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Your communication plan should be part of your general plan
(the vision, goals and targets you’ve defined)
to become a successful artist.

In other words, all your artist related communications need to
respond to how they help you
reach your goals and targets.

Therefore, defining your vision, goals and targets is a necessary preliminary process
you need to have done before working on your communication plan.
so if you haven’t done it yet, define your vision, goals and targets.
Otherwise you will most likely be setting up all kinds of
ineffective and untargeted actions as part of your communication plan.

So what is your communication plan?
Also, how does your communication plan differ to your vision, goals and targets?

Your communication plan defines how you plan to interact
with various people, communities and audiences to:
Help you realize your vision, goals and targets.
Open you up to new opportunities that emerge from networking with others.

Some possible segments you could prepare your communication plan for:
Labels you are interested in
Owners and editors of blogs you want to be published on
Artists you can learn from
Artists on your level
Artists you can teach
Music industry contacts to take notice of you
Music industry contacts to learn from
Your social media friend base
Your YouTube subscribers
Your Soundcloud followers
Your Twitter followers
Your Facebook followers
Your Instagram followers
Your mailing list

Equally important, list websites, forums and any other places
where a potential fan base for the kind of artist you are lurks.
Add those places as targets to hit in your communication plan.

to write your communication plan, you need
a good understanding of the kinds of people you aim to communicate with:
What do they want?
What do you want from them?
What can you contribute to them?
How can you arrange your communication with them so that they benefit from you?
How can you arrange your communication with them so that
you can both maintain a valuable, mutually beneficial relationship?

Also, you need to know all kinds of communication formats and lingo
that these people use so that you can
prepare for how to best approach them.
There is more on that in “Step 9. Implement Your Communication Plan.”

Check out the Communication Plan Example.

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In this chapter, you will gain success mindset tools to:
Take charge of developing your artist’s online presence.
Create a plan that illustrates your vision, and
Set goals and targets to realize that vision.

The main areas of your plan are:

Vision

Your vision is how you see your optimal situation
in the next 3 to 5 years.

For example, your vision could be stated simply like this:

I want to be a happy and successful person,
making a living from music,
in the next 3 to 5 years.

It is worthwhile expanding on your vision.

write a short story:
how would you optimally see your life
in the next 3 to 5 years?

One approach is to think of yourself being interviewed in 3 to 5 years.
write your interview answers:
What have you reached?
Where did you start?
What moves did you make to get to where you are now?

Goals

What do you need to achieve
in the next 12 months
to realize your vision?

For example:
1. XXXXXXXXX amount of album sales
2. $XXXXXXXXX amount of quarterly earnings

Write no more than 1 or 2 goals.
Also, the goals should be quantitatively measurable.

Targets

What do you need to achieve
in the next 9, 6, 5, 4 and 3 months
to realize your goals?

These goals will vary according to the kind of artist you are,
and the kind of situation you are in.
For example,
you might be a solo artist, or
you might be part of a band or crew.
Maybe you don’t even have the equipment you need to work properly yet,
maybe you’re in a good state right now, or maybe you’re struggling, etc.

Here’s an example of how targets can be laid down:

In 9 months:
XXXXX amount of album sales

In 6 months:
Album release
xx amount of contests attended

Online presence:

SoundCloud
Subscribers = 500+
Listens = 10 tracks, 10,000+ listens per track. Single, 100,000+ listens

YouTube
Subscribers = 500+
Views = 10 videos, 1,000+ views per video. Single, 50,000+ views.

Facebook
Page Likes = 1,000+
Average Engagement per Post = 100 (80+ likes, 15+ shares, 5+ comments)
3 posts per week

Twitter
Followers = 1,000+
1-3 tweets per day

Instagram
Followers = 1,000+
1 photo per day

Website
Email subscribers = 500+
Users per week = 500+

In 3 months:
Research and decision on contests that you want to compete in the next 12 months
Research and decision on potential labels, investors and key music industry contacts.
to have an Online presence setup with regular working process
and a team to publish and promote quality content
in order to progress toward your 6 month targets.

