How to Build a Content Team for Your Music Project in 2026 (Marketing Playbook)

How to Build a Content Team for Your Music Project (From Come-Up Artist to Major Act)

In this video, branding and marketing strategist Chris Alba, founder of The Cult Creatives, teaches music artists, DJs, producers, managers, and creative teams how to build the right content team for any stage of a music career; from independent artists just getting started to major household names.

If you've ever wondered how to build a content team for your music project, how to hire creatives for your artist brand, or how to get more views on your music project content, this video breaks down exactly who you need, when to hire them, and how the best teams operate. By the end of this video, you'll understand how to structure a content department that consistently creates high quality content, tells a cohesive story, and helps grow your audience.

Chris walks through real world content team structures across three essential areas:
• Touring Content
• Day-to-Day Brand Content
• Tentpole Campaigns & Story Moments

He also explains the role of every key team member; including the Creative Director, Brand Manager, Project Manager, Producer/Director/Shooter/Editor, Community Manager, Ads Manager, Data Analyst, and PR. He shares the exact workflow used to keep large creative teams efficient.

Whether you're a solo artist trying to do everything yourself or managing a major act, you'll leave with a practical framework for scaling your content without wasting time or budget.

Chapters
00:00 Build Your Crew
00:44 Why Content Teams Win
02:03 Meet Chris Alba
02:51 Major Artist Machine
03:59 Creative Department Roles
06:23 Tour Content Team
06:57 Day-to-Day Brand Team
09:53 Tentpole Story Moments
11:34 Efficiency and Budget Fixes
12:35 Touring Artist Setup
16:16 Come-Up Artist Priorities
17:35 Producer / Director / Shooter / Editor
19:22 The Process Framework
19:50 Eight Step Sequence
22:23 Wrap Up and Next Steps

If this video helped you think differently about artist branding, content strategy, or building a creative team, subscribe for more videos covering music branding, artist development, content marketing, creative direction, and fan growth strategies.

If you like Kallaway, Henry Fong, Buristimo or Adam Ivy you may also like this video

Work with us at www.thecultcreatives.com

If you're interested in working with The Cult Creatives, email us at info@thecultcreatives.com

