TikTok Takes Over

Wanna know why TikTok is so important to a music career these days? See why music research and analytics guru likes Viberate have shown in their just published annual report shows just how “TikTok Takes Over”.

Viberate analyzed massive amounts of data (more than a trillion data points, thousands of artists and playlists, millions of tracks and videos, and hundreds of festivals) gathered from Instagram and other key social media and music channels, including Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, Beatport and radio. Imagine that?

The TikTok Takes Over report shows which artists performed the best in their respective genres, what got played and liked on different channels in 2021, and which key music trends to look out for in 2022.

Only 1% of artists rule the social media and music channels! That sucks. The lion’s share of engagement and fanbase growth belongs to the top 500 artists, pushing the artists in the long tail of streaming and social media into inventing solid promotional strategies if they wish to break through.

Hip Hop and K-Pop artists are smashing it in streaming but are snubbed on the radio. While online engagement numbers crown Hip Hop and K-Pop as two of the most popular genres, radio is all about Pop and Rock. Multilingual (non-English) tracks thrive online but seem to have trouble getting through radio gatekeepers. Trends suggest that may yet change in 2022.

New Trends are: (1) multilingual music going more mainstream, (2) personalization at the forefront, (3) TikTok acting as a career launchpad, (4) short videos gaining power, and (5) further blending of genres. Here’s a short rundown of each trend (for the full list, see the link below):

Multilingual music is going mainstream. South Korean sensation BTS made it onto Viberate’s top 5 list on almost every channel, while YouTube saw a huge rise in the popularity of Asian Pop and Latin genres (especially Reggaeton). Unlike radio or TV, online music channels have little to no gatekeepers, thus pushing non-English music into the mainstream.

“Personalized everything” will drive an artist’s success. This means that labels, artists and other professionals will benefit from fan-first approaches to their promotion, merch, distribution and licensing. Personalized experiences also go hand-in-hand with securing digital revenue such as tipping, NFTs or paid subscriptions.

TikTok takes over. Not only was TikTok the most visited website in 2021, it also helped artists like Tokischa, Will Paquin or Crawlers break through and boost their streaming numbers. You can use Spotify to “seal the deal” – the artists who transform a TikTok hit into solid streams are the ones with real potential. We can therefore expect more talent discovery and promotional efforts as TikTok Takes Over.

Short videos will rule. Easily digestible formats such as TikTok videos will be the most useful promotional format for artists to stand out and get discovered. As audiences celebrate the DIY approach, content will be more important than production value.

Genre lines will blur further. Rising and breakthrough acts such as PinkPantheress prove genre bending and blending is more popular than ever. Artists and their audiences prefer moods to traditional genre labels, with the trend extending to popular streaming playlists for specific occasions (driving, studying, relaxing, etc.). For example, Spotify’s “Songs to Sing in the Shower” playlist has a hefty 6.4M followers.

See the “TikTok Takes Over” address for the full list of trends, best-performing artists and music tastes of 2021.

Instagram for Musicians

Instagram is one of the most effective music promotion channels out there with over 1 billion monthly active users. And 500 million of those users are on the app every day. Not to mention, Instagram has the highest engagement rates across all social media channels, making it a great place to engage with and grow your fanbase. That being said, if you’re not using Instagram correctly it can be a major waste of your time. So here is a fully comprehensive musician’s guide to Instagram and all the music marketing tips you need to get started.

Click to get this free guide

Instagram for Musicians

Once you are through here, make sure you check out this article for a step-by-step guide that walks you through exactly how to grow your fanbase on Instagram.

Should You Use Instagram?

While Instagram is great, and there are plenty of Instagram musicians killing it, it’s not for everyone. You shouldn’t just be promoting music on Instagram just because other people are doing it.

As a musician, you should use Instagram if the demographics of your fanbase strongly correlates with their user base. AND if image-based sharing aligns with your interests.

35% of all adult social network users are on Instagram. But 72% of teens and 71% of 18-24-year-olds are using the service. So, if a segment of your audience falls into the 13-29 year old demographic, Instagram could very well be an important part of your social media mix.

If you’re not sure, the easiest approach is to take a look at the audience at your next concert. Who’s in the crowd? How old do they look? A more accurate option is to glance through the analytics of any other social channels you’re using. Both Facebook and Twitter offer detailed stats on your fans.


Not sure what to post to Instagram? Download this free social media ebook: How to Promote Your Music: With 3 Social Media Checklists


Musician’s Guide to Instagram: Setting Up Your Instagram Account

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of actually posting to Instagram for musicians and getting more followers on Instagram, let’s make sure you have your account set up to make the most of all of Instagram’s features. These lessons are taken from the extensive collection of online music marketing and promotion courses we have at New Artist Model. Let’s dive in…

Convert to a Business Account

If you plan on using your Instagram account to promote your music and connect with your fans, the first thing you’re going to want to do is to convert to a Business account.  A Business account functions exactly like a personal account plus some additional features like analytics and direct contact buttons among others.

To convert to a business account go to the “settings” menu and choose “Switch to a Business Account.” You’ll have to connect to your Facebook artist page to set it up.

Make the Most of Your Instagram Bio

You don’t get much to work with in the bio section on Instagram, but there’s still a lot you can do to optimize.

A good bio explains who you are and what you do in as few words as possible. Think of it as a super condensed version of your elevator pitch. Your goal here isn’t to just tell people what kind of music you play. Instead, you want to share your story and what it is that makes you unique. What is that hook that will get someone interested? 

It’s also important to use language that relates directly to your target fans. Think about how you can make it obvious what niche you cater to in just a few words.

You only get one link in the bio section. So instead of constantly switching it out, use a service like Linktree to link to multiple pages. On your Linktree, you should have a link to your website, your other social channels, your store, and a direct link to a landing page where fans can get free music in exchange for an email address.

Choosing Your Instagram Profile Picture

Just like your bio, your Instagram profile picture should represent you as a musician (or band). In other words, it should match your image and vibe.

If you don’t have any professional photos of you or the band, this might be a good opportunity to get some done (you can use them across all your social channels and website as well). A logo or album artwork can work as well. The space is quite small, so just make sure the photo you choose looks good shrunken down to size.

Posting to Instagram for Musicians

Now that you have an account set up, let’s go through the fun stuff – actually posting to Instagram. Instagram is very much a content marketing platform. It’s more about sharing your story and using the posts you share as a way to continue that narrative, so keep that in mind as you craft your posts, images, and videos. You’re trying to hook fans and draw them into your world with interesting and engaging content. It may take you some experimentation to figure out what kind of content your target audience relates to, so don’t be afraid to try different things to discover what works. 

I also want to clarify that even though Instagram is an image-based platform, you do not need to be a professional photographer to be successful. In the next few sections, we’re going to cover everything from photography and editing, to content, captions, posting times, and stories. In this musician’s guide to Instagram, we’ll look at everything you need to know about posting to Instagram.

Instagram Photography & Editing Tips for Musicians

When taking photos, the first thing to keep in mind is the lighting. Bright, indirect natural daylight will give you the most consistent lighting no matter if you’re posting a shot of the band or a close up of your gear. That said, there’s a lot that you can do creatively with harsh lighting or even backlighting if you’re feeling inspired.

A good photo is like a good song – you have one key theme and everything else is working to support that theme. So when composing your photos, try to keep one main subject per photo. That subject could be you, an audience, your guitar, a new sticker design, a setlist or lyric sheet, the tour bus, or anything else relating to your music. The key is to not let photos get too busy.

In terms of taking your photos, any smartphone will produce great results. You can use your phone’s camera app, or opt for an app like Camera + for more features.

Next, you can use Instagram’s uploader or an app like Afterlight, Snapseed, or VSCO Cam to edit your photos. It’s easy to get sucked into all the editing options and get carried away, so here are the basics. Try adding a bit of Brightness and Contrast to start. Add a bit of Saturation if you feel like your colors are getting washed out, and perhaps play with the Highlights and Shadows to adjust the lights and darks. You could also add a bit of sharpening if the image looks fuzzy.

And finally, you can apply a filter from Instagram or your editing app to all your photos. Lower the strength of the filter down a bit as full strength filters can be overpowering. If you use the same filter on all your posts it will give your feed a more consistent and professional look.

Click to get this free guide to Instagram for musicians.

Instagram for Musicians

 

What to Post on Instagram as a Musician?

Success on Instagram really comes down to utilizing content marketing. In other words, sharing valuable content your fans will love and pulling them into your world. If you’re wondering how to promote your music with Instagram, here are some rapid-fire ideas to get you started.

You can post videos up to 60 seconds in your feed, so post short video clips of you or the band performing a song. Another idea is to post short tutorial videos showing your fans how to play a song or demonstrate a certain technique. Post short cover videos covering your favorite songs. Record a short video explaining the meaning behind your lyrics. Share videos from your live gigs or of the live audience and ask fans to comment if they were there.

You could share your gear set up, and even make it a regular thing with a hashtag like #gearsaturday. If you review and talk about gear regularly, it could open up the opportunity for endorsements and sponsorships down the line.

Share images from the studio, from rehearsals, from the tour bus, or backstage at gigs. Share images of your instruments, your new merch designs, or your new backdrop for gigs. Post selfies with your fans. Share images of lyrics you’re working on. Post professional photos you get taken for your website or album. Use these images as starting off points to tell a story to your fans.

What Makes a Good Instagram Caption?

Being such a high-engagement platform, your caption is almost as important as the image itself. As a rule of thumb, your captions should mostly relate to your music and your music career. Think of your captions like an ongoing story. Each caption should add value, contribute to your story in a meaningful way, and pull fans a little deeper into your world.

A good caption tells a story, starts a conversation, sparks discussion, or asks a question.

Your number one goal with your caption is to get your fans to leave a comment on your post (we’ll discuss the details of WHY later on, but suffice it to say the Instagram algorithm favors engagement). So a good caption tells a story, starts a conversation, sparks discussion, or asks a question. This is Instagram marketing for musicians 101.

Tell your fans a story or about an experience that relates to your music. Ask their opinions on something. Get them to vote on something (like the setlist for an upcoming gig). You can even use your captions to learn more about your fanbase. Ask them questions about their interests and what other bands they like and keep this information in your back pocket for future promotion ideas.

It’s also important to note that Instagram does not let you add clickable links to the caption. Instead, send your fans to your Linktree link in your bio.

When to Post on Instagram as a Musician?

If Instagram is definitely going to be a part of your social media and music marketing strategy, you need to determine the best times to post to get the most engagement.

There are plenty of studies out there that will tell you the statistically optimal time to post. But the truth is, every audience is different. So don’t give too much weight to those numbers.

Base your posting times around the numbers you see in your own Instagram analytics. You’ll be able to see what days and what times your audience is most active so you can plan on posting during those high-engagement times.

For example, you might see that your audience of mostly young adults or working millennials is active early morning, at 12 pm on their lunch break, and after 5 pm. A college-aged fanbase won’t be as active early in the morning. Teens may be active early morning and later at night. A west coast-based audience will skew a little later than an east coast-based audience if you’re in the US. And an Australia-based audience will be on a totally different timetable than a US-based audience. You see what I mean?

Instagram Stories for Musicians

Stories are another way you can post to Instagram. Unlike posts, which remain in your feed, a Story is only live for 24 hours. Stories are great ways to share quick updates, looks behind the scenes, sneak peeks, and even glimpses into your daily life.

Because Stories aren’t permanent, they don’t need to be as curated as your feed posts which often follow a similar theme or look and feel. So don’t be afraid to show a bit more of your personality. You can even give early looks at projects you’re working on.

Stories are also an incredible way to get your fans engaged. You can use features like polls, questions, sliders, or quizzes to get feedback from your fans or get them involved. Try hosting monthly Q&A’s with the questions feature, or get fans to vote on their favorite merch design. You can even share your music from Spotify directly via Stories.

Fans can also reply to your Stories which will send you a Direct Message. Frequently interacting with your fans through DM’s will help you build a relationship with those active fans. Ultimately, that direct interaction is the fuel that can help encourage fans down the path to becoming superfans.

Once you get to 10,000 followers, you will unlock a feature that allows you to link directly from your Stories. Fans will be able to “swipe up” from Stories to go to links like your website, online store, or YouTube channel.

You can also save Stories to your Highlights if you want to keep them around for more than 24 hours. Create a Highlight for frequently asked questions or with information about your gear so fans can use them as a quick reference.

Using Instagram Live Videos to Engage with Your Fans

The final post type we’ll talk about today is Live Videos. On Instagram, you have the option to live stream right in the app. These live videos can be a great chance to directly interact with your fans and forge those long-lasting superfan relationships.

All you need to go live is your phone. Optionally, you could also get some kind of mount to keep it from falling over (you can get them for under $30 on Amazon), and perhaps a simple mic that plugs right into your phone if you’re concerned about audio quality.

Your live streams could be acoustic performances, Q&A sessions, fun songwriting sessions, or even a chance to make big announcements like the drop of your new album.

The key to successful Live streams on Instagram is consistency and interaction. If you can get into a regular Live schedule, you’ll begin to notice more and more fans attending. While you’re live, take time to address your fans directly, say hi to them by name, and answer their questions. That direct interaction is what will keep fans coming back to support you.

Instagram for Musicians – The Bigger Picture

Now that you know what to post to Instagram, head to this article to learn the tips and tricks for growing your following on Instagram.

Even if you’re posting incredible content on Instagram and you have a ton of fans on the platform, it’s still only one part of your promotion strategy. If you want to effectively promote your music, you need to be thinking big picture and start getting your social followers to go deeper by signing up for emails and buying your music.

Click to get this free guide to Instagram for musicians.

Instagram for Musicians

We show you how to do this in the free How to Promote Your Music guide. You’ll learn how to create interesting and engaging social posts, and how to start collecting emails and emailing your fans. Plus you’ll get three social media checklists with tons of post ideas to get you started!

WANT TO GO FURTHER WITH YOUR MARKETING AND PROMOTION EFFORTS?

If you want help promoting your music, sign up for one of our marketing and promotion courses including How to Build Your Audience with Cover SongsMusic Marketing 101 and the How to Grow Your Fanbase.

These marketing and promotion courses will teach you:

  • The modern strategies for music marketing, branding and promotion that will work best for you.
  • Tools to identify and create goals for marketing your music.
  • How to build your brand and leverage the power of sponsorships to drive awareness of your music.
  • See exactly how to develop and enhance your website and create an electronic press kit (EPK) to attract attention.
  • See how to master digital marketing including how to build an email list and create effective communications for your audience.
  • How to effectively promote your music on social media and how you can leverage these channels to build your audience on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and via email.

Get the knowledge to understand marketing and branding and what works for you and your fanbase. Gain the confidence to excel by building alliances with people who can help you grow your audience. See exactly how to sell more music, tickets and merchandise using modern social media marketing techniques. Get more fans and sell more music. Learn how to tap into new revenue streams. See how to leverage your interests to find real fans and harness momentum. Discover the power of niche marketing and how to find your exact niche. Learn how to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd by tapping into like-minded people, sponsorships and causes to find and grow your audience.

