As a musician, trying to pour your heart into social media without seeing any results can be exhausting. Many creatives struggle with limiting beliefs that hold them back from achieving their goals. We hear it all the time: “Social media isn’t working,” but the truth is, it can be a powerful tool for connecting with fans and building your career. Today’s conversation with Alex Love, the Artist Coach at The Awakened Creative, explores the challenges musicians face on social media and how these negative mindsets can hinder their progress. We’ll also discuss strategies to overcome these beliefs and unlock the true potential of social media for your music career. Alex has the key to opening the gateway to building your creative career online, so what are you waiting for? Tune in to this episode and be an awakened creative with Alex Love.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Be An Awakened Creative: Unlock The Power Of Social Media To Amplify Your Music With Alex Love

I am happy to be back here with a former guest, Alex Love, also known as The Awakened Creative on social media. I realized it has been a year and a half since I interviewed him, which seems crazy to me because that seems like yesterday. I still am captivated by his social media content. Every time that I go on Instagram, it pops up for me and I’m like, “How does he come up with this stuff?”

That’s why I wanted to have him back on. I want to have him talk about what has changed, what is always the same, and how he helps artists navigate social media. Before we get into that, why don’t you give them a little background in case they didn’t tune in to that episode before of how you got involved in music and how you help artists?

First of all, thank you very much. It’s great to be back. It’s good to see you. I have been a musician my whole life. I won’t go too deep into that, but ever since I was a kid, I’ve been making music, and exploring music. I have always been on the service-based side. Before I did what I was doing now, I was working as a music producer and composer in a service-based thing. Before that, I was studying music. Before that, I was playing music. I was playing in a Tedford’s. I was playing in bands and doing piano lessons and that kind of thing.

It’s been this gradual journey from making music, loving it, and going deeper and deeper into that, then gradually shifting over the last ten-ish years from making my own music and being something that I love to do to start to find the value in helping other musicians with various things. From producing music for other people and doing little compositions and stuff like that to helping musicians build their presence in social media, marketing, branding, and all of that.

That came about naturally, and I don’t want to say unexpectedly but I started to get interested in the marketing side. I said this last time I was on your show. I realized it was super creative and super fun and not at all what I used to think that it was. I fell in love with marketing and branding. I started helping musicians on social media in a casual way, not in an official way or anything like that. I was putting some stuff out there and building up a personal brand and a little musical thing.

I started to give other people advice. They’d reach out and say, “How are you doing this? How are you getting this result?’ I started pointing people in the right direction. That kept working and it kept getting better and better. The more I learned, the more I shared. I eventually graduated to an official someone who had enough experience with this stuff with helping musicians create real fans, some presence, or something like that.

I turned it into a career myself, and then I started helping other people turn it into a career. It kept building from there. Every time I would figure out how to do something, I would share it, and then from that experience, I would figure out how to do something else and then I would share that. It snowballed or stacked up from there.

That is how all great businesses are born. You get a result for yourself and then other people are like, “How are you doing that?” You help them do it and then other people see that and then more people come your way. That seems like a natural turn of events.

It’s solving problem after problem after problem. Now I’ve got this whole stack of problems that I have solved and I have been able to help other musicians solve. What I’ve been doing for the last 4 or 5 years is trying to solve mostly the fundamental problems that musicians have as related to social media. That’s “How do you get yourself seen? How do you get yourself heard? How do you get people to stick around? Where’s the best place to be and what stuff should you put out?” All of that kind of thing. That’s been my main focus over the last 4 or 5 years.

Those are big problems for musicians. That’s a lot for them to swallow and gets them very frustrated for sure. I’m assuming that this is a different answer for every artist, whether which platforms they should be on, how they should show up, and all that. It’s always different for each artist. How do you get to the baseline of what that is for each artist?

Experimentation

The answer is experimentation. Nowadays, I cannot tell you too much beyond the fundamentals, which I’m happy to talk about. I can’t tell you too much until you’ve tried some stuff. I am still surprised by this and Gary Vee was right about social media. I am getting many reports now of Facebook and YouTube shorts or anything that’s not TikTok being the better platform for artists, and this is different for everyone.

It’s not easy nowadays to say, “You should be on this platform. You should be on TikTok. You should be on Instagram,” because every artist I say that to or every artist I think could benefit from that platform, there are 100 examples of something else working. This keeps happening. I’ve reached the point where I now need to say, “Let’s take some stuff. Let’s take some content and whatever. Let’s put it out on all of the places that you might like to be and let’s see what happens for a bit. Let’s try it for one month or something like that, and then let’s see. Let’s look at the data and make a decision about what we should do moving forward.”

It’s different for every artist and there is almost no obvious sign nowadays, which is weird to say out loud, that one platform is going to be better for someone than the others. Maybe if you’re the kind of musician who’s very okay with building a personal brand on social media, something for TikTok or Instagram can be good. I will usually say you probably want to try and be on at least one of them, but I’m surprised lately at how varied the results are across different platforms and for different artists.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this. TikTok has a devastating drop in views. Half of the artists on there have gone from thousands of views to under 50. They can’t get past 50 views. Everyone is saying it’s about the potential ban or whatever, but I don’t see how that lines up practically. In the last three weeks, I’ve had all of these people coming and saying, “Why have my views suddenly dropped?” Some people can’t even get ten views on the platform.

