Long gone are the days of music fans buying LP records and laying back to soak in the sounds.
Today, music has gone fully digital. Instead of producing vinyl, every artist has to turn their sights to music streaming platforms.
And while Spotify has revolutionised the way people hear your music, TIDAL, a music streaming platform owned by Jay-Z, has risen to prominence. And according to their latest reports, they show no signs of stopping.
In this article, we’re going to show you how TIDAL works for artists.
It’s time to jam!
What Is TIDAL for Artists?
TIDAL is a global music platform that brings artists and fans together through distinctive music and content experiences spanning across 54 countries.
But why should you care about TIDAL as an artist?
To put it simply: TIDAL’s global reach and advanced features allow you to reach millions of potential fans with your music.
TIDAL currently has a catalog size of around 80 million songs, and over 225,000 high-quality videos.
Additionally, they pull in subscribers by offering exclusive content and real-life experiences, such as concerts. All of this makes it possible for them to create a more immersive music streaming experience, with the focus being placed on your brand as an artist.
Even if you don’t have a record label, you can publish your music on TIDAL through LabelGrid, Indigoboom, Record Union, DistroKid, or Tunecore.
Their financial model benefits artists, as well. TIDAL pays the highest ratio of royalties vs revenues. You’ll be getting equal rates to label-signed artists.
Finally, TIDAL pays attention to content curation. They frequently promote up-and-coming artists with a whole lot of potential. You might’ve heard of that program under the name TIDAL Rising.
What Is TIDAL Rising?
This is where things get interesting!
TIDAL Rising is a program that allows artists that might have slipped through the cracks of other platforms to gain more prominence.
Since the artists are selected by human curators, it’s really one of the best merit-based artist promotion systems available to up-and-coming artists.
If you’re spotted by TIDAL Rising curators, you’ll get access to excellent star-making support:
Prominent placement – If you’re a TIDAL Rising artist, your every album, single release, video, playlist, or editorial content piece will be featured on the front page. You’ll also get a slot in the “What’s New” section.
Press photos – TIDAL will pay for professional photoshoots for you.
PR support – You’ll get a PR team that will create strategies for new music releases.
Artist imaging – Professional stylists will take care of your wardrobe, hair, makeup, as well as media training.
Tour support – TIDAL’s Tour Support is… well, free tour support. You don’t have to pay them back for arranging everything from van rentals to accommodation. This is probably one of the categories where it’s the clearest that TIDAL wants to help you succeed with their Rising program.
But just because your music is on TIDAL, or they support you through TIDAL Rising, doesn’t mean you can’t get your voice heard across other platforms.
Are There Any TIDAL Exclusive Artists?
No, there aren’t any TIDAL exclusive artists, but artists do share exclusive content through TIDAL.
TIDAL’s artist-owners (a list that includes Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Calvin Harris, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Daft Punk, deadmau5, Jason Aldean, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Madonna, among others) have shared a variety of exclusive content:
Coldplay shared a TIDAL-exclusive playlist, which included songs like The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony
Beyonce released Lemonade exclusively on Tidal
Rihanna released her single Bitch Better Have My Money exclusively on Tidal
The White Stripes’ debut TV appearance was exclusively available on Tidal
This exclusivity model is really how TIDAL attracts a significant number of followers. By allowing fans to interact with unique content from their favourite artists, they’re creating an engaging platform while helping artists reaffirm their brands.
TIDAL vs Spotify
Now, we can’t avoid this question: which is better for artists, Tidal or Spotify?
Let’s break it down quick:
Spotify has a free plan (with ads), while TIDAL’s plans start at $9.99/£9.99. The free plan is certainly appealing to a vast number of users. However, many Spotify users end up upgrading to paid plans for the ability to listen without ads.
Additionally, there are 4.2 million users on TIDAL, and Spotify has over 217 million subscribers. Still, TIDAL has a bigger catalogue. TIDAL offers >80 million songs in their catalogue, while Spotify offers >70 million.
Finally, TIDAL’s sound quality (with the $19.99 plan) is superior to Spotify’s sound quality. It also has a reputation for being a platform used by taste-makers. This makes it a great option for artists that want to make it big (even if their sound isn’t mainstream).
Finally, there’s no way around the fact that TIDAL simply gives artists more rights to their music. From the TIDAL Rising program, which is intended for up-and-coming artists, to their financial model, it’s a better option for making it big.
In that respect, Spotify likes to dip its fingers in many pies; hosting podcasts as well as music. This does open up the platform to more users, but at a high cost that might affect artists who want to create a brand through the platform.
The Verdict
The ultimate answer depends on you and your music. You don’t have to pit TIDAL against Spotify.
