How To Promo Your Music

[BuildMyBand]

I have been working with bands for over 5 years now and when I started I had no clue how to really promote a band.  I was just a naive college freshman who thought he could be the next P. Diddy.  However, I quickly found out that music promotion is not easy.  Although things were hard, I stuck with it and picked up a ton of tricks and tips along the way.  Below, I will share these tips and hopefully you will use some of the tactics I outline below.

1:  MUSIC DOESN'T SELL.  It sucks.  I mean, it does sell, but not like it use to.  I have gone to countless shows and have seen unknown bands, artists, singers, folk dancers, and the like try to sell their CDs for $10 or more.  The result is no sales, a ton of plastic that they now own and can't get rid of.  My advice for this is to bundle.  BUNDLE! BUNDLE!  I'll say it one more time, BUNDLE!  Sell a t-shirt and package it with a CD.  Sell a Poster and package it with a CD.  DO SOMETHING CREATIVE OTHER THAN JUST TRYING TO SELL A CD AS A STANDALONE PRODUCT.  Believe me, your sales will increase.

2: MUSIC VIDEOS ARE IMPORTANT!  I hate it when I see a crappy music video.  It is not that hard to make a professional looking music video.  Use an SLR camera.  If you don't own one, find one to borrow from a friend.  If none of your friends have one, then find a friend who attends college.  They can rent them for FREE from their university or community college.  SLR's allow for manual focus, which gives the video that music video quality that you see from the pros.  Also, join a video forum or two.  Comb through it, ask questions, and perfect your art.  In the end, the time investment will pay out extraordinarily.  I mean, by just putting in a small amount of time, you will now be able to produce all your own music videos until your budget increases.  This will give you a HUGE advantage over your fellow independent musicians who are trying to make it.

3: SEO: BECOME FAMILIAR WITH THIS.  You can find many forums on black hat and white hat SEO.  Let me break it down on a very basic scale for you now.  SEO stands for search engine optimization.  Its how you get your links to show up first when someone types something in Google on the SERPS (search engine results pages).  Black Hat SEO is more relevant to musicians because it is a controlled form of spamming.  White hat SEO is another form of internet marketing.  This includes manually doing things and avoids the automated robots doing the load of the work for you.  This is relevant when it comes to social media.  I will break down the tactics below. 

Black Hat SEO:  Here are the tools and methods I talked about above. 

            VIDEO PROMOTION:  there is this awesome tool called TubeAssist.  It allows you to make several YouTube accounts, like a video, and then automatically send the video out in a message to targeted people.  For example, if you're target audience are Lil Wayne’s fans, and then you can collect users who commented on his video and target them.  Opt for the 10-account package.  With that package, you can send out 30,000 messages a month.  It works.  It really does.  Breakout videos don't go viral on their own.  They need a boost.

        TWITTER:  Twitter is a great way to get new fans.  WE ALL KNOW THAT.  But a great way to get people to follow you is by following them.  Well this tool automates the process.  For $12 a month, Manageflitter will allow you to do this.  Say your target audiences are fans of Mumford & Sons.  Well you can automatically start following people from their page.  Wait a couple of days.  And then automatically unfollow everyone who doesn't follow you.  Believe me, this is great.  You can pick up real active followers this way super quickly.  Usually businesses employ tools like this, but every artist should too.

       MAGIC SUBMITTER:  Need a way to own the Internet? Post relevant blogs, videos, and press releases quickly?  Magic Submitter is the way to go.  It takes some time to set it up, but after you have set it up, you can automatically upload your relevant news and new music videos (that you have taught yourself to film) up to over 500 websites.  Its things like these that get you more organic traffic and help build your fan base.  I have always done this with artists, and believe me, it works.  You should also get an account with Captcha Sniper.  You know those little words you have to type in that are impossible to read?  That is a Captcha.  Well for literally dollars, captcha sniper integrates with magic submitter and will solve the captchas for you.  Now it really is automated.

White Hat SEO:  This is a manual method for internet marketing.  Below I will outline tools and methods to make this more efficient.

         HOOTSUITE:  Hootsuite is free.  It’s awesome.  And you need to sign up for it.  You can manage your social media through it.  The greatest add on (which is also free) is INBOXQ.  It allows you to create a stream, add 3 keywords to each stream (up to 4 streams) and every tweet that contains those keywords will show up.  More tweets than you can handle usually pop up.  We use two people just to manage one twitter account at a time.  However, this is a great way for you to connect with new fans.  Type in key words like (new hip hop song) (find good music) (find new music) and so on and you will find people who are dying to hear new music.  Well I think that music should be yours.  So, the key is to look out for the relevant tweets that pop up and reply to them.  Start conversations with the people and convert them to be your fan.

        Social Media:  Interact, interact, and INTERACT!  This is how you build a great and active fan base.  ACTIVE fans are the ones who purchase your merch, listen to your new songs, and tell friends!



So above are some of the tactics we have used in the past and still use.  Try them out and see the influx in fans you get.  I promise if you put the work in, you won't be disappointed.

Heath
President
Build My Band, Inc.

 

 

[LayneGreene]

I agree David, very informative post Heath!

[BuildMyBand]

Thanks.  I'm trying to share what I have learned with others over the years

[artistmonster]

Thanks for the post. I like the information you provide. 

[Jukentins]

Really interesting and useful post, especially for a starting musician like myself. Always gratifying to see seasoned musicians open to helping out of good will. Thank you very much!

