To promote your music successfully and make yourself known as an artist, you’ll need a strategy, a methodology, and a willingness to follow the proper music promotion steps. In this article, we’ll see some methods and tools you can use to increase your visibility among music fans and music industry professionals (influencers, labels, radio stations, media outlets, playlists, etc.)
Boosting your notoriety as a musician and winning connections in the music industry takes time, so you have to be patient. As an artist, you have to do it all: composing, producing, distributing, promoting, marketing, selling, and all the rest. It’s a real business. That’s why it’s strongly advised that you surround yourself with competent people to effectively manage your music promotion strategy, or to use proven tools like Groover, a platform dedicated to music promotion, which will allow you to contact the power players in the media, radio labels, and other music industry pros and get a guaranteed response within seven days.
In this article, we’ll talk about the quality of your music, your visual identity, your online communication, sending your music to professionals, and YouTube and Facebook advertising.
1) QUALITY BEFORE PROMOTION
It may seem obvious, yet the majority of artists are sending out unfinished tracks. That’s the INDISPENSABLE first step before going any further in your music promotion strategy!
Your music needs to be top tier, i.e. irreproachably artistic, technically sound, and original. If you don’t follow this rule, you might get burned in the music world, and it’ll be that much harder to make yourself known.
Even some tracks that are very famous and well-liked online still don’t please the ears of the pros. Why? Because the mixing sounds muddled, or maybe it’s not original (as in, tons of music in the exact same style already exists). Under these conditions, you might as well save the effort of promotion…
To sum it up, the quality of the song is indispensable before even thinking of promoting your music!
A) The artistic side
- Is your track structurally sound (intro, bridge, drop, break, etc.)? How’s the arrangement?
- Are you sure your listeners don’t find it too repetitive? Does the song seem to run out of steam?
- Is the sound design of your instruments/synths/vocals well-thought-out and executed well enough?
If you’re satisfied with the track, keep in mind that it’s important to ask for outside opinions (and not just from your friends) before promoting your music.
B) The originality side
A lot of music producers run up against a lack of originality. They get a lot of inspiration from their favorite artists, and make virtually unlimited use of:
- Samples available online (e.g. Splice, Vengeance Sounds, etc.)
- VST instrument presets
If you use a lot of existing sounds, think about reworking them to give them a bit more authenticity and a bit of a different sound.
Copying other artists’ styles won’t help you. Create your own style with your own sound. Be a perfectionist when it comes to each track. For example, use layering to improve the sound of your instruments.
TL;DR, you’ve got to stand out to get noticed! Music promotion relies first and foremost on the quality of the music and the authenticity of the artist.
C) The technical side (mixing, mastering, etc.)
Your music has to be mixed perfectly. It’s got to sound pro! Your musical productions shouldn’t have anything to envy well-known productions over.
Your songs need to be finished in the studio to sound as good as possible. Getting the opinion of one or several sound engineers is crucial. Don’t hesitate to compare the production of your songs to that of known artists. Also, consider taking breaks and listening to your songs several days later (to give your ears a rest). Listen on both studio speakers and headphones.
Next, consider getting good mastering to make your music as comfortable to listen to as possible for both fans and professionals. Mastering can’t be improvised.
D) Test and get feedback before promoting your music!
The only way to know what your music is worth is to test it with:
- listeners
- expert listeners (artists, talent scouts, headhunters, etc.)
- professionals (labels, radio stations, media outlets, etc.)
Feedback from music fans and professionals will help you figure out whether you’re ready to launch your music promotion. Skipping this step may mean lowering your success rate.
2) VISUAL QUALITY
Anywhere you communicate, the first thing people see about your work is the visual. It’s an important tool to help you gain credibility and boost your artistic universe. Make sure to put a lot of care into your logo and photos of you.
If you can, definitely don’t hesitate to enlist the help of a good graphic designer for your visuals!
3) ORGANIZING AND MANAGING YOUR ONLINE COMMUNICATION AND PROMOTION
There are many complementary communication tools out there.
A) Creating your Artist Website
There are two types of ready-to-use tools out there to help you create your website:
> Online editors (e.g. Wix, Jimdo, or Weebly): these allow you to create a website as simply as possible. This is ideal if computers aren’t your thing. A ready-to-use tool allows you to create your site easily (including the design, pages, functionality, etc.), with the only negative side being that you don’t have complete flexibility or freedom on your site. If you want a fairly sophisticated site, go for a CMS.
> CMS (Content Management System, e.g. Wordpress): these allow you to be a lot more flexible and to design a more complex site. Plus, communities like the one around Wordpress bring together tens of thousands of the world’s best graphic designers and developers offering free and paid templates and designs to personalize your site.