Your targets are periodic short term goals that you can plot out
in intervals of 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, etc.
up to 12 months.
Once you have your periodic targets written out,
your goals and your vision,
then you should have a clearer path laid out
to make your vision a reality.
After doing so, you can bring that goal-oriented layout down
to your daily scheduling, and
look at what you need to accomplish
even on a day-by-day basis
in order to live
on a progressive path
toward your vision.

This “vision, goals, targets” layout is a goal-oriented method of reaching success
that you can apply to any field.
The fact that you can now apply it to realize your artist vision
will give you experience with implementing a success mindset and approach
that you can also apply to literally anything you want to be good at in your life.

In terms of developing your online presence,
notice how making purposeful use of each platform to continually strengthen your presence:
Is not a goal in and of itself.
Instead, it is a means toward reaching your goals.

You don’t need to be on every single platform.
The noteworthy term here is “goal-oriented.”
That is, you should be able to justify the use of each platform
in terms of how it helps you reach your goals.
For example, you might even narrow down your online presence
to only using SoundCloud, YouTube and a static presence on your own website,
because you might find that, at this stage, you do not have enough resources
(i.e. your own time, money and/or other people helping you)
to update Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Google+
in any kind of qualitative way.
Having these networks empty or charged with just a few posts
in the last 12 months, is more detrimental than beneficial to your goals.

Here are some questions to help you determine what and how much to invest into your online presence:
How much will a certain platform help you reach your goals?
What needs to be done on that platform to help you reach your goals?
what content?
How often would new content need to be added?
How much promotion would be needed per content item?
How much time can you dedicate to this?
Who else could help you (i.e. think in terms of developing your team)?
Could you even hire someone to help you with this, or offer them something of value in exchange?

Summary – Vision, Goals, Targets

Vision – Think about your vision,
then write it down.
Write it as a short story of how you optimally see your life as an artist
in the next 3 to 5 years

Goal/s – Write one or two things you need to
accomplish in the next 12 months to realize your vision

Targets – Write short term goals over the
next 12 months to realize your goal/s.

These Vision, Goals, Targets Templates are here to help you
spend time thinking about what moves you make next.

Print out these templates.
take the time to think through your answers to the questions.

My Vision

How do I see my life in the next 3 to 5 years?

What have I accomplished?

Where did I start?

What moves did I make?

What was the transition point?

What was my biggest struggle? How did I get through it?

My Goals

What are one or two things I absolutely must
achieve in the next 12 months
to make my vision a reality?

My Targets

In 6 months, I need to have ________________________

In 3 months, I need to have ________________________

In 2 months, I need to have ________________________

In 1 month, I need to have _________________________

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To get started making your artist photos,
you need at least two kinds of high resolution photos of yourself.

1. Live and Recording Studio Photos

Live and recording studio photos are photos of yourself
playing in concerts and recording in the studio.
In these photos, you are in action, completely immersed in your music.

One of these photos should be able to be used as a headshot.
Take what you wrote in your characterization,
and aim to get a shot that expresses your biggest strength, your motivation and your uniqueness.
For instance, if your strength is charismatic leadership,
then a shot that communicates charismatic leadership could show you playing
in a concert where you’re guiding the movements of the audience,
where they are following what you are doing.
Likewise, if your uniqueness is your depth in depicting life’s struggles,
then a studio shot of you, after a long session, tired, sweaty,
with your eyes closed, listening to a beat intently, would be a good choice.
However, you need to think it through according to what you want to portray.

2. Studio Photos

Studio photos don’t necessarily need to be taken in a photography studio.
Rather, the term stands for photos that have you looking your best
outside any performance setting (live or recording studio).

You should be in clothes that capture the life you want to depict.
Think in terms of people looking at these photos to get a feel for who you are
and what perceptions you communicate.

That same strength, motivation and uniqueness that
you characterized needs to be communicated in these photos.
It needs to come through everything from
how you dress, to the camera angle, to your facial expression and body language.

If you hire a professional photographer who has experience
taking studio photos of public personalities, then
you should be able to discuss your characterization with them.
They should be able to help you present yourself the way you define.