Connect with Chris Alba

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In this video, we're going to cover a full guide on how to build a content team for your music project. We're going to look at this at all levels, no matter where you are in your music journey. We're going to cover this from newer artists that are on the come up to larger artists who are already household names but are still continuing to scale and expand. We're going to focus on what roles to get and then how to be cost effective and efficient with those content teams. To start, I'm going to give you examples of different artist teams that I've both seen and worked with directly who are having great success in utilizing these content teams to help grow their artist brands. There's so many videos already out there about how necessary content is for your music project in the modern landscape with various strategies and tactics, but no one is actually telling you step by step how to execute this with a team in a cost-effective way. The number one question people usually ask me is where do I spend my marketing money and why? So I'm going to directly answer this today, along with some specific examples. And after I go through those examples, I'm going to give you a framework for not only how to organize your marketing efforts into a proper sequence, but also how to lead your team towards your visions. I'll break down exactly who you need and what kind of roles to execute your goals. Think of it like Oceans 11. You're Daniel Ocean. You have a mission and a plan, but the job is too big to do alone. You need specialists, and each person has to know their role in the mission. All the members of the team together is what will make the dream possible. You'll just need to be ultra clear on exactly who you're trying to get and why. But the real thing I want you to pay attention to in this video is that the best artist teams are not just hiring random creative people. They're following a specific sequence and they're meticulous in who they're bringing in and when. And once you understand that sequence, it becomes way easier to know who to hire, when to hire them, and where the money should actually go. If you're at a place where you're starting to get serious about content, or you're looking to scale your current content team, or you're a larger artist looking to be more efficient with your content efforts, this video is a good one. And if you're in the midst of currently organizing your content and content strategy, we actually have a free content calendar, should you need. To get that, comment calendar on this video and we'll send it to you for free. So who am I to even talk about this topic? My name's Chris Alba, and for the last 12 years, I've owned and operated a creative agency called the Cole Creatives. We've been blessed enough to work with some very reputable brands in the spaces of music and fashion. We work with artists every day, from newer artists in development to some of the more well-known artists in the world. We work on helping our artists with their brand story, creative direction, content strategy, production, and execution. But for now, let's get into how to build out a proper content team and we'll start with a major artist. We'll start at the top levels so you can see all the different teams and people that are involved when you scale, and then we'll work our way down to those artists that are in development and we'll talk through exactly who you need for your content team at every stage. So if the top tier artist isn't you, don't worry, we'll get there. But it's good to see how these top level teams operate so you can steal their processes and their mindset no matter where you are on your journey. Example number one, major artist team. So I'm gonna break down a real world team from an artist that I work with directly who I think has a really nicely built content team. Now I can't say the artist's name for obvious reasons, but I can show you what the machine looks like behind the curtain. So at this level, artists aren't just posting content, they're pulling off a much bigger operation with a much larger team. There's a mission, there's a plan, and there's a lot of specialist and specialist teams who all need to do their job well to make the machine work. So at this level, you have dozens and dozens of people on staff. Some of them are full-time, but many are part-time or independent contractors. They usually have upper management teams that are managing the different divisions of their project. Those divisions usually include artist management, brand partnerships, touring, stage productions, business management, portfolio and investing, legal, publishing, licensing, sync, PR merch, and product development. It's a lot of different teams managing the different silos of the artist company. And the last division, one I didn't mention, which is more my world, the creative department. This consists of the team who is executing all the content items across all platforms. This team is at the forefront of telling the artist's story and building the artist brand. So within a larger creative department, these are the roles. You have someone like me who's working with the artist, developing the brand story and narrative, as well as the visual language for the current era and the current campaign. This role is typically called a creative director. This role helps the artist define and execute their big picture vision. So with the creative department, this is the part where everyone sits around a table and figures out what the mission actually is. What is this era? What is the story? What does the audience need to believe? And what's the feeling and vibe that we're trying to create overall? This team clearly writes the script on this era's movie. And then sometimes with the creative director, the same role also covers the content brand strategy, which is the part of how the story gets executed across the different platforms. But this varies artist to artist and team to team. Sometimes the creative direction and brand strategy are separate roles. For this particular artist, I handled both. And a quick note here: a good creative director is not just saying make cool stuff. The job is to understand the story that you're trying to tell, the bigger picture vision of why we're trying to tell that story, then building a plan to execute it, and then making sure that every creative decision going forward supports that plan. Now, within this particular artist's creative team, we also have an art director or a brand manager. This role helps bring the vision of the artist and the creative director to life. The brand manager oversees and manages the teams who are creating content for the brand. So back to our Oceans 11 reference this is the Rusty Ryan, the Brad Pitt character of the crew, the person making sure every specialist in the crew knows exactly what they're supposed to do. Because having talented people in itself is not enough. If