You may be a great musician, an original singer, songwriter, or be in a band, but unless people know you are out there, how do you bring your music to a broader audience?
Marketing is important in the music industry. This is a competitive field, and with countless artists vying for attention globally, competition can be fierce even at the local level. Marketing simply describes a way of carrying out any activity to promote your music in order to bring it to the attention of the widest possible audience.
Social media, streaming platforms, live gigs, YouTube content, and music videos are all great ways to bring your music to the widest possible audience. Even local bands doing it just for fun will find that they can build up a wider following if they put their music online. However, if you want to make a living from music, you will need to approach your marketing in a professional way in order to stand out from the crowd.
Let’s look at a few simple marketing tactics for musicians that don’t know how to sell themselves.
The War of Art
by Steven Pressfield
⏱ 14 minutes reading time
🎧 Audio version available
Define your audience
Are you aiming at an older audience, teenagers, or something in between? In marketing, it is important to understand your target so that you can use the best methods to reach them. For example, if your target audience falls into the older age bracket, social media such as Facebook will reach them. On the other hand, if they are younger, TikTok is a more youthful platform with a wide reach.
Check out your competitors
Who are the artists operating in a similar genre to you? Study their marketing strategies, identify what makes you different, analyze their online presence, and list their strengths and weaknesses. Music is a marketplace, so as with any other product, you need to know the competition to fully understand what makes you different.
Share your music on streaming platforms
In the old days of music marketing, the only way to be “discovered”was by a chance encounterwith someone in the music industry who would then spend a lot of time and money on promotion. These days artists can share via social media and streaming platforms such as YouTube, making it much easier to reach their target audience.
Choosing the right platform for your audience is extremely important. Which one are they most likely to use? Sound Cloud, for example, is great for electronic music. But you also have Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, Amazon music unlimited, and YouTube.
All musicians should be on YouTube as well as a choice of other popular streaming platforms.
Advertise on social media
Tik Tok, Facebook, and other social media, including Instagram and Twitter, are great places to advertise. To go one step further, contact social media influencers and see if you can work with any of them. Even the less prominent influencers may have thousands of followers, so if you find an influencer whose image may seem aligned to yours, they may be happy to work with you, such as by using your music as background to their video.
Create a music website
Your website is your calling card. It gives you a place to identify yourself as a brand, showcase your portfolio, publish contact details, sell your music and publicize upcoming gigs. You don’t need to have a huge website. A one-page site that is easy to navigate can be just as effective as a website with lots of pages that nobody bothers to read.
Another great aspect of a music website is that you can create a mailing list of your contacts and send them a newsletter to notify them of upcoming gigs or new releases.
Optimize your YouTube presence
Think about your content and try to make it count. A Youtube video that is entertaining or has something interesting going on is far more likely to attract attention than a video shot in a living room of you playing your own composition. Unless this is brilliant, these types of videos are all over YouTube and are unlikely to get noticed. However, the same song in a different setting could be far more successful if you think of ways to make it more interesting.
Thinking up fun or interesting content that engages your audience will help you generate likes and get you noticed.
Get out and gig as much as possible
Every time you perform somewhere, you get a new audience, so gigging as much as possible will not only help hone your performance skills, it is great advertising for what you do.
If you are playing in a local venue, you may be asked back, and people in the audience may also try to book you for their own events. And even if your gig goes badly, just chalk it up to experience. You will find that some crowds may not enjoy your music because it is impossible to please everyone all the time, so just move on to the next one.
Never underestimate the importance of playing live. This is the foundation of the music business, and if the thought of stepping away from your bedroom fills you with anxiety, a career in music may not be your thing.
Network with other music professionals
Creating connections with other industry professionals can help your career move in the right direction. Get to know the other musicians in your area and try to connect with people of influence such as venue managers, DJs, people who work at radio stations, bloggers, local journalists, festival organizers, or anyone else involved in marketing and the music industry.
If you start on a local level, it will help you build up a foundation of connections and work. And although the digital format can bring you to the attention of a fantastic global audience, very few musicians get there direct from their bedroom to the big time.
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