The Higher Concept: “Life’s Good” Part Two
Posted by Justin Boland on Apr 07, 2011 | 0 Comments
Since the first half of this interview, The Higher Concept has stayed insanely busy — that’s basically their comfort zone. New videos, new albums and constant late nights at their studio, The House of Dreams…so for this follow-up interview, I asked the most boring possible questions. We’re drilling into the mundane details of their Daily Operation. (And if you missed part one? Start there.)
How do you prioritize how you spend your time on promo in 2010? What’s been working the best, what’s been a wasted effort (if anything)?
Tekst: Promotion is basically half the work of being an indie musician. We don’t have a huge budget to buy ads or run serious marketing campaigns in major outlets. We all do our own part, reaching out to friends and spreading the word as far as we can and asking the support of others. As for the breakdown of workload, it is mainly IB that spends his working time promoting the music. We tried a hired publicist last year which failed miserably, mainly because even with all the right places to send things and good ideas, it was still unsolicited material being sent out everywhere. What’s worked best for our promo is starting on a more personal basis and working with people we have direct connections with. We have a team of friends in the clothing industry, Cloudkicker Original, and with their help as well as others that are part of grassroots campaign, our music and videos have spread further than ever before, even without a paid publicist. THC tries to be as approachable as possible and open to work with anyone on anything. This is our best form of promotion cuz it makes people want to keep working with us and talking about us in their own circles.
As far as wasted efforts, I refer you once again to the failed PR campaign. Don’t bother with strangers that offer hundreds of contacts to major press outlets. With a little work, you can aquire the same info and spend your time approaching mags, blogs, newspapers, etc. Also, if you don’t have people you know by now that believe in your music to pass on the word for you, then more time really needs to be spent networking and making connections, cuz without that, even the best music will go unnoticed.
Matty J: We have decided on a consistent marketing cycle and have attempted to put out a variety of content, whether it be video, audio, interaction/polls, or whatever else we can cook up. With the release of the album, we definitely changed the cycle and went hard with new weekly content, with several marketing “schemes” overlapping, giving people who wanted to really get involved a chance to do so, and also to provide a lot of recent content for anyone looking at us for the first time. That goes back to being able to show people you are an ACTIVE hiphop entity. Twitter has been amazing for connecting and networking, and I think we’ve gotten the word out enough that it’s slowly coming at people from a direction OTHER than directly from us, which adds to our credibility.
IB: Well, I resisted it for a long long time, but I finally made the switch to using twitter as my main promotional tool. I’d say that is what I spend most of my time doing promo on, trying to network and meet other people in the industry. The main thing we have discovered in 2010 is video content. This is something we had neglected up until this year. We were always anti-commercial and therefore anti-music video. The music video had become as symbol for all that was wrong in the music industry and we shied away from any type of video, especially one in which it was us rapping right at the camera (way too cliche).
At the urgings of our team around us, and the great success that Cloudkicker video producer John Colombo was having with some bigger name artists, we shot the video for House of Dreams in 2008. We got a great response, but we still didn’t realize how important visuals were for promoting our music. For Life’s Good we had a general plan of video content to release along with the music and those videos have been very well received. We have video content for track 3 “Find a Way” as well as for “The Rebirth,” a song that will be available on the iTunes version of Life’s Good only. We are shooting a video for the title track, next week we’re editing on a video for “So High.” These videos have allowed for some of the bigger hip hop blogs to take notice of us. The more content you provide, the more likey it is that someone is going to post it.
Audible Hype: What are the best time-saving tools you’ve found in the last 5 years?
IB: When it comes to what I do, there is not much you can do to save time. A lot of social networking and promotion these days is hands on. With twitter and now facebook becoming what they have, it is easier than ever to speak directly to artists, and fans are starting to expect it. There has to be a live human behind each site (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter) for the fans to connect with so I find myself spending a ton of time building relationships on twitter.
For the past 3 years, I had found friend adding programs such as Spyder to be great ways of saving time when adding friends, sending out messages and targeting specific fans. I’ve also picked up little tricks along the way such as opening 10-15 window tabs at a time when adding friends on myspace or facebook so you don’t have to wait for any pages to load.
Matty J: In regards to time management, I think that THC has developed a system where we hash out all our ideas via emails/texts/phone calls during the day (while everyone is scattered and working, but reachable) and then we are able to put a plan into action when we convene back at the House of Dreams at night. This saves us from having the typical “sit-down” meetings, and allows us to use the time we have together to create our product, whether it be music, video, promotional materials, etc. This has also created a situation where whenever any of us are together, we are more productive and creative, because we are so accustomed to DOING WORK when we are together.
Tekst: Everything takes forever. For my tasks, I have not found many things which make the processes of mixing, recording, editing, or graphic design move any quicker. Between me and the group, even though we live together, we often email each other on a regular basis just to stay on top of things…also Google docs have been a very helpful tool in helping us plan out tasks and monitor whats been done.
A Toast to Life | Using Fan-Submitted Video
To assemble their 2011 jumpoff video “A Toast to Life,” The Higher Concept put out a call to their fans. The result is a collage of submitted videos from New Years 2011 celebrations around the country, a great angle to get blog coverage, and a lot of gratified fans…
Audible Hype: How do you guys delegate responsibility these days? Do members have set business/promo roles, or is everyone a CEO/evangelist?
Matty J: We DEFINITELY have our positions set within the business. At this point we know where our strengths lie, and each specific task will be ran or managed, so to speak, by one person. The other two will assist and work on the project as well, but we know who will be heading each task. We know that there is more work, more jobs, and more tasks that we cannot handle, but the three of us cover a lot of the work that needs to be done.
Tekst: IB does marketing/online promo, Matty does all the video editing, internet updates, tech stuff, and I, tekst, handle all recording, mixing, and graphics, along with small jobs. We all do our part trying to get gigs, its really whoever has a lead will pursue it. We all have ideas and suggestions for eachother, but when it comes to specific tasks getting done, this has worked for us, cuz immediately we know who is supposed to do what.
IB: We all have found our roles at this point, 6-7 years into our journey as The Higher Concept. We have all tried our hand at different things and settled into what each of us do best. I work on most of the PR and Marketing for the group. Specifically running the social media sites and online promotion. I’m also in charge of keeping our mailing lists up to date (radio, blogs, DJs, Fans) and sending everything out. Matty J works on all our video editing and keeps our website up to date. Tekst does everything having to do with the music. He records the music and mixes it, he designs our flyers, he handles all of the business for The Projectivity Movement LLC, he does it all.
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