For many musicians, the thought of how to market your music independently might be foreign, forced, and fake. But, it doesn’t change the fact that getting a piece of music or even an album to the desired audience has become more complicated than it ever used to be. To complicate the issue for some musicians—many musicians, without mincing words—marketing is an odd concept when we consider personality. In other words, most musicians do not easily gravitate towards that concept of marketing in terms of personality. That’s why having to self-market our music is challenging.
However, the music industry has grown rapidly from what it used to be to what it currently is—the competitive and choky type. Thanks to the rapid advancement in technology that has given many upcoming musicians the privileges. We can now record tracks and sometimes an entire album from the comfort of their homes. With several easy-to-get DIY tools, an unfathomable number of new music gets uploaded to streaming platforms daily. Most times, the marketing channelled towards this song determines if it will get to the desired audience. This reason is why investing in marketing is not negotiable.
In this article, we will explore:
- Why Every Musician has to Invest in Music Promotion
- 11 Unique Tips to market your music Independently
Why Every Musician Must Know How to Market their Music Independently
So, you have a piece of music or an album. Why not post it on streaming platforms and hope you top the chat someday? While that’s a good kind of faith to have in your work of art, it’s not the best way to go about doing things. That’s major because of the competitive level in the music industry. Unless you don’t want your music to get to its desired audience, you will need to know how to market your music independently. Here is what marketing will do for you;
Sells Your Music
So, what’s the goal of making music? To make money, isn’t that right? Even those who claim to do it only for passion won’t mind having a few bucks from the music they make. So, if you have an opportunity to spread your music till it gets to your fan base, wouldn’t you take it? Marketing is that opportunity! Unless your audience knows about your music, they won’t buy your album, which is why you can’t afford to joke with music promotion. The moment your music lovers know about your latest release, they gravitate toward paying to get it and automatically boost sales.
Offers Cross-Channel Presence
What most musicians do is to keep trying their luck with free online music streaming platforms. While there’s nothing wrong with free platforms, using them will only put your song in the same box as that of thousands of other artists. It would help if you had something that stands you out among the crowd, and music promotion is that tool. The traditional goal of music promotion is to spread your art across several platforms and channels such as press releases, advertisements, radio announcements, or live streaming channels. Marketing covers everywhere. Doing it this way is advantageous because it creates an audience for your music everywhere. So when your audience searches, they find it available across channels and choose to connect to anyone they consider convenient.
Unlock New Business Opportunities
Several business opportunities exist in the music industry that goes beyond the traditional selling of albums. Only music marketing can open you up to such possibilities. It opens you up to collaboration opportunities with other top-rated artists or bands. Besides, you could get to win more sponsorship or get better gigs to play your music. These and several opportunities are there, but you won’t be able to connect them unless marketing opens you up to sponsors, other artists, and bands. They might not even know you exist without the exposure that music promotion gives.
Extends Your Fan Base
One of the ultimate goals of music marketing is to acquire a loyal fan base—those who won’t care about parting ways with a few of their money to get anything you release. So, beyond album sales, you can leverage the power of multi-channel presence to build a solid fan base. In other words, your music promotion or marketing has to look beyond the sales of the album and consider creating a base of loyal fans who would continue to subscribe to your future music release. Besides, word of mouth is the biggest promotion any product can get. Your loyal customers can make you and your music popular by word of mouth, and knowing How to Market Your Music independently can help build such a fan base.
Offers Opportunity To Build Your Brand
Building a brand is vital as a musician. Your vision should extend beyond album or ticket sales. However, only an excellent marketing strategy can build you a brand. Even the most talented artist may struggle to make headway. The music industry has gone past the celebration of gift and talent alone. There are hundreds—even thousands—of naturally talented musicians across the board. However, with a good marketing strategy, the best musicians can thrive—build a career, a viable audience, and a brand. That’s why investing in music promotion is an excellent barging if you want to succeed in the music industry.
11 Unique Tips to Market Your Music Independently
Firstly, let’s get something straight. If you will invest in promoting your music and see significant results, the music must be excellent. Promoting a piece of wobbly music will yield no significant impact because the audience will not receive it well. Therefore, the first step to marketing your music is to focus on making good music. Once you tick that box, you can now focus on following the unique steps;
Identify, Locate, and Know Your Audience.
Fans are the basis of any successful music career. They form a strong pillar for the success of any musician. Therefore, finding out who your fans are is the first step to get the most out of your promotional endeavours. Every music style has a specific group of people who are in it; you only need to identify those interested in your type of music and target them as your audience.
