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.
Whether you’re a solo artist or a band looking to land a big break, dropping your album on the spot may not be the best step. As exciting as it is to have the opportunity to share your hard work with the world, silently releasing an album will not work unless you have an impressionable fanbase.
Fortunately, in this digital landscape, there are hundreds of social media channels you can leverage. With 4.48 billion active users online, the possibilities for promoting your music on the internet is limitless. It can be daunting to choose the best route with so many options available, but the key is establishing a strategy that excites your fans.
To that end, the tips and tricks below should help you navigate the saturated world wide web when releasing your album:
Tip #1: Create an Album Release Strategy Based on Your Fans and Personality
When sharing your music online, there are many ways to go about it. One of the best ways to start your release strategy is to base it on your career level. This encompasses your band’s personality, including your fanbase size, online presence, genre, and career focus.
If you’re an energetic band that hops from one live show to the next, you can devise a marketing campaign that uses social media to spread the word about your gig. You can invest in posters, videos, or even work with reputable influencers to promote your show.
Tip #2: Release Your Album Constantly
One decade ago, artists would drop albums once a year and all in one go. However, modern musicians find that shortening the cycle of release makes it easier to engage fans. Releasing every two months, for instance, allows listeners to keep track of your music without being bombarded by other singles in your album.
Splitting your album enables you to stay on top of your fans’ minds, which gives them more chances to catch interest, share, and purchase. Each release must have its mini-marketing campaign that includes utilizing your social media, website, email list, and other connections with influencers.
This is the best route for those who are just starting as a musician, as it allows you to build your online presence steadily. As for established bands, other strategies may be more suitable as releasing one song at a time may not generate enough revenue for your tour.
Tip #3: Entice Your Fans by Releasing an Exclusive Preview
It’s a common tactic for artists to showcase a preview of their album before the official release date, though you add a more exciting touch to the strategy by making the preview exclusive. For instance, hosting a live show and surprising the audience with a preview of your album is an effective way of driving traffic to your social media engagement. A bit of mystery makes for the best news to spread online, and when done right, it can pique the interest of more fans.
In Conclusion
Promoting your music is a trial and error process, so trust that your strategy will refine over time. Don’t forget that in this technologically advanced world, there are marketing tools you have right at your fingertips – so all you need is to grab the method that resonates with your music, fanbase, and style. To that end, the tips above should help you get started with a bang.
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.
Technology has now made it easy for artists to update their fans about their latest musical productions or personal ventures. Social media allows you to connect to a wide audience by sharing what you had for breakfast or lyrics to a new song you are producing.
Even an image of the backstage at a concert helps you forge deeper connections with your followers. However, the ease of sharing updates does not mean that you must share every minute of your life.
Don’t bombard them with information
If you put yourself into your fan’s situation for a while, you’ll feel overwhelmed with the amount of information you feed them daily. Instead of seeing essential updates about your music, you bombard them with an endless news cycle about your pet, new places you visited, and dating app notifications.
Posting everything on social to see which updates get the most interaction is a negative strategy because you combine exciting updates with random posts. As a result, your social media engagement decreases because of the oversharing dilutes a fan’s attention. Shrinking attention spans and the reduction of reach for organic posts makes oversharing a bad idea as well.
Refine your social media strategy
Most of your social media followers care about your music. Because of this, you should only post about new music, gig schedules, and future collaborations to get the utmost priority. Posting an image of the pizza that you will share with your band does not add value to your social media strategy.
Don’t abuse your freedom to post anything on social media. While there’s nothing wrong about engaging your audience in a conversation, sharing more updates than needed takes away your promotional power. Your fans will pay less attention if you provide mundane updates that are irrelevant to your music.
Prioritizing what’s important will help you get the most of each post. However, this doesn’t mean that you must discard sharing about the lighter side of your life. Instead, you can do one post of that nature for every two or three music-related updates. If you’re releasing a new album soon, focus your messaging to promote that and stay away from posts that are unrelated to the album.
Combining different types of posts will surely deliver stronger messages as well. A one-liner about your new single combined with a short video of the recording process will draw more visitors to your social media assets. The same approach will also work if you want to share funny or poignant updates.
Using Mail Merge will make it easier to share your music with a broader audience. Their software must provide stats and analytics about the recipient’s tendencies. Finally, their fans must have a platform to address their feedback. Contact a company that offers email music promotion and ask for a free trial of their platform if possible.
