Hey Man,
First and foremost, thank you for sharing the snippets to listen to. Before I write down my own opinion, here comes a disclaimer. I never EVER released a single mixtape, I'm not a rapper by any means BUT I helped a lot of artists to do it and I spent a lot of time researching info about this topic.
So Step 1.: gotta have a strategy. Simple questions like, when you are going to release the tape? Where? How you're gonna promote it? What's your budget to release the tape? Simple questions and I know you are looking for the answers for "how to promote it". What I think you can simply do is:
A - Free promotion on Social Media. NO, I don't mean, tweeting every breathing mf to hey here is my tape download it. If you have a fan base, you should e-mail them first and then tweet it a couple times on your own timeline. I would either ask a couple artists who recently bought/downloaded beats from me to retweet and favourite that tweet OR I'd try to come up with a creative idea. Like, find a funny picture that is related to hip-hop and make a Tweet like "When Bae heards my new mixtape [link goes here]" or "My mixtaoe burn this dude head [link goes here]". Something that is entertaining and goes beyond average. I'm testing this method atm. Try Instagram as well. People on insta are very easy to engage with eye-catchy pictures.
Also, Facebook music/artist networking groups. I know they are full of spams but not all of them and one thing I took out of many tries with those groups. They are working kind of like instagram. If I post, "hey go ahead and download 3 free beats on http://phamibeatz.com" I might get 1-2 clicks out of every groups. If I do 10 groups I get like 20 visits which may convert into 2-3 leads. If I post the same script with a catchy picture then then the numbers raising with 400% which means 10 groups do me 40-50 visits which got me 7-10 leads.
B: Paid promotion - will tell you this later
Step 2.: this leads to step two, have a hot ass cover. Get your money together and get someone to make it. NO FRIENDS ALLOWED TO DO IT unless they are already making money out of mixtape covers. Why? Because you always ending up seeing something wack ass ish which looks like it's made by a 5 year old kid on Paint. Lol. You can get dope covers for 50 bucks.
Step 3.: Paid promotion. As a producer with an e-mail list, one of my strategies to LEARN is to sign up severail email lists that is related to Hip-Hop. Real Rap Promo (I'm not affiliated with them) has a very affordable price and a big ass e-mail list to work with. Even Semi Majors (T-Wayne) and Majors (Rick Ross) using their services to promote their new singles. I think the smallest price is 75$ to do it. Also, you def want to upload your tape to DatPiff. It takes 100$ to have a sponsored tape so anybody could download the tape without registering an account to the site. Many, many many rappers missing that opportunity. They rather spend their money on J's and not on promo (and beats sometimes lol).
Step 4.: before you release this one, STUDIO. REAL effin STUDIO. Make sure that all the songs are recorded and well mixed and mastered by an audio engineer. I think 4 songs could be done out of 100$ in a semi pro studio.
So overall it is 50+75+100+100=325$ which is not a whole lot of money. I mean and I don't know you personally, you say you're a producer, you may sell your beats, save that money or if you are still living with your parents, save your pocket money, find a job to save some money.
This is foreal. A lot of rappers rather drop 10 mixtapes a year instead of doing ONE but that one is so perfect that the word perfect is a degrading word to it because it's waaay better than perfect. lol.
Sorry for the harsh language, sorry for the grammar mistake (blame my dad, I was born and raised in Hungary, that's why my english a bit meeh in the more complicated sentences lol) but for real. Take it seriously. 4 songs? It's okay but that 4 songs have to be perfect any every aspect as a musical composition. Perfect flow, perfect beat, crytal clear quality.
I hope it helps a bit. Maybe it's more of a magical blog post kind of thing, I try to be as informative as I can be
Feel free to e-mail me the link to the mixtape as soon as you release it:
thisisphami@gmail.com
Phami
P.S.: no joke when I said no friends allowed to do business with you. Not because they are not talented but if they are your friends you'll accept their talent as something that's bigger than anything. My example, I have a friend who is pretty okay with Photoshop. The first time i asked him to do a dope PS picture he did an amazing job. At least I thought he did an amazing job til I found some pictures on Google. See what I'm trying to say?
