We Found The Best Music Content Advice on The Internet

If you're an indie artist that fell in love with making music, you might be falling out of love with making music because of all the fucking content they have to make, Henry. You got the appropriate shirt on for this. Yeah, fuck content. It's unbelievable. I mean, the internet is insanely loud when it comes to the topic of content creation for musicians. It's like don't follow trends. Follow trends. Post more, post less, build a brand, build a world. It's just there's so much noise out there, and it's really tough to know what to listen to. And it gets overwhelming. How do we dial this in? What do we do, Ben? Your life's hard enough. We're here to make it easier. So we pulled nine of our favorite videos on the internet when it comes to content creation for musicians to help kind of just organize the conversation that's happening online. So we're gonna play the videos, we're gonna unpack them a bit, kind of give you our main takeaways from each video, and then we're gonna give you some actionable advice that you can take away today so that all of this doesn't live in like theoretical land. Um let's just get into clip one.

Emotional recency defeats chronological recency. What I mean by that is artists, post your fucking song, okay? I put out 315 four years ago. It's platinum, it has damn near a billion streams. Every time I post it, at least one person says, What song is this? Too many artists think everyone has seen this. I've posted it enough. Wrong. The internet is not linear. Um, fans don't live on your profile, they see you in passing. We see every post we make. Our audience does not, and the audience that we're yet to have does not. Every day somebody hits me up and says, Yo, I just discovered your music for the first time. Uh to me, that's crazy, but I love it because that means growth. There are really no such thing as old songs. There are just songs that you haven't heard of yet and songs that you have heard of. If I discover a song right now that came out 10 years ago, but I hear it for the first time right now, the emotional recency of it completely overrides the chronological recency. That shit is fire right now, and it hit me today.

I don't care if it came out 10 years ago, it didn't hit me till today. So I love it. And I'm now a fan of you. Now I'm gonna check out the rest. And did it? So it's like, you know, part of making music, if you want to be heard and if you want to get your stuff out there, part of your job, if that's your goal, is you have to constantly reintroduce yourself. That's it. Yo, I love the if that's your job part. I feel like that was speaking to our one more time community. This this platform is not for hobbyists. not for the hobbyists. Man. This is if you're trying to make it a real fucking job. If you don't want a nine to five, you're in the right place. Go ahead, like, comment, subscribe to the channel. You can Get more value like this. We haven't even started giving it to you yet, but let's start now. My main takeaways from this, we've thrown around the term interest media a lot, right? People are still kind of confused since the TikTokification of social media. Your followers matter way less. You're seeing content from people that you don't follow just based on your interests. And we need to, as creators, take that into account.

And what that means is gearing our content for discovery, not assuming, like our legend indie artist friend Russ said, that people are just tapping into every episode of our page like it's a TV show, right? That's just not what happens anymore. If we're gearing our content, assuming that people are seeing us for the first time, we're gonna get way better results from our content. Yeah, I mean, I just love you know, your old music is new to someone else. I mean, we had Nic D talk about that on the podcast, and I just I think it's so true because I've recently discovered an artist, and I found them because they posted one of their older songs that was, you know, more popular, et cetera. But they were brand new to me. And so I might not have found them had they not posted that video that was of that older song. So I just think I've had it personally happen to myself. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not unique. So this is happening on a regular basis, and the smart artists are not just promoting their current fucking release. I've looked at my liked songs on Spotify.

I did this like recently. They're every one of those songs is so old. But it's new to me. Like Russ said, that shit is fire right now. Who cares about new old, like push the song you want to push. Oh, I mean, this just goes with content in general. Like a piece of content also can be old as fuck, and someone could be seeing it for the first time. Like timeline is not a thing anymore. They want to keep pushing shit that people want to see, right? And so whether that's a song that people want to hear or a piece of content that you know viewers are in demand of, right? Like that's how these platforms work now. So use it to your advantage. Don't just be so focused on the new release. And like again, we're all about like rolling out a song the right way, like pumping a fuck ton of content into that new release. Like, we get it, but let's not forget about our old shit because it could be new to someone else and it could really connect with someone and could turn them into a lifelong fan. Well said. So, what is our homework for this section? Yeah, so for me, let's not like overcomplicate it.

