What is music marketing?
The simple answer is that music marketing is genuinely defined as how musicians effectively build an audience of fans and build rapport with these fans over time through effective communication.
Obviously, with musicians, the ultimate goal is to sell more music, sell more beats, sell more t-shirts and concert tickets. We all can agree on that.
But from my experience from observing other musicians with their music marketing efforts, I notice that many musicians fall into the trap of using social media marketing tools for blatant SPAM.
I don’t think musicians are intentionally spammy or spammers. But I do believe that musicians play follow the leader and learn music promotion tips from the wrong, misguided information.
There is a ton of BS information about music marketing online, and how a musician should promote their music. Ninety per cent of these music marketing tips are rehashed generic tactics that were written by journalists, not active musicians.
All the information shared on my blog is through my experience as a hip hop beat maker promoting my music online. I only share my insight on tools, strategies and courses that I use to help promote my music.
I have guided other musicians with their music promotion efforts throughout the years. I have also shared these music promotional strategies on The Corporatethief Beats Blog.
In turn, I share my experience with other musicians to help them fast track their success in the music industry. To protect them from the failures that I have endured and to prevent them from learning from wrong, misguided information.
What Qualifies You To Give Music Marketing Advice?
Great Question To Ask!!!
And you should ask this question more often when you search for music promotion advice online.
I do have a digital marketing background. Back in 2013 I graduated and gained a Diploma in Digital Marketing from Dublin Business School. It’s important to note that digital marketing changes drastically year to year.
To this very day, I continue to study marketing advice from the best digital marketers. Filtering their most beneficial information to help promote my music online.
When I first set up The Corporatethief Beats website back in 2010, my only goal at the time was to sell my hip hop beats. During that time I began to network with other musicians about music marketing.
Hip hop artist would ask me for music promotion tips or how I can I help with the marketing of their music online. This outreach of other musicians gave me a higher purpose.
Helping other musicians with just simple music marketing strategies became a broader goal for The Corporatethief Beats website.
Over time the requests form artists with their music promotional efforts became a little repetitive and time-consuming.
So to be more efficient with answering common questions about music promotion online, I started a music marketing blog about my own experiences.
The blog also served my new audience by adding diagrams and music marketing pdf’s, video tutorials and courses.
When musicians had similar issues or had trouble starting the own music promotion campaigns, I would only share my blog with them. Here in this article, I have highlight specific sections, videos, tools, other blog and resources to help you market your music online.
Disclaimer: Some of the links below are referral links , at no extra cost to you I will earn a small commission if you decide to purchase these products. Since I have used all of these products online for my own websites I have confidence in my recommendation based on my own experience with these companies. If you do go through my referral link thanks for your support. This way I can continue to provide free resources like this for you in the future.
1. How Do I Market My Music Music Online?
Simple Answer: Build Your Own Website!
One of the most common problems with musicians marketing their music online is that they never build a base camp.
[BUILD BASE CAMP NOT BAND CAMP] 🙂
While I agree that every musician out there should use social sites in their overall music promotional strategy, it is vital to your success that you build your website in which you control.
So many musicians online place their whole music career in complete control of a company they don’t own or control. Companies like
Facebook, Myspace, Soundcloud, Soundclick, Bandcamp and various music distribution sites.
My point is to build your website first.
Here you control “The Hub” where your new fans come to learn more information about you, your music, your journey and tour dates.
Back in 2004, Myspace.com was the hot social media site at the time. Tons of musicians poured a ton of money into designing their Myspace pages and a ton of TIME into promoting their Myspace band pages.
Only a few years later other social sites started to replace Myspace. Myspace eventually took back control over a musician page rendering them completely useless.
We can see this trend continue to this day with the algorithm changes to specific social sites like Facebook, Soundcloud, Youtube, Twitter and Instagram.
Time and Time again I see hip hop musicians solely using terrible mixtape websites like Datpiff.com as their basecamp.
INSERT FACEPALM HERE.
Mixtape sites like these are covered in advertisements. How can you build any rapport or a following when there are too many distractions sites like these.
To market your music effectively, you need to build a tribe. And to build a tribe, you need your website that you have complete control over. Here on your site nobody can ban you or change an algorithm on you.
