Hey guys, welcome back to
another brand new episode of electronic
dance money. I’m your host, Christian conceito I hope you guys are doing well. Um, before we get into today’s episode,
we are sponsored
by
myself Envious Audio. Yeah,
that’s right guys, if you don’t know I do mixing and mastering services
if you’re struggling with a mix because that is
one of the most important parts of your track if you’ve spent hours and hours producing, it can get killed by a terrible mix or even a terrible master. So if you’re needing to get top quality mixes or top quality masters that are going to stand up to other tracks. help you get signed to record labels because the mix and master showcases your production skills, I can do that for you. Not only that, but with all of my clients. You’ve heard it in the past, we go through a needs discovery process. So what does that look like? Well, the first thing you do when you when you request a quote for me, is I send you the proposal showing you
everything that’s included,
what’s not included, the timescale of getting the mix or master done, a little bit about me and then the cost when I send you that proposal, I also request to get you on a phone call with me and that’s it’s basically a consultation call. It’s a completely free consultation call. We go in and we discuss what are your goals personally and professionally?
What is
your biggest dream? Where do you want to be at Are there any additional careers they are interested in, in the industry whether or not you want to self release, release, release with a record label,
whatever it is, we get down to it and I
learned a little bit more about you as well as your goals and where I can add value Can I just connect you with someone in the industry can I start helping you work towards one of your goals or your dreams This is a free consultation I do with regardless of whether or not you actually get a mixer master done for me but I want to see how I can help you. So if you’re needing to get a mix or a master done, or maybe you want to learn how to do mixing or mastering head to Envious audio.com you can look at my portfolio as well as learn a little bit more about me and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the contact me form fill it out request a quote and I will be in contact with you and I will help you be a better artist in your career. So without further ado, let’s get started with this episode. Today’s probably gonna be a fairly short episode nothing too crazy, but um you know, my original idea For this episode, we’re gonna talk more about branding, and what makes good viral content and
what you should be considering when you are
creating content
or even when you’re creating songs. And also kind of goes into branding a little bit, but I figured we’ve spent some time on branding for the past couple of episodes, especially with los padres, so we’re gonna kind of step away from that. And we’re gonna focus today on names. We’re gonna focus on artists names, and essentially naming your own business. So we’re going to kind of get into what makes a good name, what doesn’t, and how you can come up with ideas for names because you know, I tend to find a lot of younger producers still don’t have a name. I have many clients that come to me who are wanting to really But don’t know what their artist name is, they have an idea they might want to just go by their, their regular
name, which is totally fine if you have a really good you know, if you were born with a unique name something that’s memorable, then I would just go with that. Otherwise, I mean, there’s a lot of artists, you’ll see who will take just their first name or their last name. And, you know, if they take their first name, they’ll change their last name to something unique. Or they’ll take or they’ll change their first name and take their last name because their last name is unique. You can go that route that works, that’s totally fine. Regardless, let’s get into what exactly makes a good name.
The first thing I think that
makes a good name, and honestly the number one thing you should be thinking about as EDM producers is the search ability of your name or the or if your name is is Google a bowl? I don’t know if Google bowl is actually a word, but it is now
anyways,
it needs to be Google Mobile. And what do I mean by that?
Well, if you’re in a car with a few friends and let’s say you’re on a road trip, you’re heading to a festival or you’re just you’re hanging out with some friends. You guys are heading somewhere here in the car and you decide to play one of your tracks. And you go, you know, I’m going under this artist name, or let’s say your friend has a friend in the car that doesn’t know who you are. They don’t know you produce. They don’t know your artists name, but they ask. When you give that name, it should be memorable. It should stick in their head. And when it sticks in their head, what should happen is if a month later, two, maybe three months later, they’re in the car with their friends who you have no association with, and they’re all sharing music. That person should be able to remember your name. Even if they haven’t heard it for a few months. They should go Oh yeah, what was like, Okay, that was his name was so and so. And then they should be able to Google that name. And when they Google that name, you should be the one that pops up. It should be your SoundCloud, Spotify, whatever it is, maybe your Facebook or Instagram page. Regardless, that should pop up. And it should lead them to your artist page and eventually to where they can listen to your music to share with other people. If you cannot complete that simple task, and you’re not the first one that shows up on Google, when they search for your name, you’ve already failed to convert that person as a listener. They’re not going to be able to find you they’re not going to remember you and you’re not going to continue to have word of mouth. Fans growing passively while you’re not blasting people on social media. So needs to be Google.