Check out all of the valuable music marketing and promotion training options we have right here.

If you want help with your music career, consider signing up for the Music Business Accelerator program (MBA).

These classes are all part of the online music business training offered at New Artist Model. Enjoy!

How to promote your music

The internet has opened up endless possibilities to promote your music. And, while that may seem daunting, it really allows you to experiment and let your creativity run wild!

The key to successfully promoting your music in today’s music industry is to try new things, learn from the promotions you run, make changes, and fine-tune them to your unique career.

Let’s take a look at some basic strategies you could be using to promote your music right now.

1. Use Social Media the RIGHT Way

We all use social media. If you’re not on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter these days, it’s almost like you don’t exist. However, you may not be using social media to it’s full potential to promote your music.

Social media is NOT a straight-up marketing platform. It’s really a catalyst for conversation and word-of-mouth marketing. About 80% of your posts should be funny, conversational, and interesting, leaving about 20% for promotional material. Here are some examples and checklists that you can use.

That’s not to say that conversational posts can’t be promotional! You just need to learn how to frame the content in interesting ways. For example, if you’re in the studio recording a new album, try sprinkling little updates on social media. Tell a story about your studio experience that day, share a photo of the mix, or post a short teaser video of a song.

If you’re out on tour, take photos at the venues or share short videos or photos of the audiences. These things aren’t obviously promotional, but they still let fans know what’s going on.

It’s important to remember, though, that social media isn’t the end-all-be-all when it comes to promoting your music. It can easily become a huge time suck that takes you away from your music if you don’t manage your time properly (Hint: get social media time management tips here).

2. Promote Your Music and Sell it on Your Website

Your website shouldn’t be a static thing. It should be ever adapting and changing to reflect new events in your career. Basically, you want your fans stopping by your website as often as possible. The more often they’re on your site, the more they’re exposed to your albums, merch, and tickets.

If you’re just starting out, you probably don’t have a lot of big updates other than the occasional album release and tour. Starting a blog is a great solution.

It’s fairly easy to set up a blog on the homepage of your website. Most website tools like Bandzoogle, and WordPress, have blog capabilities. Plan out blog posts at regular intervals like once or twice a week and share anything you think your fans would find interesting. This could be the inspirations behind certain songs, new lyrical ideas you’re working on, a funny story from the last band practice, or even a run-down of the gear you use.

Another idea is to create landing pages on your website. Landing pages can be used to collect email addresses, to raise awareness, to give your fans more information, or to make a sale.

3. Promote with Email

Your email list is an extremely valuable tool to promote your music. Unlike collaboration and blogs, your email list is marketing to your current fan base. If someone signed up for your email list, they want to hear from you, so take advantage of it!

Remember, your emails should be driving your fans to your website, so you want to include links.

So what do you send to your email list? The obvious use of an email list is to let your fans know when you have an album coming out or a tour. BUT you can also use your email list to send fans to your blog when you have new content. (Remember, you want to get your fans on your website as often as possible.)

Of course, you need to get fans to actually signup for your emails before you can start using it as a music promotion tool, right? An easy option is to trade something of value for an email address. Keep in mind this doesn’t have to be a free song (in fact there are a TON of more effective ways to grow your email list)

If you’re not sure where to even start when it comes to growing your email list, here are 10 easy ways to build an email list for your music.

 

“No matter how many followers you have, you can’t eat a tweet. Get New Artist Model and learn how to turn traffic – into fans – into money.” – Dave Kusek

 

Conclusion: How to Promote Your Music

Your music promotion strategy is going to be something that you refine over time, so don’t get frustrated if things take some time to come together.

The important thing to remember is that you should be taking advantage of all the different promote your music tools you have right here at your finger tips instead of relying on just one thing.

If you want more music marketing guidance, download our most popular ebook (all free). You’ll get a roadmap showing exactly how different elements like social media, email, and your website come together into a music promotion machine that will help you grow your fanbase and make more money. You’ll also get 3 social media checklists with easy post ideas you can use on your own social channels.

 If you like this post, click below

for more great tips you can use to promote your music

How to Promote Your Music Ebook

 

There are a lot more resources available for you at the New Artist Model blog.  For example, if you want to self release an album, this will help you get started. If you want help with Instagram for music, this post may be very helpful.

The New Artist Model is an online music business school for independent musicians, performers, recording artists, producers, managers and songwriters. Our classes teach essential music business and marketing skills that will take you from creativity to commerce while maximizing your chances for success.

Check out the Music Business Accelerator (MBA) a new program that will help you plan your music projects, promote your music and create a sustainable career.

MARKETING AND PROMOTION

We also have a suite of marketing and music promotion courses to choose from, including How to Build Your Audience with Cover SongsMusic Marketing 101 and the Promote and Market Your Music Super Pack.

These marketing and promotion courses will teach you:

  • The modern strategies for music marketing, branding and promotion that will work best for you.
  • Tools to identify and create goals for marketing your music.
  • How to build your brand and leverage the power of sponsorships to drive awareness of your music.
  • See exactly how to develop and enhance your website and create an electronic press kit (EPK) to attract attention.
  • See how to master digital marketing including how to build an email list and create effective communications for your audience.
  • How to effectively promote your music on social media and how you can leverage these channels to build your audience on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and via email.

Get the knowledge to understand marketing and branding and what works for you and your fanbase. Gain the confidence to excel by building alliances with people who can help you grow your audience. See exactly how to sell more music, tickets and merchandise using modern social media marketing techniques. Get more fans and sell more music. Learn how to tap into new revenue streams. See how to leverage your interests to find real fans and harness momentum. Discover the power of niche marketing and how to find your exact niche. Learn how to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd by tapping into like-minded people, sponsorships and causes to find and grow your audience.

Check out our music marketing and promotion courses here.

 

Share This

How you can get your music heard using the Instagram Reels feature – plus more music industry news for indie musicians.

Instagram Reels have been around for a couple of months now. If you’re on Instagram you’ll have seen these super-short, Tik-Tok style videos – usually with music.

As they are still pretty new, Reels are getting featured heavily in the feed. So how can you take advantage of Instagram Reels to get your music out there?

Click to get this free guide

Instagram for Musicians

 

Share your music with Instagram Reels

Reels are getting lots of attention right now, and that means you should be making them too!  Up to 30 seconds long, the video content can be anything you like – but the music sound-track makes them a great way to share your music. You can choose which music clip to include, so get creative with some attention-grabbing visuals.  Here’s an indie musician’s guide to how to do it – from CD Baby.

How to use Reels

Check out this great article from Roland.com for examples and inspiration on how you can use Instagram Reels as an indie musician to get your music noticed.

Your Music on THEIR Reels

Even better, your fans and potential fans can use your music on the Reels they create, which has the potential to get your songs in front of a much wider, new audience.  Learn how, here:

Read more about Instagram for indie musicians, on our blog.

HERE ARE SOME MORE STORIES YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN

Bob Dylan sells to Universal

The sale of Bob Dylan’s song catalogue to Universal Music Publishing has also been big news in the last couple of weeks.  What can we learn as indie musicians from this deal? Here are 4 takeaways – from Rolling Stone.

Find out more about music licensing here:

Music in a Pandemic – one Band’s story

What’s the best way to promote your music release when live gigs and performances aren’t happening? Using Instagram helped this band to connect, network and grow their following. Here’s Read their story, from Bandzoogle.

 

Follow us on Facebook for more industry news, tips for indie musicians and more. 

How to get your music on Spotify playlists

How to get your music on Spotify playlists?”

That’s the hot question in the mind of just about every indie musician on the planet. And with good reason. There are plenty of inspiring stories of musicians who got one song on a crazy-popular playlist and can now pay all their bills with their Spotify checks. It can definitely be the best way to get your music heard if you can get on a popular playlist. So – how to get on spotify playlists?

Every time your song is streamed on Spotify you make a fraction of a cent. If you’re just getting a few streams a day from your fans, those payouts can be seriously underwhelming. But if your song gets thrown on a top Spotify playlist with thousands of daily listeners, those cents can really add up.

So today we’re going to show you how it’s done, walk you through how the Spotify playlist system is set up, give you some ideas that could make your songs more appealing to those mysterious Spotify playlist curators, and show you once and for all how to get your music on Spotify playlists.

Here are more ways to promote your music:

This is Not a Hack

I want to get this out of the way right up front – there’s no way to game the system here. It’s going to take a lot of hard work on your part to build up your Spotify plays, listenership, and credibility.

And it’s probably going to take some time. Just like other platforms, Spotify has an algorithm that rewards artists who spend a lot of time on and put a lot of energy into the platform.  

On top of that, the quality needs to be there. If you want your songs to stand next to some of the world’s best tracks on playlists with millions of followers, your song needs to sound the part. Make sure you’re A/Bing your songs to ensure you’re hitting the production quality.

How the Spotify Playlist System Works

On Spotify, not all playlists are created equal. The most popular Spotify playlists are extremely competitive and usually owned and curated by either Spotify or a major label. Companies or indie labels own some playlists, and individuals like you and me own the rest. In most cases, you’re going to have to work you way up the ladder. So let’s go through the pyramid one by one.

Spotify Playlists

Spotify-curated playlists are at the top of the pyramid. Some of these playlists (like Coffee Break, undercurrents, and Global Funk) are smaller and more niche with tens of thousands of followers. While some top Spotify playlists like Rap Caviar, Are & Be, and Today’s Top Hits have upwards of a million followers.

A lot of times, the songs that make it to big Spotify playlists have been tested on the smaller ones. They primarily look at Spotify data like plays, skips, and finishes to decide how well a song is performing. If your song performs well you have a greater chance of getting on playlists and staying on playlists for longer. 

It’s also important to note that some Spotify playlists are curated by Spotify playlist curators, while others like Fresh Finds use an algorithm to populate the songs based on each user’s particular tastes.

Major Label-Curated Playlists

Next we have the major label-owned playlists. Sony owns Filtr, Warner owns Topsify, and Universal owns Digster. These playlists get a decent amount of real estate on the Spotify browse page and are often used to plug label artists in order to get some plays and hopefully land a spot on a Spotify playlist.

Individual-Curated Playlists

And finally we have playlists that are curated by independent spotify playlist curators. I’m grouping these all in the same category but there’s a pretty big range here. Indie labels, big radio stations, and big-time music bloggers own some playlists. Others might be owned and curated by Joe next door.

How to Get Your Music on Spotify Playlists

Getting your songs on Spotify playlists is going to be a game of working your way up the ladder we just talked about. There’s a lot you can do here, so let’s go through some ideas one by one and some ideas that will show you how to get your music noticed.

  1. Sign up for Spotify for Artists

Creating a Spotify for Artists account will instantly get you verified, which can only help boost your credibility. Plus, you’ll get access to all kinds of cool features like analytics and notifications when you’re music is added to playlists. Keep track of this data as much as you can and try to notice trends. What causes you to get more streams? What causes you to get more followers?

  1. Direct Fans to Spotify to Get Some Activity Going

The easiest thing you can do is to promote your music on Spotify and encouraging your fans to follow you and listen to your songs on the platform so you can boost Spotify plays.

Remember, many Spotify playlists look at data like plays, finishes, skips, and listen duration, and many individual playlist curators will want to use tracks that are already getting some love, so anything you can do to get some social proof behind your songs can only help you in the long run.

Share links to your Spotify page on social media. Include a link on your website. Maybe send out an email here and there encouraging fans to follow you.

That being said, the more active you can be on Spotify in terms of releasing new music, the easier it will be to get fans excited about following you. Maybe opt to release a new single every few months to keep the buzz up.

  1. Create Your Own Spotify Playlists to Promote Your Music

Next, you should start creating your own Spotify playlists to promote your music. Again, this just gives you another reason to share Spotify links out to your fans.

Try curating playlists based off mood or activity and include tracks from bands and musicians you’re really digging right now (and sprinkle a few of your songs in there as well). Don’t go overboard with plugging your own songs here. You want these playlists to feel authentic.

Another cool idea is to collaborate with a bunch of musicians on a playlist. Come up with a cool idea or a theme, add in some of your songs, throw in other songs, and play the part of a radio DJ. When you collaborate like this, you’re exposing your playlist (and your songs) to a bigger audience. Which means more fans and more plays.

  1. Pitch Your Songs to Independent Spotify Playlist Owners

Before you start pitching, you need to figure out what playlists you’re going to target. Do some searches with keywords that fit your genre and musical style.  And then, start compiling some of the best fits into a spreadsheet. Include the playlist name, a link, the follower count, the owner, and any contact info you can find.

It isn’t too difficult to get in touch with Spotify playlist curators since most link up their accounts to Facebook. The key is to approach them with the intention of forming a relationship. Many playlist owners will get tons of generic emails and messages each day from hopeful artists looking to make it big on Spotify.

The better approach is to connect with them, compliment their playlist, and maybe suggest a song or two (not your own) that you think would fit. Pitch your music only after you get an authentic dialog going. Remember, they are people too with their own agendas, so treat them with respect.

You’ll be more successful with this strategy if you start small and work your way up the ladder. Someone with a playlist with a few thousand listeners will be much more open to your pitch than someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers. Once you get a successful track record you can start moving up.

Keep in mind too that playlist owners are always looking out for fresh new tracks to include. Chances are, if you get some placements on other playlists, you may very well get included in others.

  1. Support Playlists that Include Your Songs

When your song gets placed on a playlist, do everything you can to support that playlist and ride the wave.

Share out a link to social media telling fans how awesome the playlist is. Especially when you’re dealing with independent Spotify playlist curators, giving back is a surefire way to form a good, long-term relationship.

  1. Get Featured on Blogs

A lot of music bloggers have their own Spotify playlists, and getting a good review or two can potentially get you a spot on their playlists.

7. Submit Directly to Spotify Playlists

You can now submit new releases directly to Spotify for consideration in playlists through your Spotify for Artists account. With a few caveats. The track must be unreleased. And you need to submit it at least 7 days prior to the scheduled release date. You can only submit one track at a time (you can submit a new one after your first track is officially released). And finally, you need to submit information and data along with the song. This includes information like genre, mood, instrumentation, and cover/original. Spotify will use this information coupled with the data they already have compiled on you and your music to potentially find a place for it on playlists.

How to Ride the Wave

So we answered the big question: how to get your music on Spotify playlists. And you’re getting a decent amount of streams and getting some success on Spotify, now what?

Let me make this clear right now – getting tens of thousands of plays on Spotify does not necessarily equate to getting more fans. There are plenty of artists who have gone viral on Spotify – who make a decent living from Spotify revenue – but can’t even fill their local venue.

Spotify is NOT in the business of helping artists grow their fanbase. They’re in the business of getting people to listen on their platform and pay for the Premium service. I know it’s harsh, but it’s true.

That means it’s up to you to ride the wave of any success you may get on Spotify. You need to do everything you can to turn those listeners into fans and supporters.

