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What Do You Sound
Like? (and why it's important)
by Bob
Baker
©2008
Admit
it. Most musicians hate to compare themselves to other
artists. Does this describe you? If you feel you are a
unique, one-of-a-kind creative being, I wholeheartedly
agree with you. But if you think you shouldn't tarnish
your musical identity with comparisons to other artists,
I ask you to reconsider.
Why?
It has everything to do with this crazy little hunk of
matter called the human brain. According to the
Berkeley Lab, "Humans retrieve information best
when it can be linked to other related information." In
other words, without a familiar reference point, people
have a tough time filing away and remembering new
sights, sounds, smells,
etc. |
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Tapping Into 'The
System'
In an
article by Allen Barker, he writes,
"Memory is a dynamic process. It arises from reminders
and cues." The process that helps the brain sort out new
stimulus is called "associative memory." Barker
continues, "An associative memory is a memory system
that takes an input 'key' and produces the 'closest'
stored memory that matches that key. If the memory had
stored a picture of a chair, for example, and were
presented with a 'key' of half a chair, it would fill in
the remaining half of the chair."
If you
think this is all impractical mumbo jumbo, check out the
work being done by Pandora. It's
Music Genome Project is a system
that analyzes music using "a set of attributes that
capture not only the musical identity of a song, but
also many significant qualities that are relevant to
understanding the musical preferences of consumers who
browse the material. Each song is analyzed along 400
distinct musical attributes to create a complete musical
analysis."
Sounds
deep, but in essence, the Pandora research works much
like Amazon's "customers who bought X also purchased Y"
recommendations. |
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Making the Mental Music
Connection
Another site that understands the importance of
this concept is WeSoundLike.com. The home page
reads "Find new music like your favorite music! Just
browse for your favorite music artists and we'll tell
you the new and upcoming artists that are influenced by
them!"
Convinced yet? Music fans need
clues. People who enjoy your music also enjoy other
artists. And many of those artists are more familiar to
the masses than you are right now. So tap into the
mental links that already exist in the minds of fans who
support other similar-sounding
artists.
Bob
Baker's Best Selling Handbook
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about the author >>
Bob Baker is
the author of "Guerrilla Music Marketing
Handbook,"
"Unleash the Artist Within" and "Branding
Yourself Online." He also publishes The Buzz Factor, a
web site and e-zine that deliver marketing tips,
self-promotion ideas and other empowering messages to
music people of all kinds. Get your FREE subscription to
Bob's e-zine and a look at his great resources for
advancing your music career
here.
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as it appears.
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