So, you have a couple of great songs that you occasionally sing to your family members and hood buddies. While their genuine love for you and your hustle is good for the soul, you know it’s time you started earning something from all your hard work. You’re getting by thanks to your exposure on iTunes, but you know too well that this is hardly enough to earn you a seat at the table of accomplished musicians. How do you put yourself out there and increase your digital music presence? In what ways can you improve your music sales and earn stronger engagements with your die-hard fans? If you are wondering how to sell music online successfully, stick around, and we will share with you the 9 best strategies that work.
There are numerous ways to market and sell your music online. However, not all platforms and channels are worth your time and effort. Attempting to spread yourself out on all platforms may only leave you burned out and frustrated with the outcome. The best way to meet your sales goals is to focus on a handful of platforms where you are likely to find the right audience for your music.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Learn How to Sell Music Online Successfully With These Top 9 Strategies
- Takeout Tip
- Conclusion
Learn How to Sell Music Online Successfully With These Top 9 Strategies
If you search the internet for tips on how to sell your music online successfully, you are likely to find many outdated posts. They share old information that barely worked back then and can hardly bear the intended fruit today. Unfortunately, a lot of strategies are too much work, yet they yield little results. Marketing your music doesn’t have to be an impossible task. You can start earning real money from your talent using these hard-hitting strategies.
Brand Yourself as a Business and Reach Out to Business Musicians
This is arguably the best tip you will find today. The first thing you must do is let the hard truth sink in— you barely have a fan base compared to the audience business musicians enjoy. Because it is virtually impossible to reach out to all your prospective fans individually, it is better to focus your efforts on contacting and building good relationships with business musicians. These could be TV channels, DJs, event organizers, and radio stations that are more established than you and cover your genre of music.
The idea is to take advantage of their bigger audience and find an audience of your own that fits into the kind of fan base you envision. If you are a full-time musician, you can successfully build a career from your talent by seeking out bigger brands to earn you great exposure from just one show, interview, event, or article. This strategy is guaranteed to work better than trying to market to individual fans on social media platforms.
Take Advantage of Social Media Platforms
In your quest to master how to sell music online successfully, you cannot afford to ignore the power of social media platforms. Even though marketing yourself on such platforms is hard work, it is worth it. After all, social media platforms offer you a base to interact with your fans personally and engage them in your affairs. Compared to marketing your brand to business musicians, this may only earn you average exposure, but worthy exposure all the same.
Let’s have a look at the top 5 platforms to use:
TikTok
TikTok is the new baby in town, and it has over 800 million active users every month. This platform has quickly turned into one of the ideal go-to places for musicians seeking to promote their music online. While this app reigns supreme for its popularity among Generation Z, Millennials and even older demographics from Generation X have also hopped onto the TikTok bandwagon.
What sets TikTok apart from other social media platforms is its fine-tuned algorithm. It has an addictive format that drastically increases your chances of organically generating new fans with each short clip you post.
Let’s face it; reaching fans organically on Facebook is today more challenging than it was a few years ago. While this is the case, the platform remains an essential tool for promoting music online. Facebook ads are affordable. Besides, you only need a small budget for Ads Manager to help you create, manage and measure your Facebook music advertisement campaigns.
Additionally, you cannot afford to ignore the power of Twitter. This is more so the case if you are looking for quick reactions and real-time updates. Again, marketing music on social media platforms is hard work. However, Twitter allows you to host Q&A sessions with your fans, post setlists, and share your thoughts on relevant topics.
The best thing about Twitter is that it makes it dead simple to search for fans talking about your music or other artists in your music genre. By simply using the search function, you can strike up conversations with current and prospective fans. This is a sure way to reach out to new fans and spark an interest in the music you produce.
Instagram boasts of over 1 billion active users every month. It has recently introduced TikTok kind-of videos, making it easy for musicians to build their visual brands. Between Instagram videos, grid, IGTV, stories, and Instagram Live, you can grow your presence, reach out to new fans and make great music sales.
Again, you can promote your Instagram posts using Facebook Ads Manager. You pretty much need to use the same methods when creating, managing and measuring your Instagram music advertisement campaigns.
Snapchat
Snapchat offers you a fun way to engage your fans if you target Generation Z or younger audiences. Like TikTok, interactions on Snapchat are easy, personal, and feel more casual and in the moment. This creates a unique opportunity for you to market yourself without necessarily making it apparent that you are “marketing” your brand.