That’s weird. I’ve noticed mine got cut in half in the past week. Keep in mind, we’re recording this in May 2024. I know this isn’t going to come out until August 2024. Who knows what it will be like in August? I did notice mine all of a sudden completely cut in half, which is crazy.

This is common. I haven’t been posting on TikTok lately, but I would say maybe not half, but a decent amount. I’ve got a bunch of people in a course at the moment, probably about 100 people in there, and I talk to maybe 30 of them on a regular basis. Of those 30, maybe close to 15 of them have seen this sudden drop. It’s either cut their views in half like yours or it’s gone. It’s abysmal. It’s not worth being on the platform. I don’t know if it’s a glitch or whatever, but one thing is for sure, the reason I’m bringing this up is that TikTok is not the be-all and end-all anymore.

It is not the “This is the way to go and without this, you’re in trouble” kind of thing. By looking at all of the information that I have, I cannot see a clear pattern of one particular platform being 100% “This is what you have to do. You have to be on this and this is the one that works best.” There’s too much evidence now to suggest that it is all up in the air. Experimentation is the only way that artists can figure out the right path for themselves, at least as a starting point.

It is good and bad. For whatever reason, if the content you make doesn’t resonate on TikTok, then you’re not out of the game. Maybe you belong somewhere else and those other places can work. Are there lots of burgeoning platforms that are coming out, random ones that are new that people could get on and maybe make a quick following? I remember Shawn Mendes on Vine and those ones that were super popular and then they were gone, but they made a few people popular or is it still Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or X, and TikTok as the main one? What about LinkedIn? Do you encourage that one?

I don’t encourage LinkedIn. I don’t know that much about it. For the types of artists that I’ve been working with lately, I’m sure there’s something there. I’m sure that there is. I don’t know much about it. It’s good to be everywhere if you can manage it. In terms of new platforms, I think there are a lot of things coming out that are trying to solve different problems. They’re trying to avoid musicians having to be content creators in a lot of cases.

 

Do you know how there’s a station head, which is broadcasty radio type of thing? I don’t know too much about it at this point. There’s a lot of stuff like that coming out where it’s an alternative way for musicians to get heard. I’ve found that in all of these cases, there’s still the problem of having to get that initial attention so that these things can work properly for you. I’m jumping around a bit here, but there are Substack and Threads which are predominantly for writing things. I don’t have much experience with Substack, but with Threads, I’m getting a surprising amount of reports that it is helping.

I have an artist or two who is growing quite steadily on Threads. At least one of them has seen a bit of an uptick in streams and she feels it’s directly related to Threads. That’s super interesting to me because it’s X, essentially Twitter. Substack or that kind of thing is a potential avenue for any creative who doesn’t mind writing, but also musicians. I’m sure you’ve maybe heard some discussion about the long-form thing. I feel like people in general are moving away from this quick, short, sharp video sensationalized titles, hooks, and all of those flashy fast edits and everything.

They’re starting to look for more substance, more authenticity, more stuff that feels, I feel this myself. I’m tired of super flashy stuff. I feel like a lot of people feel like this and people want something that isn’t like this all the time. They want to be able to put something on and listen, read, or watch. It’s a bit more relaxed and a bit more real. This is a very messy answer, but I would say that I think that the main YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, assuming TikTok picks itself up and doesn’t go away, there’s still a lot of value in those.

There is still this need, no matter what, to generate a lot of attention in a specific way for musicians to achieve what they want, which is to grow and develop and nurture a real fan base, real client base, or whatever it is. There’s something about these short-form platforms that are good for discoverability. I guess that is a simple way to put it. I feel like people now associate these platforms as the gateways, where people find people and then they go to these other places.

Social Media As A Gateway

That’s true. I like the idea of gateways and I’m glad to hear that you’re saying that longer form, more authentic. I find myself gravitating toward that. If I’m on TikTok, I don’t want that quick-hit stuff. I don’t want that fifteen-second piece of a hook of a song with a message on it. I couldn’t care less about that. If someone has something to say that is eating at them that day and they want to go on a rant or talk about something deeply, those are the things that tend to draw me in. That’s exciting to me.

Being a podcaster, that’s long-form. As gateways, I’m using things like TikTok, Instagram reels, and Facebook reels like, “Here’s a little clip. Here’s a little taste. When you go to Costco, here’s a little taste then you can come over here to my podcast and hear a lot more.” That’s a great use for that. For musicians, that can be done with a piece of a song or story, like a little tidbit about a song you’ve written and how it got written, and then you could encourage them to watch the whole video, read the whole article, or whatever. Is that one way that you encourage them to use it like a gateway?

That’s exactly it. It’s funny because I have always said, “You should treat these short-form platforms not as a pit stop on the way to something else, but as the final destination.” The mindset behind that is that you create so much value on the platform that the person tuning in wants to go and explore further. That’s always been the philosophy or whatever. That is what I still mean by gateway when I say that.