Make sure you have social media platforms set up, a website, and an email list at the very least. These are places you can direct Spotify followers and listeners to connect and start building that artist-fan relationship.

When you do start getting a lot of streams from multiple playlist placements, Spotify could even become a decent revenue stream for you. You can use this handy calculator to calculate how much money you will get from the number of streams you’re getting on Spotify and other streaming services.

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If you want more music marketing guidance, download this free ebook. You’ll get a roadmap showing exactly how different elements like social media, email, and your website come together into a music promotion machine that will help you grow your fanbase and make more money. You’ll also get 3 social media checklists with easy post ideas you can use on your own social channels.

 Click to get the free eBook:

How to Promote Your Music Ebook cover copy


The New Artist Model is an online music business school for independent musicians, performers, recording artists, producers, managers and songwriters. Our classes teach essential music business and marketing skills that will take you from creativity to commerce while maximizing your chances for success.

Check out our popular program the Music Business Accelerator to plan your next project and drive your music forward.

MARKETING AND PROMOTION

We also have a suite of marketing and music promotion courses to choose from, including How to Build Your Audience with Cover SongsMusic Marketing 101 and the Promote and Market Your Music Super Pack.

These marketing and promotion courses will teach you:

  • The modern strategies for music marketing, branding and promotion that will work best for you.
  • Tools to identify and create goals for marketing your music.
  • How to build your brand and leverage the power of sponsorships to drive awareness of your music.
  • See exactly how to develop and enhance your website and create an electronic press kit (EPK) to attract attention.
  • See how to master digital marketing including how to build an email list and create effective communications for your audience.
  • How to effectively promote your music on social media and how you can leverage these channels to build your audience on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and via email.

Get the knowledge to understand marketing and branding and what works for you and your fanbase. Gain the confidence to excel by building alliances with people who can help you grow your audience. See how to sell more music, tickets and merchandise using modern social media techniques. Get more fans = sell more music. Learn how to tap into new revenue streams. Leverage your interests to find real fans and harness momentum. Discover the power of niche marketing and how to find your exact niche. Learn how to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd. Tap into like-minded people, sponsorships and causes to find and grow your audience.

Check out our music marketing and promotion courses here.

 

See what thousands of independent musicians are excited about. Learn different ways to promote your music and HACK the Music Business with free lessons from the New Artist Model online music business school.

Watch these videos to learn more

promote your music

How to grow your fanbase and promote your music

Let’s talk about music promotion. Believe it or not, it’s not just about selling your music and getting fans out to gigs. You also need to think long-term, and take action to grow your fanbase and get your music in front of a new, ever-expanding audience. Afer all, obscurity is the enemy!

By constantly thinking about fanbase growth as part of your music promotion efforts, you’re setting yourself to get bigger opportunities and scale up your success! Each new album release should be more successful than the last because you’ve gotten more exposure and more recognition.

So how do you actually grow your fanbase in a reliable and predictable way (without waiting around for “organic growth”)? Here are some ideas you can start using immediately to build an audience for your music.

Use these social media post ideas immediately to promote your music:

1. Live Music Promotion

With everything moving more and more towards digital, it’s easy to forget about the value of that person-to-person interaction. After all, these days you can create great quality music, release it, distribute it, promote it, and even play live (via online streams like Facebook Live) without ever leaving your room.

But, just because you can release something entirely online doesn’t mean you should! In fact, these personal interactions are still extremely important in the music industry. And live performances are still the best way to grow your fanbase IF you go into it with a strategy.

Now typically when we think about gigging the thought of big, headlining gigs comes to mind. But while headlining gigs and tours are great and can be excellent ways to make money, they’re not the best option for growing your fanbase.

Think about it like this… If you’re playing a gig on your own, most of the audience will be people who are already fans of your music. Very few people just go out and buy concert tickets for bands they’re not familiar with. Sure, you might get one or two people who got dragged along by their friends. But for the most part, it’s going to be the same faces in the crowd.

Now, if you do co-headlining and collaborative gigs, everything changes! When you gig with another band, you’re both bringing your respective audiences to the show. That means a good chunk of the audience may not be familiar with your music yet. Fresh potential fans!

The more musicians you gig with, the more potential fans you’ll be getting your music in front of. So try putting together lineups of 2, 3 or even 4 bands if you can.

The key for this strategy to work is to gig with bands who play in a similar or compatible genre to you. You want to find band who’s fans are likely to like your music.

Continuing on the same thread, you could also use gigs to grow a fanbase in new cities, states, or countries. Work with a local established band and propose a headline swap. You’ll open for them in their home town and they’ll open for you in your home town. Just make sure you pick a band with a similar musical style. Do this a few times and eventually you’ll be able to do your own headlining show.  This is just one of the strategies you can use to promote and market your music.

2. Collaborate with Other Musicians to Grow Your Fanbase

Collaboration is an often overlooked way to grow your fanbase and promote your music. But as we just saw, it’s a great way to get your music in front of a new group of people and grow your fanbase exponentially. You can collaborate on pretty much anything. Just make sure you collaborate with musicians whose fans would appreciate your music. 

Of course, the collaborative gig strategy we just looked at is a great option. But let’s talk about some things you can do online as well.

Obviously, you could also work together on a song or album. Try recording a cover song or two together and release them on your YouTube channels or Facebook pages. The key is to drive your fans to each other. If you create a song or video, link to each other’s website and social channels.

An even more easy-mode option is to just agree to give each other shout-outs on social media. Share each other’s newest track and tell your fans how much you dig it. (Obviously work with artists whose music you actually do dig.) The power of a recommendation is one of the best marketing tools out there.

So why does this work so well? As a musician, your fans trust your music recommendations. And if you were to recommend or work with another musician, your fans are much more likely to give them a chance than if they just happened upon a Spotify ad. To your fans, you are a trusted source. It works exactly the same when a band recommends your music. This is targeted exposure at it’s best and is one of the key strategies you can use to promote and market your music!

3. Reach out to Music Blogs

Music blogs are a great way to  reach out to new audiences and get new fans. Bloggers are always looking for fresh, new content, and the cool thing is, there are a ton of smaller blogs that are totally within your reach as an indie artist.

Blogs also tend to have a pretty niche following. This means that if your music is run on a blog, it’s guaranteed to be seen by people who already like the genre!

Do some research, find blogs that cover your type of music, and send personal emails out to the bloggers. Are there any interesting stories about your new album, song, or tour? Having a unique story will definitely help you stand out from the thousands of other musicians releasing an album. Make it as easy as possible for them to cover your story and treat them like people. Remember, it’s all about establishing a relationship.

You can also harness a similar strategy with Spotify playlists to get more fans.

Conclusion: How to Grow Your Fanbase

Now that you have some fanbase growth strategies, check out this free article and this FREE EBOOK for more tips to promote your music and sell more music, merch, and tickets.

The New Artist Model is an online music business school for independent musicians, performers, recording artists, producers, managers and songwriters. Our classes teach essential music business and marketing skills that will take you from creativity to commerce while maximizing your chances for success.

Check out the Music Business Accelerator (MBA) a new program that will help you plan your music projects, promote your music and create a sustainable career.

We also have a suite of marketing courses to choose from, including How to Build Your Audience with Cover SongsMusic Marketing 101 and the Promote and Market Your Music Super Pack.

3 Quick Ways to Grow Your Music Career

It has never been so easy and simultaneously so challenging to be a musician and grow your music career! The good news is that if you are resourceful and make good use of all the great musicians’ tools out there, you are bound to be successful. One of the new services that we think you should check out is called Drooble – an online platform for musicians, offering a unique approach to networking and music promotion. Drooble has been growing quickly and is something we want to make you aware of.  In fact we have partnered with them to give you some special pricing and discounts. Here are some of the innovative services that Drooble offers that we consider worth checking out:

Get Feedback for Your Songs From Other Musicians

Sometimes you spend so much time on a song that you literally stop hearing it properly, and that’s when a pair of fresh ears can be really helpful. Constructive feedback from knowledgable musicians is one of the best ways to evaluate what you need to work on, and can uncover things you may have missed in your mix or emotional issues that are influencing the impact of your song.

A great way to get feedback from other musicians is to use the Drooble Song Reviews service. Drooble is one of the only places where you can have your finished or in-progress song reviewed by other musicians from various backgrounds. What the song review service gives you is a well organized song report including written general impressions and recommendations for improvements, along with various other emotional and analytical responses for the track you submitted. The Song Review service will let you get deeper insights into production, songwriting and audience analytics, and is a great tool to become a better musician and grow your music career.

There are other song review services out there, but none that provide feedback exclusively from other musicians. For that reason, we think this is worth checking out. If you want to give their song review service a try, click here to try your first Drooble Song Reviews package. You’ll get an exclusive 20% discount just for being a part of the New Artist Model community. Use the code DYMAD to unlock your discount.

Drooble Song Review

 

Make a Strong First Impression with Industry Professionals

If you want to grow your music career, you want to present yourself to venuеs, labels, promoters, journalists and other industry representatives in a professional manner. This is extremely important. One way to do this is to have a professional website, but that can often be too much for someone to navigate through when they are first checking you out.

Instead, a great way to present yourself in a focused manner is to use an Electronic Press Kit. Think of an EPK like а professional music resume  containing all your content including discography, photos, videos, bio, upcoming gigs, testimonials, downloadable assets and more. It’s a great tool when you want to quickly present yourself and advance your chances of getting noticed.

When creating your EPK, you want to look for a system that makes it easy to create and edit your material. Drooble’s Professional EPK is a great choice among other similar tools on the market and we encourage you to go ahead and try it out. Again, you’ll get an exclusive 20% discount off their Pro option because you are a part of the New Artist Model community, but there is also a FREE edition as well. Check it out. And remember to use the code DYMAD to unlock your discount.

Drooble EPK

 

Expand Who You Know in the Music Community

Knowing how to network and being part of and participating in different music communities is critical to your success. The moment you choose to stop seeing other musicians as competitors and instead embrace other artists as points of connection for you, the further you will go.

People in your network can often be the first to hear your new songs, answer your technical questions or give you a recommendation for your next gear purchase or someone else that you need to know. Getting useful feedback on your songs, discovering connections with industry professionals and finding loyal supporters for your music are just some of the benefits that a music community provides.

One of the things we like about the community available on Drooble is the support you can get from other music creators. At the time of this writing Drooble has over 65,000 independent artists actively exchanging ideas and sharing experiences.

Drooble also has a very unique “Karma System” which rewards people for collaboration and engagement.  Pretty cool. Musicians on Drooble earn Karma Points by participating in discussions and giving feedback to others. Once earned, the points can be used to “purchase” promotion tools available right on the Drooble platform. Take a look:

Drooble Community

We encourage you to check Drooble out an join their community (for free) and explore the numerous benefits of their system and the “Karma” you can create there.

Music is a craft and therefore an endless journey. If you want to grow your music career, it requires dedication and constant improvement, and if you take the right steps, success will follow. Along with training that you can find on the New Artist Model, platforms like Drooble can give you access to tools and people who can help you pursue your dreams.  Check it out.

Streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are forever changing the way that people discover new music. In looking at Spotify vs Radio airplay you can clearly see some trends in the time it takes for a new song to find a market and the impact of streaming on music discovery.

These streaming platforms are leveling the playing field, allowing new artists to build massive, global fanbases without access to radio airplay, either initially or if ever. The editors of curated playlists on Spotify and Apple Music are supplanting traditional radio DJs as the industry’s most influential tastemakers across many genres.

In Spotify vs radio – radio lags way behind in its ability to quickly give new songs massive exposure. This is a major shift as the time it takes to go to market on Spotify vs radio is so much faster. As seen on the chart below from The Dataface, on average, it takes about two weeks from the time a song is released for it to reach the Spotify top 10 (if it makes it there at all). Meanwhile, the same song takes nearly three months to reach the top 10 on radio (if it makes it there at all).

spotify vs radio

Once a song gains traction on radio though, it generally has serious staying power. The average top 10 radio hit remained on the Billboard chart for 26 weeks, thirteen weeks longer than on Spotify. Even nine months after release, a huge song can still have consistent spins on the radio.

There is a vast difference though on how these two means of exposure work across musical genres. Rap songs gain traction on Spotify long before they earn substantial airplay on radio, but are also supplanted quicker.

spotify vs radio

Pop songs present possibly the starkest example of the current divide between Spotify vs radio. A big pop song often exits the Spotify top 10 right around the time that it enters the radio top 10.

All that said, the analysis indicates that mainstream radio is playing a different role in the music landscape than it used to. More and more, artists are finding widespread exposure on streaming platforms first and radio second (if at all). We’re witnessing an indisputable paradigm shift across the music industry in the way music is promoted, how albums and songs are released and how music is consumed.

For more on this check out this complete analysis of Spotify vs radio.

Measuring Radio’s Lag Behind Streaming Services And how it’s impacting the music we listen to.

From Michael Hester, Wyatt Shapiro and Jack Beckwith

How to sell more music with facebook live

Facebook Live videos are getting a lot of attention recently. And with good reason – it’s a great way to promote your music. And right now they are at the top of the algorithm in terms of reach and engagement. In other words, Facebook prioritizes live videos in the newsfeed.

There are a ton of articles out there explaining how to use Facebook live, so today I want to dive in a little deeper and discuss how you as an indie musician can sell more music with Facebook Live. Because that’s what we’re all aiming for, right? 🙂

There’s no direct “buy” button that will let you sell through Facebook live videos, BUT you can use Lives as a tool to drive fans to support you financially. Let’s take a look.

Take Donations During Facebook Live Events

One of the most direct ways to make money through a Facebook Live is with a little “tip jar.” This is just a link to someplace where fans can donate some amount of money while they’re watching the live video.

So how do you set this up? First, you need some way to accept donation payments. This is different from a typical store where fans trade money for some physical or digital product. Instead, fans will be giving you “tips” simply because they want to be able to support you or to show their appreciation for the awesome Live you’re doing.

It’s pretty easy to set up a PayPal.me link via PayPal. Just go to PayPal.me to create your link. You’ll be able to customize your link URL and donation experience and in the end, you’ll have a link that you can add to your website and a link that will let you send fans straight to your PayPal.me page.

That said, there are other services like Ko-Fi that have a similar function.

Donation Best Practices

Of course, having a donate link and actually getting a decent amount of donations are two different things, so let’s go through some best practices that will help you make the most of this virtual tip jar.

  1. Write up a description of your live video before you start. Ideally, this should tell fans what you’re doing or what the live video is all about. Create a shortened link if necessary and place the link to your tip jar right in the description of the Live video. Some people also post the link in the first comment as well.
  2. If you want to use a virtual tip jar during your Facebook Live sessions, I always suggest keeping the donation open-ended  – in other words, you should let your fans decide how much they want to support you. There’s always the chance that a fan may want to put in $10, $20, or even $100 (yes, it’s happened before), and if you limit them to $5, you’re limiting your own earning potential.
  3. Let fans know the tip jar is there. You don’t need to be obnoxious about it or overly promotional, but something as simple as saying, “Hey if you guys are enjoying the performance you can click the link in the description and give me a tip,” can be very effective. Don’t beg, just call it out a few times during the live.
  4. Give an incentive for tips. If you don’t feel comfortable asking for tips, do something to give back. Something as simple as thanking fans by name can make everything feel a lot more authentic (set up a notification that will alert you every time someone donates so you can thank them in real-time). Other musicians will even do something special for people who donate like taking a song request.