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.
How and Why TikTok is Transforming the Music Industry
If you’re trying to make something of yourself as a musician, singer, producer, or band manager, etc., the more eyes and ears on your music, the better.
They don’t say it’s tough to make it in the music business without reason—the industry is known for its glass ceilings and harsh outcomes. Still, there’s nothing more magical than creating something so artistic and beautiful that it can profoundly connect with anyone listening.
Though in many cases, getting people to really hear your music is a battle in and of itself. For all the world knows, you’re a combination of Mozart, Katy Perry, and Bob Dylan—but can’t find avenues to reach the masses.
Getting featured and turning up in the right spots as a band or solo act mainly comes down to those in which the top few record labels have invested. Those empires hold a monopoly over the radio stations, having also seeped their way into the likes of Spotify and YouTube—once havens for musicians without a label.
As a result, the overwhelming majority of phenomenal independent talents remain unnoticed and underplayed. So, if you’re looking to make a breakthrough on the scene, stay tuned into the cutting edge of platforms with which you can share your songs.
Which brings us to TikTok—a social platform dedicated to sharing short-form videos. With features – such as trimming tools, filters (both face and video), animated stickers, etc. – musicians now have an incredible opportunity to expand their audience.
Let’s take a closer look at what TikTok is all about:
The Story of TikTok
Initially, TikTok was known as Musical.ly—until it was purchased by a Chinese corporate giant known as ByteDance.
The transition was rather seamless, as the Musical.ly profiles were transferred and integrated promptly onto TikTok. Other than it being confusing waking up to your video-sharing platform having been turned into a different company, it all flowed naturally.
As such, users lost nothing with the end of Musical.ly but gained the power of a superior brand in TikTok.
For some context, ByteDance is a highly regarded private technology across the world and is worth a staggering $75 billion.
The TikTok Experience
TikTok is taking the world by storm, recently having hit 1.5 billion total downloads across the App Store and Google Play.
But what about this revolutionary platform is making the likes of Facebook and Instagram sweat some serious bullets?
With the short, 15 second videos acting as a vehicle, users have access to tools, such as filters, a music database, effects, and sound bites.
Your feed will be filled with videos from the people you’re following—and generally, you’ll engage with the content through liking (by pressing the heart icon) and replying (by pressing the “…” icon). You can also share videos cross platforms after pressing the arrow button.
Furthermore, TikTok encourages collaboration by offering algorithm-based incentives. When using the platform, you can “duet” with a friend when you reply to their video. This action creates a split-screen diptych, catalyzing a never-ending cycle of reactions.
After recording a duet, your video is placed next to the video with which you’re collaborating. Then it’s posted onto your profile. Also, duets give artists a chance to reach a much wider audience.
It’s interesting to note that users can upload their own sounds—which can come in handy for musicians looking to sing over recorded instrumentals.
Also, TikTok connects directly to Apple Music, so musicians can link the full song, and interested viewers can hear it in its entirety.
You can keep your finger on the pulse of what your audience wants to hear by navigating through the ‘trending’ section. Conversely, find inspiration from other high-performing artists just through standard browsing of the platform.
It won’t take long for you to come up with something creative, fresh, and engaging. Once it’s time to post your video, just peruse your library to select and post a pre-recorded video. Alternatively, it’s possible to record new content directly via the app. It’s here where you can have some real fun and finetune your skills with speed changes, filters, and lengths—which is only scratching the surface of tools you can use.
The Value of Organic Reach
TikTok has yet to fully place ads on the platform.
Now, we’re not here to denigrate the value of paid ads. When used effectively, it’s a form of marketing that can be quite successful.
Yes, you can hire a marketing team to launch a campaign—but even then, there’s no guarantee of success. On top of that, if you’re a musician looking to catch a break. You don’t have the money for such comprehensive services.
Conversely, organic posts don’t cost a single thing—so anything you get in return offers some form of profit.
Beyond that, an organic following means people will have unobtrusively stumbled onto your content. When an audience discovers things on their own, they’re far likelier to be accepting of the material when compared to a sponsored post.
People trust authentic, organic content far more than paid, corporate marketing drivel. This feature allows a musician to cultivate personal connections with their audience. As such, you’ll gain fans for life, who aim to follow you through your entire journey to the top of the industry.