You’ve spent many days, even months creating music you believe everyone should hear. You get it on Spotify and wait for it to penetrate the world. Unfortunately, you find that even after a few days or weeks, barely anyone has ever heard of you, let alone your songs.
With that in mind, how do you get people to listen to your music? Well, one of the ways you can do that is to get it playlisted.
In this article, we’ll talk about how you can get your songs playlisted on Spotify by different curators or by Spotify itself.
Spotify’s Algorithm
While we do not know how Spotify’s algorithm works precisely, we do know what you need to do to get on Spotify’s playlists, such as Discover Weekly or Release Radar. To do that, you need to capitalise on followers, saves, and streams. In other words, to get on Spotify’s playlist, you need to strike the delicate balance between the number of followers and save, along with how often it is streamed.
Getting Your Music on Spotify Playlists
If you want the best way to get on Spotify’s playlist, you’ll need to look for curators. You can find them through their social network. However, this method can be extremely time-consuming as the whole process consists of figuring out which playlist you want, looking for the curators on their social networks, such as Instagram or Facebook, befriending them, and communicating with them. Some might never, ever reply to your requests. Some that do respond to you might do so after a long delay (too long at times).
If you don’t want to bother with that but have some money to spare, you can hire a Spotify promotion company to do the hard work for you. They’ll help increase the number of plays your music gets, along with boosting the number of followers.
Purchasing Followers and Streams
While there is an option to buy streams and followers, this method is forbidden by Spotify. Not only will your music be removed from Spotify if they discovered that your followers and streams are bought, but your account can be banned as well.
External Promotion Efforts
Other than trying to satisfy Spotify’s algorithm to get your songs on their playlist, there are other things you can do to attract more people to listen to your songs.
For example, to supplement your use of Spotify promotion companies, you can utilize other social networks like YouTube to promote your music as well. There, you can specify an audience you want to share your music with, giving them a glimpse of what kind of music you produce and guiding them to following you on Spotify to listen more of what you have to offer.
In conclusion
The best way to go about getting your songs featured on Spotify’s playlist is to balance between follows, streams, and saves. Do this by promoting yourself through different channels, such as a Spotify promoting company or other social networks like YouTube. You can contact other curators to feature your songs as well. Remember, the more you go about improving your music, the more people are going to learn about you and follow you. Just avoid going the route of purchasing followers and streams, as that’s forbidden.
Struggling to do all the work yourself? That’s what we’re here for! If you need help communicating your music updates to your followers, give Promo.ly a try! We are a music promo delivery system for artists, labels, and PR agencies, helping you maximize your current mailing list. We’re a self-managed music PR service that delivers music to your mailing list, get in touch to see how we can help today.
With even more artists entering the music industry, the need to stand out as a musician has become as important as ever, especially when it comes to more populated genres.
In the past, the task of standing out as a musician was mostly done through the use of sheer musical skill, which eventually rendered the quest of finding success in music as one that was a survival of the most skilled. Nowadays, however, being skilled and talented as a musician is no longer sufficient to stand out and be heard well enough to develop a fulfilling career.
Attaining success as a musician nowadays boils down to a variety of crucial factors that each have their own significance in turning home musicians into international stars. Although there may be many factors to consider as an aspiring musician, an airtight marketing plan is one particular aspect (aside from talent) that has proven to be essential in attaining success.
Why most musicians end up overlooking the marketing aspects
Admittedly, the main reason musicians end up overlooking their marketing plan is that it doesn’t sound as appealing or impactful as practising, making connections, and performing. A marketing plan, however, holds the key for any artist to go far beyond what they’re currently doing because it gives them the leverage they need to present their content to a bigger audience.
Today, promoting your brand as a musician, getting your music out there, and making your presence known by implementing a marketing plan is essential for attaining immeasurable success.
What you need to consider when building a marketing plan
When it comes to building a marketing plan for your music career, it’s essential to keep in mind that there’s no one solution that works for every musician. A marketing plan can be done in a way that best fits your needs. At the same time, however, it is essential to consider a few key elements when putting an effective marketing strategy together.
If you’re keen on making an effective marketing plan that works, here are a few essential elements to consider throughout the entire building process:
1. A proper introduction about yourself
No matter how hard you work on your Facebook ads or Soundcloud profile content, all your efforts can easily be rendered unusable if you don’t have a proper self-introduction as an artist. With a proper self-introduction, you’ll be able to clearly state who you are, what you do, and why people should listen to you and watch your shows, which is essentially the foundation of your entire marketing plan.