You’ll also have to know a little about your audience, such as their age group, where they are based, etc. Thanks to advancements in technology, several websites provide analytical information that can help you learn about your audience. So, with such information, you can target your marketing efforts such that if you are a rapper, you go to play at venues where you can meet rap lovers. Same for other music genres.
Leverage The Power of Social Media
Social media platforms may be a pain to manage. Unfortunately, marketing strategies for any business enterprise are incomplete without them. The stake is a little high for musicians because it’s the best place to meet your target audience. These platforms can help narrow down who might prefer your music and get the opportunity to reach out to them. Whether you want to tell people to attend your event or about your new release, social media is the best place to be.
So, millions of users are on each of these platforms. It can be challenging to reach them one after another. That’s why when learning how to market your music independently, learn how to use paid ads. By design, paid ads are meant to reduce your stress by helping you with tools that narrow down your options to only people who matter. Tools like Facebook groups, Reddit thread, Twitter thread, hashtags, etc., also help pass your message quickly. Don’t forget to connect with other musicians like you who are as well on these platforms. Friend-making in this way fosters cross-promotion, which is good for business!
Build a Website and Emailing List
While social media platforms are the market front for advertisements and picking up your fans, your professionally designed website will be the home for them. You can’t interact with your fans on a brand level with social media; you only go there to cast your net. When you catch as many as you can, you bring them home, grooming them into loyalty towards your brand. That’s why having a professionally designed website is not negotiable in music promotion else you won’t be able to keep your fans for long.
Another important thing is to create a mailing list for your fans. By mailing list, we mean a list of your fan’s email addresses so that you can contact them regularly and notify them of any development. Remember that your fans won’t be on your website or even social media pages 24/7, so you need something to inform them to take action as your fan, and nothing does it better than sending them emails.
Send Your Music to Playlist
When considering how to market your music independently, you can’t afford to miss out on the step where you upload your music to Playlist and for streaming. Creating a Playlist across platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, etc., is very important. That’s because these platforms rack up to billions of live streams. So, if you want your share of that, sending your music to Playlist is not negotiable.
Get Blog and Press Coverage
Getting featured in a publication is an excellent way to help build your hype and take your career to a new level of credibility. You may hire a professional PR person for this task; however, you can also do it yourself to save cost. But you still have to contact blog owners and publishers to help put up your PR content, which will cost you a little. Though it won’t be up to what you’ll pay a professional PR person.
Invest in Music Videos
A track might struggle to get audiences, but it could go viral when combining that track with an original, exciting, engaging, and well-structured video. That’s because video makes a lot of waves on social media as opposed to audio tracks. Therefore, combining your music or tracks with video will go a long way in promoting your music. However, the video has to be of top quality and creativity.
Develop an Engaging Social Media Presence
Did you notice the trends of social media challenges these days? That’s an attempt from some content creators—primarily musicians—to create awareness about something, usually their music. There’s no way better than this to get your fans engaged than through social media content. Non-fans or those who are not aware of your music will gladly jump on anything that’s a trend if you can successfully create one. However trendy or not, keep your social media presence engaging.
Consider Playing Live Often.
Playing live is one of the ways musicians can make extra money in the music industry. However, aside from doing it for the money, it gives you the needed exposure. When you play live at restaurants, ceremonies, events, etc., those who don’t know you before get to know you and probably check out your music. Therefore, take the opportunity to play live as often as possible–even if it’s pro bono!
Surround Yourself With a Strong Team
Independently marketing your music doesn’t mean you’ll have to do it all alone. There’s a need for you to have a team that works with you. When you have a team of like-minded people–passionate about your music–it’ll increase your chances of success. You may need to acquire the service of professionals, but if you can get your friends to work with you free of charge or cut off eventual earnings, great!
While Trying to Get New Fans, Don’t Ignore Existing Ones
Constantly working on expanding your fan base is excellent; however, while at it, don’t ignore those you’ve always had. Like the saying goes that “a fish at hand is better than hundreds of others in the sea.” In other words, it’s best to keep what you already have rather than hoping you’ll get better ones. What if you don’t? Anyways, the bottom line is, keep engaging your existing fans while you take on new ones.
Monetize Your Social Media Platforms and Website
You will need money to sustain your music career; therefore, not everything should be done pro bono. Do the ones you can and monetize others. Are you on YouTube? Monetize it and drive enough traffic towards your uploads so that they can generate income for you. You should also monetize your website and let the traffic from social media generate an income.
Conclusion : How to Market Your Music Independently
The good news is that independent musicians now have more chances of success than they used to be. Thanks to the advancement in technology for that. However, you will need to know the details of how to market your music independently to make the best use of the opportunity. We’ve highlighted some PowerPoint on how to do it. Closely follow these tips, and you’re set on the track to success!
