Episode 87: How Artists Define Genre, Message, And Sound

Identity isn’t a vibe—it’s a system. We dig into the practical steps artists can take to define who they are, where they fit, and how that clarity turns into real momentum. From choosing a primary genre and useful secondary tags to shaping a sonic identity you can reproduce live and across records, we share a toolkit that makes your music easier to find, understand, and support.

We talk about the evolution from influence to originality, and how scenes, culture, and technology leave fingerprints on your sound. You’ll hear why Auto‑Tune can be a pillar, how TikTok subtly rewires structure, and why the “bedroom pop” aesthetic still echoes in today’s hits. We unpack message and values—how artists like Taylor Swift and Oasis align behaviour, lyrics, and community to project a clear promise fans can believe in. Authenticity becomes more than a buzzword when your music, conduct, and visuals agree.

Sonic identity gets special focus: production choices, vocal delivery, repeatable chains, and the role of collaborators. We dig into producer‑artist chemistry—think Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson, 40 and Drake—and how the right partnership can reveal the strongest version of your sound. Finally, we translate audio to visuals with branding: colours, textures, type, and styling that make you recognisable at a glance. When your identity is clear, metadata, playlisting, PR, and partnerships stop being guesswork and start working together.

If you found this helpful, follow the show, share it with a fellow creator, and leave a quick review telling us your primary and secondary genres—let’s see where you fit.

