Developing a strategy to promote your music online effectively might look different from one musician to the next. There are many different ways to promote music online. There are paid options, free options, and some in between. Choosing the right mix for you all depends on your brand and your business goals. Before starting any online promotion efforts, consider identifying what exactly you’d like to accomplish and how you’ll measure the effectiveness of your efforts.
Answer these questions first:
- What are your business goals?
- Who represents your target market?
By answering the questions above, you’ll have everything you need to work on achieving the results you’re looking for. The key to promoting your music online effectively lies in your answers to these two simple questions. Any effort you make should focus on your target market with the purpose of achieving your business goals.
Related: 15 Practical Ways to Promote Your Music Online for Free
Performance-Based Musicians
For example, if you’re a 4 piece pop-rock band and you’re just starting to do local shows, a business goal might be to start booking paid local gigs so you can earn money. As a result, your target audience right now might be locals who enjoy seeing live music and who are in their 20s and 30s.
In this example, an effective online promotion strategy would include the following:
Establish a strong web presence.
I highly recommend hosting a website on your own domain i.e. yournamemusic.com. This gives you the most control over how your content is presented. Plus it makes you look more credible. Having your own website allows you to use it as a hub from which to distribute your art. It can act as a funnel to engage and sell to your audience and prospective audience in ways that you can completely control.
Utilize LOCAL SEO strategies.
Most website platforms also feature a blogging engine. A blog is a great way to tap into SEO benefits and pull in people on the web searching for the things you can provide as an artist. Write blog posts about your music and its benefits. In our pop-rock band example, a good blog post idea would be ‘Best Pop-Rock Bands in (insert local city)’. If anyone is searching for pop-rock in that city, this blog post would appear prominently in the search results. Get other topic ideas for this strategy here.
Pro Tip: Write content on your blog that covers the local music scene. This attracts local live entertainment fans to your website.
For more tips on utilizing SEO strategies to attract people online, check out:
• SEO Tips: How to Attract More People to Your Musician Website
• SEO – Get Your Music on the First Page of Search Engines
Get consistent with email marketing.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your audience directly. With email marketing, you can easily customize each follower’s experience which can make the connection all the more personable and long-lasting. I use MailerLite to send emails to my audience. It’s a free and upgradable platform that offers beautifully seamless email functionality for content creators with audiences of all sizes. It also provides integrations you can use with your website, Facebook, and many other platforms to help you develop marketing campaigns to achieve your goals. Check out our Email Marketing Guide Series to get started with email marketing.
Build a solid social media strategy to target local engagement.
Billions of people engage with multiple social media platforms every day. Social media offers a way to gain access to your audience for free. But the competition to get the attention of your audience is stiff. To get the most out of your social media efforts, it’s best to strategize and develop an effective approach that meets your objectives. For our pop-rock band example, they would find the best results by focusing on locally-based content. For example, a post series on local venues where each week they feature a local music venue. These posts would include relevant hashtags, tagging the featured venue, pictures, and maybe even interviewing the manager or bartenders. This would help broaden their network with local venues, engage their audience with a local flare, and attract new followers.
Facebook advertising is also an option. It’s important to manage demographic settings properly when it comes to ad targeting especially if the goal is to focus on a local audience. What to advertise? The venue post series could help gain a massive amount of exposure without looking over-salesy! Or, advertise a video of the band performing an original song. Advertise an upcoming show or album release party. What about offering a locally inspired gift for free and advertising that? Playlists, free downloads, and custom books, can all be great options. Or if you’re willing to splurge, you might find that hosting a giveaway contest where the prize is something cool from local businesses could be great for attracting your target market. Be sure to follow Facebook’s guidelines when it comes to contests and advertising.
Create and post high-quality promo videos.
Video marketing has become more and more popular. A recent report states that Youtube has surpassed Facebook as the most popular outlet for influencing consumer behavior. That same report suggests that most people want to see more videos from the businesses that they engage with.
Of the many different types of video ideas for musicians to choose from, you should pinpoint a few options that can get you the best results according to your business goals. For a performing artist looking to get more paying gigs, live footage videos of you performing are best. Other types of videos that can help generate buzz are ones that feature local fans. Interview people at your shows and post the videos of them on social media so your interview subjects can interact with you online, share your content and introduce their friends to you online. These types of videos and subsequent content created from them, can also build proof that you have a following which can help generate interest from venues to book you in the future.
Join online booking platforms.
Online booking platforms like GigSalad can generate exposure for you to book gigs in your local area. People who are searching for live entertainment for upcoming events tend to search online. While your website is able to attract these people, a lot of times other platforms with more SEO authority tend to get higher search engine placement. Add a profile to these sites so you can catch these potential gigging opportunities from both sides. Additionally, more links pointing to your site from authority websites can increase SEO benefits for your website.
Engage with locally-based media platforms for exposure.
In addition to online booking platforms, you can also pursue radio stations, event blogs, local blogs, local lists, and directories to connect with. Getting featured, doing interviews, and participating in other similar online collaborations can help generate significant buzz for your music. See if you can find all the websites that list entertainment providers in your area and ask to be added. If you have an arts council or association in your area, find out if they have a list or directory of local artists that you can be added to. There may be blogs that cover local events in your area as well. See if you can get them to cover some of your events, or possibly offer to write an article for their blog with a link back to your site, of course!
What if I’m not a performance-based musician?
Let’s say you’re a studio musician who doesn’t typically perform live and you’re looking to build an online audience. You’d still need to build a strong web and social media presence, but your overall strategy might look a bit different.
