Help deciding what genre to produce

Discussion in 'Working with Sound' started by MusikWannabe, Apr 5, 2022.

  1. MusikWannabe

    MusikWannabe Newbie

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    He guys! I need your help...

    I produce for 7 years and have never properly released a song, always publishing them with different accounts... The maximum amount of songs I released on a single account was 4, and it was back in 2017 (I guess I have some commitment issues lol).

    I started producing EDM, like the old Progressive House tracks by Swedish House Mafia, Big Room like Martin Garrix, etc. But as of 2022, I have loads of projects files in multiple styles, like Deep House, Phonk, Hardwave, Future Garage, Progressive House, Dubstep, Lofi, and I just don't know what to focus on and make a real artist image. I know that if I kept uploading since 2017 I would propably have some sort of income from music, which is my goal. I don't mind if it's a small income though, I just want to be able to do what I love full time.

    I know that I can just post music under multiple aliases, one for each genre, but maybe that would'nt be so smart, because I would'nt be so consistent with releases and it would be hard for me to keep up with release plans, marketing, because I do this all by myself...

    Honestly I'm thinking about just posting on Spotify, SC, YT and hoping someone listens to my stuff, because I have no idea of what to do with marketing nor do I have the money to afford it in order for it to make any difference as opposed to simply posting. I know how to make pretty decent artworks, so I don't think the visual identity will be an issue, though.

    I'm young and I'm at a stage in my life where I want to build a future, but the only thing that makes me wanna wake up everyday to work with is music. I don't care wether it's mixing, mastering, producing, I want something to do with music! I tried having a gig on fiverr, put out a mixing/mastering service for 5 DOLLARS, but nobody bought it, maybe because of visibility, the before and after were good!

    Is there anyone here that faced the same situation? What did you do to finally get through this and actually make people know your music? This makes me feel so bad it actually implies in my personal life, I need to be set free!

     
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  3. demberto

    demberto Rock Star

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    You're not alone. Pretty much everyone is in the same boat, even the ones that got a label release. You need to be consistent and finish songs and upload them. Repeating the complete process will make you better than just repeating something like creating a melody adding drums and chords, making a drop and putting the project file away. Ofcourse you should keep sending tracks to labels and hope for something.

    Somebody once said, genres are just sandboxes created by big artists for a brand. Once many people get hooked to it, it only makes the big artists more popular. Don't worry to much about a genre. It would have been just better if you had put out everything under a single account.

    You hit gold if for example your song suddenly gets viral on Tiktok or DJs start playing your stuff. Much of the stuff you make is pretty much underground actually (hardwave, phonk). Can I get to listen some of your stuff?
     
  4. Olymoon

    Olymoon Moderator

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    I dont know if it is your case, but some artist can write in completely different genres, but still have their own style and sound, which is recognizable.
    In this case they are perceived as multifaceted artist, which is a quality.
     
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  5. clone

    clone Audiosexual

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    I am sorry, but I will never agree to the common train of thought that you should spend time finishing junk. And certainly not uploading it as a complete piece of work you are proud to put your own name on. That is what "Taggers" in the graffiti world have always done. Stick your name up on any half-assed piece of junk work so someone sees your name over and over. 0 integrity in that sort of work and McDonalds will ultimately pay you better than most YT'ers telling you otherwise. (All you have to do is go there and ask them) That should be your reason to release things under an alias, because they do not match the rest of the body of work; not because it is sub par. just different material.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2022
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  6. Oneeyedstan

    Oneeyedstan Platinum Record

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    You can try making some Phonkwave, or Garstep, or Dubressive, or you give a fuck about fitting to a genre and make what you are!:dj:
     
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  7. Lois Lane

    Lois Lane Audiosexual

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    Don't forget about Disco Punk , Hardcore Ambient or Trance Industrial Dubstep..
     
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  8. BEAT16

    BEAT16 Audiosexual

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    Hello @MusikWannabe, first let's look at what is actually happening in the Music. Since almost everyone with a computer can make music at home and upload it to Youtube and Spotify etc for free, the mass of music has become huge and so has the competition.

    You can cause yourself a lot of stress by trying to sell your stuff on the market. This stress to get your music on the internet leads to dissatisfaction and frustration. You can ask yourself how you would sell your music before the invention of the internet.

    You are most likely to be successful if you burn your music on a CD ROM or put your music on a USB stick and give it away to friends and relatives, you can also design a booklet and write your private addresses and YouTube channel etc. on the back. I would also create a free website where people can download your music for free.