I do want to say as well that the short snippet of the music thing with the fifteen-second thing still can work. It’s just that, as you’ve demonstrated, people are becoming more desensitized to it. We’re not impressed anymore by the fact that you’re a musician and you’ve managed to use a certain content format. It’s not enough now to be a musician or an artist, take a content format, have your music, and put a hook that people use, and for that to always be enough.

Sometimes that can work, but for those snippets to work now, or what I’ve seen anyway, there needs to be a lot more personalization. That format was tweaked to fit the individual scenario and that kind of thing. Those are the types of things that I’m still finding people respond to. I’m going to try and think of an example here. I’m sure you’ve seen these posts, “Congratulations. You’ve stumbled on this artist who’s not too big to reply to every comment.” It’s like a TikTok-style post or something like that.

It's not enough to take a content format, have your music, and put a hook for people to use. Those snippets need personalization to work and fit the individual scenario. Share on X

To be clear, I have people who are doing this and it’s working, but I think the reason that it’s working for them is because we’ve been through the process of figuring out, “What’s the artist identity here? How can we make this specific and tailored to your own stuff so that when people come across this, they have this clear idea of who they’re getting and they want to engage with this,” instead of it being, “I’m a musician. Check out my stuff. I’m using this generic format or whatever it is.” I hope that makes sense.

I’m saying that those short snippets of sharing your music can still work, but I feel like there’s much more importance nowadays on it’s less about the format and it’s more about the individual artist than the appeal of that individual artist and all of the things that come with that. It’s the look, the feel, the vibe, the mood, the aesthetic, the story, and all of that.

I was curious because your posts for your brand, The Awakened Creative, are very stylized. When I see one, I immediately know it’s yours. Is that because that is what has worked for you or do you encourage artists to experiment with a bunch of things and then find a thing that works for them and then have maybe a common thread between all of their posts so people immediately recognize it’s their post?

They work because the messages and messages are consistent. When people encounter the posts, they know what to expect and hopefully, they’re going to get some sort of helpful, inspiring, or encouraging message. That’s important because that’s got nothing to do with hooks or flashy animations or whatever it is. What’s important is that once people are in the door and they’ve come to learn what to expect, that’s what’s keeping those posts performing on a near-daily basis.

I did an experiment and I realized that the calm but semi-hypnotic type of thing was good for watch time. It was entertaining because the people had a reason to keep watching because there was constantly something moving. it is hopefully aesthetically pleasing. It was a good practical move, but it is also something that separates me from a lot of the other accounts, which helps a lot. I’ve listened to some people who have said they stopped and listened to these posts because of my voice, which is strange to me.

It makes me feel like I’m in a meditation or something, but I’m also going to learn something.

That’s crazy to me because I’m sick of my own voice. I hate listening to my own voice.

Aren’t we all? We’re sick of our own voice.

I talked about this for way longer than I meant to, but also the musicians at the start of every video or for most videos. There is the fact that they are animations the fact that they are all stylistically similar and the fact that I say the same thing at the beginning, I even structure a lot of the posts with the same sentence structure, and that kind of thing. That’s all intentional to not only make it sustainable for me, but to hook people in to give them that instant recognition, and to keep the whole engine running.

I will encourage musicians and any creative to do this to find a handful of things that they want to be known for or that will be defining characteristics of you on social media. It might include content formats, little hooky things like musicians, or whatever. It might include a certain look. I have this guy in the course. He’s done this cyber-punky futuristic thing. All of his videos look similar. They’re all purple. He has this certain look. He’s even got this mask thing, which is helpful.

That’s something that seems to be paying off and this is a consistent thing that I see, this handful of things that define you that will not only hook people in, especially after multiple touchpoints, but give them a consistent identity and experience. I encourage artists to have good think about if they could come up with like, “You might describe me on social media as the music marketing music guy who does the animations and who has that calming meditative voice and encouraging messages.”

That was a terrible way of explaining it, but you could probably explain me to someone without having to even say my name or without having to try too hard to differentiate me from everyone else. What I encourage musicians to do is to find some things about them that they’re authentic things. A handful of things that if someone had to describe them to someone else and they couldn’t say their name or they couldn’t remember their names, they could describe them to someone else without saying their name and without describing everyone else.

If I had to explain to you, I would say a lot of what you said, and I would also say your messages are motivational, but they also make you think deeply about your own motivations. They also hold you accountable because you’re trying to get musicians to take stock of who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s not surface-level marketing stuff. The animations and the soothing tone of your voice are another thing.

I encourage everybody to go on Instagram and watch the Awakened Creative and see what we’re talking about. This is a very nice way to get him to get some more followers too, which I think you all should follow, but it allows you to see what we’re talking about and how clear his branding and what he’s about from the posts that he has and that’s how we should all be on social media.

I’ve accomplished that to some extent. I have a few kinds of posts that I do, but a lot of artists tend to think, “People are going to get bored if I do the same kind of posts all the time.” If you have a few different kinds of posts that won’t happen, but like what you said earlier, having a certain kind of post that you can create on a hamster wheel in a way, knowing exactly what needs to be done to get that done makes it possible for you to continue to create. If you’re always having to come up with some new post or a new idea, that can slow you down in creation. I’d love to hear what you say about the fear of artists who might make their brand boring.