Let's pick our favorite catalog song of ours, right? Like, just pick your favorite, okay? I don't even want to get into the deep shit of like which one's the highest performing analytics. Just pick your favorite. That's old, okay? And make one piece of content to it this week. Let's not overcomplicate it because if you can't do that, you're not gonna do anything else that I wanted to tell you to do. You might be getting eight more pieces of homework. So we're gonna start light. Exactly. So let's get in the second clip. Let's do it. A lot of artists, they just want to make music, and I understand that completely, but today it's like the game we in. If you do just want to make music, you need to go sign, or you need to get with a team that can help you do that in a way that becomes conducive where you can grow your brand. We did a free game with BFB the Pac-Man. I pulled like 22 clips from it that were like good. They made me smile, made me laugh, or I learned something. It took me six hours to go through that hour and a half interview and pull them 22 clips, bust them down, get them into the right dimensions, do captions. Out of this 22, something gonna change my life to make that six hours worth it.

Man, if a nigga didn't want it, they'd never be able to do this. My first thoughts is like again, we say this a lot, but the second that you decide to take music seriously and try and build a career out of it, you've turned your art into a business. And it is now part art and it is part business. Preach. And a lot of artists are very, you know, creative leaning and maybe not as focused or as good at the business side. But let me tell you about the business side, content is how you get attention, okay? And attention is how you sell product in this case, streams on your music, merch, tickets, whatever it is. So content is part of the job. And to me, what LaRussell is saying here is like if you don't have a team and you can't find anyone to do that part of it, and you don't have any money to pay someone to do that part of it, you gotta fucking do that shit, man. Like, you gotta learn it. If that's what you, if you want this, you need to learn this and get good at it. And there's a lot of steps to getting good at content and thinking about it and strategizing and keeping up with the new features and all the things.

So, you know, it's something that has to get done, and either you do it or find someone to do it, but not doing it is not an option. How do people think things are getting discovered? Like just how, like, think about the last few things that you like saw or learned about or heard, it was on social media, I guarantee it. So we love getting the comments like just focus on the art and the music. And it's like, okay, how does anyone hear it? Enjoy your hobby, bro. It's fine. But like it is a hobby and be okay with that. You know what I mean? For sure. So getting into the homework, man. Here we go. so for this, and this is something we talked about too. It's like, all right, if you've done an interview, and we laugh about this because we have people come onto this platform, we won't name their names, but you know who you are. Past guests that don't do this. Uh, if you go do an interview, if you've done one, bust down the interview into social media clips this week. You do one hour interview, you got clips for days. Yeah, so that's if you if you've done one already, I guarantee you you probably didn't do exactly what LaRussell just described, he did. So do that.

All right. If you haven't done an interview, this is where there are so many fucking podcasts out there. Just look at our comment section saying, not everyone needs a podcast, you know, like all the haters that love to say, because there's there are that many podcasts out. It's true. So hit up as many fucking platforms as it takes for you to get booked for one interview. And there are podcasts that will take anybody. Imagine having a podcast, it's pretty cringe. Clip number three God damn it. I hate you. Clip number three. 10K month musician. Oh, I need to post content. Cool. One year later. Awesome. One K month musician. Uh, I'm not too sure, but I'll give it a try. But what if my mom sees this? But what if my dad sees this? What if my dog sees? I need to talk to my friends first. I don't know what niche I'm in. I'm not really sure. I feel like I'm not good enough. I feel like other musicians are gonna judge me. Um, I think my teacher's gonna see me, my high school friends gonna see me, and then oh, actually, I think it's time to post. Um, I'm I'm thinking I'm ready now. But what if what if the competition doesn't accept me? What if the school audition panel doesn't like me?

The jury thinks I'm bad, and the other musician from Juilliard thinks I'm shit and nobody wants to work with me, and my students will see this and I'll be embarrassed. And and I think it's time for me to post in 2026. But now it's a flop, and and I don't even know who told me to post all these internet gurus, and now I'm gonna quit content forever. I'm gonna uninstall Instagram, I'm gonna uninstall TikTok, I'm never gonna go online again. Do something different if you're not making money. Don't be like this. It takes some courage and it takes some kind of clicking in your brain to get to the point where you are comfortable posting videos that you know are public, you know that anyone with internet access can see when you have all these other people in your life that you're thinking about. You know, you have family and you have old friends and all these people that don't actually understand you, don't actually understand what you're chasing, what your dreams are, and a lot of people just let them get in the way of that, and it's super holding them back. And they might not like your music, and that's okay. Yeah, I'm not for you.