If you don’t have the funds to hire a professional photographer, then
find a few friends and/or family who have an interest in seeing you reach your goals.

Discuss your characterization with them.
Review how your inspiration/competition presents themselves visually online.
work out the details of:
Clothes – What clothes best communicate your strengths, motivations and uniqueness?
Colors – What colors best communicate your strengths, motivations and uniqueness?
Background/Setting – What background and setting best communicate your strengths, motivations and uniqueness?
Body Language – What body language best communicates your strengths, motivations and uniqueness?
Facial Expression – What facial expressions best communicate your strengths, motivations and uniqueness?

Whether or not you can hold that kind of a meeting,
you can also scan through photos of yourself, picking out things you like and dislike.

Do you like/dislike the way you look from certain angles?
Do you like/dislike certain ways you pose?
Do you like/dislike certain ways you smile?
What clothes, colors, backgrounds/settings, body language and facial expressions do you like most?

Aim to replicate the best in all of the just-mentioned during your photo shoot.

As well as these elements, follow a few photography tips on
how to make yourself look better according to your body type:

If you blink during photos, then close your eyes before the shot, and gradually
open them toward the shot. This also helps to make you more relaxed in your shot

Avoid goofy smiles by putting your tongue
behind your teeth when you smile

To avoid red eye, look at a light
before the photo. This will shrink your pupils during the shot

Turning your head to a three-quarter angle gives more depth
than when you face the camera directly, which can make your face look flat

Standing in front of a white background brightens your facial and skin features. It
also makes it “easier” for the camera to find the right balance settings,
thus avoiding adding too much hue to your skin

Take a lot of photos in your shoot. The more photos you take,
the more photos you have to choose from.
Rarely would you look the way you want in every photo,
so the more to choose from, the better

Make sure the room’s light is in front of you, not above or behind you,
otherwise all sorts of shadows will cover you. Look toward the light source to add sparkle in your eyes.
If you’re taking photos outdoors, then taking them at dawn or dusk,
when the sun is low, is best for avoiding unnecessary shadows. Likewise,
face toward the direction of the sun when taking the photo

Hold an object. An object both relaxes your posture,
and it also adds to your personality.
Choose an object that best accentuates your biggest strength, motivation and uniqueness.
For example, think of the Eminem chainsaw photo that accentuates the Slim Shady crazy image.
Common ones among many rappers: a mic, the white cup, lots of 100 dollar bills, or
showing off jewelry (chains, rings, watches), and hand signs

Get into a conversation with your photographer during the shoot, and joke around.
A natural smile or any natural emotions you can awaken through a conversation in a
relaxed atmosphere will always look better than fake smiles that are forced

Feel good.
Being in a good mood adds confidence and
projects positively through your photo.
Prepare yourself toward your photo shoot by being around certain friends that you
always feel good around,
have your favorite meal or drink coming up to the shoot (just don’t stuff yourself too much),
have a good night’s sleep the night before,
and do a bit of exercise in the morning of your shoot,
all with the aim of feeling good and confident when going for the shoot.
Arrange your day where your photo shoot is the central item for that day,
and everything else is there to support it.
You don’t want to do it on a tight schedule among the stress
of needing to complete all kinds of other things that same day

To make your face look thinner and eliminate a double-chin, push your face forward a little bit

Practice in front of a mirror. During that time, work out what positions you look best in,
and take mental notes of what you are doing mechanically to be
able to replicate that on your photo shoot day

3. Cartoons, Caricatures, Portraits, Sketches and Drawings

After you’ve taken your photos, it is worthwhile to turn your
favorite photos into various other graphic formats,
like cartoons, caricatures, portraits, sketches and drawings.
There are a lot of services online to do this without spending too much.
Run searches on Fiverr for the following words:

“draw you”
“cartoon”
“caricature”
“sketch”
“portrait“

The same principle of looking for what kinds of images communicate
your biggest strength, your motivation and your uniqueness
applies to the kind of drawing you choose.
For example,
someone who makes funny, goofy caricatures wouldn’t be suitable if
you’re trying to portray your strong leadership qualities,
but might be suitable if you’re trying to express your bizarreness.