Fear Of Artists

First of all, it’s a valid concern. People do get bored of things. Being able to make this sustainable is an underrated part of the whole deal. It’s a super underrated part of it because this is something that I’m about to release a podcast episode on. Simply showing up repeatedly nowadays is such a huge part of it. I know that is the most generic advice ever, but it is true. In my personal experience, in every single case that I’ve seen with artists that I work with or talk to or whatever, the ones who are getting somewhere are showing up repeatedly. They are not flip-flopping and going in and out of consistency and all of that. They are showing up repeatedly.

I wanted to say that making it sustainable is a very important part of the whole deal. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a bit of variety for the sake of sustainability. I’m not saying that you have to, but let’s preface it with that then to address the concern that people are concerned that people will get bored. Some people will get bored. Some people will tune in and out of you. That’s life. I lose maybe 1,000 plus a month. That’s how it goes. It happens. Everyone goes through that. You could look at the biggest accounts on social media and they would be losing followers by the thousands every month. It’s the way that it works. The idea is that you want to gain more than you lose every month.

Keeping in mind the fact that it’s natural for people to come in and out of your world to varying degrees. Not everyone is going to be constantly glued to you 100% of the time. With that in mind, you can get rid of that fear by trying stuff out and seeing for yourself, but also understanding the way that social media works. Here’s a common thing that happens. If you’re a musician who hasn’t been consistent on social media, you may have been posting casually. You’ve been posting stuff that’s not generating much attention and maybe you have a bit of an audience who’s used to showing up once a week and that kind of thing.

You want to gain more than you lose every month. But keep in mind that it's natural for people to come in and out of your world. They won't be constantly glued to you 100% of the time. Share on X

If you suddenly start getting consistent and you start putting out stuff that is repetitive, it all looks the same, or whatever, you will probably see a bit of a dip in engagement. You may even see a bit of a dip in followers because that’s the way it works. You are letting go of the old stuff to make room for the new stuff. You might have an audience that is used to you barely showing up and posting a little thing here and there.

Once you start being consistent, it is common to see this dip before it gets better again. What you’ll typically find is that you feel like you take a step back before you can take a couple of steps forward. Because the musicians see that, they say, “It’s because I’m being repetitive. It’s because all of my stuff looks the same. Maybe I need a bit more variety,” then they start going down all of these paths where they start thinking, “I need to change my plan. I need to do a whole rebrand. I need to do this overhaul of everything.”

What they do is they either end up back at square one because they stop being consistent and then they start again and then it’s been five years all of a sudden and they haven’t gotten anywhere, or they start adding in all of this variety then the same thing happens. They continue to see a bit of a dip and then they go, “I give up. Social media is rigged. This isn’t fair. Nothing works.” This is super valid. If you don’t understand what you’re getting into, it makes sense.

It’s hard because it sucks to lose followers and all of that, but what they don’t understand is that they are losing a bit of their old audience who aren’t that interested in them. They don’t want to see them on a regular basis. You’re making room for these new people who are going to eventually consistently come in and engage with you on a regular basis. An important thing to know is that it’s always darkest before dawn. You experience a dip once you make this big change to show up consistently, and then you start seeing more progress once you get over that hill.

I’m trying to get to your point. To address the concern that it is repetitive, it will only feel repetitive if people aren’t into it in general. My content is incredibly and unbelievably repetitive. It’s also corny sometimes. I can admit that, but what people get from it is more important than that. I think that they like the repetition. I think that it’s nice for people to say, “Every morning I wake up and I see this post and it gives me a boost for the day.” That repetition is grounding. It serves as an anchor and it hopefully makes their lives better.

The thing is we have to remember how people consume social media. It’s not like they’re sitting there watching all your posts at once. They’re scrolling. They see their favorite recipe here, music marketing post here, their favorite artist here and then they see The Awaken Creative giving them something encouraging. That’s why they followed you. They’re looking forward to that little hit from you every day. You don’t have to blow them away with something different.

The only reason that they will come across your post every day is if they don’t think it’s good. They are not necessarily looking for you to be everything for them. They’re not looking for me to be their therapist, their vocal coach, or their entertainment as it relates to something different. They’re looking for a bit of help, maybe a bit of marketing advice and a bit of encouragement, and that’s what they get. It’s generally been pretty consistent.

With musicians, that point that you made is important that you are super focused as the musician. You are focused on what you are doing. It’s like the spotlight effect where everyone thinks that people are paying more attention to them than they are. They worry that they’re putting out all of this stuff consistently and everyone is going to get bored and you’re doing the same thing.

Everyone has a billion different things going on every day like you said. They’re looking at lots of different stuff. They’re going to be happy if they lack the stuff to get that anchor of your familiar stuff. While we’re on that, people like what’s familiar to them. I’m sure that you’ve heard of the familiarity bias. People like that. It makes them feel comfortable, safe, and grounded. It’s a psychological thing that people over time tend to prefer things that they’re more familiar with.

