Transcription
Today we're going to talk about storytelling and why it's become the number one skill you need as a music artist. The artists winning today, the ones with the houses, the cars, the creative and financial freedom, they're not just making music, they're building story systems. They're directing and creating something intentional. They're thinking like movie directors and brand builders, not just musicians.
Because there's a major shift happening right now in the music industry. And if you don't understand story and storytelling at a fundamental level, it's going to be really hard for you to cut through the noise and get people to care about your music. Because your biggest problem now isn't your music. It's the attention and awareness around your brand.
Most artists think if I make better music, that'll solve everything. You could have incredible songs, but if people don't see you, don't understand you, or don't connect with you, it unfortunately doesn't matter. But this is where story comes in.
I've worked directly with some of the biggest artists, record labels, and teams in the world. And I've been blessed enough to have a front row seat to see how the biggest campaigns and promotions are actually built. And what I kept seeing over and over was this. A good story and strong storytelling is by far the fastest way to get millions of people to care about and hear your music.
So today, I'm going to show you exactly how to use storytelling to get more people to discover you, connect with you, and actually care about what you're building. And when it comes to story, it often seems complex and confusing, but it's not as difficult as you think if you know how the sausage is made. And that's what we're getting into today.
In this video, I'm going to lay out key techniques and the building blocks needed when it comes to storytelling, but specifically for music artists. And we're going to steal from the best modern storytellers, Hollywood directors, and writers. But there's a big difference between telling a story where the medium is a TV show, a movie, or a book. In these instances, you have the consumer in one place experiencing the story. It's likely in a couple different sittings, but they're going to watch or read the story from start to finish. For music artists, that's not the case. It's more sporadic.
So, one, how do you properly storytell if the audience isn't seeing all of the movie at once and they're just getting it in snippets, scenes, and moments? And then two, what are the structural elements needed to convey a strong, memorable story? How can your story stand out? These are the questions that we're going to be answering. And I have a very specific method that I'm going to talk about later in the video that helps with making your stories more sharable, which can create a snowball effect that has people doing the marketing for you and sharing your story and your brand with their friends.
So, who am I to even talk about this topic? My name is Chris Alba and I've been obsessed with stories and storytelling since I was a kid. Like many, it started with movies and movie theaters and I worked at Blockbuster Video in high school and then I studied film and screenwriting in college. But towards the end of film school, my actual last semester, I dropped out to do the DJ thing. I moved to LA, got deep into the dance music world, and for many years, I was blessed enough to live the life of a touring DJ producer. I worked alongside some of my favorite artists, and I released music with some of my favorite record labels. But my favorite part of my own project was the branding, storytelling, and creative strategy around how you get your music and your brand to the people.
So, eventually, alongside my wife, Lindsay, we started a creative agency called the Cole Creatives. We help music artists and fashion brands shape their story, visuals, content, and marketing strategies. For the last 12 years at Colt, we've done tens of millions of dollars in business, and we've been blessed enough to work with some of the largest companies and music artists in the world. And the thing that I've seen over and over when it comes to success stories is the storytelling. The strong teams in music that I worked with seem so similar to the people I knew from the Hollywood film world. Both were master storytellers.
So, today from a high level, I'm going to give you their tricks. So, let's get into it.
Step one, identity, casting the character. So when we're looking at the Hollywood world and thinking, how can we steal from this to use it for music? We ask the question, how do great writers and directors usually start? And the exact inception point is different, but most ideas start the same way. Not with plot, not with visuals, not with environment, but with character. Because before you can care about what's happening, you need to care about who it's happening to. And again, it's different for every writer, but most writers start with an idea dump. They'll start answering these questions. Who is this person? What do they want? What are they afraid of? And what's broken inside of them?
So, for example, in The Dark Knight, the Joker isn't just a villain. He represents chaos versus order. In his twisted mind, he believes that everyone thinks that they're a good person until life puts enough pressure on them to prove that they're not. And that single idea drives every scene that he's in. Or as another example, let's look at Breaking Bad. Walter White is presented to us, the audience, as a quiet, underachieving teacher who desperately wants respect, and he's willing to become someone dangerous to get it.
So notice what's happening here. Before creating the plot, Hollywood defines the psychology and the point of view of the character or characters. So then, how can we use this for our world of music? Having done this work for the last 12 years, this is where I see that a lot of artists will struggle. They generally will skip this step altogether. Once they have a song to promote, they jump straight into what kind of content should I post and how does that tie into the song. They aren't thinking how does this campaign tie into the character and the story? Because if you don't know who the character is and you don't know what the story is, every piece of content can feel disconnected or confusing.
