What Makes People Share Your Song With Others?

One of the most liked pieces of content on the internet is an egg,

One of the most sold and shared pieces of art is a banana tapped to a wall,

These pieces are not inherently valuable or even creative,

But your work is.

Your work is creative. Your work is done with a level of generosity to your audience.

But your work is being out-distributed by an egg. Or a banana.

We need to change that. I hope this article does that.

What makes people share creative work with others?

In general, people share things that will make them look good to the person they are sharing them with. The state or quality of the thing that they are sharing is irrelevant.

People share negative (fake) news to co-opt others into outrage (a moral high horse actually feels good, this is why everyday people misconstrue the words and actions of others so that they can cancel them. Cancelling people feels really good, it gives us the necessary contrast to see others as the devil incarnate whilst we see ourselves as perfect).

People share positive things to feel good too. It really feels good to share a funny video. Or to plug someone into a good artist. We share songs we love on our Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram stories every day without anyone pointing a gun at our heads because we want to and we enjoy sharing them.

But what makes us share them?

Basically, we share songs that are good, those we can relate to, those that are accessible, those that others are sharing and those that are novel/unique/interesting.

1. Good songs — there is no marketing that is better than having a good product. A good song compels us to share it with those we like.

2. Songs we relate to — there are days when you feel like you are on top of the world, and you listen to the songs that affirm your belief at the time (and you share them to remind people who is the boss). And there are dark days too, I think most days are dark because of the way everyone loves Adele — it shows heartbreaks are a global phenomenon. You get my point. People love and share songs they relate to.

3. Songs that are accessible — There are hundreds or thousands of content platforms on the internet, but you pretty much use the top 0.2% of them, that is, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and others. So, you are likely to listen and discover songs that are already on the platforms you are already using. It is easier to collect and curate your content that way. So, if you are like me, you are unlikely to go out of your way to an obscure platform just to get that one song from an artist in order to give them a listen. So you listen and share songs that are accessible.

4. Novel songs. There are songs that are just weird and funny. In a good way. Like Gangnam Style. Like Man’s Not Hot. The novelty soon wears off, obviously, but it helps in spreading the message.

5. Songs other people are sharing. Humans are creatures. Creatures that crave to belong. Creatures that crave to belong to a tribe. Therefore, in order to indicate that we are part of the tribe, we tend to mimic what the tribe is doing. And we share songs that other people are sharing (this is heresy #5, I will explain more on critical mass acceptance heresy tomorrow) — if you are like me I am sure you were frustrated about hearing about everyone’s peaches in Georgia!

This list of elements that make a song to be shared is not exhaustive. There are way more reasons to share a song. But here I focused on reasons in your control on why people should share YOUR song.

I hope this helps.

For further reading on content marketing, please read:

1. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath — It will teach you how to make people remember your content

2. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger — It will teach you how to make people spread your content

See you tomorrow!

Remember, don’t be normal. Be a heretic.