That's what we have to tell the hobbyists all the time. We're not for you. Your old friend from high school, we don't give a fuck if they're your fan. Fuck Ted. Ted is a plumber, he's got a little family, and he's doing his thing, but he's not a fan of your music. Fuck Ted. That's okay. It's fine. Respect to Ted though, but we gotta find our people. Ted's not your people, but your people are out there, and I think her advice, you know, is that you gotta get yourself into a place where we can find those people. Yeah, man. I mean, for me, look, I even struggle with this as a content creator. Absolutely. You know, I mean, but you know for me, and it's I think it's like it's like you know for me, and I know for you. So it's like I fucking hate my voice. I hate how I look on camera, I hate when I'm the one kicking off an episode, I'm the one doing this or that in the clip. But like, that's all insecurity, and that's all my fucking ego talking to myself, and I don't want this for you guys, okay? So, like, but I want to empathize with it because it is an emotional journey that we're on. Like putting yourself out there online is scary.

You guys need to like dig deep down and decide either you can overcome that because you want this music shit so badly. Or maybe it's not for you. Exactly. Yep. I think uh, you know, Jane Lee said it best. It was like I was channeling Jane right there. Well, just because you need to love to be seen. Yes. So again, if you want to be an artist in the traditional sense where you build fan bases, you tour potentially, right? Like you get press, you have paparazzi when you reach superstar status. Like these are all the things that come with it. Yeah. Um, and that's what you're kind of signing up for when you, you know, publicly put out music and content to promote your music, et cetera. I will counter with like there are ways to be successful with music where you don't have to go on tour, you don't have to go do some of the things. There's people that we see, you know, like a Nic D. He does make content. Yes, he's comfortable talking on camera, but he largely stays home and you know, just kind of does his thing and streams really well and makes a living. So there are ways to do it, but like when it comes to content, which is the vehicle, the main vehicle, which is for free, by the way, yeah, to be discovered.

We gotta at least be like making videos and feeling good and looking authentic. Oftentimes, the the one thing that you want to do least and that you've been procrastinating the most is the thing that you should outsource or do. Oh, okay. Well, I'm saying, like, you know, like it's just it's the one that's like constantly probably is weighing on you. Eat that frog. Yeah, eat the frog. And then, and you know, in this video, it was like hitting posts, right? But I want to even just pull it back a bit, and it's like, look, pick the one thing that you've been putting off in your music career, you know, up to this point, whether that's registering for the MLC, whether that's you know, doing a split sheet with your co-writers and co-producers on a certain song, whether that's whether that is posting a piece of content, promoting a new song, whatever, whether that's writing a new song, I don't care. Pick the one thing that you've been procrastinating most recently and do that thing this week. No questions asked, no excuses. I don't want to fucking hear about it until you come back and comment that you did the thing and tell me what you did, because I'm actually curious what the hell y'all are up to. Because sometimes everyone gets overwhelmed and says they're so busy with all the things that I don't really know.

And after you leave that comment, like the video and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, turn the notification bell on because we do drop these episodes every week and they are packed with value, God damn it. I'm with my guy Jayo. We just filmed more than 40 reels in a few hours. If you're an artist and you're looking to get a lot of content done, but you don't have a lot of time, this is how you're gonna do it. It can sound unrealistic to shoot a bunch of content when you're limited to only one or two locations. But the truth is it actually makes the shoot way easier. And when people continue to see your content over a long period of time, it builds a world around your song, making it easier to connect with. That being said, here's the three things I always do to make sure that my shoots are a success. First, I'm gonna pick a location that makes sense for the song and pick out any props that seem relevant. For Jayo, we filmed outside because that's where a lot of his content already is. And we want to make sure that we stay on brand. Next, each time we find an interesting shot, I'm not just gonna shoot it from one angle. I'm gonna have him sit there and I pick a few different angles that make sense so we can make the most out of our time and whatever we're working with. But without step three, none of this is going to matter. An issue that I see all the time with artists who batch film is they don't know how to batch edit.

Because it's great if you're able to get all the shots that you need, but if it falls apart in the edit, those content pieces are probably never gonna see the light of day. The easiest way to batch edit is to create a system. Make a folder of all the consistencies that you wanna have in your videos, whether it's fonts, color grade presets, or anything else. One thing I do for pretty much every song I edit is I type all of the lyrics out one time. I make it a compound file that I can save, and I copy paste that onto all the other videos so I don't have to retype the lyrics every time I want to post. And by the way, it'd be a great idea to follow me because I teach artists how to get stupid good at content. It's you know, the classic quality quantity debate, right? Should I post more to give myself more chances? Should I spend more time making my post better so they have a better chance? This guy is, I think, a master of like finding the hybrid, right? He's in that Venn diagram middle, baby. Because we can't choose between those two. We need both. Yeah. Like there is no debate. It's like quality or quantity. The answer is yes, first of all.

