Marketing is the Final Extension of Your Art

I read this post from Derek Sivers a while back and it shifted my perspective on marketing. It’s worth sharing in full:

Imagine you see a caged feather on a museum wall. The sign underneath says the artist is a political activist in jail.

Imagine that same caged feather again. But instead the sign says the artist is a high school kid in Florida.

Or imagine that the only way to see it is to crawl deep into a shrinking tunnel that opens into a room of mirrors, where the caged feather is suspended by a thread.

Same feather. Very different perceptions.

The way you present your art, and what people know about it, completely changes how they perceive it.

Therefore, your art doesn’t end at the edge of the canvas. Your creative decisions continue all the way to the end.

Now think of the way you create and release music:

• You have a tiny idea for a song.
• You flesh it out into a full song.
• You give it layers of instruments.
• You choose its texture when recording.
• You come up with an album title, and the visual look of your photos and videos.

Every step so far has been a creative expansion of your original idea.

So now it’s time to put it out into the world. Do you turn off all that creativity? Just upload the song to the usual places, and announce it like everyone else?

No! Your creative process hasn’t stopped! Flaunt your artistic freedoms, and have some fun with it!

• the way you communicate with the world
• how you make your music available
• the stories you tell about your music and yourself

These are all the continuation of your creation.

Marketing is the final extension of your art.

Many times in the past, I would work hard on a piece, but when it came time to share it. I either didn’t share it or I just posted a simple post on social media and that’s it. That same soul and creativity that I applied to the creative process stopped when it came time to market it. But the way I share it, the narrative around the piece, the way I communicate about it, is also part of the art.