What Do You Do To Promote Your Music?

[john]

Hey

The "P" word is mentionde from time to time on these boards. I thought it would be worthwhile pulling together what exactly people are doing online and offline to promote their music.

So, what do you do?

Cheers

John

[FinnArild]

Oh - promotion is painful for me ... but I'm trying.

This next time around, I'm gonna have a plan of who to contact at what time and when. This time I focus strictly on progressive rock, so it is easier to target.

Here's some things I've been thinking:

- I need to send out a pre-release to the reviewers as early as possible, since they need some time to get the review done

- I need to print out a lot of promo cds for online radio stations and get them out to them by the time the record is available.

- I need to contact all these radio stations and try to get interview time over telephone at the right time - did a couple before, but at the wrong time

- I have to ease-up on the direct-mail stuff - I sent mail to a tad too many and got some angry returns the last time. It didn't sell any CDs anyway.

- I need to send the alert to the networks (groups like songstuff, mail, myspace, all that) - not before the CD is available and ready to buy.

- I need a separate website for this

- I need a more prepared digital presskit right away (I didn't have one when I started off the last time).

... probably lots of more stuff, but this is all I can think of now - after all, I am in the recording phase now and other issues are looming.

[Alistair]

NOT A LOT.

LAZINESS MAINLY

[typo]

lol apparently most people do nothing

[MisterT]

Even though this is a old topic/thread, I thought I'd just add my 2 cents worth:

Online, online, online!

If you could direct your fans to getting online you will be much more better off.

It doesn't cost the Earth and potentially you can get a further reach.

Where to start? Most people have a myspace or facebook page or any one of those social networking site profile pages. Use them as a tool to drive traffic to your main website to join you email list.

Use blogs to tell your fans your views and thoughts. And encourage feedback. Interact with them constantly. Take them on a journey with you through your life as a musician.

Collect their email addresses (with permission) and let them know when you are doing something, anything (within music reason). Any time you update your blog, website with some interesting news, send a email out to them. Another thing, when you send out these emails, keep it personal and not general.

Ramp up the heat in your email updates and blog posts when you are coming up to a release. This is the most critical time to take them on a journey as this is when you want them to buy something! You can do this by also using video by shooting things like when you are going to the studio to do some work. Take them with you as you're traveling etc. Just like a documentary. Continue to do these sort of things integrating your blogs, youtube, myspace and email until you launch. Obviously letting them know the release date of course!

If you do this correctly, you not only have a good launch, but you also build a good relationship with your fans.

Trevor

www.independentmusicstartup.com/recordlabelguide.html