Starting a website today is much cheaper than before. With Bluehost { the same website hosting company I use} you can organise your site for £3.95 a month.
And with their one-click simple WordPress install you'll be ready to roll. If you can pay the pocket change for your website, I am afraid that you may have picked the wrong industry.
IMPORTANT NOTICE.
Make sure that you pick a self-hosted wordpress.org website as described in the video tutorial below. Try to stay clear of free websites like WordPress.com Blogger, Wix, and Weebly. These sites only give you a FREE subdomain which is an extension of their website.
Sites like these will have complete control over your website and remove you from their platform as they see fit. They can also choose to change your design or monetise your “Free” site with Ads if they want too.
Here Is My Video Tutorial On How To Start A Website Under 15 Mins
2. How Can I Improve My Fan Base As A Musician?
Simple Answer: Start An Email List.
Once you have established your website as a musician, it will be much easy for you to build your fan base. Now that your current fans have a focal point online to follow you, now is the time you create an email list of newsletter subscribers.
Having an email list is also vital to your success as a musician. It goes hand in hand with having a blog.
By place, a simple opt-in form your website whereby fans subscribe via email to hear updates about your music career.
Email marketing is merely permission-based marketing. Email address is very personal to people. So when a fan gives you their email address, they are actively giving you legal permission to inform them of new music, tour dates, and your journey.
This doesn’t give you the right to bombard them with sales emails. The more successful approach is to inform them of your story as a musician while sprinkling specific calls to action about where they purchase your music, beats, merchandise and concert tickets.
How Does Building An Email List Build My Fan Base?
Most musicians make the mistake of relying on social media to get their message out there. The major social website like Facebook has switched the algorithms to the only share a certain per cent of your posts with the fans that have like your page.
Facebook does this intentionally to frustrate you. Most frustrated musicians at the lack of reach will encourage them to hit the Boost Post or pay for Facebook video ads.
Shareholders own sites like Facebook. The platform is designed to make money from advertising. Not to help you promote your music for free.
When you continue to build an email list and keep to communicate with that email list, now you have an asset in which you can direct traffic too at any time.
If you have a new music video, a new album or new hip hop beats coming out; you can merely inform this email list of fans with a series of emails.
You can also encourage your email list of fans to help promote your latest music video, to inform a friend about your band, or to share your tour dates on social media.
Here your email of fans has now become like a street team getting the word out about your music. In turn, helping you attract a more significant fan base as a musician.
How Can I Build An Email List For My Music?
Here is the first video in my Email Marketing For Musicians Course.
This course will take you from a-z on how I use Aweber.com to help promote my beats and my blog online.
Resources Needed.
Additional Training
Email Marketing For Musicians With Aweber 8 Part Video Series
This email marketing course will show how I built a fan base of 5436 email subscribers for The Corporatethief Beats Blog. It will show you.
- How to create lists for certain types of fans
- how to set up an autoresponder series
- How to create email opt-in forms on your website.
- How to create graphics for your newsletter.
- How to create a thank you page
- How to send email broadcasts
- How to segment your email list
- And what type of emails you should submit to your fans.
3. Sign Up With A Performance Rights Organisation {from your country}.
This one is pretty simple and self-explanatory.
Find the PRO from your country and join up. You don’t have to register every song with them.
This will come in handy later when you start to tour, or people start to cover your song or if you carry out collaborations with other artists.
Here is a list of the major PRO’s.
- ASCAP (U.S.)
- BMI (U.S.)
- Global Music Rights (U.S.; est. 2013 by Irving Azoff)
- SESAC (U.S.)
- SoundExchange (U.S.)
- ACEMLA (Puerto Rico)
- IMRO {Ireland}
- SOCAN (Canada)
- United Kingdom PRS, PPL
List Other Performance Right’s Organisations around the world.
4. Sign Up With Music Distribution Service
"I understand that this might hypocritical,
since I just told you to set up your website and email list.
But wait there is a method to my madness"
Continue to promote your music on your website. but it’s still a good idea for any artist to set up some music distribution.
Yes, you might make the odd penny or two at the start of your career from music distribution sites like iTunes and Spotify, but the real goal here is making the major search engines like Google aware of who you are.
