make it in music, success in music, music career success,
make it in music, success in music, music career success,

Helpful Music Promotion | Music Marketing For Indie Artists

Music Promotion Do and Don'ts for Indie Artists

It is a privilege to be able to make music and put it out there into the world. But one thing I have learnt is that without music promotion my music will be lost in a sea of music as there are millions of artists like myself with the same ambition. Music marketing and social media are the way forward.

With so many services we are awash with offers to promote our music, get our music on playlists, get our music radio plays, get our music on the charts. But if it was that easy I wouldn't be writing this article. 

Before I continue, you will see some promotion services being shown in this article. I have used them as part of my promotion campaigns, promotion toolset and /or in expanding my music promotion knowledge. I have benefited from using them and can personally recommend them (also see my music biz services page).

 

That is not to say you will have the same experience as I have (better or worse) as there are many variables e.g. music genre, budget or your own work effort, that will impact your experience.

So, having tried more than a few ideas and spent hard-earned cash on music promotion services that crashed and burned and others that helped my music to fly.

 

Here are some helpful DOs and DON'Ts that may save you time, money and frustration.

Music promotion DOs and DON'Ts

DON'T believe the hype. If the service promises the world then you know it can't deliver.

DON'T go for general 'spray and pray' promotion unless you have a large budget. This is the wide funnel approach, the same approach junk mailers use, hoping to get a small amount of engagement.

Music promotion,music marketing, Sales funnels (credit insightsquared.com)

InsightSquared who specializes in sales and marketing analytics stated:

 

Fast-growing companies are qualifying leads more effectively and stringently. This means that while there might ultimately be fewer opportunities, the ones that remain are strong ones that are very likely to buy.

What this means for us indie artists is that we should be targeting our promotion to listeners who are likely to engage. In summary, targeted promotion not general promotion.

I have used this company to gain access to Spotify playlists when I want to to get a boost in streams. They offer a genuine service and you see real results even starting from zero streams.  For more info CLICK IMAGE

DON'T use bot services. Unfortunately, there is a whole industry out there set up to extract your promotion budget and offer services based on fake engagement. You've seen them:

 

'I will promote to my 100 Trillion social media followers' (ok, I exaggerate a little).

'I will get you 100k plays in a week by real people'

 

These services can feed the ego, I know, but in the end, they serve no other purpose. To succeed in this music business you need real fans, super fans. What do bots care about your music?

DON'T submit your music to pay to listen services. Well, you can, but there are better ways to get feedback on your music.  That may also lead to organic promotion and help build your network and that is to join forums or groups related to your niche.

 

Related post: X factor Song Reviews

 

These, tend to be formed by creatives like ourselves and although you need to be prepared for reviews answers that you were not expecting (see related post) you will get some constructive feedback that will improve your music and may lead to collaboration.

Listeners need encouragement to take action but how can you do this in an efficient way and hope to turn them into fans. Hypeddit offers solutions for trading free downloads for actions like commenting and following. They also offer courses on Facebook audience targeting for music makers. I use Hypeddit and have benefited from their strategies and courses. Here is one of my download gates

 DON'T use Facebook ads unless you have familiarized yourself with audience targeting methods on Facebook. Without this knowledge, you will definitely not get the best return on your investment and will be helping Facebook's bottom line rather than your own.

DO consistently keep researching music promotion methods. We are not the first to want to promote our own music and won't be the last.

 

If I knew when I started out what I know now I would have saved myself a lot of cash that I could have spent on techniques that really deliver. So, don't just take my word for it see if anyone else is suggesting the same things. You can't keep a good idea quiet for long in the promotion world.

Nathaniel has built a successful business starting as a beat producer. He has gone through the same problems we independents all come across but, he now knows what works and has plenty of ideas to offer. I use the ones that work for me. Learn more by clicking the link below.

Make Them Beg To Buy Your Music

DO get quality music reviews for your music. When you have a professional well-written review you can use this everywhere. Your electronic press kit (EPK), social media, website, press release etc.

 

A good music reviewer will strike a tone that it is constructive that is of benefit to the reviewee. Use one of the freelancer platforms for this like Fiverr. This gives you the option to check out their reviews first.

Rebecca Cullen, the founder of Stereo Stickman, offers a music review service that is second to none. As a musician and songwriter herself she gets it.

 

Her reviews are always supportive, professional and extremely well written. One of her reviews will be an asset in your portfolio of press and media. Check out her reviews.

This is a review she wrote for one of my previous productions Have You Seen It

DO know your audience. This really does help you with decisions about music promotion spend. As I have already said the spray-and-pray is not effective. If you know your audience, then, this is where your promotion bucks should be spent.

 

So, analyse your data, look at gender, age and location. Google, Facebook, YouTube and most of the streaming platforms offer this type of analytics for artists so use it.

 

The above is good to give you an insight into who likes your music. However, there is another view of your audience to take into account and that is the audience at song level. This could completely change the focus of your promotion efforts. Ask yourself these three questions

 

  1. What is my theme and message of the song
  2. Who is the audience that I want to hear this message
  3. Where would I find this audience

When you answer these questions you will have an alternative focus for your promotion. This focus could move you away from promotion based on genre to specific interests instead.

DO Cultivate a compelling or at least an interesting personal story about your musical journey. Many social media influencers will tell you to give all of yourself to your social media audience because they want to know about you the person and connect.

 

I personally find this hard to do but, the main point is 'connection' and there are different ways to connect and feel an affinity with an artist without having to know how they have their eggs done. 

 

If you are not a great storyteller, again you can use a freelance bio writing service where they will take your raw bio and turn it into a best seller ( I exaggerate) but you get my point. You can then 'serialise' it by releasing exerts on your social media with a great post title and image. Alternative, you can do the 'this is what I had for breakfast thing' whatever suits your personality but try to give your audience a way to make a connection.

 

If your audience connects, then they are likely to become fans that you can turn into super fans and super fans will support you in achieving your dream.

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