Greg Wilnau: I define selling out as doing anything that goes against your values. Once you have your values identified, you can be like, "No, I'm not doing that." That gives you a lot of freedom to make decisions without fear of selling out, because you have your values identified.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can really start in music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker: All right. I'm stoked to be here today with Greg Wilnau. He's a good friend of mine that lives in Orlando, pretty close by. We just realized that we lived pretty close to each other and now we've been hanging out. He is the founder of musician monster, and he's got a lot of background, a lot of experience, around website design. He actually has worked with some of the top business leaders in the world in terms of designing other websites. He's able to bring that expertise into another passion of his, which is music branding, and really good at figuring out how to hone in your visuals and your artistic identity as a musician. So I figured today that we could focus on how to really hone in your artistic identity and your music brands. Greg, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Greg Wilnau: Yeah. Michael, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. It's awesome to be able to come and talk to your people about this stuff. It's something super important. I think branding something that is easy to kick the can down the road with, and the impact of that affects everything. Definitely glad to be here to share whatever I can.

Michael Walker: That's a really good point. Yeah, dude, the branding, who you are as an artist, is really the roots of your entire music career. It is something that's foundational and it's really important to start with it. Interesting that that is something that sometimes people don't even take the time early on to figure out or clarify, and they don't really know where to start. What are some of the biggest challenges that you hear from just friends when they come to you and they're interested and starting to figure out their music brand?

Greg Wilnau: Yep. I think one of the reasons why it's so easy to kick the can down the road with or avoid, and this is directly answering your question, and this is one of the mistakes is that branding music is often perceived differently than what it actually is, or people assume it's something that it's not. They'll start with a logo and a cool name and graphics designs and t-shirts and merch, or they'll think that it's something that's shallow, and they associate it with selling out or being something that they're not, being disingenuous. Those are all false paradigms. When you look at branding through that lens, what it does is it creates resistance to get it done. What branding actually is is being intentional, deliberate and consistent. That starts with identifying who you are as an artist and how you want your music to impact the lives of other people, and then everything else is a result of that.

Michael Walker: Awesome. It sounds like what you're saying is that one of the biggest mistakes and really creates a lot of resistance the idea of branding is that as artists, we don't necessarily want to put on an image or put on a false sense of who we are. We just want to be who we are and we want to... Sometimes people can be a bit scattered in trying to figure out, "Well, what am I, and what am I trying to do here?" So it sounds like what you're saying is that branding, getting intentional about it, is really a way that you can hone in and focus. And it's not about not being who you are, but it's about creating something that's consistent, a consistent reflection of who you are that you feel proud of that puts your best foot forward.

Greg Wilnau: Yeah. It's about being intentional. There are four music brand archetypes. There's a personal brand, there's a fanatic brand, there's a persona and genre. Those are the four basic archetypes of branding music. A persona is when you create something that's separate from yourself as an individual and you become something or create an image that's intentional, so it's different. It's a way to separate yourself, like KISS, Cher, Taylor Swift on the Reputation album. Those were all personas. But those were done intentionally. So that's one way of branding.

Greg Wilnau: You don't have to do it if it doesn't sit right with you. It's all about identifying who you are first, how you want to impact people, and then those are your values. Once you have your values identified, you can make conscious decisions that don't detract from that because you've identified it. Once you identify it, you can never lose it. I think that's one of the biggest things that I've encountered is the misperception of what it is, thinking it's something that it's not, and then looking at that through that frame of reference and it affects the way that you perceive it.

Michael Walker: Yeah, dude, I love the way you just put it too. That actually gave me an aha in terms of a lot of times... A lot of the artists that I work with, their branding is they want it to be an expression of who they are and they want it to be a personal brand. But what you just brought up there was interesting in the sense that sometimes it's about creating a persona and it's not necessarily about your personal brand, but it can be about something entirely different. It's cool that that's an option for people. I didn't even think about that. Could you go into a little bit more detail?

Michael Walker: So there're four different archetypes. One of them is persona. That's like creating an entirely different image. That's cool. So that's one of the ways to brand yourself is a persona. Then another one's, you said, a personal brand, so that one's really about you as an original artist, maybe a singer-songwriter and it's about reflecting some of the things that you're going through in your own life. It definitely has a certain brand to it. Then you said there was two other ones. One was genre specific [crosstalk 00:06:18]

Greg Wilnau: Genre specific and a thematic brand. Yep. Genre specific is just where you brand based on other artists in your genre. It's the easiest to do, and you just model that. Typical way of doing this, there's a good contrast. Jared, in your program, Jared, he's hardcore death metal, and his branding is so atypical from what that genre would be. Typically, when you think of the hardcore death metal stuff, they all have this blood dripping logo that you can't read and it's all demonic and satanic and stuff like that.

