Is Your Image That Important?

Sure, the majority of your time is spent using sound to get your message across, so why should you worry about your image? Does it really have an impact on the number of listeners you’ll get? Do your fans, existing or potential, really care about how you visually represent yourself?

Before continuing with the article we’d like to ask you a question: of the two albums artworks displayed below, which would you be more likely to listen to just based on how they look?

We’d bet all our left legs that your eyes are instinctively more inclined to enjoy the second artwork. Right? Right. It’s important for you to recognise that if you want to appeal to a greater audience, you are going to have to surpass the measly desire to impress only your close friends who you’ve given the task of passing on your links. If you want to gain popularity amongst a target audience whose numbers don’t exist in your phone’s contacts list, in a world where your music will be up against millions of other songs, you will certainly have to look the part. 

So back to the million-dollar question: is your image that important? YES! A resounding one at that. Your image is of paramount importance. “Why”, you ask? Well, there are a few reasons:

It Gives People a Reason to Listen

As we said before, your music will be up against millions of other songs, and the people who don’t know you just yet are very likely to be introduced to your music through the album art. Say a random listener is scrolling through Apple Music and your new song pops up right below a well known Kanye West track. You’re going to want them to be able to look at your album art, be interested, and choose your song over the one they already know by an established artist who needs absolutely no introduction. Being able to get people’s attention is a great first start. Whether the song is actually worth the listen? That's another story. 

It Shows People What They Can Expect

You don’t want to lie to people. If your music is dark and gringy you aren’t necessarily going to have all of your promotional posters (digital or physical) portray good times with sunshine and rainbows. This can have a negative impact for a number of reasons, one of them being that you will attract the wrong audience who’ve supposedly come looking for sunshine and rainbows while all you plan on giving them is doom and gloom. What you’ll end up with is a gathering of very unhappy hippies who will all likely have a word or two to tweet about how much they disliked your music. That’s not to say that your music was below par, but rather that you didn’t give them what they came looking for. This leads us to our next point: 

It Depicts a Cohesive Message

This isn’t to say that your sound and your image must be congruent in every way. For instance, if you want your album cover, posters, flyers and social media posts to look different to what your music sounds like, then you’re going to want to do it in a calculated manner. You need to make sure that your look and feel still give off the idea that you always intended to give, albeit with hidden messages and an underlying theme that work to tie everything together.

Music Goes Beyond the Sound

Lastly, music isn’t solely about what you sound like, it is also about what you feel like, what you look like in the heads of the listeners when they aren’t listening to you, as well as the messages and ideas that people can link to your style as a whole. The sound is simply one outlet to showcase who you are, but if you truly want to etch your name into the memory of anyone who stumbles upon your page on Instagram/your songs on Soundcloud or your channel on youTube, you're going to want to strike them in every way possible. Branding yourself could be the difference between you making your way onto the phone of a record label’s talent scout and your music being a side hustle that earns you no money and a sad level of clout. You may not know how to go about creating a strong image for yourself, but that doesn’t have to be where all of your attention goes, it’s where all of ours will go. 

Here at Mmari Productions, we’re bent on taking your image in whichever direction you need it to go. All you have to do is give us the details and we’ll handle the rest! Leave it to us to take your image to the next level.