2. A set of realistic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and goals
Accountability is one of the most effective tools that you’ll have as a musician who is trying to make a career and what better way to keep yourself in check than a few KPIs and goals? Setting a few goals to paint a clearer picture of where you see yourself in the next five to ten years will help steer your efforts in the right direction.
3. A clear knowledge of your target audience
Building a marketing plan as a musician without knowing your target audience is like playing darts with a blindfold. You can try as much as you want, but you’re probably not going to hit your target. Clarifying your target audience is an effective way to ensure that you know who you’re making music for, and it is essential that you take the right steps in building your marketing campaigns as well.
Building a marketing plan as a musician with the right set of elements is a guaranteed way to achieve your long-term goals and establish yourself as a musician. By keeping the three key elements mentioned when putting your marketing plan together, you’ll get where you need to be an artist within a shorter amount of time!
If you are looking to improve your music marketing strategies in the United Kingdom, get in touch with us today to see how we can help.
If you’ve been following the internet music scene for a while now, you’ve probably become quite acquainted with the idea of using SoundCloud to get your music out in the open. With all the years and effort that you’ve put into pursuing your craft and refining your talent so that you can make it a lifelong passion to pay the bills and live comfortably, it makes perfect sense to use SoundCloud. Now, the question is: Are you really making the most out of SoundCloud?
It’s worth knowing that SoundCloud can be used for so much more than simply uploading your music and hoping for the best. You see, SoundCloud yields so much potential for any musician-businessperson to turn their talent into a well-paying profession if they use the platform properly.
You can use Soundcloud to get both your name and music out in the open for everyone to enjoy, follow, and look forward to with the right promotional strategy. Thanks to the platform’s easy-to-use interface and simplistic algorithm, the extent to which your promotional chops take effect is entirely up to your control.
Whether you have a new track or EP coming out or have been aiming to gain some much-needed traction in the industry, here are a few SoundCloud promotion tips that you can put into play right away:
1. Put a marketing plan together—and stick to it
One of the most effective techniques that you can use to your advantage when promoting your SoundCloud is to build a marketing plan that can help set every promotional effort in the right direction. While it may not necessarily be as exciting as playing a concert for 10,000 people, creating a marketing plan and following it step by step is the best approach to make your way there much faster.
When putting your marketing plan together, it’s important to understand your target market on a much deeper level in terms of what they do, what works best to their preferences, and how they enjoy their music. Doing so is a great way to understand how you can promote your SoundCloud music in a manner that’s easy for them to consume.
2. Check who your fans follow
If you already have an ideal fan in mind, knowing who they follow on SoundCloud will help with figuring out how you can be what they look for. Once you pooled a test group of similar potential fans or profiles together, go ahead and check for any common artists that they might be following. Finding the common denominator among those in your ideal fanbase will show how you can represent yourself on SoundCloud so that you can promote better and attract like-minded followers as well.
3. Keep an eye out for data by going pro
SoundCloud also provides its users with valuable data. However, accessing data analytics on SoundCloud requires going pro. As soon as you get SoundCloud pro subscription, you’ll be able to access traffic data and listener data to understand what tweaks you’ll need to make with your promotional efforts. Additionally, upgrading your account to SoundCloud Pro is also a great way to ensure what upcoming trends on the platform are drawing attention and are about to become the next best opportunity for further growth.
Promoting your music on SoundCloud is a step in the right direction towards becoming a full-fledged professional musician. Properly doing it will make a huge difference in how successful you can get. By following the three tips mentioned in this article, you can ensure that your promotional efforts can fast-track you and your music towards success easily.
If you’re looking to learn more about getting more plays on SoundCloud, get in touch with us today to see how we can help.
Whether you are aiming to be the front act for a famous band at a local show or seeking coverage from a popular music blog, you will need a well-written email pitch to succeed in your plans.
Unfortunately, many unestablished artists struggle in this form of self-promotion because they are not skilled writers. However, that is not the only reason why musicians fail at email pitches.
If this struggle persists for you, here are several considerations in promoting your music through email.
What does the reader want?
People often take you seriously based on how you communicate these pitches. Though spam emails are prevalent, some musicians still copy poorly written emails before sending them to event producers, media outlets, and playlist creators. If you also move annoying emails to your spam or delete them at once, think about what the blogger or the producer will do when they receive your hastily crafted email.
Writing a well-constructed pitch takes time, and delivering it in a personalised manner entails research. If you're writing for bloggers, craft the pitch in the tone that they write to make them identify with the text. It helps if you quote one of their articles and build your pitch from there to show that you care about their work.
Meanwhile, be more formal in pitching to a promoter or a producer to show respect. Using slang may turn them away. Instead, include in your pitch reasons you bring value to their show.