[Oasis196]

Totally agree...you cannot hope to make money via downloads.  I would offer a different POV...you need to think about your brand, your audience and how to create significant value for them so they are willing to pay way more than $0.99 for your products...

[Oasis196]

Social Media is of coarse important...but dont be unfocused...

 

Ultimately this is about selling...and the key is to build awareness, attract interest, have people evaluate your product, have them commit to the sale...and then have them endorse your product.

[jamallax89]

thanks for this post, it is very important.

[Svetlana]

Thank you for the information! Very helpful!!!

[Joanna]

Really helpful post, thanks so much.

[jallyjames]

Use blastviews.com to push your music. It's a site that will provide for you genuine Youtube sees, which will help you get more attention.

[john]

Using a paid for views service can get you into trouble. Far better to promote your channel and vids to get genuine views. It doesn't even need to cost much, just be creative!

[LayneGreene]

I agree with John, plus when you pay for views you miss that whole sense of accomplishment. The reward of a high view count for your effort is an important motivation to keep doing your best to turn out good content.

[MikeRobinson]

Use blastviews.com to push your music. It's a site that will provide for you genuine Youtube sees, which will help you get more attention.

 

Hmmm...  this concept rather reminds me of the people who would pay bums off the street to fill up the front row seats.

[macmanmatty]

Hmmm...  this concept rather reminds me of the people who would pay bums off the street to fill up the front row seats.

 

 

 How did you figure out my gigging scam??

[MikeRobinson]

 How did you figure out my gigging scam??

 

Nothin' to it.    I was once asked to design a distributed control-system for a program that a guy hoped to persuade people to install as part of a "free game," such that on-command this program would start pinging a specified web-site address a certain number of times.  Presto!  Instant "hit counts" for Mother Google.  Or in this case, YouTube.  After a quick chat with my attorney, who confirmed what my gut had already told me, I passed on the project.  But I'm sure that someone else didn't.

 

I just think that, if you want to promote your music today, the best way to do that is to write music that you think is good, in a genre that you already like and are familiar with, and then to talk about it (and other people's stuff!) on-line with other fans who also like the same music that you do.  And genuinely mean what you say!  All of us can smell a "troll" a mile away, and once you pick-up a reputation for being one you can never get rid of it.

 

Put a web-link into your signature line, which takes them somewhere they can listen to your songs or some part of them.  Then, don't sit there staring at that one plot of ground, waiting for green leaves to appear ... go write more music and start building up your catalog.  Be too-busy planting more seeds.

 

Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, [...] some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. [...] And other fell on good ground, did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, some a hundred.

 

It's easy to get (buy ...) "instant gratification" in what turns out to be "stony ground."  It takes longer to find the good ground, to build a good product, to introduce it to people who seriously want it, and so to plant what might someday be part of your retirement income.

 

People often buy stuff that they like from people that they've come to know.  (And, so do you.)  It might not seem like a huge number of sales, yet, it's almost all profit.  So what if you never strike a "gusher," if you've got enough wells out there, each one steadily producing?  And, though you scarce notice it, little-by-little growing?

[symphonious7]

Use blastviews.com to push your music. It's a site that will provide for you genuine Youtube sees, which will help you get more attention.

Never use those sites.  The only sites that give you genuine youtube views use a "view for view" system, and what you get is a bunch of people clicking through a list of videos mindlessly with no intention of subscribing or giving it a real honest observation.  The trick with youtube is thumbnail, SEO, and a title people can't refuse that isn't misleading.  Write an awesome song called "My girlfriend is a gay nazi"  And put a picture of cleavage in the thumbnail, then make every tag about sex or homosexuality or something of that nature, and you'll get hits galore.  Now that is the douche bag route, and it's one many take.  I never would, but my point in giving that example is that youtube is not a very prestigious place for the most part.  If you want to hit that front page, you gotta think like a tabloid writer does, shock, ride coattails of other trending things/and amaze.  

[stewartjames008]

You can“create a Facebook account, twitter account and promote through social media†or to “get your music in as many places as possible,†listen up.

The another way is that unless you have major label money behind you, the ability to self promote your music is one of the most important skills you can have.

*Removed unapproved Spam link

Edited September 18, 2014 by tunesmithth
spam link included in original post

[project2wo]

Write an awesome song called "My girlfriend is a gay nazi"  And put a picture of cleavage in the thumbnail, then make every tag about sex or homosexuality 

damn that one's been taking then......

 

I think social media is a good starting point, and there is a ton of SEO ready templates out there......I recently read an article here about SEO or If someone wont play your music ie radio station you can always create your own. I did hehe

Edited September 21, 2014 by Janeva
Unapproved link edited out of post

[Brad Barnett]

Good post.  The thing is if you really want to make a living doing something you love like music then you have to treat it like a business.  Most musicians that want their music careers to become something more than a hobby don't do anything to make that change.  Bands and artists should be doing things like tracking all sales and expenses so they know where their money is going.  They should also be testing different price points to see what price each piece of merch sells best at.  Things that actual business are doing on a daily basis.  

 

I love how you mentioned Hootsuite.  Buffer is also a great site that does the same thing as Hootsuite does.  Having access to update multiple social media accounts through one website saves me hours of time each week.  I will be getting the pro version of Buffer soon so I can schedule and store a weeks worth of content at a time.  

 

If you aren't updated your social media accounts on a regular basis, then you are missing out on tons of free exposure!