Then, once you’re ready to scale your personal music empire to the next level, you can plug paid content with your organic TikTok account.
Furthermore, TikTok’s 500 million active users vastly eclipse Twitter’s 336 million users and Snapchat’s 186 million users.
Plus, it’s been reported that 27 million of TikTok’s active users live in the US.
Those numbers are substantial and present more of an opportunity for any aspiring musician to acquire that highly lucrative organic reach.
One of the keys to TikTok is that it gives users more of a chance to stand out than Facebook, whose number of active users is 2.72 billion across the world. This statistic brings to mind the notion of having too much of a good thing.
The sea of user-generated content (including paid ads that regularly clog up feeds) on Facebook will drown out your organic posts. In fact, Facebook is so weighed down by sponsored posts that organic reach dropped down to 6.5%.
TikTok doesn’t stack the deck against organic users; instead, it encourages the most genuinely engaging and creative content. It’s only the most quality of posts that get rewarded with engagement and see their reach grow to new heights.
In fact, TikTok’s robust algorithm searches chiefly for fresh, new clips, instead of favoring the content of popular users. Experts believe that successful content with lots of engagement is bolstered via longer watch times. If you can retain your audience’s attention for the entirety of your video versus them swiping to the next one, you’ll be rewarded with exposure.
What Users are on TikTok?
As far as where TikTok users can be found, the app has been downloaded 240 million times in India and 200 million times in the US. 40% of new TikTok users are from India—but it’s worth noting that it’s available in 150 markets in 75 languages.
Worldwide, 2/3rds of TikTok’s users are below the age of 30 and are highly active on social media. While 60% of monthly active users on the app are between 16-24-years-old.
Across the globe, Android owners are primarily using TikTok, with 80% of sessions occurring on those devices. However, in Western markets, iOS devices possess the bulk of the TikTok market share, accounting for 42% of TikTok’s revenue outside of China.
What Kind of Music Can Be Synched with Videos on TikTok?
As mentioned earlier, TikTok offers a vast library of music through a distributor or Apple Music. The other method is other people uploading their own sounds to the app.
With that in mind, while you can upload any kind of song to TikTok, the short-form nature of the platform lends itself to a specific type of music. Simple, catchy lyrics tend to perform best, as this is what users want to use for lip-syncing, creating a challenge, or other content creation purposes.
If you’re uploading your own song, do so with the understanding that you only have 15 seconds to make an impression with your audience.
So, before putting your songs on the platform, perform your due diligence on the material. Listen to the whole track in 15-second segments until you land upon the hook that’ll capture the attention of your audience.
How Will TikTok Revolutionize the Music Industry?
With a younger aged audience, you’re appealing to a gigantic target market that is extremely passionate about your work. This is also the demographic that’s responsible for creating trends. Think about popular dances like the dab or the floss dance, and how you can’t see a Peewee football game without seeing those moves.
TikTok already has proven industry success, playing a considerable role in Lil’ Nas X’s “Old Town Road’s” ascendency up the charts.
With the “#yeehaw” hashtag, thousands of videos spawned with more than 67 million plays of the tune. Lil’ Nas X didn’t have to pay a cent to promote the song on TikTok and is on record saying he’d have happily paid for the kind of exposure that he received.
Nas X was able to push his song and reach such a vast organic audience due to TikTok’s capabilities for producing memes, starting challenges, and reaching influencers.
Could TikTok Provide a Boon to Record Labels?
Record Labels have always been in tune with youth culture—if not responsible for crafting much of the narrative.
Therefore, as highlighted by the story of Lil’ Nas X’s success with TikTok, anyone in the music industry can flourish with this product.
Direct music sales and advertisements can’t be offered with TikTok. However, as mentioned previously, it’s possible to be exposed to the song through a memorable video clip and then immediately make the purchase through platforms such as the App Store.
How Does Money Work on TikTok?
While views are integral to the algorithm on TikTok, they do not impact royalty payouts to music groups.
Royalties end up getting paid to artists and labels through posts with every piece of new content. Whoever holds the rights, receives the payments.
So, even if a post receives one million views, it makes no difference in the royalty payouts. As such, the platform encourages artists and labels to reach new users instead of just focusing on followers.
TikTok: The Next (and Current) Big Thing in the Music Industry
If you own a record label or you’re a musician, stories such as Lil’s Nas X’s should motivate you to leverage the platform to the benefit of your career.