Even if you are not writing a novel, you must still pay attention to grammar and spelling so that you will be taken seriously. Also, remember to make your message stand out by adding flair with the subject line to entice them to open your message out of the hundreds they receive weekly.
Once they open your text, it must contain concise and engaging words that will make them like you. While including your credentials is the key, overselling yourself may not land you a gig. Instead, use your tone to share your story briefly before telling them what you want and why you are the rightful person to get the push.
Get straight to the point
Producers and bloggers choose the musicians that get exposure based on their personality and the quality of music. Pitching yourself based on personality won't get you anywhere because people may not appreciate the image you project. That's why it's essential to include nuggets on what your music sounds like, your inspiration in creating songs, and the platforms where they can hear your compositions.
You must address those aspects first before developing your pitch and contacting people via email. Even if you want to include other information in your email, limit the message to what's essential and personalise it to each person who will receive the email.
Mail Merge may help speed up the process of blasting emails. However, while you get the recipient's name right, your message will not resonate because it's monotonous. It may take longer hours to write personal and unique words for each recipient. However, this approach will have a better success rate than sending the same message to 200 contacts who may know each other because they work in the same industry.
Making your recipients feel special in your email pitch may result in getting favourable responses. It's this connection that can propel your music and your brand to a bigger audience.
Musicians often make the mistake of focusing too much on creating music that they forget about promoting their rhythms. Instead, they must find time to bring their songs to a bigger audience, be it on social media or through emails.
If you are looking for a music promotion platform, visit Promoly’s website now to learn more about our software's features.
A quick look at the Internet will reveal multiple ways to share your music and promote your identity. Putting much thought on how you market your image and your music gives you a better chance of getting discovered and heard in a competitive industry. However, promotion and image must not take the bulk of the artist’s time. Instead, developing great music must still be the priority.
That said, here are three ways to use music as your promotion’s focal point.
1. Define who you are
If you still see yourself as a musician or songwriter, then you must put in mind this persona from the way you dress to your posts on social media. Creating great music is challenging even for experienced musicians, and that’s why artists compensate by building their brand and boosting their image as motivation to create great music.
However, nothing is as sleek and more thoughtful as a marketing campaign than promoting their music itself. If you put yourself in the listener’s position, an artist that is all hype but creates no great music is not worth following or listening. After all, it’s still the music that separates the good and the bad artists.
2. Music comes first
Musicians often choose to concentrate on their music instead of their image. This is because building an online presence nowadays is imperative, given the social media-driven culture. It’s not enough to be a great musician anymore. Instead, they must build their image to connect to their fans or gain new followers.
While it’s vital to update your followers about a portion of your daily whereabouts, take some time to feel the essence of your music and promote that instead of yourself. Find a way to connect with your audience using that message for them to appreciate your music on a personal level.
That way, they will appreciate your music more than the memes and the goofy videos that you post online. Posts of that type are useful in gaining short term attention. Unfortunately, they do not align with your overall strategy, especially in pushing your music further.
3. Limit your options for the best
The options are limited but in the right way. An artist who knows what their music is all about limits the means to present themselves and their message. It makes promotions and branding easier when compared to musicians who do not understand what their music means and why are they creating it beyond monetary reasons.
Don’t worry if you can relate to this because it takes years for a great musician to form a solid musical identity. You cannot force or rush it because it is a significant decision that you must start to think as soon as possible. Defining your music sets the tone for your image, which makes promoting and finding a fan base easier.
Leverage technology’s power
Aside from social media, you can also use other platforms to promote your music or your shows. Email messaging is still an effective medium despite its limited reach. Learn more about how you can harness this platform to promote your music effectively.
If you are looking for a music promotion company to help you promote your music effectively, get in touch with us to see how we can help.
Regardless of whether you’re a beginner that’s been tapped to play a few gigs out of town or a well-known act taking the national stage, there’s always the struggle of performing your music in a new city.
Performing in a city that you’ve never had a show before comes with an understandable amount of overthinking, self-doubt, and an overall fear of what’s ahead of you. Out of all the different aspects that you have to worry about when playing a show in a new city, the promotion will be at the top of your priority list. While it may be true that it’s very much possible to gain momentum and a set of new fans to your following by performing in a new city, ensuring that people actually know you’re performing can be more difficult than expected.
Two sure-fire promotional strategies
Fortunately, promoting in a show in an unfamiliar city doesn’t always have to be as hard as people say it is— especially when you know the right tips and tricks for effective promotion. To ensure that your set is a big hit in a place that you’ve been to before, here are two promotion tips that most of the industry’s biggest players abide by:
1. Pitch your show to local press and radio outlets
If you play your cards right, being the newcomer in an unfamiliar town can work to your advantage with the help of the area’s local press and radio outlets. Pitching your show through a simple meeting or conference call can go a long way in making sure that everyone in town has a reason to go to your show.