everyone is talented but moving in different directions, the whole plan breaks. So just so you can see it laid out, the brand manager manages and oversees the following roles creative leads, video departments, so directors, producers, DPs, shooters, photo departments, so photographers and photo editors, graphic designers, motion graphics, and then video editing teams. In my experience, a good brand manager usually comes from either being an artist themselves first so they can speak the different languages, or they were more of a producer type who learned how to communicate with artists to execute a vision. And then usually a brand manager will work with a project manager who keeps everything organized on a master calendar. They track what needs to happen, when it needs to happen, who owns it, and what assets need to be finished before the next move. Now, for the particular artist team that we're looking at, there's actually three different smaller teams that the brand manager is looking after. These three teams are smaller parts of the larger creative department. So team one is made up of the touring side. We'll call this tour content team. So with this team, it's the on the ground crew. This team is boots on the ground, it's moving fast because the moments on tour have a shelf life. So this particular team had a tour manager who handled scheduling and getting from point A to point B, two videographers who also shoot photo and edit the videos, as well as two other remote editors who are being sent footage from the road and quickly doing edits of the tour footage they've received. Usually with tour stuff, you want to turn and burn quickly because it's happening in real time. You don't want to play a big music festival and then post about it four months after. So then there's a second team that's also focused on day-to-day brand content that isn't tied to touring. We'll call this content team two dash brand. This particular team was made up of the following. So there's a project manager, and let me quickly explain this role. This particular project manager was assigned to just the content team. They manage the overarching timeline and calendar for all projects that will come in for the brand content team. And in my experience, sometimes these project managers are full-time, but often they're part-time. So then other members of the brand content team, you have the creative lead, the content strategist. So this is someone finding and pitching in ideas for the brand and its story. Then you have a DP, director of photography, overseeing how different branded content pieces would be shot. Sometimes you're outsourcing for multiple DPs, but in my opinion, it's good to have one go-to DP that can really own how all the day-to-day branded pieces of content would be shot. Then you'll have your freelance photographers, and these will rotate based on the creative. The reason they rotate is because certain photographers are better for certain kinds of shoots. Then this particular team had two freelance editors that were assigned to different projects. This is key for an artist at this scale because the more people that you have editing, the more content you can make, the larger your overall awareness. Then this team also had freelance copywriters. So the copywriter helps punch up and improve captions. They can also help artists and creative directors with scripts if there's any scripting needed. And they can also work with PR teams on any written form press release stuff to make sure that it's all telling a compelling story. So then there's the community account managers. And then for this particular artist, they had different community managers, one for Instagram, one for TikTok, one for YouTube. And this community account manager will actually do the hard posting of the assets to the different channels. They're very familiar with the landscape and the current changes and trends within their platforms. So next is an ads manager. This person works with the creative team and management to develop ads for upcoming shows, products, and merch. They're usually given a budget, they create the ad, oversee the ad, and manage if it needs to be altered for better performance. So in this new era, I've been seeing a lot of this next role. And this position is called the data analyst. This role looks strictly at the data and does reporting. They track ticket demand, streaming patterns, channel stats and engagement, city by city fan behavior, content performance, and then holistic audience growth. They're looking at the data and then giving assessments. So then next you have the PR agency. So with PR, it's a focus on collaborating with media outlets to gain presence. There's usually a lead PR agent looking after the brand in different regions. The artist that I'm currently breaking down had five different press agents: two for the US, one for Europe, one for Asia, and one for Australia. Sometimes the different agents will all work for the same company, but often it's different PR agencies from the different regions. So that's the breakdown of team two, our brand content team. That team is crucial because they're handling the day-to-day operations of the brand and they're keeping the day-to-day machine moving, even when there's not a giant music video or a big tour moment happening. They're making sure the artist still has awareness between the bigger moments. But those bigger moments is where a third team comes into play. There's a third content team that's focused on the big tent pole moments. This would be things like music videos, cinematic tour trailers, stunts, pop-ups, key performance moments, things like award shows, hero photo shoots, or short film style branded videos. We'll call this content team three, and their focus is brand story. This team is a big part around the storytelling of the brand's current era. Back to our Oceans 11 reference. This is the Basher character played by Don Cheadle. This specialist team's sole purpose is to make and create bombs for the brand. Big moments with lots of eyeballs, and the bigger the bomb, the better. For this particular artist, there was at least one, if not two, bigger bomb moments per month. And then with this team, sometimes it's internal, but from my experience, this is 99 out of 100 times an outside company or agency that's handling the bigger moments. Sometimes an artist is going video by video, hiring the team for just that one video. But then also what happens at this level is the artist will hire an agency and will contract them to do multiple music videos for, say, an album or an EP. And with these agencies, because they're outside teams, they still need to be managed so that everything is on brand and fits the story and the brand as a whole. So again, this is where the creative director and brand manager come into play. So I know this can feel a little bit like an org chart of just these different roles, but you can see how this artist is operating multiple divisions with