So for music artists, this is your version of casting. creating the character or characters inside your story. You'll sit down and you'll do your own idea dump. So, if you're the artist and the brand is about you, you're uncovering parts of yourself and deciding what parts you want to show the audience and what parts you don't. And this is an important note here. Just like a movie, you aren't showing the audience all of you. In movies, they don't show every minute, every thought, or every moment of a character. They either show you stuff that drives the story forward to keep things interesting or they show you moments that reinforce who the character is and what their motivations are. So, if you're the main character, you need to decide what you're going to show the audience of yourself. Use journal sessions or work with a friend to flesh this out.
Now, on the flip side, say that the brand is more made up of fictional characters, something like gorillas. In that instance, you're inventing characters. So, you're doing the same thing as Hollywood, fleshing out who they are, strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. So then once you've done your idea dump, you're going to want to refine that into a character profile. And the way you'll organize this is through these categories: archetype, strengths, flaws, beliefs, and contradictions. If it's just you as the main character in the movie, you'll just need one character profile. But if you have multiple characters, they'll each need their own. We have a bunch of videos on the Neighbor Arts Supply channel that go deeper into this idea of character building. There's this one, which specifically has a good deep dive on archetypes. And then this one, which is good for establishing a point of view on the character and their belief system. But while having a well- understood character is a big piece of the puzzle, without this next piece, it's almost impossible to get to the real story part.
Step two, setting. Building the world. So, a character doesn't exist alone. They exist inside of a world. And when it comes to story, the world shapes everything. In movies, the setting is often its own character. So when thinking about setting, how do they do it in the film world? In film, writers and directors define the setting early. Tone, environment, texture. Where are we? When are we? What's the vibe?
So, as an example of setting, let's look at Bladeunner 2049. It's cold, futuristic, and isolated. The world itself feels empty, which mirrors the main character's emotional state. Or another example, MadMax Fury Road. This is desert, chaos, survival. Everything is stripped down which focuses our mind as an audience on survival and then the details of the analog machine and DIY vehicle world. Or as another example, let's look at La La Land. Dreamy, romantic, nostalgic. Los Angeles feels like a place where anything is possible, but also where most dreams don't work out. The world is constantly shifting between fantasy and reality. Having been in LA myself for 20 years, it has this quality to it. You find yourself in these almost unbelievably incredible situations sometimes, yet other times it can feel very real or even dark. These feelings mirror the tension of the film between chasing ambition and holding on to the things that you love. Also, what's interesting about La La Land and it being set in LA is how many movies and shows have been set in LA in this exact same city, but it's shot and texturized in so many different ways based on the movie and the story. Same city, but shaped for a different narrative. Like if you look at heat which is still LA it has a completely different feel to it. The LA and heat feels quiet, cold and almost detached. All the characters in the movie are operating by a code. So the setting mirrors the characters and their emotions. People who suppress emotion in order to survive the life that they've chosen.
So you see what's happening here? The choices made around setting, they aren't random. It's reinforcing the identity of the character or characters. All right. So, how can we steal this and use it for the music world? Now, this isn't for everyone, and this is also not a judgment, but look at what many artists are doing for content. It's a random studio clip, maybe a club or show video, maybe a meme or a direct copy of something that they see other artists doing. No world building, no real character, just moments posting to post.
So, if we're stealing from Hollywood, we need to take the time to actually define our setting. Where does your story live? What environments show up again and again? Is it a specific place like a city or a part of the country? What kind of tone does it carry? Every movie and every show you've watched will give you establishing shots to make sure you know where the story is taking place. They paint a picture of the environment and the setting for the audience. And the setting where the story takes place adds to the context of the story. And most importantly, the real lesson in all this is how might the setting play against the character's identity. This is why something like Rufus to Soul feels so cohesive. It's deserts, sunsets, natural environments. You're not just watching content, you're stepping into a world where the music lives. Or as another example, let's look at Bad Bunny. With Bad Bunny, it's often beaches, streets, Caribbean color, ties to Puerto Rico. With him, you're inside a world in a culture where rhythm, identity, and energy are all part of the same soup. He paints a strong picture of environment that actually has the audience hearing the music differently because now the music is set in a place and there's a visual to go alongside it.