Presenting your upcoming show as a “debut performance in the city” to a local press or radio outlet will undoubtedly get the attention of the locals. Bringing local press and radio outlets into the mix will speak for itself in terms of answering the question, “why should we promote and cover your show?” Blogs, online news outlets, and radio outlets look for certain stories to generate interest in the area that you’ll be performing in, which makes it much easier for your debut show to come off as a hot topic.
2. Run a targeted ad campaign for your upcoming show over social media and local blogs
Should you find yourself with a comfortable budget that can be used on various promotional expenses for your upcoming show, then its best to go all-out on social media through targeted campaigns.
With the help of a targeted social media ad, you can get the word of your show spreading like wildfire, especially in locations that thrive on discovering talented acts. Selecting the right location, age, and music preference when setting up your social media targeting can be particularly impactful, even more so when you have a flexible budget.
With the right promotion strategies in place, you can easily overcome the pre-performance jitters of performing in an entirely-new territory to a crowd that you’ve never performed in front of before.
If you’re looking for a music promotion company to help you promote your show, get in touch with us to see how we can help.
What’s new on Spotify? Marquee, an advertising initiative that allows music labels and artists to promote their music on the streaming platform – at a price, of course. It’s 55 cents a click, but Spotify recommends a minimum ad buy of $5,000. For that price, you can expect to increase your stream count to at least 9,000 streams, or 9,000 potential listeners, over a seven-day period. At least, that’s what Spotify says.
Does Spotify’s Marquee tool mean that streams are now for sale? What if you don’t have the money for it as a struggling independent artist? How could this change the way listeners engage with the streaming platform? Let’s take a closer look at Marquee and what it means for artists, labels and listeners alike.
While Spotify already offers artists and labels in-platform advertising, the streaming service says Marquee is a more effective tool, and early testers have agreed.
Spotify Marquee is said to have a wider reach, which means more listeners. The paid ads are shown not only to free users but subscribers as well. The click-through rate currently stands at 21.7 percent, plus users who receive a Marquee ad were found to stream 17 percent more than those who don’t.
Despite this, Spotify stresses that artists are not paying for streams. Spotify’s Senior Product Marketing Manager, Charleton Lamb, clarifies that listeners have the choice to engage or not.
What it offers listeners
You can expect to listeners to groan at yet another ad from Spotify, but according to Rolling Stone, it doesn’t appear to be that bad – the platform “will not bombard listeners with pop-up ads” each time you open the app. And if you’re more of a classical music listener, you won’t be getting Despacito pop-ups. Hopefully.
According to Spotify, the Marquee recommendations will still be based on a listener’s music taste, so the notifications will only be from artists they follow or frequently listen to. And probably from similar artists, if Marquee really promises a wider reach.
Spotify also puts a limit on the number of ads listers see, such as a single ad in a day or two in a week. The Marquee notifications, captioned “Brand New Music For You,” can be turned off if you’re a premium user and don’t want pop-ups any day of the week.
Concerns about Marquee
Rolling Stone notes two primary concerns about Spotify’s new marquee ad tool. First, Marquee makes the music business more consolidated. If you have the resources – say, the marketing money of the major label you’ve signed with – then you can afford to pay for play and get more listeners.
However, if you’re an independent artist who struggles to even earn $300 from streams, this means your music may have to stay in the background, away from the spotlight paid for by artists with means. Would you be willing to cough up (at least) $5,000 for a song or album promotion on Spotify?
The second concern is about Marquee’s cost-effectiveness. As with other ad tools, Marquee can’t really promise success in terms of getting more long-term listeners, unless everyone that receives the pop-up recommendations becomes instant fans. However, if your goal is simply to create awareness of your music, then Marquee sounds like a good tool for it.
What do you think of Spotify’s new ad tool? Share your thoughts!
Making it big in any industry depends a lot on sheer luck. However, along with luck, it’s also equally important to work hard, have determination, and use the right strategies.
The same goes for those belonging to the music industry.
If you’re an aspiring musician, your goal is to obviously get everyone out there to listen to your creations. The tactics you use in this regard become very important. While self-promotion platforms such as Promoly can aid you immensely in promoting your music, there are other aspects of the music marketing world you should know as well.
Let’s take a look at what it takes to have a comprehensive cheat sheet on music marketing.
How to Create a Successful Music Marketing Plan
Before you start making your marketing plan, there are certain questions you need to ask yourself.