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose

The Core Question: Who Are You

Influence, Evolution, And Development

Genre: Primary And Secondary

Culture, Style, And Technology

Message, Values, And Authenticity

Building A Sonic Identity

Producers And Signature Partnerships

Branding, Image, And Visual Language

Why Identity Underpins The Business

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I'm the author of the book, The Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback, and ebook format. I'm a music creator with a variety of credits as a writer-producer. I'm a consultant, an artist manager, and a senior lecturer in both music business and music creation. Wherever you are and whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of this community. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. Okay, so in recent weeks I've interviewed quite a lot of different people, right? Music creators, music executives, catalogue specialists, financers, all sorts of different people. And I'm just going to circle back today to a subject that is wholly important to music creators on any level. And it I'm literally also going to take a leaf out of my own book, right? Literally, because I wrote a chapter in my book about the rarely spoken truth of self-discovery, right? So it's a very important subject. It's about who you are as a music creator. So let me indulge you with a few thoughts to bring this subject up. Just the idea of today is to just get you thinking about some of the things that others will be thinking about you because it connects who you are as a creator into how you make money as a music creator. So, you know, if a recording artist, for example, speaks to a new manager or a PR company or a producer, an AR, a music publisher, whoever it might be, they are going to be met with questions, right? And they all relate to that same central subject, which is who are you? Where are you? And what they're really kind of asking is, what are you? But that just seems like a really odd question to ask. But it's truthfully what they're asking, right? Because people are trying to identify the place in the landscape of the music industry where you sit, right? Because by answering that question, it offers context, right? So things like, you know, who are your influences will be a typical question that will come up, right? And this is people trying to figure out who and what you are, right? It allows them to draw links between what the artist likes and what others will like about that artist. So, you know, these are simple questions, but they're major questions uh that can stall an artist, especially early in their career, right? So it's important to try and answer those questions for yourself before you can expect others to understand them. You know, everyone is unique, that's for certain, right? No one's denying that. But it's also important that artists can actually be placed into categories. It's rather like buying something from Amazon, right? It goes, it has to go in a box for it to be sold, right? Music is the same if it is going to be sold to the public. That doesn't mean you have to be put in a box as a person, but you do as a music creator on some level. Some people have a problem with that, but it's just the way it is because this is the business behind music, right? Um, it doesn't mean that an artist can't be different. Being different is encouraged, it's admired, it's enjoyed, but there's a balance to it, right? So let's get thinking about a few things that might be able to help you here. Do you make the same music that inspires you? It's an interesting question, isn't it? Because as creators, we we basically start out wanting to make music because we are largely inspired, right? We are original in our core, but we also partially emulate the things that we've heard. And there's nothing wrong with that because that is how influence works after all. So the initial step for many is to create music that is similar in style to the music that inspires them. Again, nothing wrong with that. It makes perfect sense. But over time, perhaps the music that first inspired us as creators and the music that we now create has separation in distance, and that separation, that distance is evolution, and that is artist development. Artist development is a multifaceted process of self-discovery that draws on wider influences and experiences, right, to create a sense of balanced integrity that perhaps yields, let's say, a more refined output of musical definition. It's then that an artist actually finds an identity that they can move forward with. Now, it need not define them for their whole career, it just needs to define them for the introduction that they have to a wider audience. They can evolve further down the line, they should evolve further down the line, they will evolve further down the line because the things that they're listening to right now are going to change in the same way that the clothes that they wear right now are going to change. People change, it's all a part of the music industry because the music industry is ultimately defined by people and people do change, but we have to be something at the start of our career in order for it to make sense and connect with other people. So there are a few things that kind of define what an artist is, right? So I'm just going to split them up into little categories. The first one is genre, right? So genre definition. A solid understanding of an artist's primary genre is crucial. So primary genre is an umbrella term, you know, that covers an array of styles, right? So for example, EDM is a primary genre, but inside of that there's dubstep and eurodance and ambient dark, drum and bass, you know, electronic rock, many other things, right? Inside of RB falls soul and uh disco, motown, funk, and many others. So you've got a primary genre that acts as the top point to which your categorisation of your music sits, and then underneath that is your secondary genres. Now, you you could argue that those are subgenres, you know, in in the context of metadata and artist discovery. But it it's important for an artist to acknowledge that their primary genre, you know, and what their secondary genres uh are because you know, for some this will be a relatively pain free task, right? But for others it'll be confusing and overwhelming, and you know, I just do what I do, you know, that kind of thing. And uh, you know, an AI is helping us in some way to be able to actually understand what different genres can do. Loading up something into an AI uh, you know, GPT can help us to be able to go, oh, it's this. I never thought about that. And that's good too, because sometimes love is blind, right? When we're too close to something, we can't see it for what it is. One of the battles I think as well artists can often face is when they merge genres and then they have to work out how to best categorize themselves, right? That can be that can be quite painstaking, but it's often worth kind of checking with trusted sources what their opinions are, right? And it's best to kind of avoid unrecognisable categories, right, that often create, you know, the