Try these social post ideas on Facebook:

Use Facebook Live Videos to Promote Other Products

Whenever you have something new and cool available, it’s really easy to do a Live video to promote it. In addition to getting more visibility in Facebook’s algorithm (aka more fans will see it), it also allows you to show fans just how excited you are which can make announcing new products, music, or tours a lot more genuine and authentic. Here are some ideas:

  1. Do a Live on the day your album drops to play through all the songs. Include a link to your store where fans can buy and download the album. In between songs, take some questions from your fans so you have a chance to tell the stories behind your album.
  2. Give Facebook Live viewers a special discount. Set up a secret coupon code that you only share during your Live session. That way, fans feel like they’re part of an exclusive and special group. Plus, there’s nothing like a discount to incentivize a purchase. This could be a discount off your album or merch, or even a code that will get them an extra sticker or pin for free. This is one of the best ways to sell more music with Facebook Live.

Sponsorship

If you have a large enough following, sponsored live events can be another way to bring in some income. In other words, a company would give you money in exchange for mentions and reviews in your live videos.

You see sponsored content a lot in the YouTube space, but some companies are making the jump to sponsor live videos as well since they get so much visibility.

Attracting sponsors is going to be a combination of building an engaged audience, releasing great content, and networking your way to potential sponsors.

Sponsors are looking for an engaged and targeted audience to put their product or service in front of. So the first step is always building your fanbase.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you use a certain pedal all the time and it’s genuinely something you love. Make some videos and posts about it. Maybe it’s an in-depth video review you post on Facebook. Maybe it’s a tutorial on how to get a certain sound. Or maybe you just share photos of your set up. Tag the company to hopefully get on their radar. Some companies may reach out to you if they see you’re already using and posting about their products, but it’s also something you should be working on the networking side as well. Do you know anyone who knows someone in that company?

Sell More Music with Facebook Live

Hopefully, that gave you some ideas of ways you can use Facebook live to promote your music and engage with your audience. While Facebook Live has been around for a little while already, it’s still evolving and new ways to use the platform are popping up every day. So don’t be afraid to experiment and see what works best for you and your audience!

5 ways to boost engagement on Facebook

Boost Facebook engagement and get more attention for your music

With organic reach declining as a result of more content being shared, Facebook is largely becoming a pay to play platform.

While this makes it harder to reach your fans without using advertising, don’t be too quick to give up on Facebook as a marketing channel for your music.  Facebook is the most popular social network, with nearly 2 billion users, and it’s still possible to increase the effectiveness of your Facebook page by focusing on engagement. 

Here are 5 things you can do to boost Facebook engagement.

Use these social media post ideas to promote your music and get more Facebook engagement:

Show Your Personality

People relate to other people. That’s a simple fact and a big factor that goes into your Facebook engagement. (And a big reason why major brands have a hard time relating to an audience on a deeper level)

So when you post, try to talk in your own voice. This may be challenging at first as you get used to communicating through short social updates, but it will become more natural the more you work at it.

As a simple way to check yourself, try actually reading out your posts and asking yourself objectively, “Is this something I would actually say?”

And don’t be afraid to be polarizing! A lot of people lose their voice and are afraid to speak their mind on the internet for fear of rejection. Now, I’m not saying you have to take major stands on big world issues, but let the little quirks in your personality show.

So maybe you’re a punk rocker with rebellious, high energy, anti-establishment views. Or maybe you’re a singer-songwriter who’s also really into geek culture. Don’t be afraid to let that out on social media from time to time.

Some people may not get where you’re coming from, but some will! And that connection that goes beyond just the music is what will help solidify the artist-fan relationship

Ask Questions

Asking questions and using fill in the blank posts (or even funny Mad-libs style posts) are great ways to get people to up your Facebook engagement.

Why does this work? For the most part, a direct question elicits a response much more than a statement.

I’ve noticed myself that when I post questions on my own Facebook page, friends and followers of New Artist Model are more likely to like and respond to it, often with a great amount of detail, which leads to even more responses.

Here are some questions and fill in the blank posts you can try that could be easily adapted to any audience

  • Looking for some inspiration – What songs are you digging right now?
  • Which t-shirt design do you like best?
  • We’re ordering pizza from the tour bus. Topping suggestions?

Not only will questions drive Facebook engagement, but you can get a better idea of what your fans interests are so you can more effectively promote your music.

Share Engaging Photos (and Videos)

Photos and videos are the most shared type of content on Facebook and are a great way to tell stories in a quick and powerful way.

If you have songs with inspirational lyrics, try creating a nice looking photo with pieces of your lyrics using a service like Canva, and insert your logo at the bottom so those who see the photo and don’t already follow you are exposed to your brand.

Here are some other ideas:

  • Share photos of your gear, pedalboard, drum set up, or home studio with some information so fans can re-create your sound.
  • Create a short video explaining the meaning behind a song’s lyrics (remember to add subtitles)
  • Share a photo of a lyric sheet, lead sheet, or Pro Tools file you’re working on.

Use Your Fans’ Content to boost Facebook engagement

Social media is all about multi-directional communication.  Many larger artists post on social media and let their followers respond to them, but don’t engage with those who took the time to respond.

If your fans take the time to share a tattoo, painting, or cover of one of your songs to your Facebook page, reshare it with your fans.  It’s a great way to show appreciation to your biggest fans.

Not only that, but the excitement you give your biggest fans by sharing their content with other fans can drive valuable word of mouth.

There are a few things you can do to encourage your fans to post shareable content on social media. Encourage them to post photos from gigs, remixes of your songs, or covers and tag you. Maybe make it a regular thing (like “Fan Feature Friday”).

Post More Frequently by Scheduling Your Posts

When it comes to Facebook engagement, scheduling your posts in advance can be a valuable way to continually engage your fans without staying on Facebook all day.

Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer let you schedule posts in advance.  This means that with a little bit of work at the beginning of the week or day, you can continue to provide posts throughout the day for your fans to engage with.
Now, it’s important that you don’t rely too heavily on these social media management tools. Social media is dynamic and it happens in real time, so make sure you block out a little bit of time every day to respond to comments and post live. 

Facebook Engagement: Where to Go From Here?

There are a lot more resources available for you at the New Artist Model blog.  For example, if you want to self release an album, this will help you get started. If you want help with Instagram for music, this post may be very helpful.

The New Artist Model is an online music business school for independent musicians, performers, recording artists, producers, managers and songwriters. Our classes teach essential music business and marketing skills that will take you from creativity to commerce while maximizing your chances for success.

Check out the Music Business Accelerator (MBA) a new program that will help you plan your music projects, promote your music and create a sustainable career.

 

How to sell more music with landing pages

Today I want to talk to you about selling more music. (Or merch… Or tickets.) More specifically, I want to key you in on one of the most effective ways to get fans to take that next step and support you. Surprisingly enough, this tool is extremely under-utilized by musicians…  

What is this powerful marketing tool? The landing page.

Granted, landing pages are only one part of your music promotion strategy. If you want to see how all your social media, email list, website, and store all work together to help you grow your fanbase and sell more music, download this free ebook and get 3 social media checklists.

What is a Landing Page?

We talked about using landing pages to grow your email list here, but there are plenty of other awesome ways to use landing pages.

In short, a landing page is a page on your website with a specific purpose – usually to prompt your fans to take some further action like buying your music, entering a contest, or signing up for your email list. If your fan chooses to follow through, it’s considered a “conversion” in marketing-speak.

These landing pages are simple, focused, and free of distractions. In fact, the best landing pages don’t even have a navigation or any links other than a big button.

Why? Well there’s a bit of psychology at play here. Think about your own browsing tendencies. If you’re on a page and you can see a social media feed with cool posts from Instagram and Facebook and a link to an interesting blog post, how likely are you to get distracted and click off to something else? (I know I would.)

Even if you have focus of steel, attention overload is a real thing. So, the more you can limit distraction, the more conversions you will get.

You can have as many landing pages as you’d like (and we’ll talk about all the different ways you can use them in just a minute). The key is to make sure each has a single, very specific purpose.

Once created, you can link to them from social media, a blog post, or an email.

How to Create a Landing Page to Sell Your Music?

You don’t need anything special to actually create your landing pages, though there are plenty of tools and services out there.

At the most basic level, you can simply create your own landing page with whatever website platform you use. (Think WordPress, Bandzoogle, Square, Wix, etc.)

Create a new page, give it a short, memorable URL like “www.myband.com/free-song,” and you’re good to go.

On that page, simply add an email optin form and some text telling fans exactly what they get for signing up. (Here are instructions to create embeddable forms with Mailchimp.)

Other services like LeadPages and Sumo are specifically designed to help you create amazing landing pages. BUT, I always suggest that you start creating landing pages and growing your email list NOW with the tools you have available rather than waiting until you can afford this or that software.

3 Types of Landing Pages

Different types of landing pages serve different purposes (and can look extremely different as well).

Always start by determining the purpose of your landing page.

  • Do you want to sell something (like selling your music)?
  • Are you trying to sell a low-priced item or a high-priced item?
  • Do you want fans to opt into something (like an email list or a contest)?

Once you figure that out, you can start putting your page together. So now, let’s go through a few of the most common types of landing pages, how you can create them, and how to use them.

1. Email Signup Landing Page

You probably guessed it, but this type of landing page is used to grow your email list. And it’s probably the one you’ll use most often (so read through this section a few times to let it sink in if you have to).

Most of these landing pages will ask for an email address, but you can capture other information as well. Like a first name (so you can personalize the emails you send). Or a zip code (so you can send them emails about gigs in their area).

Essentially, you’re goal is to get these fans on your email list so you can contact them.

Most email signup landing pages will literally just have an image, a bit of text, an email signup form, and a submit button. The text on the page should tell your fans exactly what they’ll get for signing up.

It’s best to offer something free as an incentive for opting in. Almost like a trade.

As an example, you could offer a discount on merch for all fans who opt in to get notified when you’re touring through their area.

Some other things you can trade for an email address are:

The key of course, is to make sure that what you’re offering resonates with your fans. Every fanbase is a little different. That means what your fans consider “valuable” may be completely different from another band’s fanbase. If you’re not sure, test some things out and see what works best.

2. Microsites to Sell Your Music

A microsite is exactly what it sounds like – a miniature website that lives on your domain. These pages are much longer than an email signup page and are usually used to sell something.

As a musician, you could create a microsite landing page for your new album. Create a URL like “www.myband.com/album-name” (obviously use your band name and the album name). Use it to tell the story of the creation of the album with text, videos, and photos. Link to a place where fans can buy or pre-order the album and also link some higher end bundles with signed merch and other exclusives.

You can link fans directly to this microsite from social media and email. All the cool information on your microsite can get fans more emotionally invested in your album and more willing to buy and can definitely help you sell your music.

3. Long Form Landing Pages

A long form landing page is usually a very long page with a lot of text explaining to your fans exactly what it is you are offering. Dispersed throughout the text should be call to actions.

This may not be the most common landing page, but it can serve a purpose – typically for things that require a bit more explanation to convince fans to convert.

As an example, a long form landing page would be a great option for a page that calls potential house concert hosts.

For many fans, hosting a house concert is completely new. That means they will be hesitant to volunteer up their personal space unless they know all the details.

To make the process easier for your fans, you could create a long form landing page that includes everything they need to know about hosting a house concert. Include details like how many guests they will need to RSVP, how big their space needs to be, if they need any kind of equipment, chairs, tables, or lights, a suggested concert schedule, and photos and testimonials from past house concerts. Include links to a form where fans can volunteer.

Landing Page or Home Page?

Can your website’s home page be a landing page? The answer is yes and no.

Yes, you can make your site’s home page into a landing page. BUT it’s probably best to keep it as a temporary thing. (Remember, landing pages typically have no navigation, so your fans won’t be able to get to any other pages on your site.)

If you’re trying to hype up your new album, you could temporarily make your album microsite into your home page. That way, anyone who visits your site will know you have an album and won’t get distracted by anything else.

If you don’t want to go all in with a landing page, you could opt for a temporary splash page instead. A splash page pops up over your homepage when a fan visits your site. It can include information and a short call to action.

Landing Page Best Practices

Okay, now that we’ve gone through what landing pages are and how you can use them, let’s run down a few more best practices for selling your music.

1. Keep the Background Simple

The content of your landing page should be the star, not your background. That means no large tiled background images (unless it’s very minimal), no bright colored backgrounds, and no video backgrounds. When in doubt, go for white (or some other neutral that goes with your site’s theme and your image.

2. Bring Focus to the Call to Action to Sell Your Music

On any landing page, the call to action should be the main focus. And an easy way to draw attention is with color. Try choosing a button color different from any other element on the page. Of course, you don’t want a completely jarring color, so pick something that fits with your theme without being obnoxious.

You also want to be sure the text you choose for your call to action is relatable for your fans. Something like “Click here,” isn’t too enticing. On the other hand, something like “Get a free song,” is obvious and valuable.

3. Build Anticipation and Urgency

The best landing pages create a sense of urgency. In most cases you want your fans to hit the page and make a decision fairly quickly. And that means you need to get to the point, be as brief as you can, and hit most of the important points up front.

You could even use countdown timers or a hard-close date right at the top to show fans that this won’t be around forever.

So if you set up a landing page to encourage fans to pre-order your upcoming album. Add a date right at the top to let fans know when pre-orders are closing down.

4. Make Sure Page Loads Quickly

This goes for any page on your site really, but it’s especially important for landing pages. Most people are just too busy to wait around for a webpage to load. They’ll move on and find something more important to do.

To increase your page’s load speed, avoid oversized images, stay away from javascript in the header of your page, and try to do as much with CSS and HTML as you can.

Conclusion – How to Sell More Music with Landing Pages

Landing pages can be an extremely effective tool to promote your music, and hopefully this article has inspired you to give them a try. Remember, you don’t need to dive in the deep end and create tons of different landing pages right away. Try making just one to start – maybe an email collecting landing page to grow your list.  From there, you can expand out your landing page strategy one at a time.

If you want more promote-your-music guidance, download this free ebook. You’ll learn how social media, your website, and your email list work together to turn fans into buyers who support your music. AND you’ll get 3 free social media checklists with tons of ideas for social posts. Click to download your free copy:

How to Promote Your Music Ebook cover copy

Content marketing for musicians

Marketing and promoting your music is a task every musician has to face throughout their career. But it’s also the one thing many musicians wish they never had to do again. With all the noise out there it can really feel like no one’s even listening to you. 

So how do you stand out and get heard? How do you break through the noise and get your music the attention it deserves?