The other key Trey is going to be a trigger.
Now what do I mean by a trigger a trigger is something where
you go about your day.
And when you hear something subconsciously in your mind, it triggers you to remember a specific name or a brand of something. Now, there’s a really good book called contagious, which I’m going to do an entire episode pretty much on that. That was what I wanted to do today, where I was telling talking to you guys about because the book is all about how to create viral content, what makes things go viral, and these next two things I’m going to be talking about are,
are are part of this book and
a part of what makes things go viral, and triggers are one of them. Now, one of the examples they use is which brand is triggered more consistently through someone’s life,
disney world or two. curious.
Now I’m sure many of you listening are probably thinking well, disney world because it’s so much fun and awesome. And though you are correct in the sense that it’s an immediate trigger where when someone goes to Disney World, it’s all they talk about for about a week or two afterwards. But after that, those couple of weeks, they get put back in normal life, those memories kind of fade and go into the background and they’re not consistently sharing it as often.
However,
Cheerios as a brand, they are, they’re a branded breakfast cereal. So when you think breakfast you think Cheerios, when you walk into the grocery stores, you see Cheerios, it’s constantly being triggered commercials, trigger Cheerios, just talking about breakfast will trigger Cheerios in the morning, even simply waking up in the morning, it will trigger Cheerios in your mind because of the way they branded this content every day. around I think it’s somewhere around like 6am, maybe 5am till about 11am. The the search term or the there’s the search ability, and the hashtag for Cheerios is used on Twitter significantly more than any other time of the day. And it’s almost every day those peak hours between 5am and 11am. And that’s because it’s a breakfast cereal. When people are eating their Cheerios, they want to tell other people about how they’re eating their Cheerios. On Instagram, they’ll take a picture of their Cheerios, they’ll tag Cheerios because they’re eating breakfast. So this is what I’m talking about with a trigger. If you can come up with a name that has a good trigger to it. You know, someone I can easily think of is like Bill Gates, Bill Gates is a really good triggering name because just hearing the name Bill Gates will remind you of L gates and vice versa if you hear l gay too. You’re reminded of Bill Gates. So it’s this very high triggering name. If you can think of high triggering names where when people say your name subconsciously they’ll get reminded of you. That means you’ll stay top of mind your music will get played by more will get paid more by that person and shared more by that person. You need to remind people of
you,
even when you’re not promoting, they should be remembering who you are. Now, the third part of a good name is going to be if you can draw emotion. Now the emotion needs to be a high arousal mind arousal, emotion. What do I mean by that? Well, sadness is a low arousal emotion. Anger is a high one. Humor is a high one excitement is a high one these these things that really get you going. Think of clickbait articles clickbait titles. You see something like a BuzzFeed article that will happen Have some sort of headline that triggers you to click on it because it incites some sort of anger or frustration or disbelief. And a lot of times those will get shared and people won’t read the article when you read into the article has nothing to do with the headline, it’s clickbait. It gets people to share just the headline. It’s high shareability. When you can draw an emotion, think of excision. excision brings this grungy, gritty, just aggressive, it’s an aggressive name. So you know, the music is going to be aggressive, and it’s a good shareable name. It’s very global. There’s not necessarily any high triggers in that name. But you know, I think when you think dubstep if you’re not, I mean, Skrillex is another good one that drives kind of the same sort of emotion, but when you think dirty, aggressive dubstep, I guarantee it’s either Skrillex or excision that you’re kind of initially going to As far as mainstream goes above and beyond draws this very happy emotion, which is very it’s a it, it’s ingrained in the name, this emotion is ingrained in it. I think cosmic gate is another one very, that’s a trance name cosmic gate is a trance name. Remember, when you’re when you’re picking a good name, the bare minimum, it needs to be googled. A trigger is not necessarily needed, it’s more of a added bonus.
