How do you currently market and promote your music?

[john]

Hi all

 

As the title suggests… how do you currently go about marketing and promoting your music?

 

I’d be interested in seeing if we can improve what you do. No cost to you. Let’s look at what you do, how you do it, and of course how successful it currently is. Then let’s work together on everyone’s marketing, promotion, design, strategy, tactics and then look at the change in stats. I am confident we can improve what you do currently!

 

Cheers

 

John

[john]

This is a good chance to review what you do and evolve it into something better.

 

Come on guys. We take knowledge, and the power of multiple motivated people, and we improve.

 

Over to you.

[geographyhorse]

35 minutes ago, john said:

This is a good chance to review what you do and evolve it into something better.

 

Come on guys. We take knowledge, and the power of multiple motivated people, and we improve.

 

Over to you.

I’m at work, but I’ll share my experiences later this afternoon.

[geographyhorse]

On 3/23/2022 at 10:29 AM, john said:

Hi all

 

As the title suggests… how do you currently go about marketing and promoting your music?

 

I’d be interested in seeing if we can improve what you do. No cost to you. Let’s look at what you do, how you do it, and of course how successful it currently is. Then let’s work together on everyone’s marketing, promotion, design, strategy, tactics and then look at the change in stats. I am confident we can improve what you do currently!

 

Cheers

 

John

So, I'll start by saying that I am not a very social person. It takes a great deal of energy and effort to communicate with people both online and off, so obviously promotion is extremely difficult given that a huge a proponent of promotion is communication. 

 

With my last E.P.'s and Single, I utilized Instagrams tools and also starting using the music service Musosoup. 

 

I've had some growth with both releases. My Instagram following grew from around 350  to 720 or so. My Pandora, Apple Music and Spotify plays, listeners and followers all grew. And obviously SoundCloud continues to grow with monthly SoundCloud plays increasing from about 1,000 a month to over 5,000 a month over the past year. 

 

I've found Instagram stories to be fairly useful for engaging my current listeners while maintaining my social distance. I also utilize the Reels and will post from time to time. 

 

I hired a digital artist to design a logo and also had photos shot in September. I will probably do another photoshoot in late Spring and will have more digital art done for future releases. Having a semi-professional image seems to help with attracting blogs, playlist ads, Reels, Tik Toks, and influencers. Speaking of which, I've found that Musosoup to be much more useful than Submithub (etc.). It seems it isn't without risks as even though Musosoup itself is legit, not all of its users are so.... buyer beware I guess. 

 

Blog reviews etc. are not very useful for growing listeners. But... they are good for padding the EPK and attracting more influencers so I guess that's a thing. Most of them come with a playlist placement so there's that. Playlists are just well.... playlist ads. They up listener counts and occasionally net another follow. Getting a Reel or Tik Tok influencer does hardly nothing for gaining new followers, but influencers with high follower counts can pull in some money so, I was able to make the money I spent back for the first time ever. Instagram stories on influencers pages are completely useless (at least that was my experience).

 

I've testing running Instagram ads both turning traffic towards my website and towards my Instagram account. In my experience, turning traffic towards your Instagram page nets better results. It doesn't seem all that useful at first. But, advertising to my own followers has netted the best results out of every playlist ad and blog post ever, so growing the Instagram page doesn't seem to be that bad of an idea. It's just slow and cumbersome. 

 

On the SoundCloud side of things, I cannot reccoment RepostExchange enough. It takes a long time to gain traction using it's free services, but give it time and it will work. 

 

I'm still working with baby numbers, but the meager growth I'm enjoying is nice given my difficulties. I will obviously work on being a bit more social and will continue to throw sh*t at the walls to see what works and what doesn't. I didn't go into this expecting it to be anything more than a hobby so knowing that someone out there is listening is it's own reward and I need to keep reminding myself of that every time I get myself down with life. 

[geographyhorse]

Here's my logo and some photos..... 

[Janice]

I created a Facebook page, and shared videos, and links, and boosted the posts. I've shared posts on music related pages, such as Billboard A&R, and shared videos on Twitter.

The most effective methods, is paying  freelancers on fiverr to promote my lyrics videos, and paying the UK Talk Radio Station to play my music. I avoid paying anyone to boost my Spotify links, because if it turns out to be bots, my releases will get taken down.

Always read customer reviews before making a purchase! There are some scammers on there  There are also a lot of absolutely brilliant sellers on there, who have helped me to get my music discovered.

[john]

4 hours ago, Janice said:

I created a Facebook page, and shared videos, and links, and boosted the posts. I've shared posts on music related pages, such as Billboard A&R, and shared videos on Twitter.

The most effective methods, is paying  freelancers on fiverr to promote my lyrics videos, and paying the UK Talk Radio Station to play my music. I avoid paying anyone to boost my Spotify links, because if it turns out to be bots, my releases will get taken down.

Always read customer reviews before making a purchase! There are some scammers on there  There are also a lot of absolutely brilliant sellers on there, who have helped me to get my music discovered.

I would avoid boosting posts. As paid Facebook advertising goes it is by far the least effective, mainly because it is the least accurate or flexible audience targeting.

 

I can see paying on fiverr gives you a measurable on plays of videos… how do you know talk radio plays are effective?

 

Going past raw first stage results like paid promotion generates plays, do you follow it to “this promotion generated a purchase/download” etc?

 

Quite wise regarding Spotify though it comes down to reputation of the service. Promotion by reputable companies can be effective. In many ways better promotion to Spotify playlist curators and music bloggers on Facebook. Get your music in front of them can result in a much larger reach and high conversion as the audience tends to be more on-target.

[Janice]

On 5/25/2022 at 2:17 AM, john said:

I would avoid boosting posts. As paid Facebook advertising goes it is by far the least effective, mainly because it is the least accurate or flexible audience targeting.

 

I can see paying on fiverr gives you a measurable on plays of videos… how do you know talk radio plays are effective?

 

Going past raw first stage results like paid promotion generates plays, do you follow it to “this promotion generated a purchase/download” etc?

 

Quite wise regarding Spotify though it comes down to reputation of the service. Promotion by reputable companies can be effective. In many ways better promotion to Spotify playlist curators and music bloggers on Facebook. Get your music in front of them can result in a much larger reach and high conversion as the audience tends to be more on-target.

Thanks for your advice about Spotify promotion. My single, Sing got to number 1 on the UK Talk Radio station charts for three weeks in October last year. This lead to being signed to a VIP Recording Services Record label on June 7th.

They have distributed music for Missy Elliott and Robin Thicke. I released my single Patience on July 8th.

Paying the UK Talk Radio station via www.fiverr.com for radio airplay has helped me to achieve a lifetime ambition to get signed to a record label. Their prices are not cheap, so message them first with a link to  your music to find out if they think it's radio read

[GregB]

I addressed this topic a couple of months ago, and posted a downloadable breakdown of the things I've done.  I've given costs and metrics wherever possible, the key being that all was done ultra cheap!!