Today I’m going to key you in on a secret – the power of Content Marketing.

The BEST thing you can do is shift your approach – instead of PUSHING your music out in front of people, you need to PULL fans in with enticing and interesting content. Make them want to hear from you. 

That’s where content marketing for musicians comes in.

Now I know “content marketing for musicians” sounds a little intimidating… But as you’ll see, you can easily turn the content you’re already creating every day into plenty of interesting and engaging social media posts, but for now let’s talk about what content marketing for musicians actually is, why it’s such an important tool to have in your music promotion arsenal, and how you can use this approach to authentically promote your music and grow a powerful fanbase.

Get more engaged fans with these content marketing strategies:

What is Content Marketing for Musicians?

Content marketing is quite literally exactly what it sounds like.

You use valuable and interesting content to draw your audience in. It’s a form of “pull marketing” where you get your fans interested and emotionally invested in what you do. Think about it like you’re pulling fans in rather than pushing your music in their face.

So that means instead of posting “check out my new song,” you release a short video telling your fans about what the lyrics mean and include a link to purchase or pre-order.

Instead of relentlessly posting announcements about your new album (you know, the “buy my new album” spam), create a blog series or a vlog series on YouTube documenting the album creation process with easy links to pre-order.

Instead of just asking fans to join your email list, offer valuable video lessons or exclusive events to make them want to join your email list.

You see the difference?

The Problem With Push Marketing

In the past, marketing was all about pushing out messages with big money to get it in front of as many people as possible and hoping some would bite. Artists with big record label backing could thrive because they had the big bucks to promote.

But in today’s social media-dominated world, this shout-louder-than-everyone-else tactic just doesn’t work (even the big labels are having trouble despite their big budgets). You just can’t shout loud enough to be heard over the crowd anymore. Especially as an indie with a minimal marketing budget.  

Now, don’t get me wrong – announcements and push marketing style promotions will always have a place in your marketing mix.

But the problem arises when you literally base your entire strategy on shouting at your fans.

Instead, turn it into a conversation, draw them in, and they will be much more interested.

Reaching The RIGHT People

I also want you to understand that you don’t need to reach everyone when you’re promoting your music. 

I know, I know… This is hard to remember in a social media world where big follower counts are glamorized. But try to keep it in perspective – the number of followers you have on Facebook or Twitter is just that – a number. And having people on your email list or following you on social media who don’t really like your music that much won’t do anything to further your career.

50,000 followers who don’t buy your album won’t help you fund your next project or go on tour. 50,000 subscribers who don’t come out to gigs won’t help you step it up to play bigger venues.

Instead, focus on finding the fans who will actually buy your music, come out to shows, and support you.

1,000 true fans is infinitely better than 50,000 followers who don’t really care. In short, it’s not about reaching more people. It’s about reaching the right people and nurturing those relationships.

This is going to influence the kind of content you release in your content marketing strategy. Always keep your ideal fan in mind when you’re creating new social posts, blog posts, videos, or events. What will they want to see? (Hint: if you’re not sure, ask them!)

Why Content Marketing Works SO Well

Let’s do a little thought experiment to illustrate just how powerful content marketing for musicians can be…

Would you be more likely to purchase an album from an artist you follow if you just saw one or two announcements about it’s release?

OR if you had been following a weekly vlog series documenting the album creation process for a month?

Most people would go for the latter.

You see? Present it like entertainment. Who wouldn’t be interested to see what goes on in the studio? And after spending all that time watching that series, the fan is invested in your project – both from a time perspective as well as emotionally.

Start Before You’re Ready

The key to effective content marketing is to start before you’re ready. Don’t wait until you have something to promote (like a new album, tour, gig, or song) to start building an audience. Fans don’t form around nothing.

Start NOW. Begin creating a fanbase around what you’re already doing everyday (even if you don’t have anything to sell yet).

Remember, the process can be just as valuable to you from a promotion standpoint as the finished product. Then, by the time you’re ready to release something, you have a captivated audience just waiting to see what you have in store for them next.

Tie in Relevant Calls to Action

Now I know it can seem counter-intuitive to use content to promote. BUT, the key to successful content marketing is adding relevant calls to action. Try to make the content you release have a purpose.

In marketing-speak, a call to action is just asking your fans to take some further action. Maybe you want your fans to vote on a merch design, pre-order your album, pre-order a ticket to a show, support you on Pledge Music, or sign up for your email list.

Let’s run down some ideas:

  • Post a picture to Facebook of you and a fan who won a merch bundle for pre-ordering a ticket to your recent show. Let your fans know that they could be entered to win free merch too if they pre-order instead of buying tickets at the door.
  • Share a short video montage on Facebook of your last email-subscriber-only live stream. Give your fans a link to subscribe to get in on the next one.
  • Make a YouTube video teaching your fans how to play your new song on guitar. Include a link where they can buy the song. (Bonus points: ALSO give fans the chance to download the tab or sheet music in exchange for an email address.)

Conclusion: Content Marketing for Musicians

Hopefully this article has given you some ideas to promote your music. Keep in mind that content marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Don’t think of content marketing for musicians as a completely new approach. It’s just OPTIMIZING and sharing content you’re already making.

Now that you have the basics, it’s time to move on and master the email list! Your list will play a HUGE part in your content marketing strategy for promoting your music (and don’t worry, this is going to be painless).

Download this Free Content Marketing Guide
Content Marketing for Musicians

Content Marketing for Creative Entrepreneurs

This week, we are holding live training on content marketing and how to build and connect with an audience around your creative work.

What Exactly is Content Marketing?

I want you to think of content marketing as pulling your fans and audience in with interesting and engaging content (instead of pushing your work in their face). In other words it’s a lot more authentic and engaging than the typical “buy my art” posts you see out there all the time on social media. AND it’s a much more creative and fun practice for you.

In the webinars, we’re going to be breaking down exactly what content marketing is and how you can easily incorporate it into the way you communicate with your fans. So you can BUILD and CONNECT with an audience around your creative work and do it AUTHENTICALLY.

Trust us, adjusting your approach to focus more on content marketing will help you ramp up your promotions and get your music the attention it deserves.

Join us in a LIVE MASTER CLASS and build your confidence and understanding of how content marketing works.

>> Sign up here – We go LIVE Friday and Sunday

MASTER CLASS: >> Content Marketing for Creative Entrepreneurs

  • What is content marketing?
  • Get your content marketing engine setup
  • Build and connect with an audience around your creative work
  • How CreateBiz can help you reach your goals

>> Sign up here – We go LIVE Friday and Sunday

OR Sign up for the live event or get the recording and watch the replay, all for free.

PLUS we’ll be taking your questions and walking you step-by-step through our system of content marketing for creative entrepreneurs.

We will be giving away a free online CREATEBIZ course to one lucky person during each live event. Will it be you?

>> Sign up here

LEARN MORE ABOUT CREATEBIZ HERE: CreateBiz.com

make your cover songs stand out

With the DIY revolution and the rise of the music middle class in today’s music industry, it’s really easy to get caught up in all the business and music promotion stuff.

But despite all the tools and resources and services at your fingertips online that can potentially get your music in front of a huge audience… The MUSIC still comes first. Quality music trumps all!

So we’re going to get back to our roots and share some confidence-boosting skills that could help you take your music to the next level so you can really stand out and get people excited at gigs and online.

One approach is to use cover songs. If you take the time to really bend the song and put your own flair on cover tunes, they’ll serve as a transition that will introduce your original music to new listeners. Think of it like a relatable point of reference that new fans can come through to become acquainted to you and your music.

So, to help you make the most of cover songs and turn them into tools that help you grow your audience and raise awareness for your originals – instead of being a big roadblock – Daniel Roberts from Hit Music Theory and I will be presenting a free webinar to explore how you can use music theory to create some killer cover songs.

Click here to sign up for free and choose the date and time that works best for you.

Come join us! During the webinar we will be covering:

1. How to manipulate rhythm and subdivision to keep your performances fresh and interesting and keep fans on their feet.

No matter how good a musician you are, your understanding and manipulation of subdivision, time and groove is always a rich creative well to draw from. This is especially important for live performances – simple shifts in the rhythm or subdivision can add that extra flair of interest to keep fans dancing and rocking through the whole song.

2. How to use your understanding of scales and tonality to create tension, anticipation, and release in your covers, and how to use these techniques to support the mood and lyrics of your songs.

Whether you know it or not, every piece of music draws heavily from at least one scale which is centered around a particular note. Knowing this scale and how you can manipulate it can open up enormous possibilities for how you approach playing and arranging a song.

But beyond just basic tonality, the notes and scales you draw from can very much influence and comment on the mood of a song. The scales you choose can create tension, anticipation, or release to illustrate musically what’s going on in the lyrics.

3. How to use harmonic function to create endless compelling hooks and riffs.

Many of the greatest hooks and riffs we love seem to have been created as if divined by some spirit or given by magic to a special artist…

But, if we break it down, a lot of the most iconic hooks and melodies are taken directly from a very limited set of notes that the artist knows work well.

Once you see what’s going on, you’ll be able to use the same techniques to create your own hooks and melodies or even adapt the greats to create your own unique cover version.

4. How to use modes to add variety to hooks to keep fans listening and excited even in repetitive songs.

“Modes” can sometimes be a scary word, but an understanding of this concept can open up endless musical possibilities for you.

5. How to use voice leading techniques create space in your arrangements so you can improve the sound of your live set and get that huge sound we all look for.

Your live show is where you’ll make the biggest impression on new and potential fans, so getting that perfect sound is really important. Unfortunately, if you’re playing in smaller venues and clubs, the sound system may not be ideal.

So we’re going to go through an easy voice leading technique that will allow you to create space in your arrangement – sonically separating your instrument parts so they don’t muddy each other down. (Hint: THIS is how those 2 or 3 man bands manage to get that HUGE sound.)

Plus, if you can master this, I guarantee every sound guy is going to love you!

We’ll be covering this and a whole lot more during the webinar. Click here to sign up for free.

Oh! And during the webinar we will be giving away a free online course called Hit Music Theory to some lucky person!

About the Speakers

Dave Kusek

Dave Kusek is the founder of Berklee Online and New Artist Model. Since teaching at Berklee College of Music, he’s been working to reinvent the way music theory is taught. The very best way to learn music is to apply what you are learning right away, so we developed a fun way to learn music theory by looking at popular music and finding the teachable patterns that make up the hits.

Daniel Roberts

Daniel has produced, composed, arranged, recorded, mixed, and mastered many music projects through his own record label, Ivystone Records, and he’s been teaching music theory to thousands of students. His radical approach makes understanding theory easy and something that you can immediately apply to your music.

 

An Interview with Jensen Reed on the Viral Music Video Back to the 90s

It’s the big question on most musicians minds… How do you create that perfect viral music video? One that can launch your career forward and raise awareness for you and your music.

New Artist Model member Jensen Reed found the right formula with the recent viral music video, Back to the 90s. To date, the video has received 30+ million views on Facebook and YouTube.

But Jensen says that this seemingly overnight success was years in the making. He’s been hard on the scene for years releasing music and music videos, learning about the industry, and most importantly, making the connections that made such a large-scale production possible.

“The New Artist Model really helped to get me organized for a plan of action this year. By filling out the Career Map, I was able to set up time tables for goals and feel more confident about the direction of my career.

I’ve recently had success (25 Million Views on Facebook in 3 days) with a comedy music video called ‘Back to the 90s’ which I think is my 17th music video. It can take a long time to break through.

My strategy has always been to consistently work hard to improve my craft, partner with great collaborators and release quality content. I feel most fulfilled personally when I’m creating new music and videos independent of whether or not they reach a large audience.

Ultimately you have to love what you do and be grateful for the opportunity to share your vision. Thanks for your guidance Dave!” – Jensen Reed

If you were wondering just what went into the planning and production of Back to the 90s, CD Baby’s Chris Robley caught up with Jensen to find out exactly what went into the viral video…

This interview is from CD Baby’s DIY Musician Blog. Check out the full interview here.

Can you tell me about the timeline for the production? How long did each phase take?

It took almost a year and a half from concept to finished video. Ben Giroux came to me with the idea of doing a music video that’s a celebration of all things 90s. We both were 90s kids and sensed a movement for 90s nostalgia, so we knew we were on to a solid idea.

A big part of the challenge was incorporating multiple genres into one song effectively. My production partner Christian Hand had the genius idea and I knew we had to figure out a way to execute it. I enlisted my buddy Jared Lee who is an amazing songwriter and artist to help us with the chorus and my man Dirty Hollywood who is pure rock n roll to work out the grunge bridge with us.

Our Cinematographer Zach Salsman absolutely crushed this shoot. Zach and I have worked together on a bunch of my music videos and his eye and talent behind the camera is unmatched.

We shot the video in two long production days. (check out the making-of video below)

The key to knocking it out so efficiently was the pre-production process that lasted for months…locations, crew, cast, times, logistics etc. It was truly a massive production with over 100 people on set.

One thing that allowed for the shoot to go smoothly was the lyrics. Because we had so many specific 90s references, we knew exactly what shots we needed. Unlike most of my other music videos where we roll the entire song and do a bunch of performance takes, we only shot the snippets of the song in each setup we needed. This also made the original skeleton for the edit come together quickly because we knew which shot went where in the timeline.

Did you call in a lot of favors to get this video done?

There was an immense amount of talent involved in the project that donated their time and expertise or worked for us at a major discount. This was a team effort in every way imaginable.


If you want more ideas on how to promote your music and easy ways to turn the music and content you create every day into social posts and videos, download this FREE social media guide and checklist: How to Promote Your Music: With 3 Social Media Checklists


I found the attention to detail super impressive. Can you talk about scouting locations, gathering props and costumes, finding lookalikes, and so forth?

Locking down an airplane hangar to re-create the vibe of the iconic Backstreet Boys video “I Want It That Way” was the biggest challenge. We found Whiteman airport outside of Los Angeles and the owner was open to cutting us a deal because he was a former film school student and understood the idea of a passion project. All of the locations and minutia involved in a shoot this big were handled masterfully by our Producers Jon Rosenbloom, Scott Thomas Reynolds, and Marc Barnes. They are masters of getting sh*t done!

We secured Bullock and Snow Casting to cast all of the roles and they knocked it out of the park! Every person they cast was incredible. They also got us the amazingly talent Alexander Arzu (who plays the kid we educated about how great the 90s were).

Our Art Department Melissa Lyon and Marissa Bergman took the production to another level with the ridiculous attention to detail in creating spaces covered with 90s paraphernalia. There are so many ‘Easter Eggs’ littered throughout the video for viewers to discover, which has led to many people watching the video over and over. And our Wardrobe Designer Chelsea Kutun found all of the iconic and memorable looks for everyone involved in the shoot.

What happened between the final edit and the launch? How did you prepare to promote the video?