This is a messy answer, but the thing that you would want to look out for is you got to think about what you’re giving people, what’s the thing that they want consistently, and what are the ways in which they want variety. An easy example of this would be if you are an artist and you are giving them a futuristic cyber punky type of thing. You don’t want to create a different video every day that’s a completely different style or aesthetic or whatever it is because people are there for the cyber-punky futuristic thing.

You may not want to record the exact same video every day and say the exact same thing in the text and show them the same exact song every single day because they need variety in that. If they like you, your brand, and your music, they’re like, “What else have you got? The cyberpunk villain futuristic thing, but what other music have you got? What else have you got to say? Give me that same message but in a slightly different way.”

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I’ve got an important message that I think all of you musicians need to know. I am sick and tired of seeing talented musicians quit on themselves and their dreams because they don’t believe they can make money in music. The truth is there are tons of ways to make money for music. They’re outside of the traditional music industry things like royalties, streaming, and album sales. If you’re ready to tap into those off-the-beaten-path and lucrative streams of income and finally kick that starving artist syndrome to the curb, I’ve got something for you. My mission is to help 100,000 indie artists make a sustainable income and a comfortable living from their music. I have put together an awesome resource for you. It’s called 39 Little Known Income Streams and we gave our income guide a huge facelift and massive upgrade. We’ve got 39 streams of income now. Go to ProfitableMusician.com/Income, to grab your free download. Now let’s get back to the show.

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I think that’s important too because I know with your brand, I have seen you say the same thing but in a different way from a different angle, getting them to think about it a different way. I know you’ve said it before or tried to get that point across before, but it was a bit different. Certainly, when I’m on my show and I have clips or whatever, I’m not always saying something completely different every time. It’s good. People need to hear something multiple times for it to sink in. Don’t feel like, “I’ve already said that once.” Not everyone has seen it. We don’t know how many people are seeing each thing we put out there.

Another great point. We have no idea who’s seeing what and when. We have some idea because we can see consistent engagement and that kind of thing, but this is overall what I would say about the repetitive thing. Chances are what you think is happening is not what’s happening. There are way too many contributing factors. Most people care a lot less about the repetition than you think. The people who don’t worry about them are not going to be the majority of people. If what you do is good, you can sort of safely assume that however scared you are about it, they’re a lot less concerned with it because there are many factors that contribute to that.

 

With saying the same thing 1,000 different ways, this is what I was saying before we probably started these calls. There’s much advice out there and that there are many different paths that can work and that don’t work and all of that. I reckon 80% of cases, what they need more than anything else. What musicians need for social media is they need an endless amount of encouragement. That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve switched to doing a lot more of the encouraging stuff rather than always doing the practical advice.

In practical advice, there’s only much advice that you can give before it becomes not necessarily relevant to the artist. There are fundamental things that they need to understand and then the rest of it is learning these fundamentals, go and experiment. Learn how to iterate correctly and understand what you’re analyzing and then you need the encouragement to keep going. This is one of the reasons why I’ve been working with less musicians more closely.

 

Let me say that in a different way. I’ve been working more closely with musicians instead of working less closely with tons of musicians. I hope that makes sense because so much of the game now is learning the basics and then figuring out a way to make it work for you. The challenge along the way there or one of the biggest challenges is being able to stay in it like the mental game. It is tough to keep going mentally, but the practical side of it, I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s not complicated at all. It’s hard.

I’ve heard from many people that they know exactly what to do but they’re not doing it. It’s a multitude of reasons. It can be disorganization, it can be lack of time, but a lot of times it’s lack of confidence and having that person in their corner telling them, “No, this is good.” You may feel like it doesn’t have enough likes and therefore you want to stop and bury your head in the sand and say social media is terrible, but give them that encouragement.

The biggest thing that I see is related to video. A lot of artists do not want to be on video. It stops them. They want to be on video, but then when it comes down to it, there are one million reasons why they don’t get on video. I’m curious because your posts generally don’t use video and we’ve had a conversation in the past about how long it can take to create posts that are on video. I’m curious about the advice that you give around this with artists that you work with and if you have any artists that say, “I don’t want to do video,” and how you get around that.

I think that you know this, but my current strategy is not a strategy to hide my face. I’m more than happy to be on video. I used to do talking head videos. These are more fun for me. They’re more effective and they perform better. Why not do that? With the video thing, I used to be the kind of person who would try and look for ways to say, “You don’t want to do video, let’s find a different approach for you.” In a lot of cases that’s still what I’ll do because there are many approaches that work.

When it comes to showing up on video, the advice that I give nowadays is to learn to be on video. That is the number one thing because the payoff is unbelievably big if you get comfortable with it. I am a maximum introvert, 100% on the spectrum of introversion in a lot of ways. It took me two years to work up the courage to start getting on camera and video. I wouldn’t be on this call right now if I couldn’t do it. The way to get into it or the way that has worked for me and the way that I help people get into it is to take the smallest possible step that you can.

What I did was there was a point where I was sharing music clips way back in the day and I was building up to video. This is one of the things I did. I used to record my logic screen. It was like recording it with the camera so the audio was terrible. I would start slowly introducing my face. I’d have my phone and I’d be showing the thing and then I’d slowly bring my face into it for a second, something like that. When I was doing what I’m doing now, but a few years ago, the way that I got into it then was I started doing those reels where I wasn’t talking. I didn’t have to talk. I could be on the video and I could point to text.