multiple teams. It's very similar to a typical company structure just built for a music project. It's a lot of people with a lot of specialty roles. But what's super interesting is you'll see as we go down further in these levels, there's a similar thing that's happening, a similar pattern where artists with their content teams are finding success no matter what level they're at. I'm gonna chat about that particular pattern in a bit, but let me quickly explain for this particular artist what we did to be more cost effective and more efficient with the content team. There's two things we looked at specifically to make the whole brand more efficient. One was better sequencing. We refined the process and we defined what we do at what stages in that process. It was a better structure for approvals, better data and better data analyzing. And then overall, better communication and communication systems between the various teams. And then two, we looked at the larger marketing and content budget as a whole from an annual perspective. Once we broke that down, we saw we were doing way too many small shoots where we could be doing larger super shoots where multiple items are captured instead of doing a photo video capture for one moment for one thing. And all of this required a more defined vision, better organization, and better communication processes. So that's the major artist here. But now let's go down a level from the household name artist to an artist that's known within their scene, but maybe my mom doesn't know who they are yet. Example two, touring artist. So for this next artist, again, I'll break down a real-world team that I've worked with directly, who I feel like had a great team, but again, we'll focus specifically on the content side. At this level, the content team was still organized into these same three buckets touring, brand, and big moments. The difference is that everything is scaled way down. Roles that were a separate specialist at the major artist level were now combined into a few people. So with this particular artist on the touring side, the team was four people. The artist, the tour manager, the visual person, either a VJ or LD, like a lighting director, and then one person dedicated towards content. That content person is what we in the business call a predator. It's a producer, director, shooter, photographer, and editor all in one. They were fully the content arm of the touring team. If you're an artist at this level, you already know what a great investment this person is. But what's super important about them is that they deeply understand the brand, the brand story, the current era, and what kind of content needs to be made to support that. So that was the touring team. Now let's look at the day-to-day brand team. So when it comes to the brand team, it was also leaner. There was me on the creative direction and story front. And then in certain instances, I also acted as a brand manager. Then for the day-to-day content outside of Tour, we would bring in freelance photographers, freelance videographers, graphic designers, motion graphics. We may bring in an ad agency or a PR agency as needed. This artist also had a community account manager, but the difference here is that that manager was running all social channels. So Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, and then had multiple accounts across each platform. But because there was so much to manage, this person did have a junior assistant helping them with cutdowns and clips. So then for the big tent pole moments, the structure was the same as the major artists. It was hiring different agencies for these moments. There was just fewer of them. And with these bigger moments, this artist only had five or six major strategic moments per year. So the Ocean's 11 crew still exists here, but it's scaled down. This artist and their management team had the go-to people that they needed to execute their visions. And even with a smaller infrastructure, the artist was growing fast because the team was organized, the roles were clear, and we had a North Star vision guiding the whole thing. And that's where I see the most value for an artist at this size. It's investing more in the creative. Now, obviously, I have a bias here, but defining the North Star vision is crucial for growth. Who are we? What are we trying to say? Who are we trying to say it to? How do we want them to feel and why? And then it's pairing that story with organization. So overall, it's investing more in the creative, more so than playlisting or track breakdowns. This is the stuff that really moves the needle. There's a lot of artists that have had success and have gotten to this level, but then they get stuck. They either aren't clear on their story or their content strategy, or they don't have the right people around them to execute it. In both these scenarios, the audience ends up confused and a confused audience doesn't grow. And then the other two roles that I often see at this level that are missing that can be super helpful is the data analyst or the brand strategist. The data analyst studies what you've already made and shows what's driving growth, engagement, ticket demand, and fan behavior across all the platforms. We talked about this before. And then the brand strategist, their job is to look at the bigger picture direction of the artist and then pitch in concepts and creative angles that still feel on brand. So once they know the brand, they then go to work and do some recon. They'll bring in references, inspiration, and strategic thinking. So the content not only is performing higher, but it's also building the artist's world in the right direction. Okay, so now this is great for a touring artist that's already broken in, but what if you aren't really touring yet? You're playing shows here and there or making content when you can and you're growing your audience in brand. You just haven't broken through just yet. You're investing time and money in content and marketing, but you're not quite sure if you're investing wisely. So in terms of your content team, the question for you becomes what role should you grab first and why? Example three, the come up artist. So when you're coming up, it's usually you alone or you and your manager. There's no staff yet, there's no team managers, and there's no teams, it's you. And at this stage, it's all about clarity and content. You need a brand story, a unique point of view, and a mission. But once you have all that, you then need to figure out how to create an output of content that's telling your brand story. If you don't have your mission, your brand story, or your content strategy, this is absolutely step one. Without it, you're trying to make an incredible movie with no script. And with no script, you're blindly shooting in the dark, hoping that something sticks. And it's probably confusing to the audience that is watching. You may not have a huge budget, but you do have time. And you have the same amount