Musicians in Quarantine

We’re living in what seems to be the biggest global crisis of our lifetimes and everyone’s lives are affected by the Coronavirus. Many countries have announced a partial or complete ban of public gatherings and more and more people are self quarantining. As the numbers of infected continue to rise, the smartest thing anyone can do is to simply stay home. As annoying as it might be to spend spring break inside, public health has to come first so you need to prepare yourself for a prolonged stay at home. And that creates issues of its own.

As the public isolates itself, many businesses are shutting down or even worse, altogether failing. The world seems to be sliding towards another economic crisis and make no mistake, you will be affected one way or another, so you need to do as much as you can during this tough period. You will want to come out of quarantine a better musician, with a wider, more devoted audience and a recognizable brand.

The struggles have already begun for many musicians. Not only are all concerts, gigs, and public events canceled, bands can’t practice or meet, shoot music videos, or sell merchandise as effectively. Even weddings, normally considered recession-proof, are canceled while busking, usually, a stable source of income for many, is entirely out of question.

We associate the “music industry” with wealth, glamour, private airplanes, and yachts but the truth is, most musicians are average people, living day to day or gig to gig. This public shutdown directly affects each one of them more than it does many others as performers have to find new flows of income and find them quickly. As everyone is turning online, we talk about different ways of creating an active online audience, how to create daily content for social media, and what to do with your music, when you can’t showcase it in front of a live audience.

Those of you who are lucky enough not to be affected or are simply better prepared for the switch to online work, make sure you help your fellow musicians out. Find local groups organizing to help or donate directly to musicians’ Patreons. Some people are even setting up charities to help musicians in need. Buy music legally and if it’s still possible, buy that merch you were planning to, your favorite DJ, band or artist might need it more than you know.

The good side of being a musician though, is that you love your work and you can take it with yourself, for the most part at least. Whether you play an instrument or create and produce music from your DAW, you can continue to do that wherever you are (special shoutout to the neighbors of drummers). Here are a few helpful things you can organize your day around.

If not now, when? (He asks while delaying exercise by yet another day).

You have a perfect chance to work on everything you were delaying for whatever reason. There is enough time to waste on Netflix and scrolling social media, everyone who can be working from home, so are you. Devote enough time to perfecting your skill and come out of all of this as a better and well-rounded musician.

Demand for online content is higher than ever and that definitely includes music. Teenagers are on their phones all day (somehow more than usual) and people are working from home. Music is possibly being consumed at the highest rate in history.

If you had a new release planned for the spring o early summer, it’s still the perfect time to release it. You can add the perfect finishing touches in peace and make sure your song is every bit as good as you imagined it. Your audience is online and ready and you can easily create music videos for any new song and publish them on YouTube without leaving the comfort of your chair.

All those tunes you were working on but never seemed to finalize are gold right now. Roll back the years and see what you have been composing, you might find some gems, get inspired or maybe get a good laugh at your own expense. Social media users are being targeted by insane amounts of content, you will need to create quite a lot of it yourself, if you want to stand out.

One thing many independent and up-and-coming musicians willfully ignore is branding. Love of music and marketing don’t necessarily go together and authors tend to disregard the importance of creating a unique visual style and identity.

Quarantine could be a great time to work on your personal brand and establish a recognizable identity across your social media pages. All of your music videos should have a familiar tune, in a visual sense as well. You can’t go out and shoot videos obviously but you can create music visualizers online, and if you’ll be doing live streams, Q&A Instagram stories and online lessons (which you should, more on that later), a professionally designed intro with your logo can be very useful.

A recognisable visual identity helps your fans notice you easier as they scroll through the numerous social media feeds. You need to make sure they know it’s you in that important second of their attention, especially on mute.

Everybody’s turning to the internet right now. Whether it’s work from home, education, or entertainment, people are massively looking for content and you need to meet the demand. Being a professional entertainer helps massively when it comes to this.

You can’t do a standard live show but that’s not a reason not to make a show for a live audience. Facebook and Instagram live allow you to reach your fans directly and share some beautiful, relaxing moments, making everyone’s lonely day just a bit less lonely.

You can stream live gigs, DJ sets, covers, AMA’s, or anything else you like to do from home. Gamers are earning huge amounts of money streaming and to help musicians, SoundCloud has teamed up with Twitch, so all SoundCloud Pro, SoundCloud Premier and Repost by SoundCloud creators can claim Twitch affiliate status and start earning money by streaming their music, themselves playing and creating or anything else they think of. This is the perfect time to explore live streaming and see how your audience reacts. Even if it doesn’t go great, no problem as there will be millions of others trying it out themselves as well, and a lot of them won't be great.

While self isolating, many amateurs will be looking to their dusty guitars as a source of enjoyment. Many of them will look to the internet in search of lessons, covers and instructions.

Create a cover lesson on how to play your favorite song, how a well-known beat was created, or shoot beginner lessons for your instrument. These videos will be great content for social media, but more importantly, they will continue to bring new subscribers to your YouTube channel, even when the current Corona situation is long over.”

Instagram stories are on fire right now. Every artist, YouTuber, influencer, or just about any public figure is using them to communicate to fans directly, share their emotions, thoughts, wishes, and fears.

The 24-hour format allows your followers to ask questions all day so you don’t have to think about the best time for this and if you need help with promoting your Instagram stories and communicating effectively via Instagram, check out Videobolt’s vertical format templates specially designed for Instagram story promotion.

It feels weird talking about music production and social media promotion while the world is panicking. When you watch people struggling and heroes in white coats making an unreal effort, it really puts things into perspective.

But we all need our own little world where things are still normal and music will be that for many. Music makes life better and we all have an obligation to help in the best way we can so stay safe, but also get to work and do your part.