Greg Wilnau: That's a typical genre specific branding, but that's not what he does. He follows a thematic brand, which is all about transformation and meditation. He follows storylines that take a character through a progression and tells us stories in those songs. He did that intentionally because he's like, "You know what? I don't want to follow a genre specific brand. I want to be different." And he follows that theme in that brand consistently. By the way, I have a cheat sheet that goes into all the different archetypes. If you want, you can download it at musicianmonster.com/swm. It's totally free. It just gives you a nice overview of the different archetypes and give you some examples beyond what we're talking about here.

Michael Walker: Yeah. It sounds like... One question I had a follow up about the four different types of brands is so thematic and genre... Genre specific is really about the genre as a whole, so pop punk, pop rock. Blink 182 was the theme that my band came from. There's also heavy metal, death metal or country. I guess my question is do sometimes these brands overlap a bit? Because it does seem like some-

Greg Wilnau: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. The cool thing about the archetypes is what it does is it simplifies all the options, because branding music... This is why I really like it. I think branding music is absolutely fascinating because it's unlike any other industry. With a corporation or a company, they rarely rebrand. They never do. It's one thing, it looks the same, it's consistent, but musicians brand every album differently, every release differently. I talk about this more in information on my site with main brands and sub-brands and release branding and campaign branding for music. The answer to your question is you can combine archetypes. You can mix things and match things if you want to. But the purpose of the archetypes isn't to make you feel like you need to fit into this box. What it does is it simplifies the amorphous, ambiguous topic of branding music and defines it into four simple architects. Knowing that out of all your options, there are really only four ways you can go about it. That's the purpose of them is to simplify and explain.

Michael Walker: One thing that I feel like I get a lot of questions when it comes to branding, and this is also something that I've thought a lot about, and I want to hear your take on it, is the balance between standing on the shoulders of giants and modeling other successful bands or maybe our influences versus being original and doing something completely new. How do you balance those kinds of things? Do you see is there a dilemma between referencing or modeling or finding other ideas for branding and then taking those? What's your thought when it comes to referencing things?

Greg Wilnau: Yep. The analogy that I use for this question, because it's a really good one, and it makes a lot of sense. Every artist has thought of this when we're thinking about branding. I would answer that question with this in the same way that you, as a musician, draw on the greats, stand on the shoulders of giants of the past when developing your talent, developing your technique, inspiring you is the same way that you could do that with your branding. It doesn't define you. You can reference it and look at it for inspiration and then make it your own. Did that answer the question?

Michael Walker: It definitely did. I like it. It was a very simple and direct answer, and I totally agree. I think that's one thing... I think there is a balance, because it's not like you want to go out and just rip off another band because if there's no originality, then everyone can just see there's nothing unique. There's nothing special about it to set you apart. But on the other side, sometimes people take it to an extreme and it's like, "Oh, I don't have a music genre because I'm just me." And people can't really understand where they fit, and the brand, it's inconsistent, it's all over the place. So it does seem like it's really, really valuable to be able to find out what...

Michael Walker: Here's another way to tie it into, I think. In the music industry, there's a big fear or resistance to the idea of selling out, of doing something, leaning into something in terms of your music brand that might make you more popular to the mainstream and then losing your integrity. And again, that's a perfect example of the balance where you don't want to not be yourself, but you also want to tap in and be valuable. Where do you draw the line when it comes to how do people stay current and be successful without selling their soul?

Greg Wilnau: Yep. That's a great question. The way that I like to explain it is... Remember earlier when we were talking about answering the question how do I want my music to impact the lives of other people? How do I want to be remembered as an artist? One of my products is the music branding accelerator. And if you sign up for the music branding cheat sheet, you'll get an offer for a big discount, and I'll actually take you through this exercise step by step, but it's called the coffin method. What it does is you identify your values as an artist and how you want to be remembered, how you want your music to impact the lives of other people. That's the genesis of everything that you do with your brand and the direction that you take.

Greg Wilnau: When you think about those things, when you define and you crystallize how you want your music to impact people, what you're doing is you're identifying your values. The reason why there's a lot of fear around selling out or not selling out is because it's likely that you don't have your values identified. Because once you have your values identified, you can make decisions and give yourself permission to feel okay and have peace of mind about the decisions that you're making without fear of selling out. I define selling out as doing anything that goes against your values. Once you have your values identified, you can be like, "No, I'm not doing that." Then that gives you a lot of freedom to make decisions without fear of selling out, because you have your values identified. I go in not to say that's a high level answer to the question.

