Focus Your Music Demo Reel: 5 Simple Steps to Land More Clients in the Audio Industry

Hey everyone, I hope your day started full of opportunities!

Let me once more get into this topic because what I want is you guys succeeding out there in the audio business to find paid projects and making connections.

It all comes down to your music obviously. However, this is not something special to write good music, it is a basic necessity. On the other end, a lot of music composers think that good music has to be near perfect. I have to disagree. The most important thing is to write solid music that makes your client happy. THAT'S. IT! Nothing else.

Now, imagine you bought the most amazing present for your partner... but wrap it up in a few rugs. Not very attractive, isn't it? Now imagine your best music but it's hosted on public services with lots of distracting links or on a bloated website, featuring all kinds of styles and a bio that is longer than the dictionary.

Let me give you a few easy things to keep in mind, so you have an almost unfair advantage to everyone else:

You need to change your mindset. Pick one target industry = design a demo reel for EXACTLY THIS target group. Imagine you walk into a restaurant and the guy telling you: "Hey, what do you want to eat? We got Asian food from every country, American burgers, original Italian pizza and pasta, the best sushi... each category features over 100 meals." Overwhelmed much? Probably! The same your clients feel when you send them your bloated website with hundreds of tracks or distracting links leading everywhere.
Make your demo reel as easy and short as possible. Use a logo at the top, have a picture banner that is drawing the attention of your picked target industry.
Use your best 5 tracks that are speaking to your target industry. There is no need to have the weirdest horror music on your demo reel if you want to send this to children's book authors!
I am serious with this point. Absolutely nobody is interested when you started playing piano, how many awards you have won, how many plugins you own or that you're always reliable. Everyone can write anything! Okay, at some point there is some trust involved, but focus on what benefits you can bring to the table FOR the company, instead of making this a personal spotlight fest.
If you don't have credits yet, create your own. If your music rocks, people will hire you. Period! However, in order to have some visual stuff going on, use one of your tracks, come up with a nice animated picture or use AI to create you a little video of 45-60 seconds. There are tons of tools out there turning pictures into short animations that you can then use to craft a little script... again, that speaks to your target audience.

The next topics would be to learn how to network and sell your music but I don't want to make this post too long.

But for now and once more, if you have a demo reel speaking to your target industry or target group and pointing out the benefits, it is worth way more than making this an ego celebrating party.

If you have questions, ask! I am here for you!

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