In this episode, Jared discusses the importance of continuously improving your marketing and content as you progress in your music career. He shares insights on how to capture high-quality content from gigs, the benefits of upgrading your assets, and real-life examples of musicians taking leaps of faith to enhance their branding. Jared emphasizes the need for a proactive approach in capturing and utilizing content to attract high-paying gigs.

"Over time, your content should always be improving, and by doing more gigs, you not only get better at performing but also create higher-quality marketing materials that can transform your music career."

- BookLive: Everything you need to start marketing and booking your act online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)​
- Your First Gig: Everything you need to book your first high-paying gig.
- Fulltime Music Masterclass: The Secret To an Unlimited Stream of High-Paying Private Event Gigs …Without Spending a Fortune on Online Advertising or Having Any Connections!
- Fulltime Music Academy (Gig Vault): 24,665 High-End Venues + Event Planners: Use this directory to book your highest-paid gig to-date.
- Breaking Into High-end Gigs Masterclass: How I Went From Broke Musician to Thriving By Breaking Into These Largely Unknown High-Paying Gigs

What's up, renegade musicians? It's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast, where we see what the majority of the music industry is doing and how it does not lead to the happiness, financial success and enjoyment that we all deserve. And we do the opposite.

That's why we're renegade musicians. So I wanted to chat today about two things. Well, actually, it's kind of all related to one concept, which is the fact that as you progress through your music career, all of your marketing and branding and assets that you have should be improving.

And so I was thinking about this today because I was looking at my website, and over the course of the last two years, I started extreme strings just about two years ago. It's now July 14, something like that. It's Tuesday, so I don't know what day that means.

And so, yeah, I started it about two years ago. It'll be August when I moved from Milwaukee to Denver. And the extreme Strings website has changed significantly over those two years, because over those two years, a lot has changed.

For example, I had never played a gig as an electric violinist before. Well, right before moving to Denver, I actually played my last gig in Milwaukee in late July. And it was an electric violin gig, but I had no idea what I was doing.

It was very new. And so that was actually a nice event. National Association for Catering and Events.

I sponsored it with my electric violin act. And from that I got some of the first pictures of me performing on electric violin. I still look like I had no idea what I was doing.

Cables were messy, that kind of thing. But since moving to Denver, I've played probably 70 or 80, maybe even close to 100 electric violin gigs now. And I have had professional photographers at many of these gigs.

Not that I've hired, but that, you know, if it's a wedding, then the couple has hired. If it's a corporate event, then the corporation has hired. Same for videographers, when actually, you should check it out on YouTube, if it exists.

I don't know if it's still up there, but one of the very first videos of me performing on quote unquote electric violin is not on an electric violin at all. It's actually on my acoustic violin. And I have a little, like, band microphone, ribbon microphone that I've wrapped around the body of my instrument.

And I'm in an office with a white background that does not look very good, but it's me playing quote unquote, electric violin. And honestly, I will be real with you. I was not even using that microphone.

It wasn't plugged into anything. I was just using an acoustic, like a regular microphone, probably like an SM 57 or something like that, and recording that audio. But regardless, you know, these weren't great assets.

It was not great imagery. The video footage was not good, and you could probably tell that I wasn't playing electric violin, but I used them anyway because you got to get started somewhere. And then as I've played these gigs, you know, they've been photographers, videographers, some of whom have sent me those, those new photos and videos, and I've got their permission to use it.

So you'll notice that the quality of the photos and videos on my website and YouTube channel and Instagram have increased over time. And then similarly, the content on my website has been evolving. So I put out my best guess when I first created the website, my best guess as to what the act would be and what people would respond to.

And it's a little harder to understand, like, get the analytics on what pages people are visiting and how long they stay, but it's possible you can do it.

And so based on, you know, those analytics, and based on, you know, getting feedback from event planners who look at my website, and couples planning their wedding who look at my website, they would ask questions. And based on those questions, I realized, oh, my website's not clear enough about x, Y and Z.

And even one of the tweaks that I had had made was the first version of the website did not link to my socials at all. You know, people go to the website and there'd be nothing for my YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, that kind of thing. And so I got questions like, oh, do you have an Instagram? Where do I see your portfolio? And based on that feedback, I put icons to my social media in the top navigation of my website.

That's not the only navigation because I talk about that in one of my masterclasses that I give is like, you know, you can't just put your socials at the top. You got to keep them on your website and it'll get them doing what they need to do.

So over time, you know, you're going to do a lot of different gigs, even if they're, you know, not necessarily the biggest, highest end formal gigs, but you're going to be doing more gigs over time, and you've got to have a strategy to capture content from those gigs.

I like to bring a tripod with me that has a little phone adapter on the end, and I just put that in front of my gigs in front of my setup or somewhere kind of hidden out of the corner. Another thing that I'm doing today, I'm actually on my way to a gig right now, is I'll bring a tripod. And my.

I do have a really nice digital camera. It's a DSLR camera with a nice microphone on it, and I will set that up. But you also could, you know, hire a friend to come and record your gig for you.

If you've got musician friends, they are happy to help you out with this. You just can throw them some cash if they're free. Not gigging, they will record your gigs for you.

And so your content should always be improving. And so that kind of brings me to the second part of this, which is a shout out to one of the members of my Fulltime Music Academy program, Jan. He runs a gigging act called the Percolators.

They are based in Philadelphia. And he has been kind of struggling a little bit to break into the high end gig scene, but he was provided this opportunity to sponsor a nace event in Philadelphia, and that actually, that event is happening right now as we speak.

And he was a little hesitant about making it happen right now because he had just gotten back from a trip from Italy, and he's also getting over a sickness.

But, you know, he took my advice and said, I'm gonna do it anyway, even though I'm nervous and I have no idea what to expect. And so he signed up for it, agreed to do the sponsorship, and the other amazing thing that he did for the. For getting high end content was he actually hired a videographer to go to this gig for him.

So it's not just a musician friend. He actually hired a video production company. I don't know how much he spent.

Hopefully it's not too, too much, but he is going to get amazing high quality content that is then going to transform his music marketing. And I'm just so incredibly proud of the leap of faith that he took to make this happen.

And I know that it's going to pay huge dividends for him, both as far as, like, meeting up with high end planners and also getting great content for his website and social media.

So that's kind of the idea behind, you know, we always have to be improving our content. And even just by doing more and more gigs, you get better and better at them, and so your content is going to improve. Right? So that is the lesson for today.

So keep thinking about how can I improve my content? How do I get a footage of my most recent performance. And actually, if you listen to one of the first episodes of this podcast, it's entitled Record Everything. And I must admit I have not been sticking to that record everything principle.

I've gotten a little bit away from it, but I'm remotivated to do it. And I'm going to be recording as much as I possibly can because you never know when that gold nugget, amazing, beautiful piece of content that can make you, you know, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars will pop out. So that's all I got for you guys today.

If you, if you want a free trial of BookLive, the software tool where you can find those high end event planners and venue owners so you can reach out to them, get on their preferred vendor list, book some gigs, then I invite you to get a free trial of BookLive. Go to BookLive.com and that will sign you up for a free 30 day trial of BookLive.

Alright, that's all I got for you guys today. Thanks for listening to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "Your music will not market itself!".

Bye, everybody.