Copying what other artists are doing is a common problem I often encounter when talking to artists. They have identified a few artists who appears to be active or doing well so they copy them. They do what gigs they are doing, copy what blogs they are featured on and release content with the same frequency as them. They will even go a far to match their follower count through promotion or unsolicited means.
Now there are good and bad points to this so we cant treat this activity as wrong or right but we need to asses why you are doing it. However before we do lets have a look at these positivity and negatives.
Advantages of copying are:
Clarity - The other artist has done all the handwork of research. They’ve planned their campaign, filtered out all the good gigs from the bad so why do all this hard work again when you can just copy them.
Motivation - Rather then waking up clueless each day, the other artist has layer out clear goals which you can mimic for your own gain.
The Disadvantages of copying are:
Misdirection - By following the activities of another artist, you loose sight of what might be good for you. In essence you and no longer acting on intuition and are rather acting to someone else’s plan.
Workload - You maybe a single artist or a small team who is trying to copy the efforts of what might be a much larger team. The other artist may also have major representation which means they have contacts and thus able to pull strings with ease. Try getting play listed on BBC Radio without a team behind you.
So knowing this good and bad points its clear what you need to do right?
Find the artists who are doing well, copy the bits that suit you and fill in the gaps with your own relevant activities.
There’s no point trying to reinvent the wheel. You’re an artist so at some point you will probably need to play a gig, release a video, record a single and get some reviews. However, at the same time you’re an ARTIST, how you are perceived to your fans is also a reflection of act and not just how you sound.
If you love taking pictures jump on instagram and maybe forget about the artist who is all over twitter.
Love jamming with your band, maybe invite fans to the studio for a bear
Hate playing live? mime, lol no seriously try something else. Do what works for you.
Jon Hockley is the lead consultant of The Artist Potential which is an artist development and consultancy service. He has worked in the music business for 15 years and is obsessed with personal development.