Are you a musician that’s new to music marketing? Are you looking for a way to successfully promote your music online?
Do you want to increase your exposure and gain new fans for your musical endeavors?
Well you’re in luck, because today we’re going to help you do just that.
These days, technology certainly makes it easier to reach out to new fans. With some knowledge, you can leverage the power of the Internet and successfully promote your music online.
The best part? You don’t need a music marketing degree to successfully promote your music on the internet.
In this post, we’re going to help you understand music marketing, so you can successfully promote your music online. Altogether, we’re going to cover several tried-and-true marketing strategies that will improve your music marketing campaign.
Following our marketing tactics will help you benefit from a newly-energized fanbase. A greater audience leads to more music sales, if you can understand the ins and outs of digital marketing.
Before we cover those music promoting tips, we’re going to cover some basics. You’re going to learn what is music marketing and the best places to promote your music. Additionally, you will learn how to make the most of your music marketing campaign with a list of over 40 music marketing tips that we cover. So make sure you read all the way to the end.
Understanding music marketing will help you get your music out there, so that you can make new fans and sell more of your music online.
Let’s begin.
First, Copyright your Music Before you Distribute It
Before you start marketing yourself, you must protect your work. You’ll need to make sure you copyright your music before you make it available to the public. It’s really easy to do, so there’s no excuses if you don’t. Artists are wasting their efforts if someone else can steal their work.
You have to provide an audio copy of the music (CD, cassette, vinyl, MP3) plus printed lyrics with chords or sheet music, if you have it. Copyrights are issued on original work by the US government, through the Library of Congress. Just go to copyright.gov and download the forms you need.
Just remember that you must file a different form for each author, or combination of authors.
For example:
If I have three songs, one that I wrote, one I wrote with Andre, and one I wrote with Jeff and Andre, then I will need one form for each song. But if I wanted to add three more songs I wrote myself, and two others with Andre, then I will still only need three forms. Understand?
Now that your music is copyrighted, you can now distribute it with confidence.
Music distribution has evolved over the years. The old school way to distribute music was to stock a store with physical products such as CD and tapes. That is no longer the case today.
Simply put, music distribution today shares your product digitally, among various audiences on music streaming sites and other digital platforms. Furthermore, music and products are promoted through social media, in addition to radio and video airplay.
What is a Music Marketing Campaign?
A music marketing campaign is a well-planned strategy to market your music. Therefore, you will use a music marketing campaign when you independently market music.
What is Music Marketing? Can I Use it to Promote My Music?
Simply put, music marketing means music promotion or song promotion. So yes, you can use it to promote your music for FREE!
It is a form of Online Marketing or Digital Marketing. People who want to promote their music and products now leverage the power of online technology. The same rules apply for music video marketing.
For example:
Musicians that want to get the word out about their music or other products use many resources on the internet. In addition, marketers also use cell phones, advertising displays, social media and other digital mediums to market and promote their products.
Most important, you need to create and implement a music marketing strategy to successfully market your music online.
Music marketing is the practice of increasing awareness about a brand or product in hopes of increasing music sales. This can come in the form of online advertising, viral videos, live shows and other performances, or free music downloads.
There are many methods that an artist can use to increase his or her exposure. Therefore, it is up to each individual artist to determine which method works best for their audience.
Without a doubt, trends can change over time. For that reason, artists have to be willing to evolve with the times, and try new things to succeed. Check out some of the latest social media trends to maximize your efforts.
Use Social Media Marketing as a Means for Song Promotion
Another subset of digital marketing is that of social media marketing (SMM). It’s a marketing practice used to gain attention and traffic through social media sites.
To promote your music successfully, you must use social media when you market your music.
You also need to keep up with the latest social media trends to effectively market your material. Since social media marketing trends are constantly changing, it is vital for businesses and entertainers alike to keep current to have successful marketing campaigns.
Having a strong social media presence says that you have a brand worth investing in.
Musicians and artists can reach out to current and new fans using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Think about it:
One creative, well-timed post can spread like wildfire through your followers, and to their friends, through shares and likes. As a result, that will give you an exponential reach to new fans and contacts. Above all, you get noticed and in turn you sell more music online. You may even go viral.
Prepare to Promote
Preparation is key in running a successful music marketing campaign. You’ll need to know your target audience and thoroughly outline your goals. If you don’t have a goal set from the beginning, you won’t be able to put together a cohesive strategy, or gauge your results.
Pay attention to your audience. Reach out to them by promoting your new singles and upcoming shows, linking to your website, and giving samples of your older tracks. You’ll also need to add some non-offensive humor or other meme content, to define your image and attitude. If you don’t create a unique and creative brand for yourself, people will likely ignore you or forget you, and you are much less likely to have anything “go viral” for you.