It was incredibly cringe. You can probably still find them if you like scroll all the way back. It’s embarrassing and cringy, but who cares? That was something that I did for a little while and then eventually I was like, “I’m going to try and say something.” I did and it was stiff and awkward. This is the natural progression. You have to take a small step. One that’s maybe a little uncomfortable but not uncomfortable that it’s like a huge leap, a very small step.

Once you take that small step and you realize that it didn’t kill you, you’re fine and maybe even enjoyed it a little bit, then you say, “Maybe I can take another small step.” You keep doing that and then five steps down the line, you are this super relaxed, comfortable person on camera. I’m not saying that’s me in a scripted setting or whatever, but you can kind of surprise yourself at how far you can go by taking these tiny steps.

If you don’t like showing your face on camera and there’s a fear-based reason and if you’re honest with yourself, is it a big thing in the face of your entire music career where you want all of this attention and all of this, is it a big deal? If you say, “It’s not. I’m a bit scared because it’s hard to do that,” then I would very strongly encourage you to take these small steps until you get good at it because it will pay you back so much.

Take small steps until you get good at it because it will pay you back. Share on X

If there’s a different reason, I can’t even think of what the reason would be, maybe that’s a different story. The first big thing is, “I don’t want to be on camera. What do I do?” Learn to be on camera, “How do I do that?” Take very small simple steps. Show yourself a little bit. Don’t say anything. Put some text on the screen. Eventually, move up to talking. You can script things if you want if that makes you feel better. That’s what I do. I script everything that I do. If you lack the idea of this, but you’re terrified of it right now, you can work your way up to picking up your phone and being like, “Hey, guys, blah blah, blah.” Be super casual and become one of those personalities that people want to tune into every day because they love your energy. I hope that’s clear. It’s small steps.

That’s good. You can easily put a bunch of clips together. Those fast edits that we were talking about earlier. When you want to say something but you don’t want to seem like you’re reading or whatever, you can say a few sentences and then stop. Put them together super easily. That’s what I do because sometimes my brain doesn’t work as fast as I want it to. I don’t want to seem like I’m reading. I script some of it out and then for the other parts, I want it to seem casual and natural, and then I can always put three clips together to make one-minute-and-a-half thing.

That’s excellent advice. That’s what I do as well. Even my audio for the animations, I do it in clips. I’ll say, “Musicians,” and then I’ll stop it, then I’ll say the next sentence because I want it to be as smooth as possible and then I edit it afterward. That’s what most people do. That’s what a lot of YouTubers do. That’s perfectly acceptable. You do not have to be perfect. You press record and perfect. That never has to happen. It never has to be perfect.

What you could do is get on a show like this and you get what you get. For me, it was trial by fire when I started doing a podcast and then eventually a video podcast and it’s like, “There were some awkward pauses. There were some places where I couldn’t think of the answer to a question.” You get used to it, go on and you’re fine and then you feel mostly bulletproof and you’re never totally bulletproof because something can always happen.

The biggest switch for me has been being okay with things not being perfect. I know that sounds generic, but if you listened to let’s say this show, me talking on call or whatever, if that’s what my content was, people would tune out because I’m like, “Let me go back on what I said and fix it.” In these settings, it’s helpful to do this because it gets you comfortable with realizing that those mistakes don’t mean much at all. They make you more human as well, but they don’t kill you. They help you become more comfortable with being wrong about stuff, making mistakes, having to pause, sitting in those awkward moments, and being okay.

Like you, my head does not work fast unless I’m in the zone. Sometimes I talk and I’m like, “Am I a genius?” I say things that I don’t even know how I know them. Most of the time it’s like, “Are you okay? Did you get any sleep last night?” My answers to questions, I’m roundabout. To get good messages out, I have to think about the answers. That’s why people are getting a very messy version of me.

This is why I like long-form because I like hearing the roundabout way that you got to your answer because it gives me what’s going on in your mind, all the details and everything. All of that’s interesting to me. Not just the path answer or the final answer. That’s why podcasts and long-form stuff are interesting.

I like the pauses on podcasts as well because it shows you that it’s okay. It gives you this permission to relax a bit and take your time on an answer. This is a setting where it’s okay to have 5 or 10 seconds of dead air. That’s acceptable. It’s part of the charm of a podcast or something. Musicians should do podcasts. I know a lot do, but a lot more should. It’s beneficial for developing your confidence around showing up in a video and audio setting.

I remember the first radio interview I did way back in the day, but it was on the phone. It’s like, “How could I have been lame at answering questions about myself?” I had no practice. Going on, I know the answers to these questions, but I hadn’t thought about how I wanted to say them and the best way to get my thoughts across. A lot of podcasts don’t have a huge listenership and you can get a chance to practice not in front of a giant audience where you might be worried that you were going to crash and burn.

