If you just finished making the best album of all time and you could somehow verify that it was indeed the best of all time…that means you would have arguably the best tool possible to get a lot of people to listen and buy all your stuff and make you super famous.
But the thing is, even if you really truly had the best album to release to the world…”Check out our album, it’s the best thing you’ll ever hear” is a horrible marketing strategy.
Consider these…
“My company can build you a brand new house in 4 days”
“We have the best steak you’ll ever eat and it only costs seventy-five cents”
“We’ll replace your transmission in 3 minutes and have you on your way”
Even if these statements are true (which would be great), we don’t want to believe them so we don’t.
They might be true, but nobody believes you.
I don’t want my house built in four days. I want my favorite steak ever to cost a lot of money. And I want you to wait at least a few hours before you tell me my car is ready to be picked up, because that new transmission was expensive.
If those companies can do those things that fast and at that level of quality, great!! And ultimately it might be to my benefit. But they would have to be discovered, not advertised.
The truth is you probably don’t have the best album in the history of music, so you wouldn’t advertise as such, but you have a really good album…and too often the advertising is a version of “Listen to our album, it’s REALLY good”.
(or even more annoying, ambiguous and not-captivating “Listen to our album, we’re REALLY PROUD of it”)
That might be true, but I don’t care that you’re telling me it’s really good. Just like I wouldn’t even care if you told me it was the best of all time.
I want to DISCOVER that it’s a really amazing record (or the best in the world) via you telling me a story that doesn’t have anything to do with how great it is.
It might be true that it’s really great, but is that a useful thing to say?
True and useful can be two different tools in telling a story about your music and career.
So if you had the best album of all time up your sleeve…what are you going to say about it?
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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com