Welcome back to a new music marketing article. We hope you're all well!
Let's get straight to it.
For artists, marketing is a very large percentage of your music! And since making music is often deeply personal and emotional, thinking about a marketing strategy to promote your work might seem foreign. And that doesn't change the fact that it’s never been harder for new artists to find audiences for their music.
From the digitization of the music industry and the cheap cost of home recording technology, there’s more new music being released today round the world than ever before.
A crazy amount of new music gets uploaded to streaming platforms each day, but If you’re not sure how to promote your music effectively, these seven marketing strategies for musicians will definitely help get you started.
1. Find out who and where your fans are
To get the most out of your promotion campaign, you have to find out who your fans are. Knowing details like where your audience is or how old they are can help you build a marketing strategy that reaches them accurately.
Today, everything from personalised brand websites to music streaming artist profiles offer detailed analytics to help you learn more about your fans. Some platforms even give detailed information like when fans stumbled across your music online first, and through what channels or search terms. Sick right? Get to know your data, and you’ll get to know your fans.
2. Don’t ignore existing fans while trying to make new ones
Audience engagement is a crucial part of sustaining a career in music whether you have 50 dedicated fans or 2 million. Once you learn more about who your fans are, focus on doing everything you can to connect with them. It’s important to engage with and understand your current fans before trying to find new ones.
Simply distributing music online and hoping listeners find it isn’t enough. Strong, effective music marketing happens when you work on what maintains your identity and integrity as an artist. Whether it’s through email campaigns, your website, playlists, or blogs; fan engagement is crucial for keeping your existing fans looped in and interested in what you’re doing.
An unattractive way of thinking about this is fan maintenance, and a better one is seeing it as connecting with your existing audience in a personal or friendly way. You’ll have the best shot at building your audience if you don’t leave your existing fans.
3. Social media music marketing strategies
Social media is a very large thing, with lot's of users connected. Unfortunately a lot of artists are pushing their sound to new audiences. That's why having a strategy for different social's is crucial.
Whether you’re trying to get the word around about a new release or a new show, social media is still a tool you can use to narrow down who might like your music and to reach out to those people directly.
Paid ads on these platforms are the easiest way of accomplishing this, but look into other tools like hashtags, meetup groups, Reddit threads, and Facebook groups in local areas, to help get you that exposure for free. And never forget to reach out to other bands like yours through their social channels, a little bit of networking cross-promotion can go a long way.
4. Focus on creating non-musical content
Flyers, photos, videos, blogs. Putting lots of time into offering non-musical content to your listeners will help you make a lasting impact that ultimately results in new fans learning about your music on their preferred media.
If you don’t know where to begin, start by defining your artistic identity: why you make music, what your music means, how you got where you are today. This will help you know what to say through blogs. If you can, consider teaming up with a visual artist to help represent your work through videos, photography, flyers, and merch.
5. Send your music to blogs, playlists and press outlets
Take the time to write an engaging artist bio and press release and get someone you trust to take a look at it.
Look up the contact information of members of the press that write about your style of music specifically, and then send email after email until you get responses. It might feel soul-crushing at first, but it’s 100% necessary to engage new listeners.
You might not think getting featured on small blogs and playlists is that important, but it actually is. Progression doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It starts with a couple of people at a time becoming loyal advocates for your music before growing into something more substantial. We have various playlists you can get your music on to.
6. Create your own artist website
Branded websites are another crucial part of building a musical identity and reaching out to new fans. Social media still does this to a degree, but platforms like Facebook and Twitter are becoming less effective for musicians by limiting your reach as an artist.
In order to fully reach your followers, you typically have to pay for it. With your own website, not only do you have a clear path towards reaching audiences, but you also have a way to shape your message and identity on your own terms.
New fans are more likely to follow the story you tell through your website rather than a bland Twitter or Facebook profile. Branded websites also provide revenue streams for musicians that social media platforms don’t.
7. Pay for label services
This last music strategy is for musicians who have a budget to invest in their music.
Hiring a company that offers musical services is the best way to expand you career and reach those new audiences. But sometimes can be expensive. The amount of money you should spend will depend on the scale of your intended campaign, and even then there’s no guarantee that your music will be reviewed or picked up by radio stations—so spend plan accordingly and spend wisely.
If you put away a certain amount of money each week, over time you would have the budget for a big marketing campaign.
Or make a list of college and community radio stations across the country, and magazines that review music, and send out tons of album copies, you’re bound to get somewhere, and save hundreds in the process.
Also check out: Why Choose A Service Record Label?
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