YouTube
For example, you might focus on creating high-quality lyric videos for every song you release instead of live performances. Define what themes your music pairs with. For example, if your music is a great fit for gaming, connect with gaming channels and invite them to use your music in their videos. Or, maybe your music is highly meditative and instrumental. Consider creating a series of yoga or meditation-style videos. My music focuses on integrating biblical principles into everyday living. So I created a few Bible study videos on my channel with my music as a backdrop and I’m hoping to create some scripture readings as well. The idea is to create videos featuring your music that brings value to people in your target audience. This approach engages your current audience and grabs the attention of people outside of your current network.
Online Radio and Podcasts
Online radio and podcasts can represent a huge market for promoting your music whether you are a live performer or not. Although this approach requires a lot of time investment, the end result can provide a significant amount of exposure. Radio stations are looking for new music to add to their rotation. Podcasters are constantly looking for people to interview and music to add to their shows. The trick is finding compatible platforms and getting them to listen to your music.
Related
• Launch A DIY Radio Campaign for Your Music
• 10 Online Radio Stations to Submit Your Music To
Spotify Playlists
More and more Spotify playlists and curators of playlists are popping up as music tastemakers gain relevancy in today’s music climate. While this gives independent musicians opportunities to gain exposure, the competition makes it difficult to gain traction. A lot of other artists are doing the same thing and newly released music is easy to pick and choose from. However, there’s still a good chance to make your presence known especially if you have a great pitch and package.
You can start by creating your own playlists and collaborating with other musicians to be added to their playlists. But if you want to see more growth, you’ll need to be added to popular playlists. To do that, you’ll need to connect with the curators. Check out Mastering the Mix’s article, How to Get Your Music Featured on Spotify Playlists.
Online Music Distribution Services
While you can distribute your music manually to the various music outlets, there are distribution services that can do it for you – for a fee. These services submit your music to all the major music streaming platforms on your behalf. Music distribution gives you visibility on all or most of the music platforms. Therefore, when people are looking for your music, they’ll find you no matter what platform they prefer. Additionally, some of these platforms will often suggest your music to their listeners if they show interest in similar music. Some music distribution services to try are CD Baby, Tunecore, Amuse, Distrokid, and Ditto.
Discord
If your music is electronic-heavy, you may find Discord to be a great option for exposure. Similar to Twitch, Discord originally set out to provide a platform for gamers to connect. However, it has evolved into much more. Disord offers a unique mix of connectivity options that makes it easy for people with different communication preferences to connect with you while remaining on one platform. The benefit of this is that you can chat, live stream, voice chat, and make video calls all from Discord’s user-friendly layout to create various types of experiences for your audience. Discord has a built-in audience that you can tap into to promote your music. There are ‘servers’ that you can join to chat with other fans of similar interests. Or you can start your own server and build your own movement. Check out Ditto’s Promotions Guide for Musicians on Discord for help getting started.
Get a Free Copy of the eBook 100 Ways to Promote Your Music
- How to attract media coverage
- How to promote a show
- How to inspire word of mouth
- Ways to leverage online presence
- and more ways to promote your music
What are some other ways to promote my music online?
TikTok
TikTok is swiftly becoming one of the largest video-sharing platforms of all time and musicians are using it to get massive amounts of exposure. One of the unique features of TikTok is that it is a short-form video-sharing platform where the focus is less on quality and more on authenticity. Musicians can post quick, candid videos and reach billions. Comparatively, audiences on other video-sharing platforms tend to evaluate content based on quality and production. TikTok’s unique audio copying feature where users can add your audio to their videos, makes it easy for your music to go viral. Check out Pirate’s TikTok Guide for Musicians to learn about using TikTok effectively as a musician.
Twitch
If you are into live streaming, Twitch can be a great tool to expand your audience, build a community-centered fanbase and earn money. Originally starting out as a gaming platform, Twitch offers a unique network of users who show interest in getting to know their favorite content creators and other users with similar interests in a virtual setting. Twitch is known for its concentration on a community setting. This means that the users on Twitch expect to engage with both the content creators through chat features and requesting songs as well as engaging with other members in the audience over long periods of time multiple times a week. Additionally, the platform’s built-in monetization tools make the process of earning money fun and easy for content creators as well as users.
Music Promotions Services
Lastly, there are countless music promotion services that you can hire to promote your music for you. These services connect you with a variety of audiences through social media, blogs, Spotify, Soundcloud, and more. They each have specialized offerings therefore, you’ll need to research them individually to determine if they are a good fit for you. Keep in mind that these services may or may not bring you much traction and some may not be able to provide what they advertise. Fiverr has a LOT of music promoters offering to put your music on blast, but think twice before handing over your hard-earned money. I’ve tried a music promotions service through Fiverr once or twice. It seemed to me that they were simply posting my music links on their robot social media accounts. I didn’t see much traction from it.
More Resources…
Enjoying this content? We’d love to send you our latest posts fresh off the press! We’ll deliver new posts directly to your inbox. Plus, you’ll be notified when we host giveaways, webinars, and other fun stuff. Join our mailing list here.
Want to showcase your product to our audience? Take a look at our advertising options here.
Some of the links in this post could be affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and make a purchase, we could get a commission payment as a result. We are an Amazon Associate, so a lot of our links go directly to Amazon, one of our fave online retailers. The products we recommend on this site are personally recommended by us because we either have used the product personally or know close friends who have. There is no extra cost to you by clicking on our links. Plus, it helps keep this blog going. Win-Win! If you have any questions about our affiliate policy, click here to view our terms of service.
Best Live Streaming Equipment for Musicians
18 Actual Ways Musicians Are Making Money
5 Passive Income Strategies for Musicians
