Highlights
- Secured over 3M+ views across platforms, 2M+ views through YouTube long-form content, and 25k total followers
- Designed target audience and niche roadmap analyses to determine digital competitive advantages and positioning
- Designed and currently run a website containing a 70+ song discography and merchandise line
- Advise a 25-person global cohort of experienced musicians monthly on marketing and retention strategies
- Executed a guerilla marketing campaign through branded cards, a system where listeners voted for the next single, and a 1-1 e-mail list outreach strategy that targeted interested listeners
- Co-created a multimedia album campaign that linked to a website, live stream, short film, and shoe design
- Helped a creator secure over 2M+ views on TikTok and become a YouTube Partner through Content Strategy
- Created a marketing campaign that resulted in trending audio on Instagram with 400+ reels and 200,000 views
- Developed brand partnerships that resulted in collaborations with XXL, Barstool, Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg
- Did this all with no industry connections, professional studio, music internship, or management team.
The Why…
It all started in 7th grade poetry class where we were asked to write a poem for an assignment. For some reason, I found myself quickly able to put rhymes together to create these poems, and I was able to put multiple together with ease. I soon found myself helping other people make rhymes and creating parody raps during our monthly “Performance Fridays”.
I would continue to create raps during high school as a way to express myself and have fun. However, I didn’t realize the power of music until my childhood friend committed suicide in 2019. Lost for words, I felt like nothing could move me except writing music. I performed a tribute to him through a rap later that year, and felt a shift in my mission with music. Music gave me a purpose that I could rely on when all else failed. I wanted to make music to help people take control of their lives and discover their purpose the same way I did.
Music Production
I started releasing music in high school and college through mixtapes and singles, and was able to achieve a lot of feats in recent time. Through my years of being a musician, I achieved more than 1M+ views across all platforms and produced and recorded more than 100 records.
Video Creation/Editing
My most recent endeavor is learning how to create story-focused, entertaining YouTube videos. I have released more than 1000+ pieces of short form content and 200+ videos over my career with 1k+ subs and 273k lifetime views on my music channel.
However, it was only recently when I decided to focus on storytelling through YouTube. I did this through a new channel named “kiddest rohan”. All of these videos are focused on telling a story, completing a challenge, or both. The playlist with all the videos is linked below.
Marketing Campaigns
I continued to release music throughout my years in college, and started producing instrumentals for my music, which are available on all platforms. But through this process, I treated my albums like marketing projects. Here are the main results:
- Kid Rohan & Trerico – GenRift (2021) – collab storytelling album about two greedy tech employees learning the importance of gratitude and self-love. Launched as a multimedia album with a story script, website, and merchandise.
- Kid Rohan – CHILDISH (2022) – trap album about embracing your inner child and being yourself. Released with a ID card marketing campaign where 50 users got free custom virtual ID cards for going to “CHILDISHWORLD”.
- Kid Rohan – lonely (2023) – lyrical album about combatting loneliness and learning self-love. Released with a google form where users could communicate their loneliest moments.
- Kid Rohan – Campus Freestyles (2023) – Freestyle project that landed two placements on Barstool where I taught a college class how to freestyle. The freestyle videos totaled more than 250,000 views.
- Kid Rohan – UNBREAKABLE (2024) – trap album about building resilience and self-belief. Released with a lead single “RUNAWAY (feat. Lil Wayne)” that had a trending audio on Instagram with 400+ reels and 200,000+ views. Additionally, launched this album with a Discord community called “UNBREAKABLE MUSICIANS” dedicated to helping musicians find connections, collaborate, and elevate their art.
- Kid Rohan – RO’S WORLD (2024) – combined YouTube video longform content marketing model with Mixtape that resulted in 1M+ views across all platforms, 20,000 new subscribers and a YouTube Partner Program approval
Freestyle Rap
In high school, I started freestyle rapping because it sounded fun, and it was a great way to build my skills. I continued doing this by freestyling for hundreds of college students during my time at Indiana University. During junior year, I launched a series of freestyle videos where I freestyle rapped for Indiana University students. One of these videos gained more than 100,000 views on Instagram and is viewable here. During junior year, I was also able to host a livestream where I freestyled for 1 hour straight using the words of my viewers.
To view a playlist of all my freestyle rap videos during college, click here.
During my senior year, I was even able to give a lecture to a college class about how to freestyle rap and freestyled during the lecture! The full video is below.