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7 Music Promotion Tips

Greetings

As an indie, you have probably listened to successful artists and wondered what is so special about what some of them do. You have heard plenty of great songs by unknown artists that are much better. The truth is unless you are really lucky, it's all about marketing and promotion. Your music needs to be found and heard by your prospective fans so that you can build your fan base and get noticed by the right people.

To be found you need to market your music which means connecting with those listeners who love your music and turn into fans. One way is to engage the services of specialist music marketing companies if you have the budget. Otherwise, there are 7 things that you can do to maximise your self-promotion.

Self-Promotion Ideas

Before starting out on self-promotion you need to have a theme or musical story which will be consistent across the platforms you use. This will enable you to start to establish a recognizable brand that you can cultivate to help you stand out from the crowd. So focus on these  two things:

 

What is unique about you or your music? This is what sets you apart from others in your genre.

The uniqueness factor should be authentic. To cultivate this and for it to be something that fans can relate to, it should be authentic. It is easier to maintain consistency across platforms and continue the story if it is real.

Once you have the story you want to tell you now have the basis of your brand. A visual logo helps to translate this idea or feeling and helps brand recognition and brand building.

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Your Musician Website

 

In order to maximise your marketing effort, you need somewhere that is home base. Somewhere to drive traffic to, somewhere you control. Having your musician website is the ideal focal point. This is where you can have exclusive content, sell your music or merchandise and most importantly build your fanbase by growing your email list. Your email list is a direct route of communication to your fans and can be much more personal than other forms of communication. Also, these relationships belong to you and not a social media platform.

 

Target Your Music to Those Likely to Love Your Music

If you have the resources then general music promotion is an option. But in this world where ranking is governed by the algorithm, general promotiom can be harmful. This is because these algorithms take into account the engagement of all who are exposed to your music. So if you promote your music in a way that will include listeners who hate your music they can impact your ranking. This is something to be aware of with paid playlisting promotion. However, if you target your promotion to listeners likely to love your music you can positively impact how algorithms see your music. 

Make Music Videos

 

Firstly, It is now an inescapable fact that in this one-click world that visual content is king. In the world of the scrolling screen having visual content will vastly increase the chances of engagement compared with a text link.

 

Secondly, this is a great way to define your brand and set you apart from the competition. It doesn't need to be a big financial investment there are services that offer affordable visuals, for example, rotorvideos that use clips and your own music to create high-quality videos. Or you can use the services of freelance video creators see my Music Biz Services page for some that I have used.

Set Up Your Own Video Channel

Youtube is still one of the biggest databases in the world and still the go-to platform for music. If you reach a certain level of subscribers then revenue sharing becomes possible. Having your own channel is a great way of having somewhere to direct your fans and share your videos especially with the launch of YouTube music. It also makes it easier to subscribe and engage with the channels of influencers in your niche.

Engage With Influencers

As well as engaging with fans engaging with influencers could take your following and visibility to another level. For your niche, do a search for the top 10 channels or pages and start engaging by adding value through giving constructive comment. Something more than just 'awesome' or 'nice song'. By adding something meaningful this will attract the notice of other commenters and the influencer who will be tempted to check out your content which may lead to more views, shares and other engagement.

Advertising

Paying to gain reach, when you have a product to sell, is something that is going to become standard on many platforms. Facebook, in particular, has already changed its algorithm to make it difficult for 'Pages' to have any worthwhile reach without 'boosting' a post. 
 
As mentioned above, where the advertising or promotion is targeted this is much more beneficial than general promotion and most advertising on search engines or social media platforms allow for audience targeting and lookalike targeting. This is when you get a better return on your advertising budget.
 
Depending on your expertise in using music promotion apps or platforms, you may feel that it is more effective to engage marketing professionals. There are many music promotion services out there so do your research. They need to be offering something more than ' I have 1 million followers'. So what! None of them may like your music. So look out for these points.
  • What are the artist reviews saying about their services? Are there any independent reviews?
  • What are they offering other than tweeting, posting to their followers? For example, interviews, blog or magazine placement, playlisting etc. 
  • Are any placements permanent? 
  • What platforms will their music promotion cover?
  • What is their reach, national or global and where is their main catchment?
  • Can they offer a targeted promotion for your genre?
  • Is the music promotion campaign organic (Important!)
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Having the above in place will get you off to a good start but will still need plenty of hard work and perseverance. But then, if you don't believe in your music why should anyone else? 
 
Good Luck

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