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Your artist bio is a snapshot
summarizing your strengths, motivations and uniqueness.
Also, your artist bio uses your achievements, current activities and upcoming projects
in order to communicate that artist profile you characterized.

Like your profile statement, you will need your bio for different reasons
according to different requests. Each time it should be
adjusted according to the purpose you’re trying to achieve with it.

The following is a list of
core artist bio elements
to include in your artist bio:

Your artist name
What kind of artist are you
Your genre of music
Where you’re from
(Optional) Positive quote about your music from a music industry contact
Past experience
Achievements
Current Activities
Near-Future Plans
Next Project
Remind about one thing you want people to remember about you

Make sure your bio communicates what you earlier defined
as your strengths, motivation and uniqueness throughout those points.

Take a look at some example artist bios.
Simply take about 5 of your most influential artists,
Google their names together with the word “bio.”
For example,

future bio
young thug bio
kendrick lamar bio
eminem bio
drake bio

What elements from the above list do they use in their bios?
What don’t they use?
Do you think by adding any elements they missed they would make more impressive bios?
How?

One common mistake artists make in their bios is
writing their life story: their childhood, experiences and hardships.
You can do this with your fans, but
your artist bio needs to integrate you into the music industry.

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Based on your artist characterization,
create a profile statement that takes
everything you wrote, and summarizes it
in a short 1-2 sentence package.

Your artist profile statement should cover:

Who are you?
What do you do?
How are you unique?

Think of this as an elevator pitch.
If someone who doesn’t know you stands next to you
in an elevator, and asks you,
“What do you do?”
You need to explain that to him or her in up to 6 seconds.

Why do you need this statement?
You need it to help you in communication and networking.
When you speak with other people, it will
show confidence when you can sharply and confidently relay this statement.
This is useful in any life situation. Even outside of your artist-related scene.
people you come into contact with will always be asking you what you do,
and you’ll need to respond.
If you’ll be trying to get labels, investors, or other business possibilities in
developing your career as an artist,
this will be useful.

Moreover, be prepared to adjust this statement according
to the person or audience you’re speaking to.
For instance, how you speak to a fellow artist
is different to how you speak to a potential label
you’re interested in getting signed to.

These scenarios might appear to be natural.
That is, naturally you would speak one way or another
to different kinds of people.
But by taking the time to define how
each one of these audiences should optimally perceive you,
you can work to frame that perception in how you appear to them.

Your statement is an important first appearance in doing so.
It means that when you’re at a certain event, like a concert,
you can envision who you might meet,
and how you want to present yourself to them in advance,
and be better prepared for all kinds of encounters you can have.

It translates also into the virtual space.
If you simply copy/paste the same statement across all platforms you’re on,
then you’re missing the point.
Each one of those networks has
different audiences and expectations from the people who use them,
and you should speak according to the different atmosphere on each network.

Your profile statement is also the core unit of your bio,
which we will learn more about in Step 5.
You can also think of it as the first statement
at the top of your artist CV that you would
send to labels and investors.

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Characterizing your artist profile is essential to your online presence.

The goals of your artist profile can be defined as:

Differentiation – Find what sets you apart as an artist. Emphasize it.
Loyalty – By standing for what matters to people, you gain their loyalty.
Advocacy – People you touch will want to tell their friends about you.

In this step, you will work out:

How do you want others to perceive you and know you?
How do you want them to speak about you?
What do you want them to see when they look you up?
What specific thing would people come to you for, which only you could provide?
What matters to them?
How will you fulfill what matters to them?

Before setting off to answer those questions, there are some more
fundamental questions to characterizing your artist profile:

What Are Your Biggest Strengths?

What are your biggest strengths as an artist?