By signing up with a music distribution service like that of Distrokid, this will trigger your artist knowledge panel on Google and Bing.
https://distrokid.com/vip/seven/881521
Having the knowledge panel will give you a brand presence online and give you a more professional look in the eyes of new fans.
Plus as a musician, Google gives you the ability to control this knowledge panel to help you promote your music online and your social networks.
Also with Distrokid, you can even get there Youtube Money Content ID system. By having your music tagged by Distrokids Youtube Content Id system. It allow you to track any unauthorised uploads of your music on Youtube.
Here you will have the ability to claim the monetisation rights of that music and make money from the advertisements that come from the upload of this music.
So technically you are protecting your music from thieves.
Here Is A Link To Complete Guide To Music Distribution Services Online.
5 Set Up Branded Social Media Accounts
Remember when you are a musician you are also a brand.
To market your music online successfully, it’s best that you keep consistency between all your social media accounts.
It doesn’t make sense to be Kid Rapper on Twitter and Lil Tony 27 on Facebook. Plus it looks pretty unprofessional. I understand that it can be challenging to get the exact username on these platforms to try to keep it as close a possible to make it easy for your fans to follow you.
Here is a list of the top common music sites and Social Media Websites.
You don't need to be active on all of these sites everyday!!!!
I do think it’s important to stake your claim on these sites. Think of it like virtual real estate ....
6. How To Promote Your Music With Social Media?
There is no one formula for all of these websites. Nor will one musician have enough time to carry out the necessary grunt work that comes with social media.
Youtube
What I recommend musician to do is Start With Youtube. Then pick any other social sites that you will enjoy using from time to time.
The majority of the rest can be automated. The reason I pick YouTube is for a couple of reasons.
YouTube content is straightforward to make. A simple vlog or music video can be carried out with a simple mobile phone. The material needed for Youtube can be cheap and easy to produce.
A daily vlog about current music you like or opinion pieces similar to your music is a great place to start and build trust with a following.
Plus with YouTube, if you create engaging content, they will reward you with more and more traffic potential new fans.
The content you create on Youtube can also be chopped up and distributed among another social network like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Even the audio from your daily vlogs can be from the video to create a simple podcast or audio blog on Soundcloud.
One of the major influential factors today is that of live video. Live video helps build rapport with the musician a fan. It’s this live interaction between fan and the musician that help creates a bond where the casual listener turns in the dedicated follower.
The live videos don’t have to be amazing, send an email out to your fans or Tweet or Facebook post of questions that they would ask you.
Then answer these questions live on Youtube. If you are at the earlier stages of your career and don’t have a massive fan base yet, directly write your questions and answer them in a live Youtube video.
Keep to a routine with live videos so people can show up during the broadcast. These live videos rank well on Youtube due to the high retention rate and watch rate. You are thus sharing your videos with a broader audience, which acts as an evergreen promotional material.
Here is a video tutorial on how to use live video with Open Broadcasting Software On Youtube.
Facebook is also perfect for live video. I just wanted to share a video that I found on CD Baby DIY Musician blog, where one solo musician has generated over 74k using Facebook live.
This video presentation presented by Rick Barker. A music industry expert in music marketing. Rick has worked on music marketing campaigns for huge industry artists like that of Taylor Swift.
The story in this video inspired me. Click Here To Watch.
In this video, Rick speaks about how Dawn Beyer, used Facebook Live to generate over 74k in revenue. Dawn was a solo country singer that played in many venues in Nashville.
This gig was her only livelihood, but she was living the dream as a performing musician. Nash is a hectic place. Soon Dawn overworked her voice on two separate occasions. Leaving her without her main the revenue stream from playing live gigs.
74k Musician with FB live. She decided to explore Facebook live while in recovery. With nothing more than a video camera, some songs, and a guitar.
Suddenly people started to start tuning in to her live sessions on Facebook live. People began to ask where they could donate some cash as tips. So she quickly created a Paypal tip jar for every live session.
After several months of STAYING Committed to her Facebook live sessions, she started to make serious bank. Also, people began to buy her merch, ask her to play live for weddings, and perform live at certain venues. The main thing I want you to take from this story is too, Find where your audience congregates.