These include questions such as whether you’re just starting out with an online presence and need to reach your audience, if you’re ready to head out on tour and sell tickets, whether you’re already on tour and need to sell more merch, if you want to double the size of your mailing list, or if you’re releasing a new album and need to generate awareness for it.
Here are some ways in which you can create an effective music marketing plan:
Define Your Audience
Knowing your audience is the first step in any marketing plan. It’s the audience that will help you succeed, therefore, knowing them well is of utmost importance. Find out which platform your fans like to use the most, be it Facebook, Instagram, or something else.
You will need to discover how to communicate with your fans effectively, and what to offer them in order to keep them coming back for more. Ask yourself questions about who your ideal fan is, because it’s this fan who will stay loyal to you, help you sell tickets, and buy your merch.
The questions you need to ask regarding your audience include the age and gender and location of your fans, what their personalities are like, what excites them apart from music, what’s their favourite social network, and so on.
Analyze the Market
Once you know what your audience is like, you will have to find out about the current music market. This entails exploring both locally as well as globally. An understanding of this will aid you in figuring out where you fit in and what are the unique aspects you can offer to your fans.
This department requires research as well. You need to explore which bands or musicians are the most popular at the moment, what is it they’re doing to engage with the fans, if the artists within your genre are touring successfully, and so on.
Create an Action Plan
Once you have some clear music marketing goals laid out, it’s time to think about how you’re going to achieve those goals. The components to include in your action plan are PR, advertising, content curation, touring, social media, networking, etc.
Try to approach all the goals on a monthly basis. Develop a spreadsheet where you can list down when you’re going to approach the goals respectively. This will give you a picture of all your PR efforts and how you plan on creating and executing content in the upcoming months.
In addition to making these plans, it’s also important to keep a track of how these strategies are working out. Some of the KPIs to consider include how many album sales happened through clicks on your mailing list in the current week and how that compares to the previous week, which sources on your website are leading the most to your store, etc.
Formulate a Budget
Much like any other industry, it takes time and money for your marketing efforts to grow and bring about results. Therefore, when you create your action plan, assign the necessary budget to each element so that you know just how much everything is going to cost. That way, you can be prepared and even tackle any sudden expenses that come your way.
What are the Best Music Marketing Platforms?
When it comes to music, self-promotion works wonders. If you’re looking to have all your promo campaigns in one place, Promoly is the platform to go for. It lets you view everything happening in real-time, and also helps you create stunning promo packages.
Some of the best music marketing platforms musicians can go for are as follows:
1. YouTube
YouTube is obviously the first choice for any musician, both popular and new. With music being the most viewed category of video (27%), and people watching over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos every day, you really can’t go wrong with this music marketing platform.
2. Social Media Networks: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
We’re all aware of the fact that most of the people using social media are gathered and spread between Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Therefore, having a presence on each of these platforms is crucial for any musician.
Twitter has about 330 million monthly active users (MAU), it’s the place for most budding music journalists and influencers, and it helps you get a lot of word-of-mouth.
With a staggering 2.38 billion MAU, Facebook is the most used social media platform globally, and it’s where people discover your live videos. Instagram with its 1 billion MAU is the place where budding artists can generate a community and a loyal fan base.
All three platforms have a varying demographic. This is why your marketing campaigns should be different with respect to all the three platforms, depending on your target audience and the kind of content they like to see.
3. Spotify
Controlling over 36% of the global streaming market, Spotify has 217 million monthly active users and is the most popular music streaming platform in the world. Whether you’re aiming for placement on the editorial or label-owned playlists depends on your marketing strategy.
Not only will this give you global exposure and help in transforming your career, you will also be featured by the third-party influencers. It’s digital platforms like Spotify that helped in driving the change and shifting the focus from albums to digital playlists. Therefore, using this game-changer should be a must on every musician’s list.
4. TikTok
As you probably know, TikTok is the newest obsession in the world of music marketing. It lets you repurpose music and transform them into memes that you can share with your followers, and this is a trick most people seem to be loving these days.
With TikTok, users will be able to discover your music and create their content with it, which serves as a great word-of-mouth technique. They further share this content and it gets seen on other social media platforms that also has music lovers who appreciate your work.
Let’s face it. Learning how send music through email isn’t the most glamorous of jobs. It’s like herding sheep at the best of times, but like with anything; the more sheep you herd, the better you become at it.
It’s the same with email music promotion; the first couple of promos you send will probably flop, but over time you refine your audience, segment your mailing list, and learn to write better copy.
With practice, tastemakers will start to take notice. But getting to that stage is a bit of an unknown territory, but thankfully for you, I’m going to break it down.