Maybe your biggest strength is in having mastered a certain technique?
For example,
Tech N9Ne = Speed Rapping
Slick Rick = Storytelling

Or maybe your biggest strength is in making people laugh?
For example,
Big L = Punchlines 🙂
Lil Wayne = Wordplay 🙂

Or maybe it’s is in the way you talk about political/social issues?
For example,
Immortal Technique/Public Enemy = Conscious/Political Hip Hop

Or maybe it’s in the way you can paint a vivid verbal picture
of your life’s highs and struggles?
For example,
2pac, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar

Or maybe it’s in a common theme across your lyrics?
For example,
Future = Drugs

Whatever it is,
try to define it as precisely as possible.
Here are some questions to help you define your biggest strengths:

What do others say about your work?

Think of what you’ve heard others
say about your work
and the common compliments you’ve received.
If you’ve never heard any or can’t remember,
then ask people who have heard you play
what they think are your biggest strengths
as an artist.
People usually say
what they like and are most impressed with
about your work.

Is there anything written about you in chats, forums, or other social media?

Review what people say about you
and find those one or two words
that keep repeating themselves.
Also, reference these tools
regularly to stay updated on
what people are saying about you.

Google Alerts
google.com/alerts
Setup a Google Alert to get notified whenever Google
indexes stuff about you and your artist name.

Social Mention
socialmention.com
Run a Social Mention search of your artist name
to see what’s being said on social media about you.

Boardreader
boardreader.com
Run a Boardreader search of your artist name
to see what’s being said on discussion boards about you.

What Motivates You?

Why do you ultimately put so much time and effort into music?

Dig into the story of your life.

Find that emotion that makes you
strive to put in the hard work
to improve yourself as an artist.

How does that emotion feel?

What does it want?

Behind all the surface achievements,
experiences,
clothing and lingo
there is an innate
“Why?”
dwelling deeper within you,
the reason why you want to develop your artist presence.

What do you want to achieve out of all the hours you spend on your music?

Dig deep into yourself and pull out that answer.

Write the story that led you to this motivation.

This specific motivation you have now hasn’t always been there.

When did you start feeling it?

What happened to you?

How did your location,
family,
race,
culture,
class,
upbringing,
friends,
enemies,
experiences
all influence this motivation?

By finding that reason
why you want to develop your artist presence,
and extracting this story out of yourself,
you can strike a common chord
with that same place
in other people.

By sharing your story and your motivation with others,
you allow that motivation you feel to be shared with others.
When others can relate to your story and get inspired by you,
they will want to keep coming back to you.
Your story and your motivation
is a fundamental unit that enroots all 3 goals of your artist profile.

differentiation – Your story is unique to you.
No one else has been through what you’ve been through
to be where you are today,
and where you want to be.

Loyalty – Inspiration is one of the greatest gifts you can give.
If someone gets inspired by your story,
by what motivates you,
then they will likely want to come back to you.
Moreover, they are more likely to want to see you succeed,
because by identifying with your motivation,
your success becomes their success.

Advocacy – If a person who shares the same motivation as you
feels like s/he knows others who would also feel it,
s/he would want to tell them about it.

What Makes You Unique?

What marks your uniqueness as an artist?

Maybe you work out impressive wordplay,
funny punchlines or other techniques
that makes people laugh or
go “Oooh!” whenever
you pull them off (i.e. your uniqueness = creativity)?

Or maybe you’re known to spitfire
what you’re saying faster than
every other artist (i.e. your uniqueness = speed)?

Or maybe you do erratic things that most
other artists don’t do, and select words that most
other artists don’t say, and somehow end up
making it all work (i.e. your uniqueness = bizarreness)?

Or maybe when you step into a room, without any effort,
people just start taking notice of you (i.e. your uniqueness = charisma)?

Your biggest strengths could be the same as what makes you unique.
However, it’s important to think in terms of
how that strength communicates through your uniqueness.
For example, if you’re an excellent battle rapper,
then battle rapping is your strength,
but there are a lot excellent battle rappers around,
so it’s not necessarily a uniqueness.
Uniqueness is what is unique to you,
and only to you.

What makes you unique as a battle rapper then?
It might be that as a battle rapper,
you use unorthodox techniques of wordplay.
For instance,
you’re the only battle rapper who doesn’t even rhyme,
but you put your words together in a way that somehow works,
if you have a lot of battle wins under your ranks,
then other aspiring battle rappers would want to learn from you
what are those unique unorthodox techniques you use.