Michael Walker: Yeah. It sounds like what you're saying is that a lot of times the fear of selling out comes from a lack of clarity around who you are or what kind of impact you want to make on other people. One thing to add to the conversation too, I feel like, is a lot of times I think that we put ourselves into a certain box where we think that in order to grow as a human being, in some ways you have to become not you, and any time you grow, it's going to feel uncomfortable and it's not going to feel like the right thing to do. So in terms of personal growth, the idea of being yourself is almost an illusion because you can't ever not be yourself.

Michael Walker: A lot of times in order to become a better version of you, you have to become not yourself, which is going to feel weird, so it's okay to be someone else, to be the highest version of yourself. So I think there could be a mindset block around if you are a band that's playing, I don't know, seventies music, and it's not really hitting right now, and it's hard to build up a really big fan base doing it, I think it's okay to reinvent yourself, not to lose sight of who you are or the core of your influences, but maybe to bring in, to listen to what is current right now.

Michael Walker: The idea that everything right now is a very old school idea to be like, "Everything that's popular right now just sucks. It was good in the seventies." Every current generation of music has that in the past. People who listened to a different... Now they listen, they're like, "Music is crap nowadays."

Greg Wilnau: That's what I thought when I was in high school, like "Man, music today sucks." I look back on early 2000s, mid 2000s, I'm like, "Man, that was some good shit."

Michael Walker: I know. I know. I feel the same way too. I have to catch myself. It's a process, but you can learn to really find your own style that's current right now and find things that resonate that really do connect with you, but are also on the current wave. It depends on your goals. But if you want to have a successful music career, and you want to grow an audience, then you have to find out what are people resonating with. It is like catching a wave in a sense that if you're trying to catch a wave that's passed a long time ago, it could be challenging. Not to say... Sometimes there are reoccurrences of the same kind of wave, so the seventies style comes back or something.

Michael Walker: I do think it's really powerful to be surfing and then look back and see, "Okay, so this is the big way that's coming right now." And swim along with it. You still have to do it in your own way and your own twist, but if you can swim along with the direction of the wave, then when it hits, you can really catch a ton of momentum. It doesn't mean that you're necessarily selling out to do it, but there is a delicate balance, because there is a chance that you could go too far where it's just like you don't have integrity or you don't really have a cohesive brand. That's just a topic I find really fascinating is how do you find that balance?

Greg Wilnau: Yeah. The way I talk about... By the way, there are three basic phases. There's phase one, which is identify how you want your music to impact people and your values and that acts as a rudder that steers you in the right direction. The second phase is to identify visual representations that reflect the style of your music. The third is to get all your visual branding cohesive, so your logo, your marketing collateral, websites, social media profiles, then your merchandise.

Greg Wilnau: We're still talking about phase one and the implications of how that applies to help you to act as a rudder to steer your decision making and your thought process around how you approach the direction of your brand in a way that gives you permission to feel okay about the decisions that you're making without being afraid that you're going to contradict your values and make the wrong choice that conflicts with who you are. That's why phase one is so important because it gives you that rudder.

Michael Walker: Awesome. So the three phases are the phase one is really about foundationally looking at brainstorming what do you want this brand to be about, and maybe pulling in some references and figuring out what are some ideas and figuring out your values and your intentions. How do you want to impact other people with your music? Just out of curiosity to land the plane a little bit... Because that is a pretty high up question sometimes, how do you want your music to impact people? It might be a difficult question to answer, but what are some examples of answers that are good answers to that question?

Greg Wilnau: The best answer to that question is the one that resonates with you the most. There are many people who say, and I'll give you an example in a second, but I'm trying to create some context. You could say the same thing, the same way, a different way that another artist has, but you're using the words that sit with you the most. All right. You could say, "I want my music to inspire people to make changes in their lives that they never would have made without it," or something like that. You know what I mean? It's all about identifying how you want your music to impact people in a way that you find meaningful. This is just a high level view. Once you have that, you don't really have to worry about it ever again. It's done and it's out of the way.

Greg Wilnau: But anytime you brand a project, there's still a three step basic framework. Let's say you're doing, I call it, campaign branding, so your main brand and your brand. If you look and you reflect on most artist's brands, they have their main brand, which is their artist's name. Then they have a sub-brand, which are individual releases, EPs, albums, singles, live performance or tour, a music video or a collaboration. Those are all sub-brands that are under the banner or under the umbrella of their main brand. Their main brand goes with them. What that does is it gives you freedom and flexibility to rebrand every project, and the way that you do that is you still follow the basic framework. You start with one idea, so identify one idea so that everything is cohesive under it.