things like soft pop, for example, you know, like we might have an idea as to what that means, but whether that's stood understood on an algorithmic and on a collective level is ne, you know, is a problem because it's uh perhaps a little bit too woolly, for example, right? You know, alternative is a word which is often used, but you know, by its raw definition, people often associate it with something that's obscure or eclectic or abstract uh that challenges the mainstream. Meanwhile, you know, others associate it solely with alternative rock or alternative pop, right? Alt pop is a genre which largely conforms to mainstream appeal, which negates the original definition anyway. So this kind of thing, you know, it can send artists in circles, and you can end up chasing your own tail if you're not careful, but it it is worth researching it to be able to understand where you think you best fit. Um so for instance, it could be, you know, that you have a metal band uh that plays with a sort of classical music influence, right? So that band might label themselves as prog metal, progressive metal, you know, due to the hallmarks of their fusion style or their rapid techniques, whatever it might be. But in all actuality, identifying their genre as neoclassical could then open new doors, uh, not only in the live sector, but also in terms of digital categorization for playlist consideration, mood consideration, synchronicity for media, all sorts of things. Also, there's nothing shameful about a country artist labelling themselves as pop, for example, and then finding suitable secondary genres such as country pop or cowboy pop, you know, as secondary genres. So, genre definition, it's a retrospective task for some and and an intention from the off for others, right? But in any case, an artist knowing their genre enables identification, and that is a hallmark of an artist's identity. Okay, what about the cultural, stylistic, technological traits, right? It's always worth considering the roles that culture, styles, and technology play in an artist's sound, right? As these factors that contribute, you know, they contribute to the artist's identity, right? So let's take, for example, auto-tune, right? It's become a very sort of integral part of the sound of many hip-hop artists in recent years, to the point perhaps where some artists would not sound the same without it. Meanwhile, the stylistic impact of, let's say, TikTok dances as uh, you know, is it is influencing the texture and the structure of many dance pop songs, right? So styles often have scenes and cultures are attached to those scenes, right? So, for example, you know, let's take Billie Eilish, right? Billie Eilish is a unique and influential artist with a very distinctive uh sonic and vocal sound, but it could easily be argued that no matter how unique she is, and she certainly is, but even she derived in part at least from the bedroom pop movement of the early 2010s. So if you were to remove that scene, perhaps her sound or her entrance to the market might have been different. I mean, maybe not, but we'll never know. Um, but there are there are musical cultures to consider, right? So as an artist, it might be that you can identify with a certain culture that's maybe not even part of your upbringing as a person, but it's part of your musical identity, you know. So a singer songwriter from a city in Europe could be a country artist without having, you know, even being to the USA in their life. In the same way that a K-pop-inspired girl group from Australia may never have been to South Korea, right? These are all factors to consider as they contribute towards an artist's identity. So if we just circle back to the start of this episode, right, I talked about people that will come to you, music professionals that will come to you with questions, right? One of the things that they'll often question is like your message, right? What are your values? What are your messages? You know, so an artist can get a message across in their music, right? It could be in their lyrics, their the type of stories that they tell, or the vocabulary that they use, for example. Um perhaps it is in how they are using, you know, rhyming schemes or or metaphors as central messages, right? But maybe it is in how they conduct themselves too, right? And every artist has some kind of message that really sort of underpins their entry point to a wider audience, right? And it's usually a combination of artistic identity and good PR, really, right? But having a message that creates a sense of values between an artist and their audience is is very, very important and more important now than it's probably ever been, right? Taylor Swift is a great example of that, actually, right? She generates a great sense of inclusion and unity amongst her fans and encourages a sense of self-leadership and defiance through the way that she conducts herself as a businesswoman, right? And yet she exhibits her vulnerability and her sort of fallible authenticity in her songs, right? So this is a message of realness and it means something to people. Um, you know, like in the in the 90s, the UK band uh Oasis, they organically embraced this kind of lad culture and made music fans out of people who were barely really music fans prior to their existence, right? You know, the the band combined their kind of like their brash sort of outlook with working class modesty, and it connected with such a large number of males in particular that you still see people with their haircuts, even to this day, right? So Oasis, Taylor Swift, you know, what whilst their songwriting is undeniably outstanding, the message of those acts is also crystal clear. And it's important for an artist to define their message and the values of their brand through their conduct and their music. Now, I get the idea of authenticity, it's crucial, isn't it, right? There's a lot of people that try and pretend and act to be authentic about something when really we can see that perhaps they're not quite that way. Now, that might work for a certain amount of time for a certain type of person, but ultimately I think people sniff through it. So it's got to be real, hasn't it? So the answers to a lot of these things that I'm talking about now, perhaps they involve a little bit of soul searching, right? A little bit of digging deep inside of yourself to try and find the answers. Okay, another important point is around sonic identity, right? So this can be a struggle for many artists, right? So sonic identity, just to kind of define it, it's basically the sound of the music and the artist itself, right? So it's not a fixed subject, right? It can and and it should evolve, right, as an artist evolves. But for something to develop, it needs to have a starting point that can be defined, right? And anchored inside of a sonic identity that creates, you know, something that defines the artist's recorded music, right? So it's not so much a songwriting thing, perhaps, but something that sits more so in their production, perhaps. So let's think about some of the key factors that contribute towards a sonic identity, right? So music production values, that's a big