To send the perfect promo campaign, you’ll need to read the following:
Have a suitable email address
Creating a DJ or Press email list
Sending promos manually or by using software
1. Having a killer email address for promoting music:
I know this is blatantly obvious, but to start sending music through email, you will need an emailing address. Yet, you shouldn’t use any email address, for example, your personal account.
Remember, the ultimate goal of promoting music is to gain awareness about the music you’re selling.
If you’re sending music, from [email protected], then your chances of winning features are going to be pretty slim. This is especially important if you own a record label.
Branding is massively essential. Domain names are cheap. Buy yourself one. They’ll make your business look more established, authentic and trustworthy.
There’s plenty of places that sell domain names – I like Namecheap. Signup for an account, do a search for your record label name (or company) and see what’s available. You’ll probably find your record label name is possible. But if it’s not there are some pretty unique extensions accessible, such as .club, .agency, & .digital. Once you’ve picked up your domain name, you’ll need to create an email address from that domain.
Namecheap offers email hosting, or you can go down the route most people take, and that is Gsuite. Gsuite is simple to set up, and Gmail is a trustworthy email client.
I recommend creating an email address with your name as the handle, especially for email outreach. Receiving a music promo from a personal business address, such as [email protected] is more reputable. Whereas receiving an email from [email protected] just looks a little impersonal. Maybe that’s just me – I’ll let you make that decision.
2. Creating a reliable DJ or Press email list for promoting music
This is a hot topic. It baffles a lot of people. They think it’s some sort of elaborate mystery with very complicated resolution. Well, it’s not. I’m going to share some advice on it.
Whenever someone emails me, enquiring about building a DJ list, I always reply with the same answer. It usually starts off with “Having 10 DJs on your email list that love your music is far better than 1000 DJs that don’t care for it.”
I’ve seen record labels who have blatantly scraped their emails lists from the internet and subsequently wonder why less than 2% opened their promo email. Well, that is because their email list doesn’t know they are and probably not interested in their music.
Harsh, I know, but also true.
Think about it like this: If your friend sent you an email, would you read it? Probably.
If a stranger sent you an email, would you read it? Probably not, unless something caught your eye.
What’s the difference between a friend and a stranger?
The answer is a relationship.
Having an affiliation with that person is the key to getting your email opened. So, how do you build a relationship with a stranger?
Talk to them.
But how can we open those lines of communication and maximise return on that investment?
Well first work out what you’re trying to achieve. For example, your goal is building a DJ list, filled with DJs who love your music and want to play your latest release in the clubs and on the radio.
Let’s say you own a tech-house label. Start by writing a list of people who would play your music. Would a dubstep DJ who only plays dubstep play your music? No, well axe them off for starters. Do the same with anyone else who wouldn’t be interested, this includes your blog outreach research.
You’re definitely not a charity.
Firing content around with abandon will devalue the product over time. Promoting music to tastemakers who are not interested is simply not worth your time, regardless of how ‘big in the scene’ they are.
Instead, start a small list of potential DJs or press contacts and build them incrementally over time.
Also, don’t dismiss the lesser-known DJs, they’re very useful. Some of them will become successful and invariably will end up leading the scene.
One of the easiest ways of getting hold of DJs or bloggers is to message them on Facebook. Most companies/DJs/bloggers will have a Facebook page, so getting their attention is pretty straight forward.
Send them a message
Perhaps say something like “Hello Bob, I’m Pete, I would like to send you some music over email. Would it be possible to have an email address for you, please?”
Keep it simple, don’t over complicate it and whatever you do, don’t whine at them if they don’t get back to you within 5 minutes. Believe me, this happens. People are busy. If they want to get back to you immediately, they will, if they don’t, accept it and move on.
Maybe give it a week and provide those people with a gentle follow up. When they reply, they’ll probably ask for some information and a taster of your music. Give the tastemaker what’s needed and perhaps drop a link to your promo. Promoly has a ‘secret link’ function, which is ideal in this situation.
When I was running a record label, I used this technique; it worked well, and I built a decent email list (~1000 contacts) tailored to my record label’s ‘sound’. But I didn’t accomplish that over a week. I grew the mailing list as the years went on and I still dip into it occasionally when I need to contact someone. A couple of things to remember:
Use their real name; this shows you’ve done a little research.
Don’t spam them with 10 releases or send them your life history.
Don’t be needy, annoying or pester them.
Be polite when reaching out and promoting music!
Here’s my personal favourite (read: unconventional) way of obtaining an email address; Use an app that will find an email address based on the domain name you provide.