    Burn 100 CD's and start promoting your music yourself - that means giving it away for free, that way your music gets into the world. Distribute your CD's at school parties, street parties, birthdays, parties. As an artist, I wouldn't limit myself to one genre, to limit yourself to one genre means to limit yourself. Who knows what you will listen to in 10 years or what music you will still be able to stand in 10 years.

    Since you have talent and have understood music as an essential content of your life, you also have the possibility to become better. However, this is a process that cannot be forced, but which develops over a long period of time. This is also called creativity or inspiration. This creative power comes from within.

    Learning an instrument and mastering it perfectly, for example the guitar, takes about 9 years, provided you have talent and practise 3.4 hours a day. Even if you are very good, you will meet other musicians who are your competitors, and there must be a market or, in other words, a demand for guitarists.

    Due to the technical development, the computer / SmartPhone etc. we have more music than ever before in history. From the point of view of the listener or consumer of music, there are endless possibilities to consume music. In fact, it's musical overkill. But since each day only has 24 hours, you can't listen to the entire internet or visit all the YouTube channels.

    You don't have to fear the future, if you can do something, what you do will get out into the world to the people. Later you can also apply to labels or make contact with other musicians / DJs. Music is a never ending path, but you shouldn't run after money.

    Upload a few tracks to the free Soundcloud, make a YouTube channel and post it here. Create a free website: https://www.wix.com . Make a meaningful logo and create a booklet for the CDs. If I like your music I will buy a CD from you. Create a PayPal Donation Button.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2022
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  9. clone

    clone Audiosexual

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    along those lines, I will add this anecdote. Many years ago I read an interview with one of these big-wig record producers (Hollywood s. He said about demos and so on, that someone has 30 seconds of his time to listen to their song. But not at all for the egotistical reasons you would guess, "piles of work"s etc. It is because he said "they" had studied it, and a listener will decide within 30 seconds wether or not they like any song by a new artist. (and then will either continue listening to it, or change it).

    As someone who used to dj with actual vinyl records I can tell you 100% that this is true. You would wait your turn to listen to tracks, and flip through them. This one guy I used to have to call to get all the test presses for the week, and he would play songs for you like this exactly, over the phone!lol. 30 secs a clip. There were well known House Music dj's who worked in record stores so they could flip through tracks 30 secs at a time, all day long. So they could then go make their real money playing records.

    This is what your average club music buyer/listener has the attention span for. Probably much less now. Do those people who finally click on your YT/spotify or whatever do anything different? I doubt it. If nothing goes on in 30 seconds, it's gone. Resist the temptation to paste a bunch of stuff and call it "done". That's barely when you start your mixdown stage. and more stuff to learn :)

    and those tracks that you make and don't end up using, those are your hidden goldmine when you are really working on something worth keeping. you already have bpm/key,etc. and can easily resample your prior work.add filtering/modulations/etc. whatever you want.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2022
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  10. BaSsDuDe

    BaSsDuDe Guest

    You forgot "Easy Listening Thrash Metal"
     
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  11. clone

    clone Audiosexual

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    someone who knows what they are doing can pound out content. that is file generation. People make honest livings doing exactly that.
    But my accountant, as brilliant as he may be in Excel; has never called himself an artist. Nor sent me videos of him taking his CPA exams hoping to make a million bucks at .10 cents a click.

    Art is for Art's sake. Real work is for money. the rest is a scam. :).
     
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  12. Crinklebumps

    Crinklebumps Audiosexual

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    I tend to only complete tracks that I'm enjoying working on. There are no considerations as to their value or the potential of somebody else liking them. The ones I don't complete I render as MP3s and add them to a Foobar playlist of other such snippets - I have a lot of these and I often find going through them either reignites my interest in the track or I realise I can use it within another track, often years later. My focus is on honing my craft. Doggie Genre (Bow Wow Wow).
     
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  13. barroco87

    barroco87 Newbie

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    My friend, You can sell your tracks, earn money and doing what you love. Its no hard nowadays. I know a lot of people who make music as ghost producer and get the revenue for the living.
    Maybe there are other new good methods but i dont know about it.
    On Trustpilot this website has a lot of good reviews.
    But need to search...
     
