What are key marketing techniques for rap artists?

[Powder]

Lately I've seen that I've been pissing other users off because I have just been posting my link everywhere portraying the image of me being self-centered. Last march I was ready to release a full mixtape/EP that had 10 songs on it fully completed and quit rapping and threw it out because of being discouraged. I believe I am very talented at song-writing and my songs are very honest and reflect true events in my life. Two things I struggle with is Marketing, and actually just recording the music to come out the way I would like it. Does anyone have any knowledge on Music Production/Marketing that they would like to share? 

 

 

[john]

It isn't uncommon to feel discouraged. Hopefully we can provide you some ideas and encouragement.

 

A key thing is to release into a warm or even hot market. Anything less and your album or EP will be destined for oblivion. It is up to you to create that warm market. You have to find the market in the first place and then heat it up.

 

You will need:

 

• ideally your own website, like powder.com (you are about to invest a lot of time building your brand... it would be a pity if that was centred on another website)
• A mailing list (one that has an auto responder)
• a marketable image and packaging
• A good social media presence across a number of social media networks
• A blog or 4 (one main one, the others act as feeders.. one on wordpress, another on tumblr, another on blogspot, another here on Songstuff)
• A Vlog, and a Music Channel on YouTube
• An online street team
• Other like-minded artists to work with on marketing and promotion
• Other artists for musical collaboration to create cross promotion opportunities
• There are a whole bunch of techniques commonly used from a polarity strategy to cause based marketing, blog marketing

 

You will need to get beyond friends and family. You may need to pick a couple of tracks that you can use to build your audience. Don't do anything yet... because the critical part... is planning. Planning allows you to coordinate your efforts and think how to best use what you have.

 

Review your resources to see what you have in the bag.

 

Weed old social media to remove anything "unprofessional" or anything that will damage your credibility. This includes old demo tracks that are below par. You need a "that was then, this is now" mentality.

 

Expect that you will be desperate to release your music, but timing is everything. Get your ducks in a row before you pull the trigger. If you pick the wrong momment, pull the trigger before you have stuff set up, you can reduce the response by x10 or x100, or x 1000.... and it really, really sucks to put your all into your music, to feel you have created something to be proud of, something special, and the only listeners are your mum and best mates. All that time, money, emotion... wasted.

 

So decide. There are no guarantees, but if you release without all that stuff in place, you are dead set for disappointment. If you do decide to put all that stuff in place, work hard to put it in place and commit to it. Don't let impatience make your decisions.

 

In the background keep making better and better music. That way when you are ready to release a record (in marketing terms) you have a load of tracks to choose the absolute best from. That's a good position to always be in... have tracks a-plenty in the bag.

 

I hope this helps.

[Keegf12]

It is not an easy thing to get started with online marketing. You have to gather a lot of data to setup your campaign and this is why I had handed over the social media marketing and advertising campaign to an expert team. They managed the campaigns in a right way and our sales were increased drastically.