Ben and I edited the video and got it to an almost final point before we enlisted Animators Doug Bresler, Ilana Schwartz, Tony Celano, and Zoran Gvojic to add their magic touch including NBA Jam, Ren & Stimpy, Doug, Celebrity Deathmatch etc. VFX by Jake Akuna was the final piece of post production that added more detail and interesting effects, upping the ante yet again.

We had a live release party in Los Angeles the day before we released the video. It turned out to be one of the most fun parties that any of our 300 guests had been to in a while. We encouraged everyone to dress in their best 90s gear. Jared and I performed a couple of our original songs and we then screened the video and performed “Back to the 90s” live.

We encouraged everyone in attendance to share the video at 10am on Monday, May 1st when it was released to get the ball rolling. It helped tremendously that many people in attendance have a lot of social influence because of their own creative pursuits. We didn’t hire a publicist. We just put it out to the world with the hopes of it being so good that people would instantly want to share and that’s what happened.

This interview was originally posted on CD Baby’s DIY Musician Blog. To read the full article and get Jensen’s tips for shooting music videos on a limited budget, check out the full interview here.

 

The best musician website tips

You’ve probably heard this a thousand times before… as a musician, you need to have a website.

Sure, it’s easy enough to put together a website for your music with all the easy website builders available today, but making a REALLY EFFECTIVE website? One that will help you actually engage with your fans and sell more music? That’s a little more difficult.

So I’ve got some easy and quick musician website tips you can use to take your website from good to GREAT.

To help you make sure your website is a powerful tool that will help you grow your fanbase, connect with your fans, and sell more music, merch, and tickets, Dave Cool from Bandzoogle and I are hosting a free website webinar on Thursday, May 18 at 1PM EST.  See the agenda below…

Sign up for free to join us live, or sign up to get the free recorded replay.

But in the meantime, here are some musician website tips and best practices you can start using right now.

Give Each Page a Purpose

I want you to start thinking of your website like a tool – something that will help you promote your music, connect with your fans, unlock opportunities, or sell music and merch.

And that means each and every page needs to have a specific purpose – something that you want to accomplish through the content on the page or some action you want your fans to take after viewing the page.

So if you have a gig page, the purpose should be to sell tickets to your upcoming gigs. You should have a gig calendar with buttons to purchase tickets, and possibly an email signup form where you offer some kind of gig-related incentive in exchange for an email address (like early access to tickets, or notifications of secret meetups or events).

In the same way, if you have a press page or EPK, all the information on that page should be 100% focused on getting press coverage or a review. You don’t need an email signup form, a gig calendar, or social media feeds.

As a little exercise, take a look at your own website. For each and every page, ask yourself, “What is the purpose of this page? What am I trying to get my fans to do? What am I trying to accomplish?” If you cannot think of a specific purpose for a page, change it, consolidate it into another page, or just remove it entirely.

Keep Your Navigation Simple

This builds off the previous point, but you really want to keep your website’s navigation as simple and straightforward as possible. The last thing you want is for people to click off your website because they can’t find what they’re looking for.

As a rule of thumb, don’t have more than 8 buttons in your navigation and limit the amount of sub-navigation pages you have if possible.

So instead of having a “Gig” tab with sub-navigation pages for gig calendar, live recordings, book a house concert, and live photos, consolidate to pre-existing pages. Your live recordings can go to your music page, your live photos can go to your media page, and house concerts could become a separate tab if it’s something you want to really focus on.

Focus on Engagement

Once you’ve simplified and streamlined your website, you need to ask yourself, “What will keep my fans coming back again and again?”

For the most part, musicians will keep their website pretty static and maybe update it every few months. That’s definitely a good start, but first and foremost, your website is the place where you will sell music, sell merch, and get fans on your email list, right? And if fans aren’t going back to your website on a regular basis they won’t be exposed to those offers.

So how can you keep your website’s content fresh, dynamic, and interesting? One options is to create a blog where you publish new content on a certain schedule – maybe it’s once a week, or maybe once a month, the key is to find a schedule that works for you.

I know “blogging” sounds kind of silly to a lot of people, but it’s important to remember that a blog doesn’t have to be you just writing about your day diary-style. You can write posts or release videos on whatever topics interest you.

Use your blog to share more insider-access to you and your music. You could easily create a blog post about how you get a certain tone or how you set up your gear, you could do video tutorials of your songs, you could post monthly Q&A’s with questions that you gather from social media, or you could share the behind-the-scenes process of your current project.

As a bonus tip – try giving each blog post a purpose by linking to relevant items on your store, gig page, or email signup form. So if you’re taking fans behind the scenes at your gigs in a blog post, link to your gig page. If you’re talking about the tone from your newest single, link to a place where they can actually purchase it.

AGENDA:

Here are a few of the musician website tips you’ll learn during the webinar:

  • We’re going to tell you exactly what you need to include on your website and WHY (so you don’t miss out on opportunities and sales)
  • We’ll break down the big website mistakes to avoid (You’d be surprised how many musicians make these mistakes, but we’ll show you EASY ways to fix them!)
  • Learn the 3 DIFFERENT audiences your website needs to be serving (most musicians only focus on 1)
  • Enter for a chance to win a LIVE WEBSITE REVIEW! (Yep – a few of you will get live feedback on your website and actionable tips for how you can make it BETTER 🙂
  • Plus all your burning website questions answered during the live Q&A

Sign up to join us live or sign up to get the recorded replay.
We hope to see you there!

how to not waste time promoting your music on social media
 

Let’s talk about promoting your music on social media.

More specifically making the task of promoting your music on social media not suck. I mean, who has time to spend hours coming up with social media posts to promote your music on Facebook and Twitter?

The secret is NOT doing more to promote your music. It’s about working SMARTER – making the most out of everything you create.

Of course, there’s a lot more to promoting your music than social media. But for today, I’m going to walk you through a quick approach to making your social media efforts more efficient and more productive (so you can save time and get your music heard).

Keep in mind that implementing a music marketing strategy on social media like the one I’m going to give you today takes TIME. There is going to be very little instant gratification here, so get yourself in that mindset.

True success on social media is like a relationship (a relationship with each of the hundreds or thousands of fans you have on the platform). And like any relationship, it will take some time to develop.

That being said, I do have a jumpstart guide for you that includes 3 social media checklists that will give you the music promotion tips that the most successful indie musicians use online:

Think long term with these tips, be consistent, and after a few months, you’ll start seeing more activity.

Use Content You Already Have to Promote Your Music on Social Media

If you think you need to create a whole new set of content for promoting your music on social media, you’re wasting a lot of time and effort (time that could be spent playing gigs, practicing, recording, writing…).

Instead, think about how you can repurpose and adapt all the great stuff you already have. This is called content marketing

As musicians, we create A LOT of stuff. You know – riffs, songs, lyrics, covers, jams, live performances, albums, tones, beats, effects, and the list goes on and on.

BUT, a lot of musicians I see out there promoting their music online don’t actually use half of the stuff they create. And that’s a missed opportunity.

I know, there is a bit of a balance to find here. Especially if you’re working you way up to a big album launch you don’t want to give everything away before the actual release date. But giving away little pieces here and there can actually get fans more excited for the release as you build up the anticipation.

Today, take a few minutes to look at all the creative work you do every day.

  • How much of it are you actually sharing with your fans on social media?
  • How can you start weaving the content you’re creating into your music promotion strategy?

If you want our free guide on How to Promote Your Music with 3 Social Media Checklists (CLICK HERE).

Music Marketing is All About Frequency and Consistency

Okay, one quick aside before we get into how to actually create your social posts…

A lot of musicians have this mindset that their work can’t be released until it’s 100% perfect and finished. And that it needs to be released in its entirety or not at all. The result is often long periods of radio silence on social media followed by frantic promotion of the new thing.

At the most basic level, success on social media is all about balancing frequency and consistency. The more you post (as long as it’s quality, interesting posts), the more of a response you will get over time. Fans will start to expect and anticipate your posts.  

Which means that radio silence is actually hurting you when you get around to promoting your album or next big thing. (Especially on Facebook where the algorithm favors posts that get more engagement.) Less fans will see your promotions, less fans will respond to your promotions, and you’ll start feeling that social media is a waste of time.

So try to focus on getting some kind of posting rhythm down. After some time you’ll be in a much better place to promote your music (and have your fans actually notice your posts and respond).

Before you move on, look at your social accounts and figure out how often you’re posting.

  • What does your schedule look like?
  • Are there any gaps?
  • How can you be more consistent?

Splinter Your Content

Now we’ll move a little deeper and start talking about how you can actually take something like a new song, a new video, or a live performance, and turn it into multiple social media posts – posts that will get your music heard by more people.

I like to call this “splintering” your content. Think of it like taking a big thing – like a song – and breaking it down into smaller pieces that you can post on social media. Each of those smaller pieces will lead fans back to the full song.

So for a single song, here are some “splinter” post ideas:

  • Take a quote from the lyrics. Post as is or create an image with the quote. You can probably get a lot of quote posts from a single song
  • Open up and share the meaning behind the lyrics. You could create a post, a blog post, a short video, a live stream, or all of the above.
  • Create a short video (or do a live stream) walking fans through the tones (or beats, or pedal board setup…) you used in the song so they can recreate the sound
  • Share photos of the lyric sheet or lead sheet
  • Do a playthrough or tutorial of a certain riff or beat
  • Create a “making of” video series for the song
  • Post a lyric line you’re working on and ask your fans to finish it with their own words
  • If any of your fans cover the song you could share that too

See what we did there? That was just one song and we got a ton of social posts. Individually, these posts don’t give away the full picture of the song. Many of these ideas can be used in the days leading up to the song release to create hype.  

Exercise: Splinter the Content You’re Working on Right Now

Try to do this exercise for something you’re working on right now. Make a list and brainstorm everything and anything you could splinter off from that main piece of content. You don’t need to use all the ideas you come up with, but write down everything that comes to mind and proceed from there.

Use Automation to Promote Your Music on Social Media

Okay, so now we have all these social media post ideas. You probably don’t want to post them all at the same time. (Remember – consistency is key). So that means you need to space things out over time.

And that’s where automation comes in.

Automation tools help you pre-schedule posts on many different social media platforms so you don’t need to be constantly remembering to post on social media. That way, you can get your promotion over with and allow yourself to focus completely on music.

Check out these tools:

  • Hootsuite – this will allow you to schedule posts for multiple different social platforms. The free version allows you to post to 3 different social channels
  • Facebook (there’s a scheduler built right in. Instead of choosing “post,” choose “schedule” and pick a date and time you’d like it to hit your page)
  • Tweetdeck – this is a great free platform for posting, scheduling, and monitoring Twitter
  • Buffer – the free version allows you to schedule and manage 1 account from each social platform (so you could have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc). You can schedule up to 10 posts at a time per social account
  • SocialOomph – the free version only allows you to schedule and monitor Twitter, but the paid version covers multiple different platforms

Be Relevant and Authentic

A little word of caution. Automation can be overdone. The very purpose of social media is to be able to connect with your fans authentically and in real time. If you’re pre-scheduling all your content out weeks or months in advance, you’re totally missing that real-time connection with your fans.

So, here’s what I suggest… Create your posts by splintering up your content, schedule them out for maybe a week or two, and then make time each day to post something relevant that you’re working on right now and respond to comments and messages.

If you take the time to implement these steps over the next few weeks or months you’ll start seeing major changes. And not just in how much attention your music attracts online.  But also in how much time you’re spending promoting your music on social media.

If you want more concrete examples of social post ideas, don’t forget to download your free social media guide and checklist! Here’s the link again:

If you want our free guide on How to Promote Your Music with 3 Social Media Checklists (CLICK HERE).

how to make great cover songs

For a lot of musicians, there’s a bit of a love/hate relationship going on with cover songs. On one side of the equation, it’s fun and insightful to cover other people’s songs. And if you pick the right song, fans will really go crazy when they hear a classic tune.

On the other side, covers can be downright frustrating. Especially in the early stages of a music career, venues want mostly cover sets, and the covers you release online can seem to get more attention than your originals. It can make you feel underappreciated, almost like the industry is pushing you into a cover band box. Tributes “R” Us.

So that leads to today’s topic… How to make great cover songs. AND how to use covers to actually raise awareness for your ORIGINAL music.

To show you how to make cover songs and turn them into musical expressions and tools that help you grow your audience and raise awareness for your originals, we’re hosting a free webinar. Daniel Roberts and I will be walking through 5 essential “Ninja Skills” that you can use to adapt cover songs to your own unique style and make a mark on the cover song world.

Click here to sign up for free (choose the date and time that works for you).

In the mean time, here are some Cover Song Basics and best practices you can start using right now:

1. Make it Your Own

What’s the best way to get people who hear your covers into your original music? Put your own unique spin on every song you cover. That means bending the songs stylistically to fit with the kind of music you play and write. Sometimes that will mean a few minor tweaks or just adding your own color. Sometimes it’s a total genre switch and completely different instrumentation.

Not only does this make you stand out from the multitude of cover songs flooding the internet and venues, it also makes the transition to your original music a lot smoother. In a way, listeners have already gotten a little taste of your original sound by listening to your cover rendition. They’ll have a much better sense of what you’re all about as an artist and will be much more comfortable when you move to the original song.

We’ll be really drilling down into this point in the free webinar, so make sure you join us live for more awesome tips!

2. Focus on Subscribers Over Views

There’s this fascination with “viral” videos in the music industry. But a ton of views on a cover aren’t worth much on YouTube unless you can get in touch with those people again. We’ve seen a lot of musicians hit it with a crazy viral video only to release an original music video on deaf ears.

So instead of thinking, “How can I get 10,000 views,” get yourself in the mindset of, “How can I get as many viewers as possible to subscribe?” Setting up suggested videos or playlists on your YouTube channel can be a great way to get people to continue watching, which increases the chance they’ll actually subscribe.

This goes for your live shows too. If you are forced into doing cover sets, think about ways you can connect with those people again. Maybe it’s a contest where they have to follow you on Facebook to enter. Or even a USB stick that you hand out for free with a recording of one of your original songs and your social media channels written out on it.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Use Call to Actions

And that leads us into the next point – utilizing call to actions. So what exactly is a call to action? It’s basically just you directly asking your viewers or listeners to take some further action. Maybe it’s watching another video, or subscribing to your channel, or entering your contest, or clicking the link in your description box.

If you’ve never done this before, it can definitely feel a little awkward and even pushy at first. BUT it’s been proven time and time again that directly asking people to do something increases the chance that they will.

If you’re releasing covers on YouTube, you can easily use “cards” to suggest other videos your viewers can watch next. As you upload your video, you’ll be able to add cards in the “Cards” tab across the top of the upload screen. Use cards to suggest other cover songs or even original songs when people reach the end of your videos.

If you’re doing a cover gig in a venue, it’s pretty easy to add little call to actions as you talk to the audience. Ask them to follow you on Facebook for more covers and originals, or to see photos that you posted from the show.

Ask fans to visit a certain URL where they can get a few songs in exchange for an email address. Try giving them a cover and an original to introduce them to your own music. If you’re really savvy, give out little download cards so they don’t even have to memorize the URL.