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  14. softice

    softice Producer

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    hugh
     
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2022
  15. BenniTheBlockbuster

    BenniTheBlockbuster Producer

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    [QUOTE="Lois Lane, post: 635247, member: 43412" Hardcore Ambient [/QUOTE]

    :rofl::rofl::rofl:
     
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  16. Trurl

    Trurl Audiosexual

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    Produce music you hate. That way when it sucks and you hate it you can tell yourself it's because you always knew you were going to hate it and you won't be sad because it actually does just suck because it's awful. Lowered expectations always pay off.
     
  17. 11Fletcher

    11Fletcher Platinum Record

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    Best Answer
    Don't try to put yourself in a genre, they come and go, and usually the one that are still relevent in a genre are the few first artist that help this genre to trend, and sometime even those artist are not in that genre anymore.
    For exemple, look who is still successful with big room now, the trend follower from that 2012-2014 era aren't there anymore or had to switch to other project.

    The best would be to focus on one alias first, but instead of doing one genre, try doing something in the same vibe, sound that aren't necessary in the same ballpark but gave the same feeling or could be together in the same album.
    Skrillex or Flume can be great exemple for that, even if you're not fan of their sound, but if you take Skrillex and is first EP, it wasn't just dubstep on all track, even if he was like the big dubstep guy at that time. His EP had some complextro stuff, some midtempo/moombahcore tracks, and after that he moved into more pop stuff, always keeping his style and sound.

    If you only have one project to focus on, you can be more effective with your marketing stuff, and if you're not focus on one genre you can reach more blog/website/playlist with different tracks and have your name more present in different places.

    People now and younger generation aren't listening exclusively to one genre anymore, so you don't have to be one kind of genre producer, it also help you to stay relevent without losing your audience.

    So don't change the way you produce if you're into multiple genre, be sure that there is other people out there that are into the same kind of spirit, if you like what you're doing, be sure that you're not the only one, you just need to find them, even if it's not in your city, internet is great for that.

    The harder part is you find your sound and a way to feel that all your track are connected in some way or another (could be by sound design, or even little personal FX and tag you put here and there, or by experimenting and creating a new genre, nothing is better than being the trend creator). It takes time, but if you believe in what you're doing, other will to.

    On the marketing side, don't wait for your audience to come by itself to you, thousands of tracks are uploaded every day on streaming service, so the "wait until they find me" strategy is like winning the lottery, we're not in the myspace era anymore. Send your stuff to blog, to youtube channel, to spotify playlist (reach for the smaller one first, but not the paying one), if it's dancefloor oriented music, reach for the DJs too, not the big one yet, but smaller one. It's easier to climb the step one by one than reaching to the all the step at once. Key is consistency, and patience, so that's why is better to focus on one alias if you can be productive.
     
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  18. Mynock

    Mynock Audiosexual

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    The idea of musical genre is lossy associated with how people categorize musical sound objects. Like any process of categorizing complex objects, it is not 100% homogeneous (categorizing a musical genre is not so easy like categorizing an object in the chair category). Although there are multiple variables (one of the main ones being the specific knowledge that the categorizer must have about the musical sound object and its constituents, otherwise we won't recognize that object as a member of a category, subcategories or will perform a lossy categorization) and the whole process is quite inaccurate (with musical genres grouped more in the center, in the middle or on the periphery of a category or subcategories — search about prototype model), the idea of categorizing in music is not totally null as some believe, as if something only serves record labels or distribution portals. Categorizing things is a basic need of any human being, to understand and be able to make use of what is categorized: Jacob and Shaw (1998) describe categorization as "a fundamental mechanism that simplifies individual interaction with the environment: not only facilitating the storage and retrieval of information, but also reducing the demand on human memory along with a better understanding of uses and functions on what is categorized". These words here demonstrate great wisdom to me... Satch a Wisdom boys (excerpt from Satriani's interview to Beato, about musical trends):
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2022

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  19. Direct drive

    Direct drive Producer

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    & hes just joined! & never come across Audiosex .lol:dunno::dunno: full of!
     
  20. clone

    clone Audiosexual

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    It looks rather vanilla on purpose. No? For many users it is like " What is this feed thing down here?"
     
  21. EEOC

    EEOC Ultrasonic

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    Every time I hear the word new generation, I feel stupid.

    The most attractive thing for the new generation is only sex. They have no worries other than sex and they put it in different ways in their music. If you feel that the young generation should be trusted and given the opportunity to express themselves, you are making a big mistake because the new generation has nothing great to say.

    Never take the nonsensical genres and styles they invent too seriously, because they are the result of their immature thoughts.
     
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