Aura Vs. Slop Content Strategies

In partnership with

How 15 Small Brands Achieved Remarkable Marketing Results

Stop believing you need a big budget to make an impact. Our latest collection highlights 15 small brands that transformed limited resources into significant market disruption through innovative thinking.

• Case studies revealing ingenious approaches to common marketing challenges

• Practical tactics that delivered 900%+ ROI with minimal investment

• Strategic frameworks for amplifying your brand without amplifying your budget

These actionable insights can be implemented immediately, regardless of your team or budget size. See how small brands are making big waves in today's market.

Get the case studies for free here.

The AI Slop Wars Are Here

I'm starting to believe the slop wars—the war waged on all of us by AI companies trying to entice us to make as much garbage as possible—is going to become the most defining thing in your marketing and what you present to fans.

Maybe you missed it, but Taylor Swift fans felt quite betrayed for using AI in her promotional videos. I've been discussing this a lot with people who hire me for consulting. This is becoming our most defining decision that shapes more marketing decisions than anything else: DO WE ENGAGE WITH SLOP? how much do we post, what goes on which accounts, and what do we choose for the artist account versus the fan accounts?

On one artist I was working with, we realized we hadn't posted on the grid in a month because nothing felt good enough—everything went on the fan account. That's bad. Especially after considering Rachel Karten’s substack “Link In Bio” about how the grid grows your followers but we were too busy having too high standards and though that maybe we need to loosen uo. We were really underusing it.

What Aura Actually Means

This is from 8Ball, Sean Monahan's Substack. His thought this week: the opposite of slop is aura.

I don't really like the word aura because it's like using the word "thing" in writing—it means too much. But what I've come to accept is that aura basically means "what I'm seeing here is exceptional."

When people see aura, they're saying, "I'm seeing something that's not average, that's not mid." This feels bigger and newer, like somebody's out ahead. Slop is over-exposure. It's doing cheap shit all the time.

The Quantity vs Quality Lever

One of the biggest concerns has always been quantity versus quality. If we're only doing quality things, we generally need more budget or time. But slop—AI creations, regenerating the same thing with a different filter—that's winning with quantity.

Enjoying this? Forward it to a music friend you’d like to be closer to and start a discussion!

When things aren't going someone's way on social media, one of the main things I say is we should adjust the quantity versus quality lever. Some people are like, "I can only post once a month because I do these insanely high-quality videos." Maybe we need to get to posting three times a week and lower the quality?

Sometimes it's "I'm putting really low effort in." Well, we need to up the quality because people aren't getting into what you do. It's mid, they've seen this a thousand times.

When we're trying to fix things and get a better result, we figure out the quantity versus the quality of posts, videos, and songs. Should you be releasing more often? Should you be taking more time?

Aura Doesn't Always Cost Money

A big thing for aura versus slop is when you're posting less, but everything is much more high-quality or exceptional—you're in more cool looks, you're putting more effort in.

Around 2015, Amazon had to adjust its return policy because tons of influencer kids were taking pictures of themselves in an outfit and returning it the next day. Every single day. Three pictures, three outfits, return everything.

What a lot of people do for photo shoots is exactly that. A fashion stylist friend recently had a 200,000-monthly-listener artist who's a really tall woman say, "I want to raid somebody really fashionable's closet." They found this person, tried on tons of different looks, had a similar body type, and got tons of photos for carousels.

You can achieve aura through hacks. Aura is not always expensive. Aura is not always high effort if you have a good eye and you're fast. Aura is often a lot of thought. Most of the time when I see artists people tell me have aura, I'm just seeing a level of thought that goes into things more than what a lot of people do. They do more depth, and they come up with a better idea. Sometimes it's time, sometimes it's money, sometimes a friend has access to a Rick Owens showroom.

At the end of the day, how much somebody likes your song matters. You can get them in the door through the slop method, and they can grow to love it. But you catch more flies if you can do something exceptional.

Most people land in the middle. They do something cool every once in a while, and they do a bunch of posts of mid. The person who does only insane quality doesn't post enough and usually doesn't get enough attention. The person who posts 300 videos in a month is churning out slop, and a lot of times, no one engages because it's all unremarkable and low effort.

Where you lie in this is somewhere in the middle. How you move that lever is very determinative of what happens with your music.

The "If You Like X Artist" Problem

I get sent posts all the time: "If you like this artist and this artist, you should check me out." I saw this video making the rounds this week, calling it a terrible content strategy.

@benfromvelo

not a good play #musicindustry #independentartist #artistsoftiktok #diymusician

What I see with these guys is they've read too much “brand” stuff but haven't actually inhabited the music world of doing this work.

South Arcade, which now has 1.3 million monthly listeners and a ton of aura, largely did this. The last time I saw one of these posts from them was six months ago. They've moved on.

Why do artists do this? Because it works in the algorithm to find the right people. I call these audience finding videos. When people say they're shocked anyone does it, they're not recognizing the pain point that music artists have.

Is it less aura? Absolutely. It's very low effort, very fast to do. But musicians like to see a hero’s journey from you. It's not necessarily a diluted brand if you do a journey from mediocre to exceptional. This week I did an exercise where I looked at every artist I listen to rabidly. Everyone of them had early material I would never listen to willingly, but what they make now is exceptional. It’s ok to do cheap things that get you a platform and grow into making aura level moves at all times.

If you're going, "I am only going to work if it's all aura," you're a true purist where you can't even barely post because your aura has to be on 11 at all times. Different story. But "why would you ever do this" is a very limited take.

There is a trade-off. If you're like "the only way this is ever going to work is if I'm all aura," you're going to have to have music that backs that up and an image that backs that up. You're going to bank on word of mouth.

Whereas if you're like "the only way I'm going to get discovered is if I start to find that audience, I've not been getting any attention," you may need to do audience finding videos and sacrifice a little aura.

You Can Grow Into Your Aura

Referring back to the video above, they go on about positioning yourself as a cheap knockoff. The fact is, people are often like, "Oh, I would like another artist like that." They listen, and if they connect with the music, that's what matters.

I did a TikTok/Reel that took off, where I show all these different artists who were bad versions of themselves at one point and then turned into artists with a ton of aura. You can grow up into your aura after you get some attention. People love to see an artist have a journey.

I think of Joji, who many people would say has a ton of aura now, but was Filthy Frank on YouTube at first. You can come back from anything.

The argument I have with what this guy’s take is that first impressions don't matter that much. People change their minds all the time, especially with music. You can be a totally cheesy version of something and then be very wildly respected. Radiohead is one of the greatest examples. Everybody hated that “Creep” song, thought it was so lame. Then they became the most respected band in the world with the next two records.

Considering Aura vs. Slop will become the defining scale of how someone markets themselves in the coming year. Where will you stand?