 

As you can see, cover songs can be an extremely valuable part of your approach. And on top of that, they can really help you grow your audience and get more fans.

If you want more ideas of how to make cover songs your own, I hope you’ll join Daniel Roberts and I in a free webinar. Click here to register for free and learn the 5 essential “ninja skills” that every musician needs.

AGENDA:

Here are a few things you’ll learn during the webinar:

  1. SUBDIVISION & GROOVE – Rhythmically drop into any musical context and make people dance.
  2. SCALES & TONALITY – Immediately know where the “right” notes are before ever playing a new song.
  3. HARMONIC FUNCTION – Be able to understand and play chord progressions after only hearing them once.
  4. MODES – Find the best notes to play over any chord to make your melodies stronger and more memorable.
  5. VOICE LEADING – Create smooth chord progressions and riffs that don’t get in the way of other parts.

 

emailing music bloggers

Emailing music bloggers, music venues to book gigs, and other industry people like press outlets and record label execs is just downright frustrating for a lot of indie musicians. More often than not, you put all this time into your emails, and then when you hit the send button, you never even get a response.

There are a lot of factors that go into whether or not your emails get opened, read, or responded to, and unfortunately, a lot of them are out of your control. But today, we’ll go through a few things you can do to increase the chance your email will get noticed and taken seriously.

The key to writing effective emails is to touch on the points specific to the recipient. If you want to get a response, you need to know what the person on the other end is looking for and write an email that peaks their interest.

So how do you write emails that get responses from music bloggers, press outlets, and record label executives? Take a look at the tips below.

Keep it Short

Most people that you’re going to want to reach out to are short on time, so be respectful of this. It’s important that your email is as short and as easy to read as possible.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s often more difficult to edit your message down into something really concise. As musicians, we have a tendency to want to tell our whole story, but that can make your emails very hard to read and very difficult to understand the purpose of the email.

With this is mind, when emailing music bloggers and other industry people, it’s best to write your emails in steps. First, write down the purpose of your email. Do you want to get a blogger to review your album? Or get a local news outlet to cover your upcoming tour?

Once you have that, take a first-pass and write down everything that immediately comes to mind. Then, do a series of cuts. For each sentence, ask yourself, “Is this really important to the person I’m emailing? Does it support the purpose of this email?” If the answer to either of those questions is “No,” cut it out.

Writing short emails will take more time, but it’s respectful to your busy recipient. Remember, the average human attention span is just 8 seconds, so try and keep your emails under 5 sentences.

Write better emails that get noticed with these 10 email templates:

 

Use a Website or EPK for Supplemental Information

Continuing on a similar point, if you feel like you absolutely need to include some additional information about your band, you can add it to the email without clouding or confusing your message by linking to your website or EPK.

If you’re emailing music bloggers to review your new album, rather than telling them about your band’s formation history and where you’re from, link to a page with this information in case the blogger wants to learn more (like a bio or an EPK), and get straight into the details about your new album.

Including too much background information is a sign of inexperience and dilutes your email’s message. It can easily turn people off, resulting in fewer responses to your emails.

Make Use of White Space

Not only do emails need to be short, but they must also be very easy to read.

Most people don’t read entire paragraphs – they scan them to pick out important points.

To ensure your recipient is getting all of the information you want them to get from your email, space things out so the email is easy to skim. Here are some tips:

  •      Write short, 1-2 sentence paragraphs.
  •      Make use of white space.
  •      Make use of bullet points and numbered lists.

Write Compelling Subject Lines

Of course, the first step in getting a response is to get your email opened and read, and that means you need to have a great subject line.

Here are some things to keep in mind when constructing a compelling subject line:

  •      Keep it short.
  •      Include the recipient’s name, if possible.
  •      Hint at what’s inside.
  •      DON’T USE ALL CAPS or overuse exclamation points!!!!

Use the Recipient’s Name in the Email

If you’re emailing music bloggers, rather than opening your email with “Hi [Music blog name]” you want to include the recipient’s name directly.

This simple addition shows that you put in the extra effort to actually do the research and will set you apart from the vast majority of emails that hit the inboxes of music bloggers. 

Failing to include the recipient’s name can make it feel like the email was sent automatically (even if it was not). Remember, there’s a real person on the other end of every email you send.

Getting your music featured on blogs is one of the best ways to promote your music. Hopefully these tips have given you some ideas that will help you get noticed by music bloggers.

As you can see, getting your music covered on blogs and other news outlets isn’t all about luck. There are easy tweaks and strategies you can use to get your emails read and taken seriously. If you want more up-to-date and practical indie musician success strategies, check out the full online course. Or sign up to get the Hack the Music Business ebook for free.

how to make free music make money

Technology. It’s provided a lot of really cool opportunities for musicians. I mean, now you can create incredible quality music with your laptop, you can release that music to the world with the click of a button, and you can connect with a global fanbase from your home.

But – and this is the big but – for a lot of musicians all that opportunity hasn’t necessarily made their lives any more secure revenue-wise.

I’m sure you know the story… Free music is everywhere so it feels like no one is willing to actually pay any more. Even music instruction is available for free online on sites like YouTube now so even side income from lessons seems to be dwindling.

As a result, the average musician – whether it’s your career or passion project alongside your day job – seems to always run into the same brick wall: “How do I compete with FREE?”

What if I told you that you don’t have to compete with free music? That you should embrace “free” into your approach for promoting your music?

No, I’m not saying renounce money and go live in a cave with an acoustic guitar. I’m saying USE free as a stepping stone – a point of entry for new and potential fans to come into your camp and get turned on to your music and a small piece of your overall approach. Let’s take a look.  

Free Music is One Part of the Bigger Picture

A lot of musicians will look at the idea of giving away free music and think they are just throwing away potential income. But it can actually have the opposite effect. It can help you create fans who will buy more music, merch, and tickets – if you use it correctly.

Think about how you discover new music. Let’s say your friend recommends a really cool new band. Are you going to go out and buy their album right away? Probably not. You’re going to get on YouTube or SoundCloud and listen to a few songs and make your decision from there.

So once someone has heard a song on your YouTube, what’s the next no-brainer step they can take? They can download it for free by trading their email address. It’s a little bit more of an investment on their part because they’re giving you access to their inbox. But it’s still a relatively painless step.

And now you’re getting permission to contact them again – and that’s key. That contact will open up the door for you to send them more cool stuff they can buy. So we’re opening up the potential for them to be repeat buyers.


Not sure what to send your fans when they join your email list? Download these 10 free email templates: 10 Attention-Getting Email Templates for Musicians


One Size Does Not Fit All Fans

And now to dispel the common myth: Fans DO want to spend money. They want to support you – it’s up to you to one, give them the opportunity to, and two, figure out what they want to buy.

Giving stuff away for free can also help you piece together the puzzle to figure out what fans really want to buy.

Here’s the thing. As musicians, we tend to group everyone into one category – fans. And that category includes everyone from people who literally just found your music to hardcore fans who have been following you and supporting you for years.

But all of those fans have different interests and want to buy different things. Some fans might like collecting merch. Other fans may be musicians themselves and would be totally into lessons and instructional videos. And some may want signed stuff and exclusives. So if you just give them a chance to buy a $10 album, you’re missing out.

Get to Know Fans’ Interests

Here’s where free stuff comes in. Seeing which fans opt into which free offer can give you hints at what they’re interested in.

So someone who wanted one free song may be interested in buying the full album. A person who entered a contest for a chance to win a big merch bundle may be interested in buying a new merch design you come out with. A fan who opts in to get a gear list for your pedal board may want to buy a bonus version of your album with the Pro Tools files for remixing OR PDFs of the tabs and sheet music. And a fan who comes to your live Q&A streams on YouTube may be into meet and greet packages at upcoming gigs.

In most email programs, you can mark these interests automatically by segmenting your list into “groups”. You can then add hidden form fields on your opt-in forms.

So try to go beyond just offering free music. Think about the things you can sell and figure out what you could offer for free to sort your fanbase by interest. This is where free stuff gets to be really powerful in your overall approach.

Build a Ladder

Once you get some free offers in place you can start building a ladder – something that will work your fans up towards bigger purchases and move them into the realm of superfans. Start piecing together your free offers so you’re constantly giving your fans free stuff and simultaneously figuring out more and more about them and what they want.

This approach is taken out of the New Artist Model Essential Music Business Course. As you can see, the strategy is designed especially for indie musicians to work in today’s modern music environment – not the industry of 10 years ago. If you want more up-to-date and practical indie musician success strategies, check out the full online course. Or sign up to get 4 lessons for free

how to use Facebook ads to build your email list

Social media is great for musicians – it gives you the ability to interact with your fans and promote your music to a well-targeted audience.

Even with all of the benefits, social media sites come and go. However, one thing seems to remain constant – email.

This is why the most important asset you’ll ever have is your email list.  Growing an email list is a great way to increase sales of your music and merchandise, and allows you an avenue of direct communication with your fans. (If you want ideas for what to send to your email list, check out these 10 free templates.)

Because of this, if you have even a $5 per day marketing budget, you should spend some of it on building your email list. In this post, I’m going to show you how you can do this with Facebook ads.

Use Facebook Ads as a Part of a Bigger Strategy

Keep in mind that Facebook ads should not be the entirety of your strategy to grow your email list. Instead, it should be one aspect of a larger music promotion strategy. So maybe you use Facebook ads to get in front of new fans, but you also have an email form on your Facebook artist page as well as your website where you offer things like free music, discounted merch, and early access in exchange for an email address.

The Facebook ads will be targeting people who may have never heard of you before but are inclined to like your music based on their interests. Having forms on your website will target current fans who already know about your music and want to go deeper. Both are necessary for an effective email strategy.

About Facebook Lead Ads

In the world of music marketing, a lead is – in simple terms – someone who has shown enough interest in your music that they’ve shared their contact information with you.

Because of this, Facebook has built a type of advertisement that lets you easily collect information like email addresses and phone numbers (with a user’s consent) through their ad platform – they call them Lead Ads.

These ads can be a great way to build your email list with your Facebook advertising budget.

Targeting

When targeting Facebook users for any ad campaign, you should aim to reach people who are interested in music similar to yours.

To do this, you need to find out what your current fans listen to.  One easy way to figure this out is by looking at your “related artists” page on streaming services like Spotify, and by seeing what kind of playlists people are placing you into. You could also post a simple message on Facebook asking your fans to comment their favorite bands and musicians. 

When targeting your ads on Facebook, it’s a good idea to have at least 2 ads running at a time, each with a different audience.  So if you’re targeting punk music fans, you might have one ad aimed at Blink-182 fans, and another targeting Green Day fans.

After each of these ads run for a few days, continue with the one that’s performing best, and replace the one that’s performing worse with a different targeting set.  This process is known as A/B testing and can help you make the most of your online ad budget. No sense paying for an ad that’s not working for you, right?

Formatting Your Ad

Another thing you want to test with your ad is the format.  With Facebook Lead Ads, you can use images or videos and have a number of choices for a call to action.

As mentioned above with targeting, you also want to A/B test your format and call to action.  

Try combining a music video ad with an option for viewers to download the song for free in exchange for their email address, or if you’re promoting your email list to current fans, an image announcing that mailing list subscribers have a chance to win a signed copy of your upcoming album might work.

Test multiple combinations of ad formats and value propositions to see what converts best.

What Fields to Use

When creating a Facebook lead ad with the intent to collect email list subscribers, it’s obvious that you want to include a form where people can enter their email, but what other information do you need?

Too many form fields can make people wary of signing up, so it’s important to limit the fields to only what’s necessary.

Here are some fields to consider:

  • Name – Personalizing your emails by using a subscriber’s name can increase open and click thru rates. You probably only need the first name.
  • Zip code or City, State/Province, and Country – This can be helpful when planning tour dates.  Rather than blasting your entire tour schedule to your email list, you can personalize it to them by including only the tour dates closest to them within the email with a link to purchase tickets.  Since zip codes don’t exist everywhere, you may want to use city, state/province, and country instead of zip code if you’re an international artist.
  • Address – If you plan to host giveaways for your mailing list subscribers or send them anything physical, ask for their address. If not, stay away from this. Remember, simpler is better. 

Remember, paid advertising should only be a small part of your overall music promotion strategy. If you want more ideas for how to promote your music, we recommend the Musician Power Tools course. You’ll go step-by-step through setting up your social media pages, your website, and your email list (and how to turn them into conversion machines that will help you develop superfans who will support your career).

DIY Images for social media

Images are one of the most engaging types of content. It’s been proven time and time again that social posts that include images will usually get more likes and comments than plain text posts.

With that in mind, most everything you put out there to raise awareness for your music – from blog posts to YouTube videos, and social posts to emails – will usually need at least one good image, so being able to design awesome DIY images yourself can give you a powerful edge in promoting your music.

Of course, images for your press kit or music releases should be taken with great care, and in most cases should be put together by a professional designer. But if you’re looking to design images for a social media post, profile picture, or an upcoming event, DIY images can work and keep your costs down.

When designing images yourself, you want to make sure you can put together the best looking work possible.  We have more step-by-step tutorials in the Musician Power Tools Promote Your Music Crash Course, but here are 3 resources to get you started:

Canva – A free online graphic design site for DIY images

Canva is an awesome graphic design tool for just about anything you need to create on a DIY level.  This service is completely free to use, and provides the ease of use necessary for putting together quick, simple designs, but offers features that can help you put together pixel perfect, near-professional level designs as well.

They have a great collection of templates available for selection, along with a variety of shapes, icons, text, filters, and photos – some free, some available for a fee – in a drag and drop interface that lets you easily mix and match elements, change their colors, and more.

You’ll also find a ton of ready-made image sizes for just about anything you need, so you don’t need to go searching around to figure out the correct image size for the platform you’re using.

While this shouldn’t be used for professional design, it’s a great tool for putting together nice looking graphics for social media or quickly adding filters to your photos. We’ve personally used Canva for New Artist Model graphics for social media and blog posts (including this one!)


Want some ideas for what kind of images you should be posting to social media? Download this free ebook – How to Promote Your Music: With 3 Social Media Checklists.


Pixabay – A resource for free, professional quality photos

There are a number of reasons you’d need photos other than those of you or your band.

Maybe you’re writing a blog post, setting up an event on social media, or are in need of some images for a custom design.  Whatever the case, you want to make sure you’re using images that are free of copyright so that you don’t face any legal trouble.  People have gotten sued for using photos without permission, and it can be a really big fine if you get caught.

Pixabay is a website that offers millions of copyright-free photos to use however you want for free.

Once you’re on the website, simply type a keyword into the search box and start browsing.  When you find something you like, just click download.

Images are often available in different sizes.  Keep in mind that when using images online, smaller ones will load faster, but for print, you want the highest resolution possible.

Material.io by Google – For understanding colors

When designing DIY images, you want to make sure you use colors that mix well together.

To effectively use multiple shades of colors, it’s a good idea to use colors that are on the same color scale.