How to Sell Music Online Successfully; Post Regularly On Your Website
It’s hard to talk about how to sell music online successfully without mentioning the importance of having a professional website. Think of this as your personal space where your fans can always find you even if you are unavailable on your social media platforms. It remains imperative to make your site as engaging as possible. Use blog features to enhance your SEO and find concert reviews, album reviews, guest posts, and interview opportunities. Again, this is a sure way of improving your exposure and reaching out to new fans.
Furthermore, you can use blogs to create deeper relationships with your music fans. Talk about the creative processes that go into making your music. Also, share personal experiences about your journey as a musician. Most importantly, create a complete sales channel that allows your fans to sample and purchase your albums. Don’t forget to also link your page to an Amazon page where people can buy your music and other related branded products.
Capitalize on Pre-Order Sales
Have you ever got yourself an album before it came out? Well, there’s nothing more exciting than this, especially if you are a musician’s die-hard fan. It makes you feel special and ahead of the game. Fortunately, using pre-order sales can help you make big-time sales of your digital and physical albums to fans who visit your website. You can also sell digital pre-orders through iTunes and attract multitudes of fans by rewarding them with one advanced single.
You cannot afford to underestimate the power of pre-order sales. They make great advertising, increase your revenue, and create a buzz to hype upcoming releases. An overexcited fan base is likely to quickly sweep the shelves clean of your albums way before you can master what to say about future albums they should expect.
How to Sell Music Online Successfully; Offer Discounts
It’s a tough world, and everyone, including the financially endowed, loves freebies. You are probably narrowing your eyes and thinking, won’t that take a whole chunk of goodies from my revenue? Well, you will have to give something up, although you will receive much more in return.
Discounts can generate great excitement about an album, and your fans will not mind signing up for your email list just to save a few bucks. In fact, just a small giveaway can help you earn hundreds of subscribers overnight. Moreover, this will save you a lot of marketing effort, especially if you are an upcoming musician figuring out how to sell music online successfully for the first time.
Have A Mailing List
Did you know that email marketing is nearly 40 times more effective than Twitter and Facebook marketing combined? Well, now you know. Your newsletters sent to your email list may just turn out to be the single most vital tool for increasing the income you generate from your music. You can use emails to remind your fans about upcoming releases, upcoming shows, and your career as a whole. Just make sure that you also include links to your iTunes, YouTube, online store, and whatever else you use to increase your online exposure.
How to Sell Music Online Successfully; On YouTube
As well, you must post videos on YouTube. This is the second largest search engine with an outstanding ability to drive music discovery. Use the right keywords to create catchy titles and include relevant tags and detailed descriptions. When people hear your music on the radio, they are also likely to search for your playlist on YouTube. Don’t just post your video for exposure. Also, include a link where fans can purchase each of your songs.
Don’t Forget To Use Music Streaming Services
Spotify is my personal favorite, and most people will also go into iTunes, Audiomack, Pandora, and other top-tier music streaming services. You can reach your fans on such platforms and keep most if not all of the rights and revenues from your songs. Streaming services can make your music more visible online. Seeing your music rise high on the charts is as good as hitting the jackpot.
Invest In A Great Publicist (music industry influencers)
It’s simple; most successful music artists have a great publicist. Public relations (PR) is not what it used to be decades ago. Today, it is imperative to work with an expert who can get you the attention you need from the media and potential interviewers. A great publicist will do some heavy lifting to boost your SEO. Also, the expert will help your website rank on top pages and have more traffic going into your site where fans can purchase your music.
You cannot depend purely on your talent or on dumb luck to get noticed in the current world. Regular media engagement and hot gossip about your special events, tours, awards, and new releases are a must-have. These are key ingredients if you want to create a solid fan base, build quality connections and move your music up the charts.
Takeout Tip
There are only as many times that you can rerelease your last hit single and create a buzz. The surest way how to sell music online successfully is to make your music or at least yourself gossip-worthy. With the internet flooded with fashion idols, adored actors, models, stellar dancers, and prestigious directors, you need to more than just a one-hit-wonder to become gossip royalty.
Strive to make great music. After all, your music career and chances of being noticed hinge on the fever levels you give your fans once they listen to your new releases. Remember that you are competing for attention, and you must go over and beyond when writing your music. Without great music, the abovementioned tips will simply not work.
Go Ye And Make Great Sales!
There you have it, 9 sure tips on how to sell music online successfully. These are not your regular “market on Facebook and Twitter” tips. We have gone a notch higher to include fresh tips that work best in the current times. You will learn of strategies that can reduce the time needed to make hundreds of sales leads. We aim to help you increase your music revenue streams and enjoy massive cumulative effects.