It brings up another great point, going back to musicians being afraid to get out there, being afraid to get on camera, and that kind of thing. When you do this stuff, the assumption is that if you do something that you make a mistake or whatever, the world is going to see it and you’re going to be exposed for this idiot, fraud, or whatever. The reality especially if you’re starting out and you’re afraid to put yourself out there, it’s mostly very safe in terms of being subject to hurt online. There are horrible people online, but it’s not easy to reach millions of people.

It is not that you put yourself out there and if you’re not perfect, the world is going to see you for the not-perfect person that you are, the imperfect person that you are. It is much more that you get 10 views and maybe 5 or 10 people see it twice. No one cares. If it was so easy to get views and that you could make a video and that would reach one million people. There would be a lot more successful musicians on social media.

The other thing is that starting up on social media, and getting into it properly, you have a lot more room for making mistakes than you think like a lot more Chances are a lot fewer people will see it initially than you think. My podcast, full transparency, I started it and I’ve done 13 or 14 episodes or something like that. I have an audience on Instagram of 80,000-something people. I’ve maybe got 300 listeners per episode or something like that.

 

I think that’s great. To be clear, I’m super grateful for that, but I thought, “I’ve got a huge audience on Instagram relative to what I have on Spotify, which is tiny. I’m going to be able to build this thing pretty fast. I’ll get a bunch of people from over there to come over there.” The reality is that not that many people have heard it relative to how many people could have heard it. This is always the case when you’re starting and that kind of thing. You have to start because once you start you’ll realize like, “I want to reach more people. I was afraid of reaching people initially because I didn’t want to get laughed at. Now I’m like, ‘How can I reach more?” That’s the game.

By the time you get to the point where you are reaching a ton of people, hopefully, by that time you develop a thick skin because there will be those trolls and people saying, especially if you run ads. You’ll get the people who are ridiculous human beings.

I’m sure that you know this, but you do come to realize that this is such a real thing, the whole someone with a private account with next to no followers and they don’t have any posts or they’ve got a private account or whatever, no profile picture are the ones who are more likely to say horrible things. I get the fact that I am trying to put something out there and it reaches people automatically means that there will be some people who hate you.

“You’re a scammer. You’re giving false hope to musicians.” I know.

The Music Game

That’s a thing that I think about quite a lot because I do think that this music game is hard. In a lot of ways, it’s not as hard as it has to be for a lot of musicians, but it is hard. You do have to work hard to achieve these things and I feel like it is a tough thing to be encouraging, educate, and show them what’s possible. I always feel the need to be like, “It’s hard work. You have to work hard.” I’m at this point now where I’m like, “You’re a responsible adult.” Most of the musicians who are seeing my stuff and your stuff, they’re responsible adults. We can give the encouragement, try and tell them how it is without fear-mongering and being like, “This is hard. This is so difficult.”

When you constantly tell people how hard it is and you don’t provide any encouragement, any solutions, or anything and you constantly talk about, “This is difficult,” it scares these people off. Sometimes these people who could have done well don’t get the opportunity to do well because we’ve scared them off. I’ve found, and I feel like I’m talking about myself a lot in this episode, I’m sorry, but I get a lot of messages about encouraging messages that have said crazy things like, “I always want to give up this has kept me going.”

When you constantly tell people how hard it is and don't provide any encouragement, solutions, or anything, you scare them off. Share on X

I’ve had people say, “Just because I’ve watched these videos and been encouraged to keep going, I’ve now had X success.” That to me is validation that this is a good path to go down. This is helping people, which is crazy. They need encouragement, but you’re a responsible adult and you can be responsible for your own. The whole false hope thing is like you can figure out. You can decode this messaging.

We’re not trying to manipulate people by showing them what’s possible and providing hope and that kind of thing. You can figure out that you’ve got to take personal responsibility for working hard. That’s given. Everything in life that is good requires hard work to achieve something like that. it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.

The state of social media has fed into that because I have plenty of ads that get rejected because they say, “You’re providing false hope. You’re providing false promises.” I’m like, “Did I promise that one of these income streams that I’m recommending would make them X number of dollars? I did not.” The feeling is social media platforms are scared that we’re providing fake information.

It’s interesting for us to talk about this here because we both experienced this. It’s something that unless you’re in this world that we are, we’re creating content from musicians. No one else understands what pressure we’re under in that way. People are saying things like, “Who do you think you are telling them they can make this much money in music or anything like that?”

I am not telling you that definitively you will do X, but I have done this and I have helped all these other people do this. I believe you can too. That’s the goal of our content. A lot of times people are trying to shut us down because people don’t want hope in the world. They want us to be completely practical. I don’t know.

I don’t know exactly either, but I know from the social media side, but from the actual, your ads getting rejected, I can’t speak to that, but I can say that people have a lot of limiting beliefs, especially around this stuff. This is what I think when we communicate this stuff. We have our own experiences with artists and musicians. We have helped artists and musicians get results and we see how it works and that kind of thing.

There are a lot of musicians out there who never are satisfied with anything on these platforms. I think if you provide hope, then it’s false hope, but then if you tell them how hard it is and how hard they’ve got to work, it’s negative energy. I feel like it comes back down to beliefs around social media and maybe their own capabilities, the industry, and all of that.

