Despite common belief, musicians need to be good at a lot more than just music to be successful in the music industry. Whether they are independent musicians or producers, or massive performers on the biggest labels, artists today need a lot more skills than just musicianship to be successful.
One of the most important skills to have as a musician is the ability to promote new music and market themselves and their music. The only way to get money from making music is to have more and more people listen to the songs.
That’s why marketing is so important; it is focused on getting more people to find your music, and encouraging them to listen to it more. While making good music is still the foundation of having a successful career in music, marketing is the delivery method that gets the music to the people. Regardless of the music genre you’re in, your profile in the music industry, or how many music fans you have, promotion is key.
Advertising and promoting go hand in hand. Whether you use an electronic press kit, physical press kits, music blogs, or even a simple mailing list, get your music out there and promote yourself. It’s the only way to grow your fan base and acquire new fans!
The internet provides countless ways for musicians and producers to put themselves out in the world, and get them more recognition and success. And with the advancement of promotion as a whole in the modern world, there are many methods that musicians can use to get their music in front of more people, which can directly serve to create more dedicated fans.
Table of Contents
What Is Music Promotion?
The goal of music promotion is to grow your fanbase, spread your music, and establish a career. Pretty much any music in the world can be loved by at least someone, if not a lot of people. Music promotion is all about getting the music that people love in front of them, so they can truly start appreciating it.
It can be fairly difficult at times, because it requires a lot of dedication and consistency to do right. Most people don’t want to put forward the amount of effort that it takes to successfully promote their music, and that’s why there are so many incredible musicians who don’t have a lot of success in the world. The music industry is about so much more than just good music; it takes dedication to promotion and marketing to truly get music to the people who want to see, which in turn leads to actual success.
There are many different ways to promote music, and most of them can be done using internet based services. Many times, these are just simple and easy tasks that just take up time to do. Musicians who actually put in the effort to promote and market their music are generally the ones that will get the most out of their music career.
Here are some of the best ways to promote your music to people, and start truly reaping the rewards of all of your hard work as a musician!
Social Media
Almost everyone is on social media platforms today. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or something else, social media has become a dominant driving force in many people’s lifestyles today, especially in the way that they interact with creatives. Social media makes it so much easier for people to find the music they like, as well as for bands to reach out to people and cultivate their audience. You can even ask a blogger with a professional website to give you feedback and create spotify playlists or itunes playlists of your music for their readers.
Digital marketing is the absolute best way to promote yourself. You can livestream concerts from your Youtube channel to hype up your album release in real-time. Fans and visitors to your site can comment on the performance and send the link out on Twitter. Hopefully, the hype will help get your music to radio stations and record labels if you don’t have one already. It’s the ultimate marketing strategy.
Social media also allows artists to express themselves in a much more personal and intimate way. This helps listeners to identify with the music much more, because they are able to know where it’s coming from in a much more direct way.
From hashtags to using your social bios as an ad, social media keeps your fans up-to-date. Making it so that your music can be more relatable helps to create more dedicated audiences that are much more interested in your music.
Email List Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to cultivate an audience that already exists. While it’s not a good idea to send music to people who didn’t express interest in receiving emails, sending email interactions with existing fans is a great way to cultivate an existing audience of people.
Email marketing is a great way to inform people about updates with your band or project, or let them know about upcoming releases on shows. This method is a really good way to interact with fans consistently, and offer special incentives to them. Having a good email list is something that can create a very genuine and relational way to interact with the people that care the most about your music.
Email lists are also a great place to find out who the biggest fans are, and it presents a way to deepen the relationship based on special interactions. Offering various gifts like behind the scenes information, early access to tickets, and exclusive discounts can be great ways to show your most dedicated fans that you care about them in a real way as well.
Pitching your Music and Playlisting
Learning how to pitch your music to playlists is one of the best ways that musicians today can really get their music in front of new audiences. It’s not always easy to get on the playlists that you want to, but learning how to pitch music to playlists is one of the best ways that artists can cultivate their audiences in a better way.
First and foremost, Spotify offers built in playlist pitching with every song that is uploaded to their catalog. It’s a fairly simple process, and it doesn’t require a whole lot of effort on the part of the artist. Just wait until the song shows up in the pre-release section of Spotify for artists, and find a playlist that seems to best fit the feeling and attitude of the song that is being released. These editorial playlists tend to be very hard to get onto, but have a very large number of listeners that follow them. It takes a little bit of luck, and a lot of quality in your music to get onto these editorial playlists.
But there are other playlists that are worth pitching music to. These range in size from very small to absolutely massive, but each one likely has a potential group of followers that would likely all benefit from hearing your music. So make it a priority to find playlists that your music sounds like it belongs on, and look for ways to submit songs to them.
The best way to find playlists like these are to look at artist pages on Spotify of the artists who sound the most like what you make, and find the section that says “Discovered On.” These are the playlists that most likely have a similar sound and feeling as what you’re going after, and can help you to locate places where your music belongs. Look for the owners of these playlists, and find ways to reach out to them.
Remember that the most important part about promoting your music is to simply have excellent music. All of the best music in the world won’t be heard if there isn’t good promotion, but conversely, music won’t be promoted if it isn’t good.
How Unison Can Help
Since the best way to market music is by making it excellent, it’s best to have tools that will help you make the best music that you can. That’s why Unison exists; to give musicians and producers the best assets and equipment they can have to make the best music possible. From high quality Serum Presets to MIDI packs to Artist-created resources, Unison is here to help you get your music out in the world in the best way possible. Your best music is right around the corner, and Unison is here to help elevate it from good to great. Check Unison out today!
Sources:
What is Music Marketing? | Music Entrepreneur HQ
What Are the Benefits of Music Promotion? | Planetary Group
How to Promote Your Music: The Essential Guide | Landr