So unhelpful sometimes. It sounds like it. But this is a guy that figured out how to, you know, kind of achieve that by putting systems in place. He's simplifying processes, little hacks, little tricks, and just smart planning, intention, yeah, but then going and not overthinking once all that's in place. Yeah, you know what I mean? The level of quantity that he's getting out of these shoots, yeah, but they still look fucking incredible to your point, is is really remarkable, to be honest. Something that he touches on that's really important is something as simple as switching the camera angle. Like you know, that's a big one. Yeah, like we posted a clip from his episode with us where he mentioned that same thing where he helped, you know, an artist who actually her episode will probably be out by the time this comes out, KELS. Uh, he basically shot her content for her and he literally switched the camera angle three different times. Each of those different angles got like millions of views. Insane. Um, so just something like as simple as that can help achieve enough uniqueness to make it you know feel new, but also still live in the same world, obviously, that like the set that you you know choose.

Um it's not completely run and gun. You know, what I mean he does he does like a simple board, right? Like an art board. He's picking a location that's very intentional. But once you go there, yeah, we're like maximizing all of that shit. Yeah, it's like Hey, this output. Hey, let's let's stand over there. Hey, let's try sitting. Hey, let's try holding this prop that we brought. Hey, let's try it from this angle, let's try it from that angle, right? So, really getting like just the most bang for your buck when it comes to like going to a location. You don't want to leave that. So you gotta get as much shit as you can at that one location, um, and just maximizing the output. And then the editing techniques are pretty pretty clear. The lyrics one is good. If you guys like what he's spitting in that one, go definitely go check out the full episode with Stafford, put a link to it right up there. For sure. So, what can they do, you know, today? Let's pick one location, okay, that we think has the potential to have uh maybe three to five, I'll call them like mini sets within the like broader location, right? Stand over here, stand over there. Yep, exactly.

Um, and then within each of those mini like sets within the location, let's get three angles forwards, left side, right side, or pointing up, pointing down, you know, whatever angles you want. And I mean, damn. And let's film the entire song. Huge one. Whole song. Let's not like do just the hook, the hook. Exactly. Yeah, so you're getting maximized first verse, bridge, hook, second verse, intro, outro, whatever different like you know, parts of the song you want to do. Um, that way you have like I mean, you damn near have a hundred pieces of content there. That makes sense with your song, you know. what I mean, for sure. And but if you get creative, there's more options than you think. Exactly. So, yes, but I don't even want to overcomplicate that. That's a whole other fucking conversation. And I'm sure that's only if you want extra credit on the homework. Exactly. But even just picking one location and then doing that uh will suffice. Yes, if you can make it live in your like artist brand world, then yes, extra, extra uh credit for sure. Next clip.

Next clip. Music artists, use storytelling content to get more followers. Let's go to the fjords of Norway. Film a DJ set where no one has ever been before and make it look like a fucking movie. Use relatable content to get more shares. If you've ever lost somebody you weren't ready to lose, wrote this song for us. I wasn't ready. Use comedy content to get more views. This is my morning routine as a professional musician. Use educational content to get more saves. Use reaction content to get more comments. I'm going to show my family my album. They don't like bass music at all. Use motivational content to get more likes. Use transition content to go viral. And comment list to get all the hook styles to grow faster on Instagram as a music artist. I think my favorite part about that is just thinking about content in different sort of buckets, right?

And just kind of classifying. He's obviously very intentional about like this piece of content is doing this, this piece of content is doing this, this one's doing this, instead of just making a video and hitting post, right? It's like, what is the goal of this one? And I think variety also is very good. It's good to try a lot of different ones. You might find you're very good at one of these buckets if it's comedy, if it's motivational, whatever. And you might find that one really sucks, right? Because we constantly need to be auditing our content as well. And so breaking it up like this, I think is just a smart way to be thinking about how to go about it. Yeah, for me, they each serve their own purpose. And that's what I really love too. It's like one helps you gain followers, one helps you get comments, one helps you get shares. Um so they all kind of have like a different metric that you should be looking out for, or that you should be, I guess, expecting, you know. Um, so if you post something that's supposed to get a lot of followers, maybe don't worry about the fact that it doesn't get a lot of comments, or vice versa, right? Like if something's usually a comment-heavy piece of content, they might not follow you after that, and that's okay.