Michael Walker: What's up, guys. Quick intermission from the podcast, so I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public. They normally are reserved for our $5,000 clients that personally. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode your Fanbase and Make a Profit with your Music Online. Specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel that's going to allow you to grow your fan base online. The system's designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music. We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers, and really see what's working best right now for musicians, so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. So if that's something you're interested in, in the description, there should be a little link that you can click on to go get that.

Michael Walker: The other thing I wanted to mention is if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating a new podcast is if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear. That'll help us reach a lot more people. So if you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the subscribe button. All right. Let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker: Something that came up while you were talking about that is... I was just clicking in my own brain about how I'm understanding the idea of thinking about what kind of impact do you want to make on the people listening to the songs. I think that's a great question to ask. One big facet of that, I feel like, is thinking about how do you want people to feel. Music is really a transmission of emotion to people. In a lot of ways, a good song-

Greg Wilnau: Yeah, it is.

Michael Walker: ...can resonate and it's an emotional transfer. So thinking about how do you want to make people feel is going to be a really powerful way to think about your brand, some of the different elements that come into it and what kinds of songs you write and maybe even the visual aspect of it. With death metal, if you want it to make you feel angry or make every one stand up and rebel against power or something, there might be a certain... It's interesting. A lot of different genres probably have... Emo, definitely it has a certain angle to it.

Greg Wilnau: [crosstalk 00:22:16]. They have their similar... What you're talking about, translating emotion, that's what I'm talking about when I talk about phase two, which is identifying the visual components that translate that the best. There are three parts to this. There are color, typography and art style. Those are the only three ways, the three things, that you'll use as a vehicle that translate that emotion and bring it into a visual space.

Greg Wilnau: I'll give you a quick example. Different colors can represent different emotions or convey different emotions. So once you have the impact that you want your music to have identified or more clearly to you, you can use that as a basis to pick colors that reflect that accurately. For example, let's say, like you said, anger, well, red is typically used to convey anger. Anger, aggression, but it can also be used for things like passion or love or something like that. So when used in that context, you can be intentional about the visual components that you choose to represent and have peace of mind knowing that it lines up correctly. That was color.

Greg Wilnau: Another is fonts. Let's say you have a masculine brand or a feminine brand. You would pick masculine fonts, because you'd want your font to look powerful and strong or masculine. If you want it to be more feminine, you could use scripted fonts or something that looks a little bit more feminine or a little bit more personal. I hope that provides a little bit more context to how you actually translate the ethereal, amorphous idea into something that's visually cohesive that represents and reflects that message clearly.

Michael Walker: Awesome. In terms of getting visuals, do you have any recommendations for what's the process like? Because I know one mistake that I have made a lot or I made early on was thinking that we needed to do everything ourselves. We needed to record all of our own songs professionally. We had to get really good at production. We had to get really good at Photoshop. Those are really valuable skills to learn, but I also have come to realize how much more powerful it is to have a team, to have people that are really their main thing is doing this and then working with them. Do you have any recommendations for how do you take this ideas and the rough sketches and turn them into something really professional that they can stand behind?

Greg Wilnau: Yep. We're talking about phase three, basically. Once you have the idea or the concept, you have the basic ways to translate that idea or concept visually. Your brand core, as I call it. The next phase is creating your marketing collateral and conveying that vision into designs and graphics, merchandise and things like that, so that process. I think one of the biggest mistakes, and this goes back to the beginning, we as artists make is we think that it's somebody else's responsibility to define the vision for us.

Greg Wilnau: What you want to do is you want... You wanted to find your vision and the goal or the objective of the brand or of the release or of the album or whatever you're working on, whatever project you're working on. From there, you can choose either to use free tools like Canva. Take maybe a course in Udemy, or I have a course called Music Brand that shows you how to do it on your own. Or you can hire a designer and then delegate that task to somebody who has the talent to take your vision and the direction that you give him or her and translate it into the physical equivalent using their skills, talents and abilities.

Greg Wilnau: It depends on your situation and what you're wanting to do. You can do it on your own. But the point that I'm wanting to make is you got to know what you want first before you can do it yourself or before you could delegate it. But those are both viable options, and it depends on your budget and your time. If you have more time than you have money, then you should probably consider doing it yourself first. If you have no time and some money, then you could probably delegate it.