Don’t wait for the perfect moment, time place. The perfect moment will never happen will never be perfect.
Don’t be afraid to experiment.
You have a ton of tools at your disposal, {Mobile Phone, Hip Hop Beats :-), Social Media, Email. No audience is too small if it looks small.
Example like 50 people. Try and imagine 50 people at a venue. Or try and guess 50 people are purchasing your merch.
I already showed you how to use both Facebook Live, and Youtube Live here in these videos.
No harm using your phone too if you feel the quality is right. I urge you to watch the video. It’s super inspiring.
Promoting Your Music in Facebook Groups Vs Facebook Pages.
While I still believe that it’s important to keep your Facebook page active on a regular basis, Facebook page reach is down to an all-time low.
Due to Facebook’s algorithm changes over time, it has been increasingly difficult for any musician to promote their music organically.
The solution to combat Facebook’s algorithm changes is to create your own private Fan Facebook Group.
Make sure it’s private otherwise it will become a spam haven for trolls. Your Facebook fan group will help you stay more connected with your Fans online and help build a more connected tribe.
Here your fans own questions and will help provide you with new content idea’s. It will beat the Facebook algorithm because other members in the group will create content by just asking questions and participating in an ongoing dialogue.
How To Promote Your Music Using Twitter?
Twitter is seen as a broadcasting medium.
Short microblogs of updates which are funnel in the news feed of your followers.
To this day I feel that Twitter is an excellent platform for up and coming musicians to get started. It’s like an open forum of discussion on specific topic form news, to pop culture and new music discovery.
It’s one of the few social media channels that doesn’t go overboard on algorithm changes.
"The main trick with Twitter is engagement levels. While it’s great for promoting links to your music, you need to treat Twitter like an open conversation platform too."
Start by creating polls of your Twitter page on certain songs you have written or bands you like.
Find exciting conversations about music that you like and can join.
Don’t just share your music.
Share music that or articles that you like or have an interest in. Helps you share your personality with your audience.
By sharing the content that you like with your fan base on Twitter, your personality and similar interests help create a connection between the musician, and your followers.
Make sure to use relevant hashtags in the music genre you reign. If you want to promote your music on Twitter to the right audience, you need to use specific hashtags which correspond with the proper conversation on Twitter.
Getting your music in the right conversation feed on Twitter, dramatically increases the chance of your music to be discovered on Twitter.
You can also broadcast live to Twitter using a tool called open broadcasting software and periscope.
The live video events will gain far better reach compared to a traditional Twitter videos.
Here is a video Tutorial on how to broadcast live video from Periscope to Twitter using OBS.
More in-depth knowledge on How To Use Twitter To Promote Your Music,
Check Out My Twitter Music Marketing Machines 2.0 course.
This course is packed with knowledge on how to maximise the music promotional possibilities with Twitter, using selective automation tools.
Promoting Your Music On Instagram
Instagram is like a mini version of Facebook and Twitter. Here musicians can share micro snippets of their music, images and their music career journey.
It wasn’t until I took a holiday to Lisbon in Portugal last year that I found out exactly how powerful Instagram could be. While as a beat maker I am profoundly more comfortable being in front of the camera at my home studio. Here I have to the ability to edit any of my mistakes.
So while on holidays I didn’t have the luxury of this. All I had was a phone and a beautiful backdrop for my videos. I decided to carry out a micro video series of my best music marketing tips.
They are forcing me to be more comfortable in front of the camera and build more rapport with my followers.
A critical music marketing tip to take away from this experience was that it was super simple to create content.
- No blog writing.
- No video editing.
- No and pre-planning the content.
- It was super simple to make videos.
- The more videos I made, the better I got.
The trick also using Instagram stories to help promote the videos that I had just uploaded and using Instagram live to interact with people about the video tips I had just spoken about.
Effectively I was content stacking.
You can follow the same formula that I use for Youtube and Facebook live.
Just ask your audience to send you some questions to answer about your music. You can also ask them about the music you like or the music you have made.
Then create a series of videos answer these questions, while using both Instagram stories and Instagram live to help promote the original video.
