TL;DR
- Spend more time posting than consuming posts from others and you’ll already be ahead.
- Find your voice with how you showcase your beats, edit quality videos and images that you like ad match the vibe, the effort will pay back. Standing out is key so you can get people interested in buying your beats.
- There are free tools you can use to make your content pop.
- Use Canva to edit images and simple videos, CapCut to edit videos on your phone and Kapwing to add cool soundwave effects.
- POST, GET NOTICED ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND MAKE $$$$$
Okay. You’ve gained an interest in music, worked your way around the DAW, and you’re finally confident to share your talent with the world.
THAT’S GREAT!
But now what? You have a gold mine sitting in your laptop.
If you are reading this, that means you have the possibility to make so much money with just your laptop and the internet. There are only two key aspects to this: getting to the right people and standing out to them. Thankfully, with some tweaking the algorithms usually take care of the first part, but the hard part is finding a way to get people to stop scrolling and listen to your stuff for a moment in their busy lives.
In an endless sea of content (right now it would take 70,000 years to watch all the videos on youtube) and even more being uploaded every second, this can certainly be challenging.
This is why I wanted to share how we work here at mostro to make the best of social media and never run out of ideas of what or how to post - even if you don’t feel like being on camera everyday.
Why you need to make good content
Social media is a huge part of our lives now, there’s no escaping it. Luckily, since there are so many people spending so many hours on platforms like youtube, instagram and tiktok; it is also the best place to show your work and get people to listen to your beats and potentially get them interested in buying them. It will be worth the effort to put in the extra time and make nice content.
Here I’ll show you what tools I use and recommend to show your beats on social media so that they get the attention of your audience as a music producer. These are completely free, and fairly simple to use, so everyone, anywhere can use them. Now I don’t want you to open these apps with false expectations, video and image are a complex artform in themselves.
Focus on finding both images/video that resonate with you, that match the vibe of your beat and slowly you’ll find how to express your own voice.
Images
Static images are a dying artform, but you still need to master them whether to post them as your artwork or to turn them into a video later.
By far the best tool to edit images is Canva. There is a premium version, but the free version is great and has everything you need, so don’t worry. There is also an app but personally I prefer the web version; it is a very powerful tool with a lot of options, and on mobile it gets a little bit crammed up.
You’ll have to create an account to use this tool. After you’ve logged in, you’ll see this home page. Let’s make a simple video as an example.
You can set up any image size you like, but first you need to think about where, what platform are you going to post your beat. If you’re making a static image or a video that’s longer than one minute for instagram, just remember to keep the ratio at 4:3 or 1080px by 1350px or 1:1 or 1080px by 1080px. If you’re making an image or a simple video to post on reels or tiktok, remember the format is 9:16 or 1080px by 1920px. For YouTube, it’s the same ratio just horizontally: 1920px by 1080 px.
If you’re unsure of what to use Canva has templates for all formats and social platforms, just go to Templates at the top-left of the screen and select the right option. Canva is killing it with it’s templates so definetly check out all the categories they have.
For this example i’ll be creating an image from scratch so you just go to templates- instagram post - create blank post. From here you can give your design a title, whatever you make will be saved so you can reedit and reuse later so be sure to have titles to keep everything organized.
At the left you’ll se a bar, with all the options and elements for this image. Canva has a database of images that you can use but let’s say you want to upload your own, simply click uploads and drag or find the files you’ll want to use that best matches the beat you’ll be posting on social media.
Then you can adjust the size of the image and also add a few more like a collage. You can also fit images or videos in the frames elements so that your image is contained in a shape. Simply place the frame and drag your image or video on top.
You can edit your images and add filters to give it a special look or feel.
And of course you can add your text, and even animate it so that now this static image is a video. Adjust the duration and you’re done!
Canva, however powerfull and full of things to try, is super intuitive so I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it in no time.
I definetly recommend turning your images into simple videos like this, even if it’s simply by adding a text that appears or a simple animation because let’s face it: video is the new king of social media.
Video
With tiktok taking our screens by storm in 2020 the way we consume content has changed, and we must all adapt if we want to get an audience. Both the platform’s algorithms and the people’s attention have turned to video, so focus all your efforts here.
This is why the next tool you need to learn is CapCut, a video editing app.
CapCut is actually owned by the company that made TikTok, so this app is perfectly compatible for tiktok, reels and youtube shorts (all of those share the same 1080px by 1920 px format). But that’s not all, it is also possible to edit youtube videos in CapCut and export them in 1080px.
CapCut doesn’t have a desktop version, so before you edit anything make sure that you can access all your files from your phone or tablet.
Once you’ve downloaded the app you’ll see this screen.
The shortcut button on the right has premade templates with all the text and transitions. I personally never liked the app’s suggestions but by all means, give them a try. I prefer to have more control and not add many effects or whatever but that’s just my style. You’ll need to experiment and find your own.
Click where it says new project, and add all the images or videos (or both!) that you want to use. Then select the correct format according to the platform you want to use, and zoom and adjust all your clips to fit.
You can always add more files with that little plus sign next to your clips. To edit a clip, click on it on the editing bar. Here you can chop it, accelerate or slow it down, reverse it or add a filter. Have fun!
Once that is done, now you can add your beat. Simply click the “+Add audio” below the video edition bar and then click on Sounds. To browse your own sounds go the “from device” tab.
Once that is added to your track, click on it, and you’ll see the audio editing options.
You can also add and animate text, and set for how long it will show up. You can add and style your text from scratch or use one of CapCut’s templates.
At the top right, you’ll see a little book icon that is a more in-depth tutorial of all the tools the app has, definetly check it out so you can have more freedom when using this tool.
Now I want to show you a cool add on, that might need some more work but I promise it will be worth it to make your videos pop. CapCut has some cool stickers, but none that works as a waveform that matches your beat sound. To add this, you’ll have to take an extra step and use Kapwing.
Kapwing has a similar interface to canva, simply drag and drop. You can also use Kapwing to edit your whole video right there, but you only get 3 video exports per month without the watermark on their free plan. If you prefer editing on your computer, you can also use this tool to edit your whole video and then use canva to resize and get rid of the watermark too, but don’t tell anyone I told you this secret.
To add the soundwave simply add your beat and click add soundwave. Then export this simple video with a black background, download it and put it in your phone, add it as an overlay on canva and click splice and then click the filter that looks best for the effect you want. If you add this, the audio will come from the Kapwing video so remember to remove the track on CapCut.
I promise you taking these extra steps will make your videos look more professional and the effort will pay in the future.
Find the right images and video
Ok. Now you know how to edit images and videos to promote your beats and build your brand as a music producer. But maybe someday you won’t feel like being on camera, or not be feeling particularly creative to make a video, right? I know it happens to me so I’ll let you in on a few websites that can help you out.
The first one is Unsplash. Unsplash has has a lot of free high quality images that you can download, simply search for whatever vibe you want and that’s it.
Pexels has some great videos.
Pixabay is another royalty-free resources website. This one has images, videos, illustrations, vectors if you’re in a more artsy vibe, and even has some sound effects to add to your videos.
It is absolutely ok to not want to be in front all the camera all the time. And also, playing around with formats, videos and effects will give you variety to show off your beats and never get bored.
That’s it! Now go get noticed!