of hours in a day as your favorite artists. Just remember, Christopher Nolan didn't start with the Odyssey or Batman. He started with a $6,000 feature film called Following. Everybody starts somewhere. And your favorite artists at some point were where you are right now. You just need to be creative and intentional with what you've got. So I'll get off my soapbox now and let's talk about how to build your content team. So when you think about a content team at the stage, what is your team and how do you run it? So there's two things that need to happen making the content and then managing the flow of the content. And you don't have to have the budget or the bodies to do this. You just need to get scrappy. But at this level, with all the places you could invest time and money, where should you invest? In my opinion, at this level, it's all about finding your predator. It's the one key member that can completely change your entire project. And when you shoot with this predator, don't just shoot one thing, shoot as many things as you can in that day. Really dial in your pre-production and have your scripts and shots ready. So when you get into capture mode, you can get a ton of meat off the bone. Now, every music brand is different, so it's not a one size fits all. But as long as you or your group are the brand, the predator is the best place to invest in terms of time and effort. Now, working with a creative director could be great if you have the budget to get the story in one centralized place. They can help you flesh out your brand's mission, brand story, and visual identity. But the game now is finding your story, creating music and content that back that story, sharing that story, seeing what resonates, and then doing the whole thing again. And then the real trick at this level, the artists who I've seen make it over and over again are the ones who own the project manager role fully. You need to define what kind of creative you want to do, but then build a system to how you capture it and distribute it. And then another role you'll want to take on is you become the data analyst. You'll time block time for yourself to deeply look at the performance of the things that you've made, what resonated with people and what didn't. Now you're not just making things solely to get performance numbers or vanity metrics. You're making things for you and then you're sharing it with like-minded people. But the data can help you understand what's resonating. To me, at this level, these are the key areas of focus. So many artists are trying to do a hundred things wearing 20 different hats. They think in order to compete with top-tier artists, they need to be everywhere doing everything. To me, this is the wrong approach. In terms of strategy, I think you should look at where you want to make and distribute content and then focus in that one area. Once you get a good sense of that and things are working, move on to the next thing if you feel like expanding. And that's where I'd focus in terms of content for a come up artist. Now I mentioned before that there was a pattern that I saw with the larger artists down to the come up artists that were having success with content. And there was one thing that they all had in common. What's that thing? That one thing is they all had process. They had a process for how they make music, how they make content, and how they distribute. A strong process and a clear, compelling story is what they all had in common. And when it comes to what that process or framework looks like, I'm gonna give it to you right now and lay it out simply here. Step one is getting clear and defining results. Where are you trying to go and why? What's the big mission now? Are you trying to sell more tickets, grow your audience, launch a new era, build more awareness, or expand your creative offerings? Before you hire anyone or make anything, you need to know what result you're actually chasing. What kind of game are you playing now? Then step two is the vision. What's the overarching vision? What's the story? What's the era, or what's going on with the character now? There's a bunch of videos on the Neighborhood Art Supply channel that can help you flesh this out if you don't have it already. Then step three, production planning. Once the results and visions are clear, now you have to figure out what actually needs to be made. What are we shooting? Who do we need? What locations, what formats, what's the budget, timelines, and assets that are required to pull this off. Step four, capture and execute. This is the stage where you execute your productions. Step five, post. This is where the raw materials become the final asset. Editing, coloring, graphics, sound, captions, cut downs, photo selects, and formatting all happen here. A lot of content is either won or lost in post because it's where the story actually gets shaped. Step six, distribution plan. This is the process of creating a content calendar and defining where the items are going to go and why. Step seven, operations. This is where you manage the system that keeps everything moving. Follow the calendar, hold yourself to the deadlines, approvals, file organization, budgets, communication, and who owns what. This is where unfortunately a lot of artists and their teams will drop the ball. Creative types, as they should be, are good at making the art, but often not great at organizing. So figuring out the systems for this part of the sequence is key. And then lastly, step eight, analysis and post-mortem. What worked and then analyzing why it may have worked. That sequence is one that I've seen over and over with successful artists at all levels. And that's the most important takeaway from all this. It doesn't matter where you are in your journey up the mountain, the sequence of how you should attack story, content, and creative is the same framework at every level. What comes first and what comes last is the same. It's a story and a brand featuring your music. Just like an independent $6,000 feature film is a story, or a $250 million shot on IMAX Summer Blockbuster film is also a story. At this stage, you may not be able to control what you have in terms of resources, but you can control how you create and how organized you are. But the more you grow and the bigger your missions become, it'll be good to recruit your crew. You're gonna need these specialists at a certain point, and you shouldn't be doing all these roles yourself. As you're growing, find what you do best, focus on that, and then find specialists for the rest. Find your crew, find your oceans 11. And should you want to work with us directly on any of these elements, you know where to find us. All things the cult creatives, thecultcreatives.com. We also have a newsletter where we write articles on similar topics. If that's something you want to subscribe to, head over to neighborhoodartsupply.com. But until next time, good luck in all your building, and I'll see you on the next one. Peace.