GETTING YOUR MUSIC HEARD: TIPS ON MARKETING YOURSELF

GETTING YOUR MUSIC HEARD: TIPS ON MARKETING YOURSElf

Getting Your Music Heard

You know your aims, you’ve found your niche, and you really have your own style going on. The music is recorded, mixed and mastered… but just how do you get it out there? As an up and coming artist, working without the backing of major label money, it is essential to have the latest skills in self promotion as it is down to you to head the campaign and make sure people know about the music you are making. Here are some ideas and marketing channels to boost your release promotion. Focus on engaging your audience and increasing your online sales by linking to your music wherever possible.

WRITE DOWN YOUR GOALS

Write down your goals and know what you’re aiming for within 3 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. This will not be a rigid plan and will constantly change and develop over time. Have your milestones set out for the coming year detailing how you will manage each progression – such as launching your website, single release dates, press releases, gigs, conferences, networking events, meetings, online promo campaigns in terms of deadline times, knowing what action you have to take and when, and keeping others informed if they are working with you.

ESTABLISH A TIMELINE FOR YOUR MARKETING PLAN

Establish a timeline for your marketing plan so you know when you should start to prepare material and when it should be released and sent out. You should have individual campaigns for promoting specific things, like a new album, free downloads, gigs, tours, music conferences etc. Choose one thing to promote at a time so that the aim of your marketing is clear and concise for the audience you want to reach.

ESTABLISH A ‘BRAND’

Establish a ‘brand’ based on your style of music, which is an honest reflection of you as an artist. Look at how the artist/producers that you admire do this. It is important to have a look and feel to your name, logo, websites, images and sound which makes you and your work easy to identify for your audience. You want people to remember you right? Getting your brand right from as early on in the process as possible will really help you to make best use of resources. – You don’t want to spend your time and cash on creating your web design, branded items, demos etc and then have to change your name 1 year later and go over the same ground again. Until you are sure about your artist name, brand and style, its best to carry on with all the promotional moves you can make without splurging your money too soon.

CREATE A PROMO PACKAGE

Arm yourself with a tool box of promotional material that is ready to go, as and when you need it. Keep well organised folders with the files of your artwork for flyers, posters and website, promo photos, your press releases, biography, discography, WAVs, HTML files, collection of press you have received and your contact information to allow you to add content to any marketing networks quickly and easily. Being able to get your promo material out rapidly makes you look professional and makes best use of the window of time you have for marketing each of your milestones.

SET UP A SOUNDCLOUD ACCOUNT

Set up a SoundCloud account and upload the best material you have and keep this up to date. Get to grips with how to use this platform to its full potential here: http://soundcloud.com/tour SoundCloud has replaced the need for sending out CDs as promo material and the majority of radio stations and DJs are used to receiving content this way.

SET UP YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS

Set up a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, MySpace and Reverbnation account among others to keep your followers up-to-date and whip up further interest in you/your work. There are certain etiquettes you need to observe when using your social networks, so always be mindful of this. Those 140 little characters are powerful, and can either make you look like a king…or a bit of a plonker.

SET UP A YOUTUBE ACCOUNT

Set up a Youtube account so you can add videos and music that people will actually want to watch and listen to. Youtube is great for viral marketing and sometimes an amazing video can help your music to rise in popularity as fast as your Youtube viewing stats – The ‘OK Go’ videos are a prime example.

BUY THE RIGHTS TO YOUR DESIRED DOMAIN NAME

Buy the rights to your desired domain name: even if you don’t design and develop it all straight away you can use your website as the hub for all your online activity and link to your releases and connect your networks together. This should only be £2.00 – £20 annually from an online host, and if you end up sticking with the name you work under now, it will be really useful to own it from the start. If not, it’s worth the chance now rather than struggling to get the web address you want later.

PROMOTE ONLINE SALES BY EMBEDDING BANNERS

Promote online sales by embedding banners with links to sites where people can buy your music on your social networks. Juno Download has a great page to help with this: https://lms.juno.co.uk/lms/promote/index.php

SEND OUT EMAIL NEWSLETTERS

Send out email newsletters with info, photos, links to your work and press articles, to the right people with relevant info. Don’t make it more than two scrolls of a mouse, as surfers bore easily. Only send to people who have signed up or you will end up spamming and being a nuisance.

GET YOURSELF GIGS AND PLAY YOUR MUSIC OUT

Get yourself gigs and play your music out as often as you can and if you don’t plan on being the performer yourself, find DJs that will include your tracks in their mixtapes and will also put these up on their SoundCloud pages, along with radio shows that might just give your tracks airtime.

KEEP TRACK OF CONTACTS, EMAILS, INVOICES, DOCUMENTS

Keep track of contacts, emails, invoices, documents, making sure you keep a neat system that will make it easy to utilise your database of industry contacts and fan network. Keeping folders of important emails, invoices, documents and especially contracts will help you operate smoothly because you will be able to find the right information you need easily and in the event of any legal issues that could arise, you will have a good record of things in written format.

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY

Don’t worry, be happy – getting to where you want to be with your music is a battle and you will have plenty of knocks along the way. It’s the same for everyone and lots of people do make it in the end. Make sure you are one of them by keeping working at it and remember to relax a little and enjoy the journey.

For more detailed information on how to market your music check out our Music Business courses in London or Online. www.pointblanklondon.com www.pointblankonline.net