Before jumping into website creation, it’s recommended that you analyze other artists’ websites. Choose 5 or 6 other artists’ well-designed, well-presented websites. Pay attention to the following elements and take them into account when designing your site.
- What kinds of pages and templates are out there?
- How is musical content presented? Text and images?
- What elements are present? (e.g. newsletter signups, audio players, Facebook widget, etc.)
- How is their design presented?
Don’t forget about your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to be more visible in search engines (making your music promotion more visible too!). Consider regularly updating your website, both for your users and for search engines.
B) Promoting your music on social media
1) Your Facebook posts need to be high-quality and effective to boost visibility:
- Make sure your profile picture and cover look good first (see part 2, “Visual Quality”)
- Of course, use a fan page, not a user page (as we’ve seen people do quite often)
- Consider posting a few times per week to optimize your fanbase engagement
- Vary the type of content (text, links, images, videos, etc.). Keep in mind that engagement (likes, comments, etc.) is often better on posts with good-looking pictures without text, or with embedded videos. Avoid posting YouTube videos (Google/YouTube is a competitor of Facebook, so they aren’t huge fans of YouTube links) or just posting links to your music.
- Don’t strictly stick to only talking about your music news. Social media is a place where fans will appreciate being shown varied and fun content.
- Consider mentioning other people in your posts when relevant, and tag images with the people in them.
2) Grow your Facebook fanbase with posts.
Did you know that you can invite everyone who’s liked a post to like your Facebook page?
Open the window showing all those who’ve liked the post, then click INVITE TO LIKE.
If there are a lot of people to invite (e.g. thousands of likes on your post), then use the awesome extension (and not many music blogs talk about this) “Invite post likers to like page on Facebook”
C) Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Consider using and staying active on various artist accounts. This will allow you to capture a larger audience.
To simplify the management of all these platforms, you can use a tool like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, or SocialEngage.
These tools are laid out like dashboards and manage accounts on various social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, Mixi, MySpace, Ping, and WordPress. You can automatically post on several sites at once.
| To dive deeper, check out this guide on gaining followers on Instagram
D) Newsletters / Emailing
You can use a tool like Mailchimp or Sendinblue to import emails, create them, and send them.
When you create a fan base or a list of prospects (labels, media outlets, DJs, etc.), it’s very important to diversify your communication methods to ensure you’re reaching the maximum number of people possible.
Consider gathering email addresses:
- from your website
- from social media
- by prospecting professionals (labels, radio stations, Music Supervisors, influencers, etc.)
If you can, get the first name, last name, language, and business (if applicable) to personalize your emails. You can personalize certain fields (e.g. Hello XXX, I believe your label XXX may be interested in…) and send different language versions if applicable.
This type of tool will allow you to track the rates at which your messages are opened and clicked through in real time, and to find out exactly who opened or clicked in your email. This makes it a precious tool in your newsletter strategy and your music promotion.
| Check out How to create a newsletter.
E) YouTube: how to optimize and boost the recommendation of your music videos
There’s no need to explain how to upload on YouTube. However, it’s important to keep a few rules in mind about optimizing your music videos on YouTube.
> Post regularly: YouTube prioritizes artists that regularly post content
> Optimize the keywords in your video file during upload
> Fully fill in the title field with keywords (without going crazy)
> Entirely fill the description with information about you. You can even put the song lyrics here.
> Use as many tags as you can in the video. Also tag artists similar to you.
> Personnalize the video thumbnail that will appear in the suggestion column. This will help you improve your clickthrough rate (= CTR, an important SEO item). This is also why a lot of YouTube channels put hot girls in the thumbnail…
> It’s important to boost your views at the beginning to help the algorithm promote your music. You’ll have more of a chance of generating buzz if your video gets a few thousand views as quickly as possible. For this reason, consider setting aside a Google Ads budget to boost your video.
> Don’t hesitate to contact Youtubers to increase your views and promote your music, you can quickly reach a large audience this way! Many Youtubers from different musical styles are on the Groover platform, where you can contact them directly and get a guarantee that your music will be listened to and that you’ll get a response within 7 days.
F) Be present on streaming platforms to promote your music
Make sure you can be found everywhere:
- Spotify
- Deezer
- Shazam
- Beatport
- Itunes
- Amazon
- Qobuz
- Etc.
There are many digital music distribution platforms that will allow you to upload your song once and have it distributed everywhere.
4) MAKE REMIXES OF POPULAR SONGS
Use the power of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and YouTube to make yourself known.
Make remixes of popular on YouTube. For example, if you are influenced by Imagine Dragons, you might make one or two remixes of Imagine Dragons, along with all the other usual optimizations 🙂
Start with some popular artists and titles to take advantage of their visibility and link yourself to their keywords.
Another tip: instead of focusing on a song’s title, why not focus on its origin?