For your music to get discovered on Instagram, you need to find specific hashtags which match the topic of your music. Find a common theme of both popular hashtags and popular current trending hashtags.
When you share new content on Instagram tell people that they can find more about your music on your website. You have a link to your site on your Instagram on the home page.
You can link back to this page in every post using the “@” symbol and your Instagram user name.
7. What Tools Can I Use To Help Promote My Music?
One of the most effective was to help with your music marketing online is incorporating Automation into your music promotion plan.
Most musicians will never have enough time to carry out music marking on every single social media website. There isn’t enough time in the day to get it all done.
There are plenty of tools that can help you both schedule and syndicate content so that you can spend just an hour or two of your time to complete a month's worth of social media posts.
There are tools that you also use to help cross-promote content on different platforms.
For an in-depth look on how to maximise your music marketing efforts with Twitter Check Out My Twitter Music Marketing Machines 2.0 video course.
My course has over 30+ videos on how I specific automation and content curation tools to help promote my music on Twitter.
Here are some of the best tools I use to help incorporate automation into my music marketing strategy. Click the learn more buttons to watch video demonstrations of these tools and how I use them in my music promotional plan.
Recurpost {Social Media Scheduling Tool}
Recurpost is social content scheduling tool. RecurPost allows you to post text, images, gif and even videos on your social networks. To make it easier for you to organise your social updates, we let you categorise them into different libraries such as My Blogs, Promotional Posts, Other People's Content etc.
You can link serval social networks with Recurpost, like that of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest and Linkedin.
Here you can schedule some posts to syndicate to your social network sites at specific at perfectly timed intervals to save you hours and increase your engagement every week.
It even has a simple chrome extension that allows to schedule content that you find on the web, that your fans will also be interested in too.
It also recycles your best content to be repurposed on other platforms Saving you time having to schedule content over and over again manually.
Social schedule tools like that of Recurpost are a must have in a musicians marketing battle plan.
Click Here To Learn More About Recurpost
IFTTT {Social Media Syndication Tool}
IFTTT is a workhorse that helps you syndicate content from one social network to another social network.
For example, When I upload a new video to Youtube, this action triggers it on Twitter via a Tweet, or a Facebook post, a Pinterest Pin, a WordPress blog post, A Tumblr post, a Trello post, and Evernote note blog post, or a Medium blog post ect.
IFTTT can trigger some content syndicating actions. The same applies to an Image uploaded to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or a song uploaded to Soundcloud.
You can link serval social networks with IFTTT like that of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest and Linkedin, Soundcloud, Tumblr, Trello, Evernote, Medium, WordPress, Buffer and an RSS feed.
The sky is endless with IFTTT, and the best part is that it’s free. BOOM !!!!
Click Here To Learn More About IFTTT
Tubebuddy {Youtube SEO / Time Saving Tool}
Tubebuddy this is a like Google Chrome extension which helps with the marketing of my Youtube channel.
Work on your Youtube Channel and the Youtube interface to help optimise your channel. Other products require you to leave YouTube to access their functionality. TubeBuddy toolkit’s features load right within YouTube's website, in line with your daily workflow.
- Some of the stand out features of Tubebuddy, include
Bulk editing of Youtube cards and annotations, end screens, - Youtube descriptions {Find and Replace Links} Spy on competitors video tags.
- Open Tag Explorer allows you to find the right tags to help promote your music videos.
- Youtube Thumbnail Creator
I have already covered all the features with Tubebuddy which will help you promote your music on Youtube, in this
Free video series.
Click here To Learn More About Tubebuddy.
Sniply
Sniply is a tool that enables you to place a call to action iFrame bar on any content that you share on the web. It’s the best way to piggyback of accessible content that you share online.
Sniply adds your custom call-to-action to any page on the web, allowing you to engage your followers through every link you share. For example, you can attach a button to the page that links to your website, so that people can discover you while they read.
While I still use Sniply today, I have developed my own and more powerful content curation strategy, as seen in my Auto Blogger Method video course.
Click Here To Take My Autoblogger Method Video Course.
Loud Links
Loud Links is a VERY similar concept to that of Sniply. Hypeddit.com powers Loud Links and let music artists, record labels, brands and other influencers add music to links they share online.
