How I Promote My Band Online

[SongTortoise]

Warning: This article is kind of long but by the end you'll learn a valuable skill in promoting your music/band/whatever it is.

I have a band that isn't too big but has a little fan base growing. I've been playing out for a few years with this band and released an EP, learned a lot promoting it. Then released a "single" and got a LOT of press for it, much more than expected. Now we're going into the studio to record a full-length in about 2 weeks and I'm confident that we're gonna get a lot of attention for it.

Each time I've released a new record I went all in, trying different techniques, using advice I'd find on the web and from talking to other musicians, using Craigslist to make new connections, etc. I'm gonna share ONE of the main strategies that I think has REALLY helped me. It's pretty easy and anyone of you can do it. It goes like this:

Think about some of the more traditional ways of promoting music, the "old school" or "major label" way of promoting music that has worked pretty well up until a few years ago. Back in the day a major label would shell out tons of dough to plaster your bands posters and fliers everywhere before a show, get you CD into tons of cool hip record stores, and of course pay radio stations to spin your latest "hit" single. Many times this would work and the rest is history, you have all of your major pop stars of the last few years. But you never heard of the artists that didn't make it. While there were tons of artists that became stars "overnight" there were many many more that fell by the wayside whose labels dropped them and they were never to be heard from again.

That doesn't sound like much fun.

These days with the web if someone doesn't feel like hearing about your kind of music, or already knows about you for some reason, the chances of them ending up on your website are slim to none. Even if they end up on your website they might not even hang around long enough to get to your first chorus. So how do you get people to pay attention?

A trick I've learned is to promote your band by focusing on the OTHER things you're interested in. For example, Derek Sivers from CDbaby talks a lot about this one artist who made a record all about sailboating. Sounds kinda weird right? Well not if you think of it like this: what if she tried to promote her music to a music magazine that covers tons of different artists? She would have TONS of competition and the chances of her getting covered are super slim. This is the real world. When you send your music to a music publication you're lucky if someone even replies with an email saying "no thanks". BUT, if you send your super interesting SAILBOATING album to a sailboat magazine they're gonna think it's really cool that a MUSICIAN would write SONGS about their passion: sailboats. From a marketing perspective it's SOO much easier to promote that AND there's a LOT less competition.

Try and keep this in mind when you're trying to get press or attention from potential fans.

My band used this when we released our latest single. I'll be honest, I know it's not the greatest song in the world, and the music video was recorded with a home video camera that wasn't the greatest. I did spend a lot of time editing the footage and making it as good as possible, but the thing that made it really stick out and got us written about in my city's biggest music weekly was that the song was about the town we live in: Phoenix, Arizona. (You can watch it here:

)

I spun the story around the fact that right now Phoenix, Arizona isn't looking too good in the eyes of the country, especially after the shooting in Tucson, our immigration policy, etc. So I addressed that in a song talking about all the positives. The local press ate that up because it was relevant to them (a Phoenix publication talking about local issues) and to all the local music blogs. It worked out great! It didn't cost me much money (my friend recorded it in his little home studio) and I spent about a week and a half editing the footage. All in all it was a HUGE success for us! Now when we release our album we already have connections with the press and a greater possibility of being written about again! Remember: Press loves press!

So, I know this is kind of long but I think it's really helpful. Try and promote your music keeping in mind OTHER interests than the music itself. This creates an "angle" that the press will LOVE because it makes their job of writing interesting articles super easy. If you have any questions get in touch, I'd love to hear from you (:

You can watch the music video here:

My band's press from the video here: http://snailquail.net/press/

Thanks! I hope this helps!

[Guest]

I've found making a Facebook account where you can add friends relevant to your industry very useful also..

[Guest]

Hey Myspace is all about music lovers now, you have to be active there. I will also suggest you to be active on Youtube and Facebook.