This is where this page from Material.io can help.

While the entire site works as a complete design guide, mostly intended for app developers, this page contains a color palette that contains around 500 colors – starting with primary colors, then filling in the spectrum – to create a complete palette designed to show which colors work harmoniously together.

You can also find plenty of color palette generators, creators, and libraries with a simple Google search. Try out a few options and choose colors that best reflect the brand you’re trying to create. As an easy guide, try to have one main color, one accent color, and a few more neutral colors to keep things clean.

Knowing which colors work well together is important for any design.  If colors mix well together, they draw attention – which is the entire point of an image in the first place.


Try these three resources out and see what kind of images you can come up with. If you need help setting up things like your Facebook cover, your Twitter header, or even your YouTube channel art or thumbnails, we recommend the Musician Power Tools course. You’ll go step-by-step through creating those images (and how to turn them into conversion machines that will grow your email list).

Easy steps to get started with email promotion for musicians

Email is a big topic (which is why we dedicated an entire module to it in the Music Power Tools course), and it’s something that a lot of musicians put off. But I’m here to tell you that email doesn’t have to be scary, time-consuming, or intimidating.

Instead of thinking big picture, narrow it down to a few easy steps you can take right now to get emails flowing in.

Choose an Email Promotion Provider

Before you do anything with email promotion, you need to choose an email provider – Gmail or Yahoo isn’t going to cut it here, you need something professional and legit with the ability to group and segment your list.

There are a lot of options, but let’s run through two big ones quickly so you can start deciding which may be best for you.

Mailchimp

Pros

  • Very easy to use, even if you’ve never used email services before
  • You can start with a free plan – which will give you up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month
  • Affordable pricing for paid plans starts at $10 for 500 users/unlimited sends (see more here)
  • Good templates are available, you can create your own templates, and the editor is very easy to use
  • There is awesome RSS feed support
  • You can track where signups come from and automatically add to group statuses with hidden form fields
  • Easy to understand reports
  • Customize signup forms for mobile devices
  • Easy to import and customize your lists
  • Easily share songs from iTunes or YouTube
  • Segmented email campaigns, such as by location (great for tour alerts)
  • Mobile apps available
  • Lots of integrations with website providers

Cons

  • Many advanced features require a Pro plan, which starts at $199/month
  • Some segmentation features require a paid plan

Aweber

Pros

  • Awesome drag-and-drop editor which allows you to easily format text, add hyperlinks, and insert images
  • You can schedule emails by time-zone
  • There are 700+ email templates to choose from
  • The interface is clean and easy to use
  • They take spam very seriously
  • Split A/B test your emails
  • Mobile Apps are available
  • The shopping cart integrates with PayPal, Shopify, and Google Checkout
  • You can add attachments to emails
  • There is extensive tracking and reporting of email campaigns

Cons

  • Lacks Google Analytics integration
  • No social media tracking or reporting
  • You can’t build your own email template.
  • You can only import xls, xlsx, tsv, csv, txt files

Need some ideas on what to send to your email list? Download these 10 email templates – Attention-Getting Email Templates for Musicians


Don’t Ask for Too Much

Once you have your email provider, your next step in your email promotion plan is to start creating opt-in forms where fans can signup to receive emails.

As you’re doing this, remember that it’s important to only ask for what you need. People are wary of giving out too much personal information, and too many form fields can lead to people dropping off before they submit their email.

You need to decide what information you absolutely need (and what you can live without).

Keep in mind that you can create multiple different forms that collect different information depending on where they’re located on your site. So for example, an opt-in form on your homepage may just ask for email and first name (so you can personalize the emails you send). An opt-in form on your tour page may include email, first name, and zip code so you can notify them when you’re playing in their area.

Add Opt-In Forms to Your Website

Where you place your email opt-in forms will have just as big an effect on how well they perform and how many fans signup.

To start, make sure you have an opt-in form towards the top of your website’s homepage (it should be visible without scrolling down). Tell them what they’ll get for signing up right on the form.

If you have an active blog page, include another opt-in form towards the top or in the sidebar allowing fans to sign up for blog updates or weekly blog roundup emails.

Another option is to add an opt-in form to your merch page giving your fans the chance to sign up for emails to receive a discount code.

Pop-ups and welcome mats can be used, but be sure to adjust the settings so they’re not popping up all the time and getting annoying. Sumo.com is a great one to try, but there are plenty of other plugins for WordPress and other sites that will do similar things.

Let Fans Subscribe at Checkout

Another easy way to get more people signing up for your emails is to add an opt-in checkbox to your store’s checkout page. Don’t assume that everyone who buys from you is on your list. Plus, for the most part, fans who actually purchase from you are probably your most loyal fans, so you want to be able to contact them again!

Add a Call-to-Action to Your Facebook Page

Adding a button to your Facebook page to get mailing list subscribers can help create a mailing list from your Facebook following.

Here’s how to do it: Click the “Create Call to Action” button on your cover photo, select “Sign Up” from the button options dropdown, then enter the URL to your mailing list and click “Create.”

It’s a pretty easy step, but it’s yet another way to funnel fans into your email list.

Collect Emails at Your Merch Table

Your merch table is another place where email signup forms can easily be added into the mix. It can be as simple as having a clipboard on the table, or you can tie it to some kind of a contest to really make it worth their while. Tell your fans that anyone who signs up for emails will be entered to win a merch bundle at the end of your set.


If you want to go further with email marketing and learn more about what to send and when to send, consider signing up for the Musician Power Tools Promote Your Music Crash course. There’s an entire module dedicated to email promotion, and 5 other modules covering social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, as well as your website so you can get everything working together to promote your music.

Written by Nicholas Rubright of Dozmia, Chelsea Ira

Get more Twitter followers

Image via Depositphotos

Twitter is a great channel for promoting your music and engaging your fans online. However, for it to be effective, you need to get more Twitter followers.

First off – what you should not do. Don’t buy followers unethically online and risk getting your account banned, or buy ads to promote your account ( the cost of this can add up quickly). For the most part, you’ll just be attracting numbers – a.k.a. people who don’t actually engage with your content or support your music and just serve as a validation number. And what’s that really worth?

Your best approach is to grow your Twitter account by getting in front of potential fans organically.

Now, just because we’re talking organic doesn’t mean you need to just sit around and wait. There are some things you can do to get more Twitter followers and get your tweets out there, and here are 5 options you can try.

Want more music promotion tips? Click here to download this free ebook to learn how to promote your music, and get a ton of free social media checklists and post ideas.

1. Stick to the social media rule of thirds to get more Twitter followers

Social media isn’t about self-promotion, it’s about engagement. People follow you because the things you share are of interest to them, not so they can be sold to.

Many musicians make the mistake of tweeting only when they release new music or merchandise, and making almost all of their tweets about their music without engaging their fans.

Instead, split your tweets up as follows:

  •      One-third of your tweets should be promotional.
  •       Another one-third of your tweets should provide value to your fans.
  •       And the final one-third of your tweets should be engaging.

So instead of only tweeting about your merchandise and new music, reply to tweets from fans, engage them with questions, share what you’re working on, or even give them tutorials for how to get your sound. They’ll love hearing from you, and the replies from them can get you seen by their followers.

Plus, you’ll find that with this method you have a lot more to tweet about. As a musician, you’re producing really awesome content every single day, whether it’s new lyrics, new tones, new songs, riffs, beats, covers, performances, and gear. When you start thinking of social media as sharing engaging and interesting content instead of just promotion, it opens up a world of possibility.

2. Mention other artists in your Tweets

With social media, it doesn’t have to be all about you. Another effective way to get more Twitter followers is to mention other similar artists in your tweets.

It could be as simple as doing short, Twitter video mini covers of some of your biggest musical inspirations. Share the video and @mention them.

You could even just share some of the songs you’re digging at the moment. Share a tweet with the song you’re currently vibing off, or create a playlist of your favorite tunes. Once again, in both cases @mention the artists. Fans love getting music recommendations, especially from artists they respect. Plus, it’s a great way to get a conversation started about shared musical taste.

Not only that, including other artists in your tweets can get your content in front of their audience, which can grow your following. The mentioned artists may even give you a retweet.

3. Follow and reply to similar artists

Engaging other artists within your music scene can be an effective way to get yourself noticed by fans interested in your style of music and get more Twitter followers. But above all, it’s one of the best ways to start building yourself a network of musicians who you can work with on collaborations, joint gigs, and even cross promotions.

Find similar-sized artists who have a compatible sound to yours, follow them, and start engaging them. Like and retweet their music, and start building relationships with them. It’s all about giving before you receive.

Doing this can get your tweets in front of their followers, and may result in them following you back and returning the favor. These relationships can also result in future collaborations with mutual benefits.

4. Know when to tweet

When you tweet is almost as important as what you tweet.

The most popular time to tweet is noon-1pm, but tweets sent between 2-3pm get the most clicks on average. Use a combination of some of the Twitter data you can find online and intelligent deductions you can make from your Twitter analytics. So, for example, if you’re seeing that most of your audience is 13-17 or 18-24 you may want to tweet after 3PM when most of your fans are out of school.

Experiment with different times to see what results in the most engagement and use your analytics to guide you. If you simply send tweets at the same time every day, you’ll never know if there’s a better option.

5. Use trending hashtags to get more Twitter followers

Hashtags are a great way to increase the reach of your tweets.

Look at what’s trending on Twitter using their website, then get creative and compile a tweet that makes sense for that hashtag. You can also use tools like Trendsmap to see what hashtags are being used in different locations, which can help you use hashtags to your tour based tweets in front of a targeted audience.

The key is to be relevant – don’t just jump on a hashtag train if you have no business joining the conversation. Think about your ideal target audience – the fans you want to attract – and ask yourself: “Will they be using this hashtag?” If not, don’t waste your time. Sure, you might get your tweet seen by a lot of people, but if they’re not the kind of person that will become a fan then it’s not worth your efforts.

Remember – with social media, it’s all about picking your battles and consolidating your efforts so you get the most benefit from your limited time. [free PDF: The Musician’s Guide to Getting More Done]

Image via Stocksy

First thing that comes to mind when thinking about promoting your music is probably social media, right?

Social media breaks down so many barriers for indie musicians to reach and communicate with an audience – and that’s awesome!  But sometimes it’s easy to forget about the in-person, experiential facet of music. That face-to-face connection will always be a powerful way to grow an audience, even in the face of technology advances.

With that in mind, don’t limit your efforts to strictly online music promotion. Playing live shows is a great way for musicians early in their career to gain new fans.

Obviously, the first step is booking a great gig, but here are some easy and creative ways to sell out your gigs to get you started.

Got some gigs? Here’s how to sell tons of merch:

1. Play Some (very few) Shows for Free

Not all free shows are bad. The simple fact is that no matter where you are in your career, you need to weigh the benefits vs the downsides of performing for free. You need to assess the opportunity.

Here are some questions you can ask a promoter when you’re asked to play without pay:

  • What other artists are playing?
  • When do we play in relation to other artists?
  • How many people will be at the show during our set? (it’s important to specifically ask about the expected audience size during your set. Many promoters will give totals when asked otherwise, but many people will show up later in the day.)
  • Will we be able to sell merchandise?

If the opportunity really is going to provide a huge leap in the size of your fanbase, it’s for a cause you believe in, or it’s for a huge conference or event – go for it.

If you’re a new musician or band and don’t have much experience playing live, it might be a good idea to take what you can get for practice and even small amounts of exposure.

In the extremely early stages, any amount of free exposure is good. It gives you a chance to figure out who your target fanbase might be so you can figure out how to get in front of more of these people using targeted music marketing strategies. So pay close attention to the type of people who dig your music during any performance. Better yet – go talk to them after the show!

So, if someone does ask you to play for free and you’re early in your career, don’t be so quick to jump on it. Alternatively, if you’re a bit more established, don’t be so quick to say no. Assess, figure out what you stand to gain, and make your decision from there.

2. Play with Established Artists in Your Scene to Sell Out Your Gigs

If you play a show by yourself, it’s going to be hard to draw a new audience, and if you’re new to the scene, it’s going to be hard to get anyone to show up at all.

A great way to add a jumpstart to your fanbase and sell out your gigs is to play with musicians who have a more established fanbase than you. So network with local artists in your area, or in cities you’re touring to – check out their social media followings (both in size and engagement), and reach out to new artists who you’d like to play a show with.

If you’re not sure where to start, Facebook is a great way to find new musicians of a similar size and genre to yours. Here is an easy way to do that:

Go to the Facebook page of an artist in your niche and targeted city, like the page, then you’ll see a whole list of recommended pages based on what that artist’s fans have liked.

These recommendations can be great ways to find new musicians, especially if you’re using this method from your own page because that means there’s some fanbase overlap and you can increase the perceived value of the event among ticket buyers.

If you already like the artist’s page, unlike it, leave the page, come back again, and like the page again to see the recommendations.

Granted, this is just the first step. After that, it’s on you to put on your networking hat and actually form a relationship with them. Start by leaving valuable comments on their posts and engaging to get on their radar and then try messaging them and proposing a joint gig or a headline swap. Have a plan in mind that will benefit you both.

3. Don’t Gig Too Often (So You Can Sell Out Your Gigs That Matter)

If you play every weekend in the same city or town, your shows will lose their value.

Think about it like this – if your favorite band played in your city every weekend, how likely are you to go this Saturday? How likely are you to spend a good amount of money on the ticket? After all, you could always catch them next weekend, right?

Chances are, you’ll put it off.

Separating your shows increases the urgency of each event. Your fans are less likely to put it off, more people will show up, and there’s a better chance you’ll sell out your gigs.

Now, of course there’s a balancing act here. If you’re a relatively new band you’re going to want to play any opportunity you get to work up your performance chops, but as you start developing a local following, start spacing them out.

Another option is to play smaller gigs regularly and do a big, almost event-like gig every few months. Try to make these bigger gigs something your fans won’t want to miss. Maybe it’s a cool collaboration, an interesting theme, or a new release.

4. List Your Shows on Bandsintown and Songkick

Both Bandsintown and Songkick use various databases to find local events, but you can sign up for Bandsintown as an artist to ensure all the information about your events is correct. For Songkick, you can sign up for Tourbox.

5. Send Emails to Local Mailing List Subscribers

When you create your email list, make sure you segment subscribers by location so you can send them relevant links to buy tickets. Just add a form field to your email signup forms for zip code and let them know it’s to send them info about your local gigs.

Sending gig emails to only relevant fans who will actually be able to come is much more effective than simply sending the entire tour dates list to every subscriber and results in less people unsubscribing from your mailing list.

6. Create an Event on Facebook to Sell Out Your Gigs

Create an awesome event photo for free with Canva, set up the event on Facebook, and invite everyone you know. You can also promote the event using Facebook ads.

7. Publish the Event in Local Event Calendars

Check the websites of local churches, newspapers, and other media outlets in your area to see if they have event calendars. If they do, look into how you can be included in the calendar.

 

This article was written by Nicholas Rubright of Dozmia.