Michael Walker: Yeah, dude. I think that makes total sense. It sounds like this whole question is phase three. So a lot of leading up to this point, in order to it into something physical, like merchandise or actual designs, it takes... One of the mistakes is just skipping phase one, phase two, and just going straight to it and hoping that someone else is going to come up with the vision-

Greg Wilnau: That's what most musicians do is they'll go right to phase three, and they're like, "What are we trying to do here?" [crosstalk 00:27:00]

Michael Walker: Right. Then it probably ends up taking way... It probably takes way longer than necessary too, because then it probably goes back and forth and it ends up [crosstalk 00:27:06].

Greg Wilnau: And you're not happy with it. You're not happy with it. You just look at it and you're like, "This doesn't feel right." You know what I mean? "I don't know why. I just know I don't like it." You know what I mean? So you avoid that.

Michael Walker: It sounds like with phase three, the two options that you have for really crystallizing it is one, you could either do it yourself and find some free tools like Canva or invest in Photoshop, maybe Udemy or your course to learn how to do some of the graphic design elements.

Greg Wilnau: There are so many free tools and templates that are available to use. The problem's not that. The problem is knowing what you're trying to do with them. All the tools are out there. Absolutely.

Michael Walker: It's true. I remember at the beginning, I think, of Paradise Fears and the beginning of this business, I think when you're starting something new, a lot of times you end up spinning a lot of different plates and it's like you're doing everything and it's like you're doing the visuals [crosstalk 00:28:06]

Greg Wilnau: And not knowing what to focus on or how to... Yeah, exactly.

Michael Walker: Yeah. But I do think it's really powerful as quickly as possible to start building a team and being resourceful in sourcing talent from other people who may be... But they have to be the right people too. So when it comes to... Let's say that someone is looking at, they have a really clear vision and idea for what they want, and they want to be able to work with a designer or someone to bring that into fruition. What are some of the best tools that they could use in order to get those designs created?

Greg Wilnau: Yep. I always recommend 99designs because once you have your vision and you know what you want, you can communicate that easily, and then somebody can take it and show you example designs and you can make a decision. The reason I like 99designs is because you can hire, I think it's 20 to 30, designers who compete to win your project, and if you're not happy with it, then you don't pay. The reason why I typically suggest that as a starting point, if you're just starting to work with or hire a designer and you've never done it before, seeing a lot of different interpretations of how you're communicating what you want will really empower you to help make the decisions. So instead of just seeing one thing, you see 10 or 15. That's typically what I recommend. You could also do a pop into a Facebook group and ask for any recommendations or anybody that you've worked with before. That's a really good place for finding people who are talented and recommended. Those are the two steps that I would recommend.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. I'm glad that you recommended 99designs, because that was the one that came up for me too, that we've had amazing experience with is 99designs.com. Yeah, it is really hard because... Sometimes I feel like it can be really hard and it's going to be a heck of a lot easier once you do phase one, phase two, like you're recommending of clarifying the brand and your intentions and finding some references and stuff. It is so helpful to be able to look at 20 different designs from different people, and sometimes there's just one that it just hits you. It just resonates, and you're like, "Oh yeah, this is the one. They get it. They get the vision." So it is really helpful to have that 10 to 20 different designs you can look at and choose your favorite one. I want to echo 99designs is awesome.

Greg Wilnau: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Michael Walker: It's beautiful.

Greg Wilnau: Yeah, man.

Michael Walker: All right. Greg, dude, thank you so much for taking the time to hop on here. It's been really helpful, I think, to dig into some of these more higher level concepts of creating a music brand and being able to reflect and being able to be intentional and consistent with who you are as an artist. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on here and share some examples and tools. I know you have a training that actually goes a lot more in depth and has some templates and cheat sheets and stuff, so for anyone that wants to connect more or learn more from you, where can they go to check you out?

Greg Wilnau: Yep. My website is musicianmonster.com. If you want the application to some of the things that we talked about today, like the next action steps, you can go to musicianmonster.com/swm and download the music branding cheat sheet. It goes over the three phases in a more applicable level so that you can take action on it. And once you sign up for the cheat sheet, if you want to complete or have the next steps for phase one, so you can get clarity on your identity as an artist, you can sign up for the music branding accelerator. Then after there, if you think that my methods on music branding are useful and helpful and they sit right with you, you'll then also be able to invest in the full music brand course at a big discount if that's something that you want to do. Yeah, I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me via email greg@musicianmonster.com.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. Greg, you're awesome, man. Thanks for being here today.

Greg Wilnau: Thank you, Michael.

Michael Walker: Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.