Therefore, think hard about what you,
and only you,
can do.
What would people come to you specifically for to get advice on?
If you really can’t find anything, then think in terms of
where would you like to be?
and what would you like to do that no one else can do?
how could you reach that?

4. Who Is Your Inspiration/Competition?

What artists have the kind of reputation you want?
By answering this question,
you not only define the artists that you aspire to and
who you can learn from…

you also define your competition.

What are these artists’ biggest strengths?

What gives them a strategic advantage over other artists…
and over you?

What motivates them more than anything else?

What makes them unique?

To answer these questions, divide the artists into
those who you see as competition you can overcome in the short term,
and competition you aim to be as good as, if not better than, in the long term.

Study them.

Study not only their music, but also their communication:
how they speak in interviews,
in videos,
how they look, clothe and present themselves,
their body language.
These artists are there for you to seek examples from and
use to improve yourself,
to aspire to their level and beyond.

Moreover, by studying your inspiration and competition,
you need to review your own answer to what makes you unique.

Are you still unique in relation to your inspiration/competition?
Are you doing something they are not doing?
If not, what do you need to do to really mark your uniqueness
and differentiate your artist presence?

The answers to all of these questions
form your artist profile characterization.

Print out the Artist Characterization Template
as a guide to help you answer
these questions in a pinpointed manner…

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Get all the web channels you can with your artist name …
“own” them.

For instance:
Your Soundcloud page – soundcloud.com/yourartistname
Your Bandcamp page – yourartistname.bandcamp.com
Your YouTube channel – youtube.com/yourartistname
Your Facebook page – facebook.com/yourartistname
Your Twitter page – twitter.com/yourartistname
Your Instagram page – instagram.com/yourartistname
Your Tumblr page – yourartistname.tumblr.com
Your Google+ page – plus.google.com/+yourartistname
Your LinkedIn page – as your real name, not your artist name
Your Pinterest page – pinterest.com/yourartistname
Your Flickr page – flickr.com/photos/yourartistname
Your Website – yourartistname.com

In addition to these social media pages and your domain,
there are a lot of musician social networks,
including ones more relevant to your style.
Current popular social networks for hip hop/rap/RnB artists
include DatPiff, LiveMixtapes and SpinRilla.
There are lots of other music social networks worth being on,
so that you know that you own your own
name on that network from the beginning.

It’s not the purpose of this guide to list all the music social networks.
Review Google’s search results for
“music social networks”
to find some that suit you.
It’d be worth finding a few that you think would benefit you
(your networking, communications) and sign up to them.

As well as all the above sites,
register your artist name on
any relevant discussion forums
you could potentially participate in.

This action needs to happen
even before working out
which pages you plan to actively communicate on.
That is, get all the possibilities you can with your artist name,
and afterwards work out what to do with the possibilities you have.
This is a one-time task that will take you 2 to 6 hours to complete.

Note also that this is a research stage that can serve your communication plan
(described in “Step 7. Create a Communication Plan“).
During this stage, keep your eye out for opportunities:
Do these sites have active communities of people who might like your music?
If they do, note them for later reference.

Also, at this stage, don’t waste your time filling in profile info.
Most of these sites try to make you add your profile photo,
write about yourself, invite your friends, and fill in other info
about yourself right after you sign up.
Don’t do all that yet.

All you need to do at this stage is just sign up
to the sites and own your artist name as their URL.
Period.

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Do you have an artist name?

Is your artist name established?

If it is, is it consistent across the platforms you’re on?

Your artist name is the basis of your online presence.

It’s a major element in how people identify the “artist you.”

To the people who hear about you,
look you up in Google,
check you out in YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook …
your artist name is the entry point into getting to know the “artist you”:
your story
your values
your styles
your achievements
your experience
what you stand for.

It’s your artist ID.

It’s the place where, if handled well, can help hook people to you,
become loyal to you, and make them want to support
and promote you and everything you’re about.

Since your artist name is an essential aspect of your online presence,
then you should do the following actions to make sure
that it’s in a good position to develop upon:

1.1. Run a Google Search for Your Artist Name

What you want to see in the search results
is that there is
no or little competition on your artist name.