one, right? Uh choices of instrumentation, vocal delivery. Vocal delivery is a big one, isn't it? That's not not just not the performance, but also the post-production of it. What's that chain look like on that singer? Can they use it live? Can they use it from record to record? And that then links on to the use of technology. You know, how important is that for an artist and their sound? So it could be, for example, that you say, Well, you know, uh let's say it's a folk singer songwriter. You go, well, technology is not as important, but I would argue it is because if they record their vocals in a certain way, or maybe their reverb is done a particular way, a particular patch of reverb that they use, or maybe it's some of the outboard they use, maybe it's the guitar, and that's just a woody, let's say, acoustics-led genre, right? So if we to go into something that's more electronic driven, there are of course absolutely loads and loads of things to think about. Okay, so let's add a little bit of context. So I mentioned a couple of artists earlier. Let's take Ed Sheeran as an example, right? So he's an artist who has shown a great deal of like sonic evolution throughout his career. But at the heart of it all is just his voice and his acoustic guitar, right? So if let's go a little deeper into that, right? So his voice, it's soulful, it's beautiful, it's heartfelt, and yet it flips quite comfortably into something very playful and technical when he raps, right? His guitar sound is also pretty signature, right? It doesn't sound uh uh, you know, like a clean, deep, rich country record, right? It just doesn't. It doesn't need to because it sounds like him. It's in his playing, it's in that sort of tinny sound of that small acoustic that he's known for. That's him. So let's take another. Let's take Elton John, right? Over the decades, out of his, you know, amazing career, right, through all the outfits, the colours, the themes, the sounds, um, you know, the sound of his piano is ever present, right? Um so you know that's barely changed since the 1970s, right? So much like Ed Sheeran, everything could be stripped down to just that one voice and that one instrument, and that keeps its power, right? Um here's another example, right? Um the Daft Punk vocal sound. Just try try and Google that, right? Google the Daft Punk vocal sound, right? There are countless theories and projected signal paths to recreating that sound, right? Um that you know that the electronic Jew have famously used in in many of their songs, Daft Punk, wow, legends. It's signature, right, to their sort of sonic identity. And it's just you know, whether it's vocoders or talk boxes or whatever it might be, but as technologies develop and fuse together, there are a range of vocal sounds that remain yet to be discovered. And as that could be something that you could tap into on a unique level, which combines technology with vocal production, right? Some producers also possess that sort of unique sonic fingerprint that, when paired with the right artist, can bring music alive, right, and just forge like vibrant partnerships. And you know, it's it's very interesting to think perhaps how Michael Jackson would have sounded without Quincy Jones, right? Or how Drake may have sounded without Forty, or how Def Leppard might have communicated their music to the world without Mutt Lang, right? It's fair to say that it all would have sounded a little bit different. Okay, let's talk about branding, right? Branding in image. It's uh it's always been important. It's it's crucial now, isn't it? You know, it plays a very, very key role in how the style of an artist is actually perceived, right? So everything from colour choices to shapes, textures, even things like font styles. A lot of fonts these days are actually logos themselves, right? But all of these things they contribute towards an audience's connection to an artist, right? So specialists sort of, you know, fashion and style consultants could play perhaps a significant part, right, in an artist's style, but some artists style themselves as their image is so unique to them and their artistry, right? So while styling and branding can often slip under the sort of let's say conscious awareness of the public, they are always present, right? And they always have been, and they they need to be very carefully selected through, right? And it might you might stumble across something early on in your career where you just go, bang, that works. It can happen, but it's incredibly rare because it's about a selection process, and again, it links back to all of the things that I've said in the last sort of 20 minutes or so, which is digging deep to look inside, right? You know, I mean some you sometimes you get groups that have been styled to not look styled, or you know, flamboyant pop acts that you know that have been styled to look self-styled, for example. You know, an artist's image can often have a sense of uniqueness. Uh it can be pioneering, right? It can be it can be, or it can be purposely dull, right? It it there's there's all sorts of different aspects to this, but all of these things they all contribute towards the story that an artist portrays. Okay, so there's just a few thoughts there, everybody. I thought I would throw this in here, right, at this particular point of the uh of the podcast, because you know, we've done quite a lot of episodes on this podcast now, and what I've really talked about today is something which is truly central to absolutely everything. So when I talk to music business uh executives on the podcast, and they might talk about collection or metadata or marketing or analytics or legal frameworks or whatever it might be, everything, absolutely everything, is underpinned by the artists and their songs. Because if songs are the lifeblood of the music industry, then the artists are the vehicles, right? And without them we don't have a business. And so it's absolutely of paramount importance that we encourage artists to find uniqueness in who they are as people, which then hopefully extends itself into who they are as artists because it brings joy, it brings happiness. Happiness to absolutely everybody around us. And I think that actually that is probably the most important aspect of the music industry, right? So dig deep, everybody. The answers might not be too far away. You may have even found them. If you have, you'll have noticed the pattern, right? Once you figure out where you are, who you are, it helps you to figure out where you fit. Once you figure out where you fit, it helps you to figure out how to market yourself. Once you figure out how to market yourself, you start to see growth, and it's at that point that you can then start to build partnerships and build it into a career. Didn't that sound simple? It is simple, everybody. Let's not get in our own way. It is simple when we really, really put our minds to it. Yes, you have to work hard, but it is plausible. I see it every single day. It's happened for me, it's happened for many others, and it can happen for you too. I'm gonna leave that thought with you. Have a great day, everybody, and may the force be with you.