And maybe that's just what that piece of content does. And like so it serves a certain purpose and they all kind of work together. Um, but yeah, I mean, for me, I I struggle with this sometimes though, right? Of how much variety. I think you need some. Some. I think you need some. I think but if you find your bucket that works, I do think you definitely go deep. Yeah, I I go, I always like to go back to the classic like 80-20 rule. Um, where I think 80% should maybe fall into, you know, one of the buckets, right? Like, so educational type of content, I think is you know something that maybe like educators do 80% of the time, but 20% of the time they need to be doing, you know, comedy type shit. They need to be doing reaction style, they need to be doing, you know, storytelling or whatever, right? 8020 feels heavy to me, dude. I I don't know. I think I I would go like 6040. Okay, I'm trying new shit, just okay, unless unless you have a bucket that A is working and B, you love to make and is come comes naturally. Because they maybe do a lot of that, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Otherwise, I like trying shit, man. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So, you know, I think as far as like actionable homework, right? For this, you know, video. For me, odds are you guys have some questions, right? You want to learn maybe some different ways to think about this stuff. So for me, I think we need to go back to the testing battlegrounds, right? You know, let's just start off by making one piece of content in each of those styles just to see how it feels. Yeah. See how you feel about each of them. You might love one, hate others, you might hate them all, but that's something we gotta overcome. You can even put it on a brand new page. Start like a brand new TikTok and try the different posts. If you're like so precious about your page, you know what I mean. And if we have an emotional, you know, reaction to any of them in a positive way, maybe we double down on those, you know, in the in the subsequent weeks. But also if anything outperforms gotta be significantly, right? Obviously. So if you make a reaction video and you get hella views and shares and comments and react to some more shit. We do more reaction videos, right?

If you if you do a little educational thing of like how to make like how to write a song and E minor, I don't know, whatever. Teach some more shit. Um, yeah, do some more teaching type of videos, right? So um that's that's what I think you guys should do. So I'm seeing that was the Snapchat hook. One of the simplest and most reliable ways to go viral in 2026. Here's why it works. Putting a Snapchat caption over a wild public moment lowers the viewers' guard because it looks like real life, not another music video. So they stay longer waiting for the situation to unfold. But here's the catch. If the moment doesn't escalate, people get bored and scroll before you have a chance to show your song. That's why you need a holy crap moment, a moment of pure shock that keeps the viewers hooked and becomes the transition moment for your music. So you create curiosity, you build tension, and then bang straight into the music. Now the key is the transition. Your performance shot has to carry on naturally from the Snapchat moment. When the action flows smoothly between shots, the viewer is satisfied because it looks like one continuous seed.

So the story keeps going. Most artists won't try this because they're too afraid to be cringe. But you've realized the performance reels are outdated, and viral formats like this are how you engage and convert your viewers to streams. That's how we got Adria a million streams on his latest EP. If you want the full breakdown of our content system to do that for you, then just comment me and I'll send it right over. Citizen is obviously like mastered this shit. We just did an episode with him. We'll put a link to that episode right up here. He goes deep into a lot of that type of stuff. For me, it's not so much about the Snapchat transition itself. I mean, go ahead and give it a try. Citizen said, and I tend to agree that it's probably on the way out because now everyone's figured it out, right? And now we kind of associate that with a fake out hook, and we don't even think that it's real anymore. But the principle beneath it all is the candidness, right? It's that the fact that people do lower their guard and feel like something real is about to happen. It's crazy that that works, right?

Like all we need to do is make people think that like a real moment is happening, especially with everything going on in AI. They're Like we're at a real all-time low of realness in society, I think. So it's getting real, right? It's just getting very real. So if we can understand like how to, you know, the Snapchat trend will die and something else will happen. But that principle of making people feel something real is not going away anytime soon. I would argue it's more important than ever. Yeah, I mean, for me, really, the takeaway is more kind of like what you're hinting at as far as take the Snapchat hook idea out of the equation. For me, it's more about the setup and payoff. Right. So I think good pieces of content have setups and then they have payoffs, right? So whether that's you know setting up something that someone's gonna learn from the video, and then the payoff is they learned the thing, or whether it's uh, you know, a stand-up comedy type of reference where it's like the setup is literally like setting up the joke, like the premise of the joke, and then the payoff is the punchline. Content is similar, and Citizen has mastered that shit to a T.