I use hunter.io for gathering email addresses. However, there are other alternatives available which are comparable. Hunter works very well, and many companies use this technique for cold emailing purposes.
If a DJ/label/etc., has a website, plugin their domain name and the app will display the associated email addresses for the domain provided. (Hunter also has other impressive functions, like email tracking, which could be used in conjunction with promoting music.)
This will save you A LOT of time and give you a personal address instead of a generic info@ address. Here’s an example, using our domain promo.ly.
Once you have their email address, send the contact a simple email, like the Facebook message but this time ask for permission to send them promos. Just because you have their email address it doesn’t mean they want to hear from you, so don’t spam them with release promos without seeking permission first. You don’t want to be flagged for spam or get strung up in a GDPR fiasco.
Remember: music PR is about building relationships. Once you have their approval, build a relationship and then consider sending a song/promo. Also, don’t forget to check in with them from time to time. Don’t be that person who only contacts someone because they need a favour.
3. Sending music promos through email manually or by using software?
So you’ve got your email account and press list in the making. And I assume you have some music to promote?
But how do you promote music successfully?
There are a couple of ways sending promos can be achieved: you can either send a promo to a segmented email list, or you can do manual outreach over email. Both are excellent ways of gaining features, plays and premieres.
Using a tool like Promoly is a great way to organise and track crucial information, such as plays and downloads.
Promoly caters for sending promos as well as generating secret links for manual outreach.
If you wish to send a promo to a whole list, you’ll need to start adding your mailing list in Promoly. Segment the lists into appropriate groups. Really dig deep here.
Segmentation is the key to getting reliable results. Spend some time going through your email list with a fine-tooth comb. Think about the music the tastemaker/DJ would prefer.
Add the contacts to different groups. The work you put in will be worth it in the long run.
Now your mailing list is organised, polished and ready to roll; it’s time to create a promo campaign. You’ll need artwork, press information and music for this part.
Think about your subject line – what makes you open an email in your inbox?
If you’re stuck, we’ve written an article here which will give you some ideas about creating a click-worthy subject.
Subject lines should make people want to open your email, not delete them.
Unfortunately, many record labels often fall into the ‘bland subject line’ category when promoting music, but it’s ok… this is why I write articles like this one.
Hopefully, you’ll learn something, and if you do, drop a comment in the Facebook comment box at the bottom.
What information should be included on a promo?
1. Artwork 2. Music 3. Press Release 4. Release dates
These are crucial factors. Here’s Promoly’s campaign creator:
Including artwork, music, press release & release dates are absolutely vital when sending music through email to your recipient list.
Without all the necessary details you’re cutting down your chance to get featured.
There’s nothing worse than receiving a promo and having to chase the sender for the relevant information. Get this right the first time, and you’ll automatically be in with a higher chance of getting noticed when promoting music.
Finalise your promo, save it and make sure the preview looks good. Promoly will automatically create an attractive landing page for your music to be showcased on.
Here’s an example:
Manual outreach vs bulk sending, what’s the difference? And what’s the best way of sending a song/promo?
Manual vs bulk sending is entirely up to you and totally depends on your goals. If you wish to circulate music to DJs in line with your release date, then don’t go sending individually, as that’s counterproductive and could take too long.
But, if you’re promoting music and seeking a premiere, I suggest manual outreach. Including a Secret Link (created by Promoly) is also recommended. Secret links are direct access to the promo landing pages. They eliminate having to send a whole promo campaign via email.
Instead, Promoly can generate a secret link which you can drop into a Facebook or Whatsapp chat. This is great if you’re chatting freely with a tastemaker about a premiere and want to strike while the iron is hot. Promoly will record all data on that secret link and compile the data into a report. Try doing that with WeTransfer or other link-sharing services. Yep, thought so… you can’t!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCLIdwR2g9o&
When you have a release ready to promote, start thinking about when the promo needs to be sent to tastemakers. Do bloggers take 4 weeks to respond? Does Mixmag need your music 4 weeks in advance to their print cycle? All of these questions need to be thought about before you start to promote music. Sending a release into oblivion and hoping for the best isn’t the most tactical way. Hence the importance of segmentation and pre-planning.
There are many ways to promote music
As you’ve probably worked out, there are 101 different ways to promote music.
This article on ‘how to send music through email’ and promotion is only scratching the surface. When promoting music, it’s all down to what works for you and what gets you great results.
Every record label and publicist works with different methods; they may have some secret sauce from time to time, but essentially they’re doing similar methods highlighted in this article.
The most crucial factor to take away is you must test ideas and stay consistent. Try out an idea for a solid couple of months without changing direction. Results will not appear overnight, but Promoly can help you to achieve them over the long term.