There are things to be concerned about for sure. I’m not denying that at all. I think at the end of the day, we’re probably both the kinds of people who are, “This is a potential pathway, challenge accepted. Let’s see if we can figure this out. If we can figure this out and if we can show evidence that this works, which we can, then we can share it.” The people who have done the inner work to take ownership of their situation, they’re willing to do the work and all of that, and it’ll reach the right people. You learn to tune out all of the too-far-gone limiting belief stuff.

I used to get so caught up that I felt responsible for their inner beliefs and what was keeping them from moving forward. Eventually, I had to be like, “I know that when people don’t have these limiting beliefs or when they’ve worked through them, they can achieve X.” Therefore it is no longer my responsibility. I can try to encourage them and help them with these limiting beliefs, but at the end of the day, it’s not up to me to pull everybody along. I can pull along the ones who want to go.

I’m sure that you can attest to this as well. Every single coach, mentor, or whoever in this space or the creative space in general that I’ve ever spoken to has said that it’s the same for them as it is for me. The people who have their own drive and motivation and that self-starter identity are the ones who take the information, they get some value from it. They apply it and they are willing to learn how to build on that information instead of saying they take the information and they try it once and it doesn’t work and therefore it’s all hopeless.

You have to have that self-motivation to be able to make this stuff work. Otherwise, all you’re going to do is look for evidence that it doesn’t have that kind of person everywhere you look. I have many people who are on social media and are not doing too badly. They’re growing and all of that. They come to me, look at their results, and say, “Things aren’t working. It should be faster. I want this to be better. It doesn’t feel like anything’s moving.”

You have to have that self-motivation to be able to make stuff work. Share on X

I’m like, “From my perspective, you are doing great. Everything’s going up over time. Your Spotify’s going up. Your numbers are going up. Your views are great. You’re reaching maybe a few thousand people every day. That’s amazing.” Sometimes if they’re willing to hear that, they’ll take a step back and go, “Things are going not too badly.” It’s just that they have this feeling or belief that things should be different or that this feeling that makes them feel as though they’re stuck when they’re not. That’s maybe a conversation for another time. The limiting beliefs thing is a tough one to overcome, especially with musicians. There’s a lot there.

I think that’s why they need someone in their corner to work through it with them and not just get this information. We can get the information on how to get it done on social media, but having that person in your corner and helping you analyze, did this work, did that work, what working means, and all that stuff. I’d love to let everybody know how to connect with you in case they want to have you in their corner working with them.

Instagram is a good place to start. That’s @The.Awakened.Creative. There’s a bunch of stuff that you can watch there. I’m in the middle of creating a new thing. At the moment, I’m available for one-to-one coaching for a short time. By the time this comes out, I’ll probably still be available for that. You can book consultations anytime. I can help you get directions.

By the time this episode is out, I will have a group coaching thing, which will be the first time I’ve done this sort of properly. This will be taking musicians through the branding process or the artist identity process, figuring out the identity that is showing up on social media. All stuff about modern content approaches, the ways to show up and communicate that artist’s identity, releasing music, social media growth, and even some productivity stuff.

I’m going to be there to keep you accountable and going because once you learn the fundamental stuff, that is 95% of it is to keep going and learn how to analyze stuff, learn what patterns to look for and you’re good. Those are the things that are available at the moment. By the time August rolls around, I might even have some more stuff. My website has all of that information. if you go to TheAwakenedCreative.co, you’ll find everything that you need there.

 

Your podcast, which I didn’t even know you had, what is it called?

It’s called the Awakened Creative Co Podcast. It’s on Spotify. You can go to my website and there’ll be a link that will take you there directly. If you prefer to read, I send out big newsletters every week and a big deep dive into music marketing or personal growth stuff.

I love knowing that because I know we’ve had conversations in the past about how email is my thing and you’ve helped me out a little bit with social media and I helped you out a little bit with email. That’s cool.

Email is still great for everyone. It’s always going to be one of those things that for ages, everyone says it’s dead or whatever, but I think it’s going to continue to be very valuable. I still have tons of people reading. The evidence is there.

TheAwakenedCreative.co. Go check that out. Check him out on Instagram. I see his stuff pop up every day for me. It’s great. I love it. There are many great comments that I see under it from musicians. Why don’t you guys be one of them and comment on one of his posts? Thank you so much, Alex. This has been great. I knew we’d have plenty to talk about for a second interview, and we did. We always do. Thank you so much for sharing everything that you did.

Thanks for having me. It was great. It was endless stuff to talk about.

 

Important Links

• Alex Love – Past Episode
• The Awakened Creative
• ProfitableMusician.com/Income
• @The.Awakened.Creative – Instagram
• Awakened Creative Co Podcast

 

About Alex Love

Alex is musician turned coach-sultant for artists and service-based musicians based in Melbourne, Australia.

His focus is on helping musicians form deep connections with their audience through the power of branding, content, and psychology so they can achieve their music career goals.

Alex has worked with and on projects for names like Kraddy (Glitch Mob founder), Nadia Struiwigh, Blake Bowden (The Book of Mormon), Shey Baba, Kylie Auldist, Kristy Jinks, Nik Pringadi, and Joe Accaria.