And when it comes to defining your setting, it doesn't need to end up being something that's going to be hard to capture or expensive to make the content like trips to the desert or Puerto Rico. It can be whatever makes sense for you and your project. And a lot of artists will have that defeating belief where they'll say something like, "Well, I'm not Rufus's soul. I'm not Tyler the Creator or Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny. I don't have that kind of budget to have that kind of brand." And they'll throw the concept of good storytelling with an intentional setting out with this kind of thought. But if you do that, it's a huge miss. You can build incredible cohesive worlds without huge budgets. A good example of this is Lori Music from New Orleans. He does content music videos in his city on buses, in local vintage stores, street corners, burger shops. He isn't making excuses. He's focusing on his story and using the resources that he has and where he's from to tell great stories and let the audience know who he is and what he's about. He's found millions of impressions doing this because he brought you into his world and that's what it's all about.
So now the world is clear, but the next step is vital to giving your story a reason to exist.
Step three, conflict. The engine of the story. When it comes to story, without conflict, nothing moves. So, how do they do this in the film world? So, in the film world, almost every movie is built on one line. A character wants something, but something is in the way. So, for example, Rocky. Rocky wants respect, but he's seen as a nobody. Or the social network. Mark Zuckerberg wants status and recognition, but struggles with connection and relationships. Or Inception. In Inception, Cobb wants to return to his family, but is trapped in his own guilt and subconscious. So the character wants this but creates the tension and the tension drives everything, every decision, every scene.
And this may make perfect sense when it comes to movies, but how can we steal this for the music world? So this is an interesting one for music artists that historically run their brands more like documentarians than storytellers. But a lot of the smart ones find the conflict in their own weaknesses. If we think about it like a character, what are the characters strengths and what are the characterser's weaknesses? So, as an example, let's look at someone like Eminem. His strength is in the lyrical precision in his raps and his fearless honesty, but his weaknesses are anger, addiction, and self-destruction. So, the tension for the audience is this. Can he control the chaos without losing the edge that made him great? Or as another example, let's look at Kanye. No matter how you feel about him, let's acknowledge some of his strengths. His strength is that he's a visionary with unparalleled confidence to disrupt culture. His weaknesses are ego, impulsiveness, and public self-sabotage. So, the tension with Kanye is, is he a misunderstood genius or his own worst enemy? And depending on where you are in the story or what side you fall on, you either root for him or against him. And he knows that. This is a huge part of what makes his brand interesting and compelling.
So, in these two scenarios, the artists themselves and their demons are the villains. They are their own brand foe. But let's look at a different way to do this. Let's look at Billy Isish. Her strengths are emotional vulnerability and intimate world building. But her weaknesses are anxiety, pressure from the public, and a persistent fear of being consumed by fame. So for her brand, some of the tension would be how do you stay soft and real in a world that wants to eat you alive? Or let's look at Taylor Swift. Her strength is narrative mastery, a lot of what we're talking about today, and emotional relatability. Her weakness is her sensitivity to criticism and the need for hyper control of her image. So for her, the tension is can she evolve, grow, and mature without losing everything that defined her? Will she continue to ascend or will something knock her off the pedestal that she's built?
So with Billy and Taylor, there are internal struggles, but a lot of the external challenges, the outside villains they must face are things like the media, the critics, and trolls. And when you look at the four artists that I just went through, think about different moments in media where their story showed up. These moments of conflict and tension may actually stick out in your mind more than a song. You remember that moment of tension because it plays into their story. And whether it's internal or external, the best brands and stories have conflict, tension, and foes.
So for music artists, you'll define your ongoing tension and conflict in these buckets: internal, external, industry, and personal. And once you have the tension in your story, you can now shape it into something that people will actually want to follow. The more interest your brand carries, the longer they'll follow the story. But in order to keep them invested for the long term, you're going to need a solid framework for your story. And that's what we're going to talk about next.
Step four, log line, elevator pitch, the story spine. In order to tell a compelling story, you need a rough framework. So, how do they do this in the film world? So, in film, this is where the log line comes in. Writers and directors create a log line on the movie. It's one sentence that captures the entire story. So, for example, The Hunger Games. A girl volunteers to take her sister's place and must survive a deadly televised competition. Or another example, Gladiator. A betrayed general seeks revenge against the emperor who killed his family and destroyed his life. So that one sentence, that's the blueprint for everything.