Enables content sharers to create new content experiences for their audiences.
Loud links incentivise content sharers to share content with their audiences. Creating more distribution and traffic for content owners and publishers.
Loud links link to the original content either directly or by using iFrames and canonical tags. As such, Loud links do not interfere with content publisher's web analytics, ads or SEO credits.
Traffic generated by loud links can benefit content owners and publishers through increased page views, visitor activity, ad revenue and SEO credits.
Learn More About Loud Links Here.
Canva {Image Editing Software}
Canva is a free image editing software. It is one of my most used tools to this very day. I use it every single day in my music promotion. Canva is a graphic-design tool website, founded in 2012.
It uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts. Non-designers, as well as professionals, use it. The tools can be used for both web and print media design and graphics. Canva is a must have for musicians.
Clipchamp {Online Video Editing Software}
Clipchamp, For video editing I frequently use iMovie, but I have found myself using Clipchamp more and more because of its ease of use.
Clipchamp Create is a modern video maker that comes with all the essential editing tools you need to work on video projects.
Available features include trimming, cutting, cropping, rotating, speed control and more. You can also add text, audio tracks and images, adjust colours and apply filters.
Use it to produce videos with your footage or add pro media assets from our stock library.
Clipchamp has a very similar workflow and interface as iMovie. One of the best functions about Clipchamp is that it has video templates for some different social websites like Youtube, Instagram and Facebook.
Learn How To Use Clipchamp To Make Music Videos Here.
Tweet Peak {Build Your Twitter Following Automatically}
Tweet Peak is a social listening and interacting social tool for Twitter.
An easy way to build up your Twitter following without having to be on Twitter every hour of the day.
Tweet Peak is an excellent tool for Musicians that don’t have a large enough following at the start of the music career.
By placing specific keywords into Tweet Peak based on the personas of the people you want to attract will retweet, follow like and favourite their Tweets.
These engagement features appear as notifications on the mentions tab of new potential followers.
Learn More About About Build You Fanbase On Twitter Here.
FollowAdder For Instagram
FollowAdder For Instagram is a tool I use to help grow and manage my Instagram following. It’s my number one tool I use to find the right people on Instagram and interact with the posts.
Follow/Unfollow Instagram users, Schedule Posts, Like Back Photos, Automated Photo Liker, Automated Direct Message, Create Lists, Search by Hashtag, Search by Geo Location of User, photo, or comments.
Publish posts to Instagram immediately or schedule them to publish at a later time from your computer. Efficiently manage multiple Instagram accounts in one place. Grow your Instagram community by engaging your audience right within the dashboard Find opportunities for engagement by creating search streams that follow specific users, hashtags, and keywords.
I already created a 5 part Free Video Course On FollowAdder
Watch The Follow Adder Video Course Here.
8 How To Outsource Your Music Marketing?
Let's face it music marketing is a bitch.
There is just too much to do, and you have to be in too many places at once. There is just never enough time to create and manage all every single site.
Outsourcing my a lot of the grunt work within your music marketing is the perfect solution. Hiring help to do mundane, repetitive music promotional tasks is something that will free up a ton of your time so that you can go back to making music.
Outsourcing can be a daunting task for any musician. Especially when they aren’t as lucrative at the beginning of their music careers, most musicians will have the fear that they will get ripped off, the other person won’t understand their business or fear it will take too long to train them on what they need to do.
These are all understandable able fears. I was also in this position too.
Before you hire or outsource your music marketing, make a list of all the tasks that you could outsource for someone else to do.
Here is a list of tasks you should outsource.
- Blog Writing
- Add Blogs To The Website.
- SEO
- Social Media Scheduling
- Social Media Content Curation
- Social Media Content Repurposing
- VIDEO EDITING !!!!
- Graphic Design For Social Media
- Blog Outreach / Blog Placements / Interviews
- Press Releases
- Mixtape Uploading
- Soundcloud Uploading
- Youtube Optimization
- Google Ads / Facebook Ads / Youtube Ads
An excellent place to start is with a video editor, social media manager or a blog writer. These specific tasks all take up a ton of time.