For example, the music from the new Renault Captur ad on TV was making the rounds, so why not make a “Renault Captur ad remix” ?
The goal is to jump on keyword opportunities to better position your music on YouTube. Once that’s done, your music will promote itself.
| Read also: How can you legally release a cover on streaming platforms?
5) PROMOTING YOUR MUSIC ON BIG SPOTIFY AND YOUTUBE PLAYLISTS
Before anything else, make sure you’re targeting professionals in your music genre to avoid wasting everyone’s time. Select your best songs (or song). Pros are flooded with new artists to listen to. Make sure to send the links to your social media and streaming accounts. If they’re interested in you, they’ll take the time to check out your Facebook, Soundcloud, YouTube, etc.
There are tools that allow you to list influential YouTube and Spotify playlists:
- Noxinfluencer for YouTube: https://www.noxinfluencer.com
- Spotontrack for Spotify: https://www.spotontrack.com/playlists
You can sort playlists according to different criteria: musical style, country, follower numbers, follower growth, etc.
Use a prospecting tracker to organize your contacts and intelligently follow up (date sent, opened or not, clicked or not, etc.), like if you were doing business prospecting.
You can also check out the Groover platform, which will allow you to contact playlist curators directly, with the guarantee that your song will be listened to and that you’ll get a response within 7 days.
6) SEND YOUR MUSIC TO RECORD LABELS
Make sure to target labels well (especially by style) and don’t send several songs right off the bat.
If you’ve recently started doing music, and you’re at the beginning of your career, keep in mind that many big labels will wait for you to be at a more advanced stage before signing you. Some big labels even wait for you to have tens of thousands of fans.
To get started with labels, you can:
- visit label websites one by one, or go on every Facebook and Soundcloud page and find a contact.
- use the platform Groover to directly contact the labels of your choice and get a guarantee that your music will be listened to and that you’ll get a response within 7 days.
- try to contact labels’ A&R (artist and repertoire), and not just whoever manages the main inbox (already drowning in emails). To do that, you can try LinkedIn. In the search, type the label’s name + “A&R” or “Artist” or something similar. This will allow you to find the appropriate contacts. Next, guess the email based on their name (often {first name}.{lastname}@umusic.com), and then use:
– Rocketreach
– The Hunter extension
7) TAG YOUR SHOWS ON BANDSINTOWN & SONGSKICK
Consider posting your next dates on Bandsintown and Songkick to let your fans and pros alike know you’ve got gigs booked.
It’s crucial for an artist to have regular music updates. This makes you more attractive to managers, bookers, fans, etc.
Consider plugging these modules into your Facebook page.
8) FACEBOOK ADS AND YOUTUBE ADS TO PROMOTE YOUR MUSIC
A) GOOGLE ADS / YOUTUBE ADS
Google Ads / YouTube Ads are useful for quickly increasing the number of views on your videos, all while targeting an audience more likely to enjoy your music. (Google Ads here)
You can precisely target your music at an audience by:
- Online location: YouTube channels and videos, websites, mobile apps, etc.
- Physical location: country, city, language, etc.
- Age range and gender
- similar musical genres
- device: mobile, ios, Android, PC, etc.
The price ranges from €0.03 to €0.20 based on your video and targeting.
Boosting your YouTube views when you launch a new song increases its visibility within the YouTube algorithm (suggestions, YouTube searches, etc.). The potential lies not in the views you buy with ads, but in those generated afterward thanks to the algorithm.
B) Facebook Ads / Instagram Ads
This tool allows you to:
- invite more users to like your page
- invite more users to like / comment on specific posts or listen to your music.
Since Facebook bought Instagram, you can distribute your ads where you want (Facebook, Instagram, Mobile, Desktop, etc). You can target users (age, gender, country, fans of certain genres/artists/labels, etc.) who see your post to invite them to like/comment etc. Consider inviting them to like your page once they’ve liked your post (see part 3) B) of this article).
For example, if you type in “Ed Sheeran”, the tool will also automatically suggest targeting Facebook users who are also fans of Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, etc.
Targeted ads are very powerful, because you can target any user type.
It’s also possible to target Facebook / Instagram users who are very similar to those on your mailing lists (audience Lookalike on Facebook).
You can even send your ads/videos only to users who have already been on your website, watched your videos, etc.
| The complete guide to promoting your music with Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads
CONCLUSION
There are a lot of tools for promoting your music, and you’ve got to make sure your songs are perfect before using any of them.
You’ll need patience, hard work, and good organization to use all these communication channels well. If possible, surround yourself with experts, since this takes a lot of knowledge and time (and you’re already spending so long in the studio and on tour…).
> Next article: How to choose the right Record Label for your Music
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Contact playlists, radio stations, labels, and music pros on Groover ⬇️
