How to promote your music and gain listeners
When the time has finally come after finding inspiration, writing, recording, mixing, mastering and you can finally press export – what comes next? There’s lots of ways to push your music to the world and get it heard far and wide.
Get Social
Being social with your music is the best way to connect with people, share your music, and create bonds. In music, being social manifests itself in many ways and making use of all of them is the best way to create awareness of your music, create valuable connections and reach new fans.
Social Media
Nearly everyone in the world is online these days. Whether they’re sharing their music online, shopping for gifts, or talking to friends, the internet has gotten us all connected – all the time. As an artist social media is your window to a world of people!
Creating a Facebook page for your band or artist is the biggest step. It creates a hub where fans can come to show their support and keep up to date with your new releases, tour dates, and any info you want to share with them. Make sure to update your page regularly to keep your fans engaged and updated, This gives you the best chance at visibility and engagement.
Beyond Facebook there’s Twitter which is a great way to start conversations with people and find new fans using hashtags. It’s a much more open platform than Facebook as anyone can find you and see you based on your tweets and people’s interactions with them.
Both Twitter and Facebook offer paid promotion where you can push certain posts to people who might like your stuff for as little as a few dollars.
Make Friends
The power of connections applies to all industries but in the music industry making connections is a lot more special and can be the most valuable thing you do for your music.
Make friends with anyone you can: other bands and artists, promoters, venue owners, producers, managers, and anyone who is involved with music in some way. You never know who might give you your next gig or who might push your music to the right person that it gets airplay or label consideration.
Connections in the industry are give and take, so be friendly and help others when you can. Playing gigs with others is also one of the best moves you can make. Every other artist that is at a gig has their own group of fans there, and now they know who you are. Whether you’re offering support to an up-and-comer or you’re getting taken on tour with a bigger artist you made friends with, connections are SO valuable.
Let It Be Heard
Often the hardest part of music after you’ve created it is getting people to actually listen to it. There’s lots of ways to reach entirely new audiences with your music.
Get Online
We already talked about the wonders of the internet for socialising, but it’s also transformed the way we consume music around the world. Nearly all of the music ever released is now available in our homes, in our pockets and wherever we are. Thanks to music streaming there are no barriers to finding new artists.
With music streaming listeners can discover you and listen without having to make the investment of purchasing it in advance. Whilst this can mean less revenue immediately it means that anyone has a chance to listen to you and become a fan. This enhanced discovery leads to album sales, merchandise purchasing, ticket sales and more. It gives everyone around the world a chance to find you and fall in love with your music. They can still buy and own your music digitally with download stores like iTunes and Amazon MP3.
At RouteNote, we’ve opened the doors for artists by providing 100% FREE distribution to all of the world’s top music streaming services and stores like Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, TIDAL, Deezer, and many many more. Sign up for free at www.routenote.com.
Share the Love
Once your music is online for people to listen to you need to spread it around so that people are aware of it. The obvious place to share it is on your nice and active social profiles from earlier, but there are more places to put your music to get heard.
Music influencers hold a lot of power in the music that makes and breaks it. Influencers used to come in the form of radio DJs and label executives but as the platforms have changed so have the people aiding them. Streaming playlists have become a massive source of recognition, with millions of people subscribed to Spotify’s top playlists which they update every week with new music for all of those people to discover.
Spotify recently updated their Spotify for Artists platform to allow you to pitch your music to be added into their playlists. Upload an unreleased track and their playlist curators will take a listen and decide whether they want to include it in one of their massive playlists. Playlists have been the breakout for many small artists who suddenly have millions of listeners aware of their music so don’t miss out on your chances.
Beyond streaming services there are lots of independent blogs that feature music in a variety of ways. For example the Fresh On The Net blog created by BBC Radio 6 Music presenter Tom Robinson. Their curators listen through to roughly 200 tracks sent to them every week and selects their favourite 25 to push on the blog. They then allow listeners to come and hear them and vote for the ones they like the best. The curators pick their favourites and feature them in a separate post. Tom Robinson also often picks tracks that stand out to him for radio play. This is just one of many blogs like this!