If your band has a Youtube channel, it’s best to start there. Record a few vlogs about your group and each song that you have done. Then get a blog writer write an article for each of these video blogs.
Record a screencast showing your new employee how to edit the videos, how to schedule the videos, how to repurpose the videos on different social sites.
When you hire the help, they won’t know everything right away. It will take time for you to teach everything about the music marketing that you carry out.
Where Can I Hire People To Carry Out My Music Promotion?
Fiverr.com is a global online marketplace offering tasks and services, beginning at the cost of $5 per job, hence its name. The site is primarily used by freelancers who use Fiverr to offer services to customers on a global scale. ... Gig: A service provided on Fiverr's website.
Here you can find specific services that people offer starting from $5. While the platform has changed over time, the cost of services has risen dramatically.
You can find a freelancer to carry out Graphic Design, like logos, or artwork. You can hire virtual assistants and social media managers, people to distribute your mixtape and hip hop blogs that will post your music.
Some of the services here are amazing, and some are complete trash. Please read the reviews of before purchase or hiring anyone from Fiverr.com.
Onlinejobs.ph This is my prefered method of outsourcing my music marketing tasks. All of the freelancers here are from the Philapeans.
Filipino's influenced by American culture. Their level of English is very high. This is a significant reason why I outsource all my work to the Philapeans.
Filipino's are incredibly hard working. The economic situation is pretty bleak in the Philapeans.
It’s difficult for people to get employment for decent wages over there. That’s why when western people give them a job they are incredibly grateful.
Both of my Filipino workers are paid between $200 - $300 a month. Which compared to our salaries here in the UK or USA seems very low. But this is beyond the standard of living in the Philapeans.
The Filipino workers are very loyal. Because of the internet and western influences in the Filipino school system, a vast majority of young Filipino workers have amazing digital marketing skills.
Skills like video editing, blog writing, social media management and graphic design.
If you want to take your music marketing to the next level hiring help to carry out repetitive tasks, it’s the best start you can make.
Now that I have worked with Filipino workers from Onlinejobs.ph I have total confidence in my recommendation.
9. Get Your Fans To Spread The Word About Your Music.
One of the easiest ways to get your music out there is to get people to spread the word about your music. The problem with this just asking people to share your music isn’t enough.
You to find a way to incentivise people to share your music with others.
One of the easiest ways to incentivise your fans to share your music is by using Content Lockers or Download Gates.
Social Content Lockers are self-explanatory. You lock free music, mp3 video, or content behind a social paywall. For your fans to download this free music, they must share your music marketing message with their audience or followers online.
Here you can get your followers to help you promote your music online, or build up the buzz about your album release, new music video or where to purchase your concert tickets.
There are some Content lockers online that will work with your website.
One of the better content lockers is that of Mythemeshops Content Locker Pro.
Learn How To Set Up Content Locker Pro Here
Another more effective method for incentivising people to share your music with their follower is by holding a competition or sweepstake.
I have seen many musicians make horrible mistakes with sweepstakes, by giving away products like iPads, Headphones and Amazon Gift Vouchers.
Giving away products like these will attract the wrong people to the sweepstake. These people will use fake social profiles to share the campaign and ultimately leave you with poor campaign results.
{Been there, done that and bought the T-shirt}
The best and most effective way a band can hold a competition or sweepstake is by offering an incentive that is very close to the musician.
Example.
- Free Concert Tickets,
- A Merch Goodie Pack,
- Signed Copies of The Bands Album,
- A Free Skype Call With The Band,
- A Private Facebook Live / Youtube Live Event
- First Listen To The Bands New Album
- Live Q/A
The fact that these are all personal to the band and your fans, it will keep random people that don’t have any interest in your music out of the way.
It’s pretty simple to set up a viral social campaign by using a combination of the content lockers that I mentioned above and your email newsletter that I said above.
- Create a fantastic download incentive for your fans.
- Create a nice distraction-free landing page on your website.
- Make sure you add video instructions of how to join the competition
- Create a specific email list for this viral campaign
- Create a thank you page explaining when how you will announce the winners {TIP 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Prize}
- Add social share button asking people to share the campaign after they have subscribed via email.
