Why it’s important and ways to work the system
We’ve all seen them: artists with names in all caps, names in all lowercase, names with capitalization so wonky it makes your eyes hurt a little. Creative casing can be a really fun way to brand yourself and keep your artist name fresh and unique.
But before you go with creative casing, there are some things to take into account.
How do music platforms want me to capitalize my artist name?
Generally, platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, and the like tend to prefer artist names that are in what’s called Standard Title Casing. You can read more on that in our next article, How to Format Song Titles, but for now, it’s basically First-Letter-Capitalized casing (think proper nouns). But that doesn’t mean that creative casing is totally off limits! Just that you’ll need to do a little planning first (which, maybe it’s just me, but like… I always recommend anyway).
How to get your creatively-capitalized artist name approved
If you want to creatively case your artist name, you’re going to need to develop web presence first before you can distribute under that artist name. Basically, this serves to help the platforms make sure that you’re really branding yourself that way and didn’t just accidentally leave caps lock on when you submitted your release to your digital distribution service. When I say web presence, I mean make sure you’ve decked out a Facebook artist page for yourself, an Instagram, a website, etc. (For more examples of the kinds of web presence music distribution teams can accept, check out Soundrop’s Help Center here).
Why does web presence even matter?
The benefits of web presence are actually twofold. Not only are you helping the music stores to respect your creatively cased artist name, but you’re also providing yourself with branding that can really help you engage with your fans further down the line. Overall, the more holistic your branding presence is, the easier things are gonna be in terms of getting your music on the right artist pages and making sure your music doesn’t get mixed up with anyone else’s.
Really, that just speaks to why it’s so important to make sure your artist name is unique to begin with! Help your fans find you easily and make yourself look as official as possible by doing a little cursory research before you hit that submit button. If you just go with the artist name “Bob,” for example, you’re probably gonna get confused with a bunch of other Bobs. But if you go with the artist name “Farmer Bob’s Beefy Beats” or “b O b!” and really brand yourself with thorough web presence, you’re gonna be a lot better off in the long run.
So, tl;dr: Artist Name To-Dos before your send your music to Tidal, TikTok, and friends:
- Google the artist name you wanna use. Is it taken or really similar to a bunch of other people? Maybe think of ways to make it more unique to your personal brand.
- If one of those ways is creatively casing your name, design your web presence beforehand! That way, your fans will be able to know exactly where to go to start bugging you for the album after they can’t get enough of your single and the music platforms will be ready to respect the casing you chose.
Done with that? Awesome. You can get started submitting your music with Soundrop right here, right now.