slamming me right in the face or it skimming right over my head.

This morning I was reading this article, and I was hit in the face. The article quoted Mark Hughes, author of the book Buzzmarketing, as saying:

The goal with products is to give people a great story to tell, so they can tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on. Being new is a great advantage on this front. Would you go tell a friend about Pepsi? No, because they’ve been around too long. That’s the advantage of being David in the David and Goliath story.

This is nothing new, nothing revolutionary, I’ve heard the “have a story” spiel a thousand times; for some reason, this time it really rang true to me. Perhaps it will for some of you too, and it’s always a point worth making for bands and musicians.

But I’d like to put a slightly different slant to it than the usual “because it will help get a story in the local newspaper” idea.

This isn’t about getting publicity (all the time), it’s about creating context. Creating context breaks down the barriers to absorbing your music.

One of the major challenges I see indie musicians facing today is that because the internet has become so diluted, it’s increasingly difficult to get people to care long enough about what you do to truly absorb your music. Back in the day we’d hear about a few new albums a week that appealed to us, and we had the time to check them out. Now, there are potentially hundreds and thousands, and there’s simply not enough time to let them all sink in.

The story of your music is the grease that helps your music settle in and hopefully stick in a listener’s ears. By “story” I don’t mean your band bio that describes your passion for indie music and your heroic and inevitable rise to the top. The story is your “image”, your “brand”, your unique “identity”. Everything you do should somehow reinforce this story, because if it doesn’t, you are confusing your listeners and making it more difficult for them to absorb your music.

To illustrate this point, I’d like to direct you to the MySpace page of a girl who sings under the name A Fine Frenzy. Check it out. I realize that there are some marketing dollars put behind this “image” and design, but the point is still the same - before you even hear the music you get the image of a bright, cheerful, reflective, airy, feminine songstress. Listen to the music for a minute. Like the sound or not, it sounds A LOT like how it looks, huh? The colors, the mood - it’s all cohesive. I remember being directed to this page and coming away with a very strong sense of what this girl does after just a minute.

If I were in this girl’s target market, this would make it incredibly easy for me to share with other people. I know how to describe it, and I know that when I recommend it to someone they too will be able to “get it” very quickly.

What’s your story? What’s your image? Is everything that you do reinforcing that image? How can you make sure that your audience will “get it” before they move on to another band?

Food for thought! I plan to develop this more in the future and put my finger on some more practical tips on how to do this well. Let’s get the conversation going in the mean time - what are your thoughts? What are some other examples of artists with a very cohesive image? How can you write a good story about your music without words?