Whether it's him using the Snapchat hook, or whether he's just doing any other, you know, viral type of video, that's like one of his core principles that he makes sure is part of his like checklist that he has for million like videos is having that setup and payoff, right? Hey, Henry here. Sorry to interrupt this podcast, but there is something I have to address. As many of you know here at one more time, we love doing live music reviews. We love hearing the music from our community and providing helpful feedback that is hopefully helping you further your career. But if there's one piece of advice that we are tired of giving, it's that your master is too quiet. We shouldn't have to turn up the volume for your song just to have to turn it back down for the next song. That's not good. But Henry, good mastering engineers are so hard to find and so expensive. Enter DistroKid's newest tool called Mixia. I master music myself. And while I don't think AI mastering will ever replace the quality you get from an experienced human mastering engineer, it's pretty damn good. And if you already distribute through DistroKid, you can now master unlimited tracks using Mixia. And if you don't, we have a link right here.

You can sign up for DistroKid with 30% off, upload unlimited music yearly for an insanely cheap price. Humans perceive louder as better. It's dumb, but it's true. Use Mixia for a clean master, and you won't sound weak on that playlist. Let's get back to the episode. The homework for me is definitely like pick one of your songs. Okay, pick your favorite moment in the song, what maybe might be thought of as like the climax moment of the song, like the biggest part of the song, and then think of a creative way to visually tell that story of the climax, and then think of like the funniest, most like absurd way to set up to that payoff. To lower the guards. Exactly, because the payoff is gonna be the climax moment. That's where you're gonna flip to like the cinematic or as much like high quality as you can. Um, but the Snapchat needs to be more of that like you know, set up and premise to that that payoff. And if you're having trouble coming up with the ideas, we gathered a hundred viral content ideas for musicians We did. and put them in a free PDF. We're giving it to you absolutely free.

We know you struggle with ideas of what to come up with. We did the research, we put them all in a convenient little packet for you to just sift through and see what makes sense for you and start making some content for your music. Get it heard, guys. Come on. 100 viral content ideas.com for free. Let's get into the next clip. Indie babies, you need to be doing these two things. If you're not doing it, then trial reels on Instagram. You have an option to click on the trial reels when you're about to upload the reel. This means it's not gonna go onto your main page, it's only gonna go out to new people out there. Here's the thing why you should be doing this and how you should be doing this is the key. Are you with me? Trial reels. When you're utilizing trial reels, I want you to take the three four best performing pieces of content, be old, whatever it is. You're going to repurpose it, reframe it, you're gonna put a different filter on it, you're gonna add a little bit of a variance on the heading, change it ever so slightly, and you're gonna upload it to trial reels. Trial reels means none of your followers are gonna see it, which means there's gonna be a new group of people that are going to see your content.

And since it's already performing better than your other pieces of content, the likelihood of the conversion, the likelihood of them following you is a lot higher. You may not have access to trial reels, just take a look. When you go to upload, you'll see a little thing on the bottom that says trial reels. If you do, then I I highly recommend that you utilize this tactic and don't have to, you know, create new pieces of content separate for trial reels, or you know, just take the best performing pieces of content, repurpose them, put up those bad boys. Another tip that I have for you is TikTok does not penalize you for using the same piece of content. So if your content for some reason that day didn't do well, it didn't push it out, you have 53 views, it's not doing so well, delete that shit and put it up again. Do you know how many times indie artists have come to me taking this advice? They said 200 views and they just uploaded it again, 20,000 views. No explanation. It just is. So take the pieces of content that you feel like the algorithm just didn't do you any favors. It did it, it just blocked you.

And so you're going to now delete that, or better yet, here's a better way. Leave it on there. Just upload it again. I want to remind you that we are not just supposed to work harder, we are supposed to work smarter. We have tools available to us. It's up to us how we're going to use it. So let's use our brain and let's be strategic about it. Reposting trial reels, huge. You might have a different takeaway, but mine is that these platforms are always changing. Social media is always changing. They're introducing new features, different types of content, different formats are working now and not working now. And as part of the job, since content is such a big part of the job, like we need to be dedicating some time into keeping up with that. And even like literally, like set a block of time. Or if it was me, maybe I'd have like an AI agent, you know, be researching and give me briefs like once a week on what's new in the content world, what's working for musicians, what are the new features on the different platforms. And literally making that research and that staying on top of shit part of the job because especially like the early people, the people that can get to the stuff quicker are always rewarded the fastest.

The platforms love rewarding people that use their new features. Trials have been out over a year now. It's still very valuable, I think. But man, when we found out about it a year ago, the people that were really taking advantage then were crushing. You know what I mean? So it's like the Snapchat text thing. Like you could still try, I think it's still useful, but the principle of keeping up with that thing is the most valuable, you know, teach a man to fish type shit. Yeah. And I mean, my mind immediately goes to like just like we were talking about with the Rust clip, right? Where emotional uh, you know, recency is you know, outweighs uh chronological recency, right? So your newest post doesn't have to be your best and favorite. Like an old post that worked a fucking year ago, no one remembers it. I guarantee you. I will guarantee you no one remembers it. No one remembers your post from last week. Okay, and the good news is even if people do remember it, if they're getting shown it again and they're watching it through, it's because they fucking liked it the first time and they're still liking it the second time. Huge, right?

