The Music Virus

The Music Virus isn’t some code out to destroy computers with James Blunt on their iTunes.

Nope.

The Music Virus is a moment / happening that every so often occurs in the music world. Irrespective of genre, decade, race, sex or rhythm or whether itʼs a group, a band or a solo artist; they are at the centre of a storm of words - the buzz of the industry.

It doesnʼt have to be the resulting exploitation of a teenage dream (see Rebecca Black – ʻFridayʼ) and it doesnʼt have to be something of the magnitude of The Beatles. It could be that the whole world listens or one town listens - it doesnʼt matter.

The Music Virus is the result of an artist creating passionately and a listener listening intently.

It would be silly of me to say how a music virus comes about. This is what makes its occurrence so special - its a stark rarity when you take into account the amount of artists creating music at any one time.

The question i’m more interested in answering is ‘What can you do to become the centre of such a buzz?’. And not aimlessly as the butt of a joke like Rebecca Black’s Friday but as the result of a listeners genuine love for the music you have created. Say for example the buzz surrounding the free self-produced Blue-CD-R’s Vampire Weekend handed about at the beginning of their now envious ascent.

Why did their music spread?

And don’t tell me they were great at SEO (didn’t have a website then), or had a great Facebook fan page (didn’t have one then).

Connections? Maybe. They did live in New York.

Two things the band themselves could ensure; the music was exceptional and the music was available.

Without exceptional music people will not want to listen. And again I can’t explain exactly what makes some music exceptional except that it is completely unlike anything else around at the time. Exceptional floats like a turd to the surface of the pool, the duds sink to the bottom and slowly get sucked down the drain into the pit of indifference.

Their music was available because it was free. Anybody could take a copy, spread it, put it on their blog - this is how word spreads. It wasn’t about making money at that stage, it was about building an audience that truly loved their art. A passionate audience who would go on to buy their debut album, and push their second release to number 1 on the Billboard charts.

The Music Virus thrives on the exceptional.

If this post has made absolutely no sense (I apologise), I’ve written a free ebook entitled ‘The Music Virus: A Guide To Going Viral’ where I go into a little more depth and which you can download at my blog (for free of course) here!

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Marko write 7 days a week at his blog www.behyped.com where music artists are sure to find helpful stuff lurking about - mainly concerning sticking out in the music world’s dense mass of flotsam and jetsam.