Use Social Media
Like we stated earlier, you need to use social media to successfully promote your music. Doing so will get your music heard by more people. In turn, you will sell more music downloads and merchandise. You will even have larger audiences at your shows, promoting your brand on social media. You just need a sound music marketing strategy to make your dreams come true.
Forget creating a mix-tape to send to a record label in hopes of getting discovered. Simply put, those days are long gone, because social media promotion is way more effective and record labels do not “discover” acts and invest in artist development. Today, all of that work is done by the artists, who must build their brands and grow their following.
But, what’s that catch? That sounds too easy, right? Can I really gain success by promoting my own music?
The answer is yes, however, many people fail at marketing, because they don’t have a sound strategy. Nor do they know what they are doing.
Know This Before You Promote Your Music
Marketing sounds easy. That is because it is simple. However, applying those easy strategies still requires a lot of work to see results.
That’s where people go wrong, by giving up too quickly.
Using simple strategies won’t always produce instant results. Unfortunately, nothing is instant when it comes to developing a good marketing strategy. To succeed requires trial and error, and A/B testing until you get the results you want. It is an inexact science.
So make sure you have a sound strategy before you start marketing yourself. You will save yourself a lot of time and effort by doing so.
What is Self Publishing?
When someone self-publishes their music, that means their music is “published” as soon as it appears in the public domain.
For example, when put you work on iTunes or Facebook, your music is considered self-published.
Musicians can create performance opportunities by spreading their music to the right people on the internet.
Even though there are many outlets for promoting your music, getting noticed by record labels is like taking a shot in the dark. For that reason, many musicians and artists turn to self-publishing to release their music.
To start promoting your music, you can use our list of best websites for music promotion:
- Your own website
- Youtube
- Soundcloud
- iTunes
- Spotify
- Pandora
- Amazon
- Tumblr
- Snapchat
- Stumbleupon
- Dozmia
- Livemixtapes
- Spinrilla
- Bandcamp
We strongly recommend that you use all of these sites to promote your music, or as many as you can. In this list, you have some top music marketing companies and band promotion websites. Using social media to promote and self-publish your music is great for your brand.
For instance, you can post up-to-the-minute updates, alerting fans of last minute shows or new promotions. Additionally, you can create in-depth profiles and send detailed messages about your brand. Your fans can follow your interests, sharing your posts, songs and events with their friends and increasing your overall reach.
See!
Social media can do wonders, if you use it correctly.
Ready to cover the best part?
Here are some tips to help you improve your music marketing strategy:
- Promote your music by word of mouth
- Sell your music on your website
- Reach out to music blogs to help promote your music
- Collaborate with other musicians
- Use email marketing to promote and sell your music
- Market yourself as A Business-to-Business musician
- Focus a good portion of your time on playing lots of gigs
- Post content regularly on your own professional website
- Make interesting and original music
- Find a great publicist & work closely with them
- Promote your music on Internet radio stations
- Promote your music with SEO
- Define roles within your band & camp – Build a killer team
- Promote your music with content marketing
- Buy a music promotion service on Fiverr.
- Promote your music with Google AdWords
- Promote your music in Hip Hop and Alt Rock forums
- Capture behind-the-scenes sootage & share it with your fans
- Promote your music by bundling it with other products
- Be more than a Musician
- Cross-promote with other music artist
- Promote your music at shows & concerts
- Upload your music somewhere new
- Promote your music at colleges
- Network to promote your music (Be on The Scene)
- Promote your music by sponsoring an event
- Promote your music by getting a sponsor
- Manage your finances effectively
- Never make any weak moves!
- Promote your music with fliers
- Develop and streamline your social media presence
- Get some truly amazing promotional photos
- Send your music to local radio stations
- Reach out to a music blog for a review
- Post on social media
- Comment on something that interest you
- Write a blog post
- Reach out to a playlist curator
- Look at your analytics
- Learn something new
- Spend $10 on advertising
Promoting Your Own Music Conclusion
There you have it! We hoped that you learned a lot about how to promote your music today.
You should have a better understanding of music marketing and the best ways to promote your music. Furthermore, you should know how to start promoting your music on social media sites like, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
Given the music marketing strategies that we covered here today, they should help you to get your music heard with no problem. Simply put, that is how you get you music out there with very little cost.
Remember, you don’t need a degree or music marketing software to promote music online effectively. Most of the time, music marketing jobs are created by the musician, which makes them a music marketer/musician. Who could be better at promoting you, than you?
Now get out there and show them all what you’ve got!
