Whether it’s on a stage or on a landing page, there’s something about the confluence between music and marketing that feels harmonious. Musicians perform in front of an audience much like marketers, both are essentially singing for their supper, but there’s a delay in the response times. If someone doesn’t like your music, you’ll know it immediately, whereas, if someone doesn’t like your marketing, you’ll really only hear about it when the P&Ls come in and they escort you out. In this episode, we plumb the depths of the musician marketing matrix, learn how these two disciplines converge and divert, and find out how brands, and bands, can generate revenue and rave reviews.
On A Creative Mission
Anthony Garone is a musician/ghostwriter/YouTuber/content marketing specialist with nearly a decade of experience working with businesses to deliver products and content strategies that help them build their brands. He’s co-founder of Edify Content, he’s traveled the world playing music, has written several books, has a masters degree in science and he’s bringing his well-rounded heat to the Sounds Like Marketing Podcast to talk about the musician/marketer matrix.
Combining Music, Writing and Marketing While Pursuing the Sonic White Whale
Like many youngsters who found a guitar in the early eighties, Anthony Garone’s journey started when he heard the guitar legend Steve Vai, and wanted to learn more about how to play like he did. This desire led to a lifelong friendship with the guitarist, facilitated by a serendipitous connection and Anthony’s determination to understand and express himself through some of the more technically challenging pieces and techniques that Vai and other guitarists were coming out with at the time. This intense focus and determination led Anthony to a nearly 20 year long path to learn “Fracture” by Robert Fripp, considered by many (including Fripp himself) to be un-recreatable.
This determination and passion for playing what he wanted and following through led Anthony to several other stops along the way to guitar mastery, most notable writing and content marketing. When discussing creative parallels between marketing and music, he’s often found that,” Modern music is now a pastiche, it’s background, people don’t look to music to express or connect with emotions. I think the same thing has happened with marketing – stupid tweets, fortune cookie tweets always seem like they hit, but they are empty. Hacks are for hacks. A well-practiced practitioner knows hacks, shortcuts, but they aren’t using the real click bait stuff, because they have dignity and respect the audience. I don’t think modern pop music respects the audience, and maybe they don’t deserve respect, which also connects with the medium – we’re on a toilet scrolling, does that deserve art?”
We continue to discuss the idea of “overnight” success, which is rarely overnight, how much work it takes to get to the top of anything, and then stay there, and and how you have to focus on making the appropriate work for the project, which isn’t always what you think it might be.
References & Resources
Hot take – https://englishlive.ef.com/blog/english-in-the-real-world/5-interesting-links-music-language/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonygarone https://edifycontent.com/LISTEN TO THE FULL SHOW -> Stay tuned, stay curious and subscribe to Sounds Like Marketing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or add it as a Favorite on your podcast player of choice.
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