You do have a voice that will make people stop for a while to listen. And on top of that, your composition skill is something to be proud of. So you decided to try your luck and started your music. That’s great! But after that, what’s next? Generally, a piece of great music is not always equal to success unless you get it out of the market.
But how? With the number of talented individuals from rising singers to well-known artists, it sounds impossible that your song can make it to be heard by others.
Since music alone is something personal and intimate, so marketing seems to be a bit unnatural that needs careful planning and strategy.
If you’re new to the music industry and still grasping how the system works, these 6 essential guides towards promoting your music will definitely help you in your way.
1. Make Remarkable Music
Let’s get straight to the heart of marketing—if you want to have a smooth-sailing promotion, you have to have great music.
Regardless of whether you are in a group or band or a solo musician, you’re fighting against all odds. You’re competing to get noticed by the people who listen to various genres, so having that “WOW!” factor will really make an impact in the music industry.
It’s a common misconception that a well-planned promotional strategy and a well-known music company will do the job of making the people hooked up with your song.
The reality is, your music drives itself to the market, so the better the overall track, the easier the promotion will be as your fans will do it for you—the power of the tongue. In that sense, making your music as remarkable and relatable as it could be, is a must.
Meaning, focus first on the song—make sure to have meaningful lyrics to share and compose a rhythm that will surely swing your listeners’ ears.
Having a composition that you are confident to share, is the best fuel for promoting your music.
2. Organize Musical Events
Those “baby” steps matter.
Whether it’s a fan gathering or meet-up, or a pop-up band performance, or simply a jamming session, hosting events in the local community is an effective way to start introducing your music and just let them know that you exist.
Musical performance in the street is now becoming more popular, though this seems difficult due to the current pandemic, but gigs, tours, and guesting still offer to establish a connection between artists and listeners.
Also, having a series of regular shows at the same venue is a good stepping stone to build your identity and confidence in a small crowd. Get booked at nearby venues remember local support is meant for local artists. Once you’ve established a name for locals, heading out of the road, or even hosting music scenes place by place will start to fall into place.
Conducting a fanbase contest is also a great idea as it will increase the engagement of the people to your music. Having awesome prizes such as a premium account on a certain platform, or an original copy of your personalized memorabilia, up to tickets and merchandise, will surely attract your fans.
3. Publish Your Music
Free streaming is now a popular channel to get your playlist playing without hassle. Having your albums published on these online recording stores allows people to discover your craft.
But as a newbie in this industry, you might start your music career on a low budget and you may wonder how to release music out of tight financial capacity.
Good thing is that nowadays, there are lots of websites where you can upload your music for free and most of these sites allow fans to download songs even without a subscription, taking your track on a global stage.
Some of these sites include:
SoundCloud
With over 150 million tracks, SoundCloud will surely connect you to your audiences and most importantly to other artists.
For free accounts, musicians can upload tracks and albums for free and even podcasts, while paid pro accounts let the user distribute songs to all major music services.
Free Music Archive
Unlike iTunes, Spotify, and Tidal that require the user to subscribe before they can download music and songs, Free Music Archive offers no subscription for them to download. However, the publication process is the challenge here as you need to request to participate by submitting your track on their site.
Google Play
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Google play may not be as popular as iTunes or Spotify, but ignoring this platform is still a big “NO”. Google, as a company, is one of the top service providers in the digital world, and most Android gadgets have google play installed in it.
Isn’t it a great opportunity to easily promote your music?
Personal Website
Above all these widely-used platforms where you can publish your tracks, having your professional website is probably one of the things you have to consider. Other social media may help you promote your songs but as a rising artist, centralizing your tracks and playlist into a website is a wise choice compare to bringing them to different platforms with the same content.
Listeners, potential clients, and recording companies can easily get all information about you and your craft without too much effort.
Your website primarily includes:
- Contact information: Some talent recruiters and recording companies might be scouting you for future projects, or a fan asking a question, or even a potential business owner who wants to book you for a session, make sure to have your updated email address, contact number, sites, or pages, or some other means for people to get in touch with.
- News hub: Like a bulletin board that you can use to announce things like your new releases, tours, gigs, guesting, and media appearances, and the likes.
- Merch store: Presumably, your albums might start earning money as it gets views in the market so you may want to have an online store where you can sell personalized items for your avid and future fans.
4. Utilize Social Media Platforms
Social media has been a game-changer for different industries, including music. But like selling a product or service, promoting your music to anyone might cost you your time and effort with little feedback. So knowing the target audience or potential listeners of your genre will help you determine which social media suits you as each of them has its strengths and weaknesses.
For instance, Facebook and Instagram offer a paid advertisement that directly reaches your target audience. Depending on the amount you invest, your promotional content may reach thousands of people for a certain period.
Another useful feature of these platforms is that you can have your live performance and stream it online as if you’re performing an on-site gig. With your Facebook and Instagram pages, you can post updates, videos, schedules, and gigs that can be seen easily.
The second is the use of YouTube account. Some well-known artists like Charlie Puth, 5 Second Of Summer, and Justin Bieber started from this platform—and look at them now! They have made their names marked in the music industry.
Importantly, this platform does not just allow artists to upload music videos, but it also offers the opportunity to organize playlists and show “bloopers” or backstage scenes to make your channel more relatable to your viewers. YouTube “browse channels” gives you the potential to be found in the search engines easily through keywords and even be listed in the “Popular on YouTube” section.
Lastly, the TikTok. As of 2021, TikTok made it to the top as one of the leading social platforms downloaded in the online store. This application allows users to upload a 15-second video to your feed. So how can music artists excel on this platform?
This application can help you build your fanbase as users can choose music or audio from a vast library of songs. Depending on the genre of your music, your fan base can use your music for dubbing, background music for dancing, and even dueting with your songs!
5. Collaborate With Influencers
The major agents of different social platforms are the influencers. You may not believe it but their network is probably bigger than yours! So why not initiate a collab performance with one of them? Or simply, have a chit-chat or acoustic jamming session with some famous social media influencers?
Are you one of those people who jives and dances with different TikTok songs? Well, this application has taken the stage of promotion and advertisement in recent years which causes some locally produced songs to be placed in the mainstream.
But moreover, aside from naturally grown trending songs, these platforms are being widely used by music content creators to strategically promote tracks through influencers.
Now, this pay-to-post setup has dominated not just TikTok but also other social media platforms such as Instagram Reels, Snapchat, and more.
6. Join Music Contests
Of course, doing hands-on advertisement is still on top of the line! Joining musical contests and/or writing competitions give you lots of benefits such you got to have free promotion of your song! And who doesn’t want it?
Also, it’s your chance to showcase your capabilities as an artist—and that contest could be your ticket-to-fame for composers, voice coaches, and recording directors are possibly eyeing for someone during the competition.
You made it this far, so I know you’re eager to market your song tracks and playlists. Well, at the end of the day, the success of your music career will be determined not only by great music and awesome melody arrangement but also by careful and strategic planning of promotion as you release your track in the market.
Now you know where to begin, so start releasing your music. Who knows you might be the next music star?