And then
pretty much same with an emotion.
I would either go for a trigger or an emotion. You don’t necessarily have to have both, but it has to be available. It needs to be memorable and searchable. And then at the bare minimum, either choose a trigger or an emotion if you can draw either one of those. Then you’re set.
I’ll actually add on to that a little
bit to a little caveat there with it. With a fourth section for what isn’t a good name, and I would say that it makes sense. When you hear the name, it makes sense, especially for the genre you’re in, when you hear excision. And when you hear the name excision, and then you listen to music. You go, Yeah, that sounds like that name. When you listen to cosmic gate, you go, yep, that
sounds like that name.
You can’t necessarily get that with. And I would actually say that this would draw to the imagination. This would be drawing to the imagination of what the name is. And when you when you go with someone’s name, like let’s take Thomas gold for instance. You don’t
necessarily
draw that name to a specific genre.
When you hear Gareth Emory’s name,
it’s not necessarily drawing you to a specific genre. It’s not until you hear his music that you can then represent that name with that brand or that that genre.
So
sometimes it’s not good to go with a name unless you
have a good like Gareth Emery. That’s a very brandable name. That’s a good name. It’s a memorable name. Thomas gold is a pretty memorable name. When you can resemble the name with something like an image in your head that can be represented well in a logo you know that you’re actually you’re getting towards something good you’re getting towards something that’s more brandable again, I guess this
episode is
going directly back into branding but it’s very important in a lot of people get somewhat confused by try to draw to the imagination as well something that’s unique and it brings any, any invokes if you can invoke a specific emotion you can then usually resemble that in some sort. have unique logo that’s not like anyone else’s. And it looks good. And again brandable. It’s shareable. So with those things in mind, how do we actually come up with the name, how I was taught was to write down for about 30 days, you want to write down about five to 10 names per day, for 30 days. This will get you anywhere between 150 and 300. names in there, there should be at least a handful that are good that you can google and nothing pops up that invokes a specific emotion or possibly even triggers something and you can draw to the imagination. When you just think of names, write them down. frant kind of Rican start kind of randomly, but by the 30th day, you’re writing down a lot more probably you’re coming up with probably a lot more than five to 10. So you don’t restrict yourself if you can write down 20 write down 20 The more you can get the easier We’ll be to narrow down to what you like. Because the first 1015 days, you’re probably gonna, you’re probably not going to be coming up with the best names. But by the 30th day you’re coming up with really, really good names. This is a really good exercise to figure out what your name is to close the episode, I will say, definitely don’t. Don’t if you’re still trying to figure out your name. I think that should be somewhat of the least of your worries. Unless you’re producing incredible music that you that you’ve been told time and time again, that needs to be released from other producers. If that’s the case, then start worrying about a name but if not, if you haven’t had if you haven’t come up with a name yet, don’t stress about it. You’re probably still young in this game, you’re probably still early so don’t worry too much about getting a good name. It will come to you naturally don’t force it as much
Just let it come naturally.
You can tell when a name has been forced and you don’t want that just like when you can tell when music production has been forced. You don’t want that. So that’s it for today guys. Go on over to Envious audio.com slash Episode 32. To check out the show notes, join the Facebook community, electronic dance money community. I want you guys talking in that group. You guys, if you’re listening to this episode, you are the show in general, all of you probably share the same interests. You want to be full time producers. You want to make money doing this stuff you you want to get into this world, start talking to each other. If you’re trying to come up with a name, go in the Facebook group post in there, get engaged, build a community, you never know who you’re gonna meet. And especially if you can collaborate with people in that group, just start talking and engaging with people. Let’s you know let’s build a unique community with like minded individuals. So we can all help each other out in this world of music business. But that’s it for today, guys, thank you so much. I’ve got some really really awesome guests lined up and some new ideas for episodes. I think you’re gonna all love. And that’s about it. Take care guys. Thanks