- Create a live event on Facebook or Youtube announcing the winners
Alternatively, you can use an insensitive social platform like that of Shortstack.com.
This site has fantastic templates, but the membership comes at a price. If you only plan a couple of campaigns, it might best to carry it out using your email lists and social lockers on your website.
Hypeditt.com is another pretty popular content locker for musicians. Here you don’t need to have a website to lock your free Mp3, Album, Ep or Music Video.
Hypeditt gives you a social content locker page for each piece of music you lock behind each social paywall.
Hypeditt helps by building your social following online. So you can link your social network sites here or collect an email address in exchange for giving away a free download.
Download gates are a fantastic way to make your music more viral and grow your fan base. They let you share downloads of your music in return for fan email addresses, likes, reposts, comments and followers on SoundCloud, Spotify, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook and other sites.
10. How To Get Big Music Blogs To Promote Your Music?
Getting endorsements from large music industry blog is crucial for your success as a musician.
Having a significant blog feature under your the belt is fast track method in building a targeted fan base in a short period.
There are paid music blog placements out there. I have no problem with that. If you can spend the money on a significant blog placement go for it.
It’s best to seek out previous artists on this blog that have already paid for placements and see if it was worth it.
Ask them what benefits did they get from the blog placement. Did they get new followers? Did they get new email subscribers, new comments on videos, increased merch sale, increased views and streams?
If they respond with generic comments like,
“We Got More Exposure”. Don’t bother. These people got nothing.
And now they feel embarrassed to tell you the truth. You have to judge what you want to get out of the blog placement.
Sometimes you might not get much back from the blog placement, but it’s an excellent social proof indicator. It can be good to brag about on other websites or when you are looking for better blog placements
Helping you get featured on other blogs on the future because of this initial music blog placement.
It can be quite daunting having to email several blogs after a couple of days. If you don’t hear back from these music blogs, you might get dejected.
What I suggest that you do is outsource this section. Find someone from the outsourcing sites I mentioned above like,Fiverr.com, Onlinejobs.ph or Upwork to carry out blog outreach.
Musicians are sensitive souls, and we don’t take criticism well. While you might feel in the first few weeks that you can withstand the onslaught of negative feedback or lack of feedback, after some time this will end up being a tedious office job task that you won’t want to do it.
So get some help!!!!!
Hire a freelancer to help get your music placed on favourite blogs.
If you don’t have the money to help get your music placed on blogs you can use a tool called GMass. Gmass is a Google Chrome Extention.
GMass allows you to schedule emails easily, send out mass emails and mail merge campaigns and more with Gmail!
- Gives the impression you only emailed that person.
- Personalise and Schedule.
- Track your email opens and clicks.
- Create email lists based on search results.
- Send emails as replies to the last thread with each person.
- The killer feature: set automatic follow-up emails to be sent sequentially until you get a reply.
Click here to learn about more features!
- You can load up Gmass with an email address from specific blogs that you want to reach out too.
- It’s essential that you just send a simple email at first.
- {WITH NO LINKS} asking the blogger “How to get featured on their blog”?
- Once the blogger responds, follow the correct procedure on how that music blogger accepts music placements on his or her site.
Learn More about getting your music featured on music blogs.
11 How To Grow A Music Fanbase Quickly?
The fastest way any musician a grow a fanbase in a short period, is by collaborating with other artists both offline and online. Find other similar artists that perform an identical style of music as you.
Be the support act to another band. Whenever other local groups or musicians are playing music in your area introduce yourself. Ask if you can join them at the end or the beginning of their show.
Make sure to offer the favour in return at your show. It might be a good Idea to hold an event at a local bar or venue. Gather some musicians and get every musician to promote the gig.
Here you are introduced to some new potential fans in a brief period.
- But it’s up to you capitalise on this success.
- Introduce yourself to fans at the end of the show.
- Encourage them to share your music online, or give them access to free demo downloads on your website in exchange for an email address.
- Take pictures and selfies {I hate that word} with them.
- Get them to tag themselves in the photos on social media
- Get them to upload videos of your show online.
When you are starting nobody is going to promote your music better than yourself. Don’t leave it to chance.
I will continue to add more and more content to this resource…... TBC.........
