“The saddest people I’ve ever met in life are the ones who don’t care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and with them, any happiness is only temporary, because there’s nothing to make it last.” - Nicholas Sparks
It is said that people that know themselves or live by morals are the best at never falling for peer pressure. This can be considered branding. Your brand is basically your theme and if you know your theme you can understand your target crowd. Artist (mainly hip-hop or R&B) can get highly confusing on what direction to go in with your music; however this can be fixed very easily when you know your brand.
So lets get into what i mean by Branding. Branding is a basic understanding of what your look and target audience will be. This will give you a better understand of where to do shows, who to network with, what kind of instrumentation to use, Album artwork, and mainly, your audience. When you have no idea WHO to target, you can find yourself getting into a visious loop. You will find yourself creating mixtape after mixtape, video after video, and not getting any response. Branding is the reason why people that make up hustle tracks, new dance songs, and chants songs seem to get a faster buzz then just music with no direction attached to it.
If you call any record label, they're going to be looking for quite a bit of information. An EPK, BMI or ASCAP Registration, PK, Social Following, etc, but those things we won't get into right now. One thing they will be looking for is a Single.  A Single can set your brand very easily, but this is how you create a one hit wonder, because with most one hit wonder, they put out an awesome catchy single that goes totally against there brand, but is commercial enough to grab a buzz; however once they get ready to drop there album its nothing like the audience expected and the audience gravitates away from any of there future projects.
The best way to brand yourself is with visual presentation. Give yourself a theme for example, i know an artist that has a jungle theme, so when it comes to his branding everything he does from music videos, photo shoots, graphic promotion, all incorporate the jungle theme. Doing this will help his brand become memorable and he will become "That guy with the jungle stuff". Now, i know to some. that may seem weird to want to be know in that way; however after a while people will start to incorporate your name with your brand.
"THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING, SO YOU'LL NEVER KNOW WHERE YOU'LL END"