Creating Your Publisher Brand

As a sheet music self-publisher, it is beneficial to create a distinctive brand for your sheet music products. A cohesive publisher brand can easily turn your one-time buyer into someone who recognizes and returns to your work as a repeat customer! This article is designed to help you take the first steps toward creating your own brand, and help you improve/build upon any branding you may already have in place.

Creating a brand can sound like a daunting task, but it really comes down to asking yourself two main questions: What is my identity as a self-publisher? and Who is my intended audience?

GETTING STARTED

Marketing company Hubspot provides a great crash course on developing your personal brand.

The process

Branding your sheet music is a practice in intentionally illustrating your identity a publisher, not just an arranger or composer. Additionally, uniformity across your sheet music products will visually tie your works together.

Elements such as a logo, color palette, fonts, and imagery are not only an illustration of your identity as a publisher, but they are all recognizable cues for your customers as well.

To a first-time customer, your brand conveys a sense of quality. To the returning customer, your brand is easily recognized and instills a sense of trust in your product.

Check out the video from Hubspot above which provides an excellent general introduction to this topic. Several concepts discussed can be applied to your efforts in creating your brand as a sheet music publisher! Here are just two that jumped out to us, adapted to relate to developing your publisher brand:

“People should be able to recognize your music by how it’s presented, not just by who is presenting it.”

“Combine your own uniqueness with the music that only you can create, and you’ll have the foundation for a great brand.”

Once you have a general sense of the concept of brand-building, take some time to answer the following guided questions to help you build or improve your own publisher brand:

1. What is your identity as a publisher? Who do you want customers to imagine is behind your sheet music? Are you a serious academic, or the life of the party? The visual elements of your brand, such as a logo or the look of your cover page will convey this much more quickly than words ever could.

2. Who is your audience? Who do you imagine purchases your music, and how can you capture their attention?

3. What experiences do you create for the musicians who select and perform your music?

4. What does branding mean for you? What do you hope to get out of your branding efforts?

These are big questions that take may some reflection to answer, but will be time well-spent to achieve a branding strategy that works for you.

“Branding your sheet music is a practice in intentionally illustrating your identity a publisher, not just an arranger or composer.”

FIRST STEPS

Develop a custom score template

Simple, elegant, and highly effective score template branding used by ArrangeMe member, Alison Gillies (aka quartetpad.com).

The easiest step you can take in your branding efforts is to develop your own custom score template. In the music engraving world, it’s called creating your own “house style.” This approach to your sheet music gives all of your scores a uniform look for the thing your customers spend the most time looking at: the notes on the page!

Do you use a stock template from your notation editing software? Simply choose a unique font for the song’s title that matches your identity as a publisher. The next thing you can do is vary the stock music fonts throughout the template to customize things like accidentals, articulations, chord symbols, etc.

Fans of ArrangeMe member Alison Gillies (aka quartetpad.com) instantly recognize her work when previewing her scores, thanks to her uniform font usage and custom score template approach across all of her arrangements.

Design a logo

Another relatively easy step in your branding process is to create a logo. Choose an image that can be easily recognized, which will tie all of your products together. You can use your logo in your marketing efforts on your personal website if you have one, your sheet music covers, on social media, as well as any other digital content you post.

Your logo can be as simple as the initials of your publishing company name in a consistent font, or it can be a custom icon with graphic art and symbolism. This is where you get to flex your creativity beyond the staff paper!

We recommend using a free Canva account to easily experiment with color, font, images, drawings, and more. You can save your logo in Canva and easily apply it to sheet music covers and anything else you create there.

Create branded cover pages

The combination of incorporating your logo on a custom cover page for your sheet music is almost all you need when it comes to branding. This approach has been used for decades by all major publishing companies and there’s no reason you shouldn’t use it, too! An interesting cover page that relates to your music is a great opportunity to communicate to customers what your music is about.

Check out the excellent example of these two branding elements together from ArrangeMe publisher, Learning The Harp, below. When viewed together on Sheet Music Plus, their products look like they belong together—because they do! To the first-time customer, this branding conveys a certain serenity associated with the harp, and establishes trust in the product through a clean and professional look. And notice how their logo is incorporated at the bottom of each cover page! This is an outstanding example of how a logo and cover page can work together to accomplish an intentional, consistent, and professional look.

Learning the Harp creates beautiful, unique, and consistent covers for their sheet music, creating a recognizable and polished branded product.

NEXT STEPS

Consider organizing a series

Once you have developed a logo and a cover page strategy, you might wish to expand your branding approach even further.

One method you are most likely familiar with as a sheet music customer is the concept of a sheet music “series.” Do you have more than one sheet music product for a particular ensemble, grade level, or theme? If so, you’ve got yourself a series!

When a customer notices the cover of their piano solo is part of a “Beginner Piano Series,” for example, they are encouraged seek out other related material. Your series should be organized visually so that it’s easy for customers to browse. This is especially relevant on your website, which we’ll discuss in the next section below.

A quick look at Hal Leonard’s choral products in the example image below shows a number of choral series, each with their own distinctive look. (Notice the consistent logo usage in the two different cover treatments pointed out below!)

“Do you have more than one sheet music product for a particular ensemble, grade level, or theme? If so, you’ve got yourself a series!”

ArrangeMe member Aaron Bennett of StringfulScores.com has a uniform look on social media. @stringfulscores on Instagram.

Your brand online

With social media and a personal website, you have the ability to showcase all of your music in one place, allowing your brand to really come together. This is where all the work you have done developing a score template, logo, and branded cover pages pays off.

One of the greatest benefits of self-publishing your sheet music through ArrangeMe is that your products are listed on our retail partner sites. We encourage you to link to your sheet music in as many places as possible, including posting to your social media accounts and your website.

Branding is especially important when advertising your sheet music in these digital spaces, and this is where the practice of connecting your music to an intentional visual presence has the greatest power.

Include an image of a portion of your cover page and incorporate your logo anytime you post to your social media accounts to promote your latest release. Use your logo as a custom watermark if you display preview materials on your website. These are just two ideas to connect your branding efforts to your online presence. Once you open yourself up to the creative process, you’ll find the branding opportunities are endless!

“Once you open yourself up to the creative process, you’ll find the branding opportunities are endless!”

TAKEAWAY

Whether your strategy is as simple as a customized score template, or a fully-designed logo treatment with cover pages and a social media presence, determining your brand as a self-publisher is a powerful tool to convey both your identity as a publisher and a sense of quality and professionalism to the musicians playing your music!