So how can we steal this concept for the music world? So in music, you need to create what I call a brand story core and you need to do it in elevator pitch format. So for those who don't know, an elevator pitch is a quick pitch where if you were to jump into an elevator and explain your story to someone, you could do it before it was time to get out of the elevator. So for example, a one-s sentence elevator pitch could be something like this. A blank kind of artist who blank is trying to blank but struggles with blank. And then what you can do with this elevator pitch is you can convert it into a mini artist bio, but it's written more like a story. So as an example, let's try this for Domala, an Australian house music artist bringing humor, groove, and personality into club culture. trying to make dance music feel fun, human, and culturally relevant again, but struggles with balancing credibility in the underground scenes while reaching a global mainstream audience. Or as another example, let's look at one of my favorites, Leon Bridges, a soul artist channeling the sound and spirit of the past into modern music, trying to preserve authenticity and emotional depth in a fast, disposable music culture. He struggles with maturing and evolving as an artist, but without losing the timeless identity that defined him.
So, it's the quick one-s sentence elevator pitch that becomes the small paragraph that tells the story. This is what gives you a clear framework on what this brand is. So, something important to note here and a little extra sauce that I found in the years of doing this is you want to try and balance creating a unique brand story, but doing it with familiar references. You don't want to do a straight copy of what another artist in your niche is doing. You want to take references from a few different places, but through your brand, you create a new recipe. So, instead of looking at another artist that's having success, and saying, "I'm just going to do it exactly like them," you can use them as inspiration, but then you're looking at multiple other artists, modern or from history, and you're taking all of those pieces and creating a new recipe. And not only will that new recipe feel fresh, it'll feel unique. And that's what you want is you want unique. You definitely don't want predictable because in the world of music, predictable equals boring. Unique and different is better. And being unique and different plays heavily into how we're going to package our story. And that's what we're going to talk about next.
Step five, visual identity. Designing the character. So, in the beginning, when you're crafting, a story is often just words and you can't see it. But now that we know the character, the setting, the tension, and have a highle view on the story and the framework, we can now look at the visual identity. We have a bunch of videos on the neighborhood art supply channel that do deep dives and case studies and break down different elements having to do with visual identity. So feel free to check those out after this. But at a high level, this is how they think about visual identity in the film world. This is where cinematography comes into play. Color palettes, lighting, set design, costume design, wardrobe. If it's a period piece, it's what elements are in to show the period.
So, as an example for something like The Matrix, it's new technology in camera and capture. Black coats, sunglasses, a green color grade, a dystopian future. Or let's look at Drive with Ryan Gosling. For this, it's locked off and still shots with symmetrical framing. Wide shots conveying isolation. It's the minimalist styling, the jacket, neon lights, quiet but intense. LA feels more like a character than it does a city. Or another example, let's look at Titanic. It's ultimately a love story about connection and intimacy, feeling close and small in a big world. Wide shots convey the bigness of the world, but then close-ups bring us, the audience, in Rose and Jack get closer, and we get closer. Their faces humanize their story. The intimacy is conveyed in the camera work and in the color grade. Warm colors as they fall in love, cool colors as their love dies, and because it's a very specific historical moment, everything is period correct.
So in these films before any of the characters speak your brain has already made all kinds of judgments just based on the packaging and the visual language of the movie. Okay. So how can we apply this to our world of music? So for many many artists they'll end up just blending in visually. And when you blend in visually unfortunately it usually means that you're forgettable. So, when coming up with your visual identity, define your look. Style, colors, fonts, photography style, video styles, textures, and is there an overall look to the era that you're in?
Now, if you look at an artist like Tyler the Creator, you can tell that each era that he's had, he's made these decisions ahead of anything that he's made for the content or for the campaign. Don't Tap the Glass was primary colors, red, yellow, blue. Chromacopia was green. very specific art direction, very specific styling. Each era is its own unique moment. But as another example, outside of Tyler, let's look at someone like Rez. From the beginning, she had a look and a feel to her brand. The glasses, leather jackets, baseball hats, an ownable look. References to rock, emo, and punk, portals, spirals, the circus, hypnosis, red, black, teal, and purple. Whether it's a performance, single artwork, or a piece of marketing, you know that it's rez. Or another example, let's look at Ice Spice. Colored hair, bright color styling, not trying but trying, grounded and DIY feeling photo and video with 2000's nostalgia. The biggest mistake that a lot of artists make with visual identity is the same mistake they often make with the other parts of their brand. They make choices based on if they think it's cool or not. And they aren't entirely wrong for doing this, as the audience wants their taste. But master storytellers see the visual identity as an extension of the story. And the visual identity helps create more context. It sets the room that the story and the characters live inside. So creative decisions are being made intentionally in ways to help serve the story and serve the brand, not just because something's cool or not.