What you want to find
is that there are
no search results for your name,
except for pages you already setup and agree with.

The meaning = you have no competition

…when you set out to develop your online presence based on your artist name.

If this is what you found with your search,
then you can already move to
“Step 1.2.: Search for Your ID in the Trademark Search Engines.”

Other possible scenarios:

The Good Scenario

There are some other pages in the results
with your artist name, but they are insignificant.
That is, the name appears only somewhere
in the text of the page.
It doesn’t appear in any headlines.
Also, there are no results where
the name is used in the domain name
or in any of the social media IDs.

If this is the situation with your search,
then you can move onto
“Step 1.2.: Search for Your Artist Name in the Trademark Search Engines.”

The Okay Scenario

There are other pages with your artist name
in the page’s headline, but they’re old.
Also, there are not too many of them.
You can see that if you owned a lot of
social media and a domain with that ID, and updated actively,
then you would soon push the other results lower down the ranks.

If this is the situation with your search,
then you can move onto
“Step 1.2.: Search for Your ID in the Trademark Search Engines.”

The Not So Okay Scenario

There are other people using your artist name on social networks.
The .com domain of your ID is taken.
However, it’s a website that hasn’t been updated in a long time.
There are also a lot of search results that came up for your search.

If this is the situation with your search,
then you should contact the owners of those pages and domains.
Try finding their email or phone number,
and if not, then try
contacting them through private messaging.
If you can’t find it on the sites themselves,
then try Google searches with the following search strings:

your artist name + email
your artist name + contact

Likewise, if there is a domain taken,
search on www.whois.com to find the domain owner.
Ask the owner to transfer the domain at a reasonable cost.
You can run a value check on www.siteprice.org to find out
how much the domain is worth, and accordingly
you can make them an offer.
If you don’t have much money, then see if you can get an alternative domain
like a .org or .net version of your artist name.

The following steps will illustrate the importance of owning a domain with your
artist name.

The Bad Scenario

Your artist name is in use.

The .com .org and .net domains of your artist name are all taken.
A person or business is using it to base their own online presence.

If this is your situation, then you really need to revise your artist name.

For example, let’s say for whatever reason you chose
“Virgin,” or “Coke,” or “Starbucks” as your artist name.
Then, you’ve not only gone into direct competition with
multi-million dollar companies from the get go.
Eventually, the more you develop, the more you
risk having your online properties removed
due to copyright infringements.

You would then need to check
what you can do about your artist name.
If you haven’t got much output in terms of
albums, mixtapes, songs, merchandise or contest wins
connected to your artist name,
then you should have no problem in creating a new one.

Then, you can either delete your current artist name or leave it dormant.
If you have any products connected to your artist name,
then contact the relevant people on the sites
you have items published on to see if you
could transfer your artist name’s value over to another artist name.

1.2. Search for Your Artist Name in the Trademark Search Engines

Run a trademark search to make sure your artist name
doesn’t infringe on any trademarks.

In a world of rapidly growing Internet population,
you might not be only one wanting to use your artist name.

Also, you might later want to own
your own business named after your artist name.
So don’t limit yourself from the beginning.
Make sure that there is a place for you to be able
to do that in the future without risking
trademark infringement or having to make any name changes.

Marcaria.com International Trademark Search Engine
lets you run searches in various countries.
At least in your own country of residence
and the country you will be owning online properties,
check that you are in good standing to use your artist name
without infringing on any trademarks.

Marcaria.com International Trademark Search Engine
trademark-search.marcaria.com

If you find a business operating under your artist name,
most chances are that
you can still use it.
It might only be a problem if it is a
business involved in music,
but if it is for different products and services,
then it is likely that you are still
good to go.
If you do find
that there is a similar business name
located where you are and
related to the music industry,
then you would need to take
that into consideration if you
make future steps to develop
your artist name into a business name.
If that is already a clear goal
to you, then it’s worthwhile
to review whether you can change
your artist name
(see the end part of “Bad Scenario” in Step 1.1.)

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