And it's gonna reach more people the second time than it did, or different people than it did the first time. Isn't that the beautiful thing about the we love to complain about the algorithm? But hey, if someone doesn't like your post, you can just post it again, and that person won't see it again. You're only gonna reach new people that might like it. Yeah. So for me, that's kind of where I I go. And like, I know we're talking specifically about like trial reels in this sense, and then obviously like the TikTok kind of suggestions she gave. But yeah, I mean, it's more about looking at old content. I mean, I'm telling you, because I do study this shit and I'm real like, you know, analytical with what people are posing and whatever, I notice it, but I don't notice it and then get like upset about it. I just notice like, oh, like, you know, just to use sides as an example, she's really good at this, where she posts old videos often. And I can tell hers is a dead giveaway because she has a different hair, she has a different haircut. Like she used to have like different colored hair, and like, so it's like I know for a fact that's an older video, but it still fucking hits. Hasn't bothered you. So it it yeah, and it doesn't matter. So that would be kind of like my main takeaway. So then, as far as like the actionable advice, I mean, I think you know, now uh Instagram's giving you giving you the ability to um sort your own reels, and sometimes you can even sort other people's reels by most popular, like other people's. you go to the reels tab, there's a little arrow right next to the button on the reels tab.

You can go most recent or most viewed. Yep, exactly. So let's let's do our own and let's do most viewed, and then literally let's take for this next week. We're gonna take our top seven. Seven. I mean, well, because I just think it should be this easy, bro. We're just we're just, we're just the same thing, right? Let's go. Click the download button or use a fucking rip rip the Instagram video without the watermark, you know. Or if you're legit, you keep all your videos. Yeah, okay, okay. If not, rip your own videos fine. Give them that much credit. Because we don't always do all that either. Um, but you know, get the video somehow. And yeah, I'll literally say, take your top seven high-performing videos and repost them to trial reels. Yeah, that's it. One a day. Simple. It's that simple. Don't fuck. And like maybe do what she said about like slightly change something, swipe a filter over, put a this, put a that, like whatever, because they are cracking down a little bit on like having the exact same video re-uploaded. things change, which is why we keep track of that.

Yep, exactly. But that's like a five-minute exercise. Download your own video and post it again to trial reels, and it might get you a follower. And that's five minutes for a follower. She was saying that, like, she had a trial reel that was just an old post. Get her two thousand followers. Yeah. Fucking stupid, bro. I was like, God damn, Jane, you're cracking the code. What are we doing here? Anyways, next clip. Nobody cares that your song is out because you're not giving them a reason to care. You're flooding your feed with the out now posts of your cover art. No story, no emotion, no connection. Fans need to fall in love with how you and the music makes them feel. Billie Eilish doesn't just sit there and promote her songs. She's showcasing vulnerability in a world that fakes everything. Zach Bryan's not sitting there pushing his music onto people. He shares the truth that people feel like they're too afraid to say themselves. And you, you post your cover art, you say, click the link in my bio, and then you wonder why you don't have that die hard super fan base. So here's how you fix it.

Stop saying, go listen to my new song. Start showing the moments behind the meaning of that song. Stop pushing the genre tag as the marketing spin. Start telling the truth and narrative behind it. Because when someone feels seen by your content, they're not just gonna stream the song, they're gonna stay in your fan ecosystem. Because your song is just the product. The emotion is what makes your brand spread. Ruff, another one of my favorite episodes. So good. Gotta link his episode right up here. Man knows what he's talking about. We did a live stream with him too. Absolutely cooked. My takeaway from this is probably that we're always told that we're in the attention business. Right. I would say that Ruff might argue that we're in the feeling business, bro. We're in the feeling business because if you can make people feel something, the attention comes with it. You know what I mean? You might get someone's attention for a second, but if they don't feel anything, it's not getting they're not coming back, right? We need repeated attention. We need someone to feel something so that they remember us and they keep coming back for more.