So now with the visual identity, is that it? Do we have all the pieces? It's all the same pieces that movie directors and writers have, but there's one last piece that we are missing that makes the whole thing worth it to the audience.
Step six, transformation, the arc and the change. No one watches or reads a story where nothing changes. In film, transformation is everything. It is the story. So, as an example of transformation, let's look at the movie Iron Man. Tony Stark goes from a selfish billionaire to someone willing to sacrifice himself for others. Or another example, The Godfather. Michael Corleone goes from being an outsider to transforming into the very thing that he once refused to become. Or Top Gun Maverick. Maverick goes from being a reckless lone wolf to someone willing to trust others and lead them into battle. A real story is change. We go from this to this. The best stories make the change feel inevitable, like it was always meant to happen, but you still might not have seen it coming.
So, how can we steal this for the music world? So, this is a very unique approach and one of the most subtle yet super powerful keys when it comes to branding. This one approach has been a huge cheat code for me at Colt. It's what keeps the brands that we're working on interesting. Because what can happen with many artist brands, especially the ones who have a hit and find early success, is they often stay in the same place. They'll have a bunch of people in their corner telling them to do that again. Let's try to find that same success again. But art and music doesn't work that way. It's not a repeatable product that comes off of a conveyor belt. But you can create repeatable success with consistent change and evolution. You grab the audience with the question, where does the story go next?
So, here's the trick. Define your arc. Where are you now? Where are you going? What's the change that's going to occur? And you can think of this in terms of short arcs and long arcs, just like a TV show. In TV, sometimes an arc will happen over a few episodes. A character enters and that character has a specific story arc that starts and finishes. But then when it comes to the show, there's a longer arc that's happening over multiple seasons where the main character is constantly changing. So, if we're looking at music as an example, let's look at an artist like Gwen Stefani. She comes into the scene with a young rebel punk attitude. She's driven by the freedom to be who she wants to be. But as the albums progress, so does she. She matures. She refineses. Her rebel edge softens. That change and progression keeps things interesting. Or let's look at Rihanna. She starts as the people's princess, but over time, she matures and evolves and becomes the confident ruler queen she is today. And you can see similar arcs for artists like Miley Cyrus or Olivia Rodrigo.
So for artists, each era is a chapter and each chapter should cue a progression forward because again, no one watches or is invested in a story where nothing changes. This is what keeps people watching, keeps them listening, and most importantly, it keeps them sharing. If it's interesting enough, they share the story with their friends because they share in the change. People use music artists and their stories to define who they are as individuals. That's why when you see someone wearing a shirt of their favorite artist, they're signaling to the world that they identify with that artist and their story. And when you get people sharing and repping your brand, it can become like a snowball rolling down a hill. And that snowball can propel you all the way to the top. So, the main thing to take away when it comes to sharability is that the stronger your story is and the better job you're doing at storytelling, the more you can connect with someone's identity. And when you connect with someone's identity and form a real bond, it's so much different than when someone's just a casual listener. Now you have a real fan. It's a real relationship and they'll follow you and the story until it becomes boring.
So those are the main elements and from a high level, this is how Hollywood creates hit movies and TV shows and how serious music artists build their brands. Going through these exercises and defining these pieces is the first step. But the most important thing you can do with all these decisions you've made is to create a story system for yourself and for your brand. Use this information as the filters and the guard rails when you're thinking about content and campaigns. Everything should play in the same sandbox of your story and brand. Don't look at what other artists are doing who are having success and copy them if their movie isn't at all similar to your movie or your brand. Stay with your story and use the story system to consistently stay on brand. And should you want to collaborate directly with me or Colt on your own brand, you know where we are. All things the Colt creatives, the colult creatives.com.
But with that, it leads to my own curiosity to the artists that are watching this channel. I'm curious about your story and what kind of artist you are. If you end up coming up with an elevator pitch and you're willing to share it, write it in the comments and whether it's one paragraph or one sentence, I'll comment back with my honest thoughts and feedback. I genuinely want to get to know the people in the neighborhood art supply community as best I can. I'm here and I'm going to keep making videos like this to help you on your path because I love artists and I'm almost making these for the younger version of myself. Something I wish I had in different moments in my journey. I'm also still learning, researching, and studying every day. And as I find new knowledge, I'm going to bring it here. But good luck in your creative endeavors. And if you want a good follow-up to this video, I'd suggest jamming on this one.