In the latest “Seasonal Trend Alert” article in the Author Hub, we are supplied with a very exhaustive list of seasonal and cultural events that we should provide content for, with the closing statement being:
Creating diverse content
Our customers are a diverse group looking for content that represents their communities.
Discover why you should create diverse content. Spoiler alert: it’s not just the right thing to do—it’s also good for your sales!### Creating diverse content
Our customers are a diverse group looking for content that represents their communities.
Discover why you should create diverse content. Spoiler alert: it’s not just the right thing to do—it’s also good for your sales!
In my personal experience, I’ve often followed these trend alerts, and like many other authors, I’m sure, have tailored a lot of my output to what is going on in the cultural calender etc. Furthermore, I’ve particularly tried to create music which is infuenced by, and pays tribute to the different music styles of different cultures. AKA, world music. I’m particularly interested in African, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Asian and folk types of music, and put a lot of effort into buying and playing real instruments, and/or using world music library instruments and trying to use them in authentic ways. (I know I’m far from unique in doing that, but I’m just saying).
The problem is, that when it comes to these items being found in search, I’m finding it very difficult to find them unless I use generic titles and tags, and even then, they then become lost in a sea of similarly titled and tagged items.
As an example, I recently made a track which I called “Sacred North Africa”, which was a fusion of traditional and contemporary elements, but using my real peerformances on Moroccon instruments: loutar, and guembri, having researched the playing styles, and specifically Gnawa music.There are some big world music festivals in North Africa in the coming months, and I was trying to cater for anyone who might appreciate some specifically North African sounding music. I uploaded it, and tagged it with some admittedly very niche tags, such as gnawa music, loutar, guembri, morocco, north africa etc, but I was dismayed to find that I could not find my track unless I used its title word for word, and none of those tags words used as search terms resulted in my track being found. In other words, the search engine was not capable of finding my track, or dealing with those tag words.
I had to change my title to “An Africa”, and as advised by support, I used search terms from the most “relevant” and “popular” items that come up under a search for “Africa”.
My sad conclusion is that originality and authenticity is not rewarded, and attempting to provide diverse content will basically amount to an ineffective use of time. Because of this experience, I find some of these seasonal trend articles to be quite “triggering”, in that I actually feel like we composers are effectively being gaslighted when we are advised to provide diverse content, but in reality, it will be impossible to find.