Yeah, I love that because I mean I think we talk about that a lot when it comes to the music. The music has to make people feel something, or else they're not gonna become a fan of it. Same thing with the content. But same thing with the content. Yep. And you guys are good at that, right? You make good music that makes people feel something. So how do we we gotta translate that into video somehow, right? Well, I think, you know, self-awareness, point to it. I don't know, it's somewhere up there, right? Yep. Um, I think it comes back to self-awareness. I think we need to be self-aware as to what feeling or feelings we are invoking with the song, and then being able to, you know, kind of convey those through the content. Just think about this shit. Like every single post, what do I want people to feel? Yes from this post. Yes, exactly. What's the feeling? Yep, yep. And I think that, you know, connecting that with the song feelings is obviously the win-win, right? Because if you get their attention with, you know, text on screen, whatever, to kind of like capture that feeling that you want them to feel, and then the music and the associated visuals actually make them feel that thing, that's like where the fucking magic happens. You know what I mean?

Easy homework assignment. I might just jump in as the teacher. All right, Professor Henry. For your next X amount of posts, let's like physically, even maybe write down what it is the feeling that we want people to feel with that post. Maybe even edit the post in a way that guides them toward that feeling. And then maybe we look at the comments on that post and get some type of gauge on if they felt that feeling, you know what I mean? And right? I mean, I think that's I don't even remember the homework I was gonna give, so that's perfect. I feel like you know, Professor Henry right here, baby. Let's get it. You want to just take over? No, I mean, people are only here for me already, anyway, right? Yeah, I am. Last post. Let's go. This is where everybody messes up. They go viral doing something, and they're like, oh, I'm gonna make something way better than this, and people are gonna love that. They're gonna hate it. They're gonna want you to do exactly what they saw you do the first time for 10 more times, 15 more times. Don't do anything else, just do this, upload it now. It feels not creative, but I almost think like get creative to figure out how you can like put a slight spin on this already proven to work thing.

We use the word like auditing a lot. We need to be auditing what's working. I like to think of social media posts as little like science y psychological experiments. Every post is a little experiment, right? And we get data back from each one, and then we can change a variable here, and we change a variable here, and then okay, we write that data, and oh, when we did this variable and this variable, this worked. And so all he's saying is if you get a combination of variables that works, you know, let's not maybe not go back to the variables that are not working. Let's let's dial in, you know, what's working. Yeah, I mean, literally, I was just talking about this rapper, uh, exotic off camera, and he's been going stupid viral almost with every video, and it's him and his uh girlfriend. They're a uh uh interracial couple, so it's a white girl and he's a black rapper. And so maybe that's part of the dynamic because she's in every video of his rapping his song with him, and the format works. And instead of just like having the one video blow up and then him just never including her in another video again, he literally has her in every single video.

They're not like a duo, she's not a rapper, she's just in the content because it fucking worked, and he took this advice. It's like he went viral and he did more of the thing that helped him go viral. And the creativity does not end when you find an idea that works, it's just dials in a notch. Now we gotta get creative within this framework that's proven to work. There's so many other ways you can still take this and get creative and spread this framework that is proven to work, right? It's not like just do this every time. We still gotta be like getting creative and figuring out how to expand on our winners. For me, I also though kind of look at it like y'all struggle with ideas. So, like, if one works, why the fuck are we moving on to another idea? Like, let's let's double triple quadruple down on the idea that we we just got proven to work. Like, let's not make it harder on ourselves. Like, y'all already hate content. And it might not last forever, but that's why we're constantly auditing, constantly staying in touch with what is working for us and what is not, and updating it. This is a never-ending game.

It's not like you're gonna find your thing and you just solved content forever, by the way. Like get used to like watching episodes like this and podcasts and listening to the people that you know may or may not know what they're doing and trying to figure this shit out because it is ever evolving, and that is part of the job. So hopefully you get successful enough, maybe you can get someone else to do it for you, but someone's gotta do it. Yeah, exactly. So I think like the actionable homework homework for this one would be um, you know, same idea, go to your Reels tab, uh, sort it by most viewed. Look at your top performing piece of content. Make some versions of it. Make three more versions of it of that exact type of video, right? So if it was you and your girlfriend, like the example I was giving, do three more of that. You and your girlfriend. If it was you at a certain location, go back, shoot three more videos in that certain location. Again, we're not gonna really know exactly what worked about the video, but like you can kind of take some guesses, right? And then if your next one flops, maybe try another variable from that viral video.

Maybe it was the text on screen. Try that again. Three more versions with like a very similar, if not exact text on screen, but in different locations. So try and recreate the magic that you already like was were shown to work, you know. Some real game in this one, guys. If you haven't already, please like, comment, subscribe so we can not go broke and continue to make episodes like this to help you guys level up. We love our indies, man. We do. Until next time, what are we doing? Getting out of here. Get out of here. Peace, y'all.