The music industry is one of the highly competitive yet rewarding fields, where being an artist is a lot more than just a great voice or proficiency in an instrument. Songwriting lies at the center of a musician’s career, determining what their music sounds like and how they engage with listeners.
Flexibility with songwriting style can allow you to find a much larger audience and increase your daily followers. Your ability to adapt your songwriting to different genres, themes, and song structures is the key to demonstrating your creativity. This blog will discuss how writing in varying styles can grow your audience and benefit your career. Along the way, we’ll offer practical songwriting tips to help guide you.
Before discussing the advantages of diversity in songwriting, we must establish what we mean by “songwriting style.” Your songwriting style is how you write songs, the melodies, harmonies, lyrics, and forms that appeal to you. It’s your calling card as a musician and can encompass everything from the way you construct a chorus to the subject matter of your writing.
However, a rigid adherence to one specific songwriting style can constrain your reach. A distinctive sound is a must, but if a musician wants to have a long career with broader appeal, he or she must evolve. People are into all kinds of genres, and if you try all kinds of songwriting, which means being highly diverse, you can grab more listeners.
Setting songwriting structure with diversity when we combine different genres of music or switch from happy lyrics to sad lyrics. Having diverse songwriters makes your music more available to a larger audience.
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Different styles will help you reach different types of listeners, which is one of the best ways to create your fanbase. And the more diverse the songwriting style, the better. Here’s how:
Listening to music across genres is commonplace for many fans today. Streaming platforms have invited listeners to sample a broader swath of music than before, sometimes on the same playlist. One way to do that is to diversify your songwriting style and add a touch of pop to rock, hip-hop, or electronic music. Some artists, like Taylor Swift, leaped from country to pop successfully, while others, like Post Malone, have married rap to rock and pop to widen their audience.
Here is where diversity in songwriting becomes just as vital as diversity in sounds and musical genres: exploring the range of human emotions. A lot of the time, after a song is played, it means something to people because they connect with music emotionally. If you are writing songs that elicit different types of feelings (like happiness, sadness, anger, or nostalgia), you have more people who can relate to your music.
Some listeners might enjoy your bright, catchy anthems, while others might prefer your more reflective, melancholy ballads. The emotional tones balance out in your songwriting structure, making your music versatile and relatable and capturing the engagement of your fan base .
Having a diverse songwriting style also expands the potential for collaboration. Collaborating with artists from other genres or musical styles is a great way to tap into their audiences and introduce your music to more potential fans. Cross-genre collaborations are a growing trend in the industry and sometimes a great way to develop your fanbase while adding new dynamics to your songwriting.
Experimenting with different styles is great, but the structure of your songs is critical to keeping listeners engaged. This songwriting structure means arranging different parts of a song. However, writing in a flexible format allows for listener interest and helps your music appeal to more citizens in the future.
There’s the standard verse-chorus form, of course, as well as the AABA form and even more avant-garde forms, such as through-composed songs. Using different song structures to write your songs will keep these consistent but also provide diversity, so with each new song, the listener will be able to listen to something different each time. A good pop song will use a verse-chorus form, but a ballad is going to need more of a narrative arc from the intro to the outro.
Regardless of the recipe you decide to use for the next delicious track, the hook is the one part that’s a must-have. A solid, memorable hook is what keeps your song repeating inside listeners’ heads long after they’ve listened to it.
There must be hundreds of ways to introduce and repeat hooks in your songwriting style, so the more you experiment, the more likely you are to produce a memorable and successful song. The hook is your ticket to capturing attention, from melodic phrases and catchy choruses to lyrical punchlines.
With regard to songwriting structure, repetition can be familiar and catchy, but repetition for the sake of repetition gets stale. The duo skirts the line between recognizable song formations and surprising diversions, keeping listeners engaged.
That could mean reintroducing the chorus multiple times with a slightly different arrangement each time or including a (pleasant or jarring) shift in the middle of the song. More precisely, a bridge (in verse-chorus-verse songs that may make space for a less rhythmic verse part). New fans will find your music not only accessible but also exciting when incorporating these songwriting tips into their writing.
Diversifying your songwriting style doesn’t have to be a scary process. You can even start simple and build your way up to having as much variety in your music as you would like. Here are some songwriting tips to help broaden your creative range:
One of the many simple ways you can diversify your songwriting style is by playing around with other instruments. If you usually write music on a guitar, switch to a piano or synthesizer. Switching the instrument can provide samples of melodies, chord progressions, and rhythms you likely wouldn’t imagine otherwise.
Are your lyrics heavily centered around one theme, such as love or heartbreak? Find Your Narrative Storytelling is a potent tool in songwriting, and exploring different narratives in your songs—whether they’re about personal growth, sociopolitical issues, or even fictional tales—can widen your appeal to different listeners.
Mixing elements of different genres is a great way to make your music unique. Try combining genres you wouldn’t normally find yourself in. Use one genre to inspire another, such as placing a hip-hop beat over a folk song or rock parts on an electronic track. But this genre-blending typically produces fresh and different songs that can appeal to wider audiences.
To further expand your songwriting style, you can get inspiration from those who aren’t in your genre or musical circle. Study their lyrics, melody choices, and song structure and see what they do that you can adopt to your music. It is not about copying another artist but instead learning from them and adapting the techniques for your own work.
Most pop and rock songs are written in 4/4 time but experiment with playing in different time signatures like 3/4 or 6/8 to freshen up your songwriting. Likewise, composing songs in other keys — especially in ones you don’t encounter often — can lead to fresh melodic prospects and nudge you from your more familiar habitat.
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So, what does any of this have to do with helping your fan base? To summarize it in the briefest way, complex lyrics lead to a likable and compelling music repertoire. Not only do you keep existing fans engaged with your music, but you also take the opportunity to reach new audiences by improving your songwriting with each release.
People love it when an artist surprises them, and when you broaden your creative arsenal, you increase the chances of folks identifying with your music. Diversity, especially with songwriting, allows you to cover different demographics.
These playlists can also help you reach fans of different ages, ethnicities, and musical tastes in your catalog, which in turn will help widen your base. In addition, while playing with new styles, you will naturally grow as a songwriter, so the quality and depth of your music will improve throughout the years.
Having a diverse songwriting style is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to attract new listeners. A variable approach to songwriting in terms of structure, emotional tone, and genre will reach different people and have a sound refresh.
The secret of songwriters' success in the music industry is not necessarily writing great songs; it is writing great songs with high impact. By applying these songwriting tips and seeking diversity in your craft, you will be well on your way to earning a loyal and growing fan base.
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