How to promote your music - here are some working methods

petez

New member
Ok, to make your music heard everywhere around the world is essential for you to be succesfull and therefore I decided to write down some of the methods I use to promote my music and I've found these to be effective:

1. This is a bit slow promotiong, but very important nonetheless: create a blog around your music.

- Pick a web hosting, register a domain name that includes your band or artist name and set up a wordpress blog on it. Wordpress CMS is a blog platform and it's easy to install, maintain and update and there's tons of good looking free wordpress themes around the net (and handy plugins to socialize your blog as well) you can use in your blog.

- Put some content to your blog: write your biography, (discography if any) and samples of your music. Put up a links to your twitter, facebook, myspace profiles as well. Also, if you can, write anything music related articles (preferred to your genre): How To -guides, opinions, reviews.. anything. Social bookmark every post you make. In time you start getting longtail keyword search traffic via Google to your site. And most often visitors also look around what's more in your website and some of them check out your music as well.

- Make a link exchanges with other blog owners. That'll create visibility for your blog as well.

- Also, install a plugin to your blog (or use feedburner) to have an option to people subscribe to your blog. That way, every time you post a new content (a new song perhaps) to your blog, people will get noted through email.

- Subsribe your blog's RSS feed to various RSS directories and blog directories. Make your blog known everywhere but remember not so spam.

- And remember to comment on other artists, producers and music lovers blogs as well. Try to create a network of people around you.

This is what I've done and it's working quite good!

2. Create a channel for your band on Youtube:

- Write a short bio about you there and link back to your blog as well. Create a video for each of your song and upload. And on each video description, put a link back to your blog. The videos could be simple still images playing your music on background. I have created a tutorial on how to do this in here.http://petrisuhonen.com/how-to-prom...ow-to-make-your-music-heard-by-lots-of-people

- Next, start gaining subscribers and friends to your channel. Good idea is to start commenting on other artists videos (related to your genre), subscribing to them and sending a friend requests and messages. Also, posting a video responses will help.

3. Promote your music on forums:

- This is how I got my record deal for couple of my songs. I posted a song on a forum which created a buzz and record label A&R picked it up. Most music related or genre specific forums have a promotion area where you can post a link to your musical productions. Try it out. If your song is good, it may create a buzz on forum as well and that means good things for you and your band!

- Also, if you're a member of a forum, you can create a signature to your user profile and I suggest you use a link back to your blog. That way, everytime you post something in the forum, you gain more visitors to your blog as well as many people check out your signature.

4. Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

- This is obvious. Create a Facebook and Twitter profile for your band and start collecting friends and followers, though remember not to spam. Every now and then, post a link to your latest music and also remember to mention on both sites when you post a new blog post. There's also lot of other social sites as well. Use them to your advantage.

5. Leverage P2P file sharing sites.

- Many artists and record lables to this alreayd. Upload a short preview or free track of yours to the most popular torrent sites. That's where masses of people hang around and download their music anyways. That'll create exposure for your band and music.

I agree, this is all a bit time consuming but in the end, rewarding. But remember, when you do all this: do not spam! :) That's what people dont' like.

Hope these helps to get you more exposure!
 
Last edited:
Thanks for this. I'm doin a lot of this now and wanted to begin writing blogs. I was thinking of blogging on my myspace since it is already linked to all my other social networking sites. Do you recommend a dot com instead? I assume I would benefit from search engines more if I had my own domain.
 
Thanks guys!

---------- Post added at 07:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:44 PM ----------

Thanks for this. I'm doin a lot of this now and wanted to begin writing blogs. I was thinking of blogging on my myspace since it is already linked to all my other social networking sites. Do you recommend a dot com instead? I assume I would benefit from search engines more if I had my own domain.

Yep, I recommend to have .com as well. Of course, you can have both, your myspace page and own blog. But the thing is (like you said) in the long run you'll benefit more of having your own blog and updating it constantly. In time you start to get search engine traffic as well.
 
Cheers for this man, I am really hopeless at the whole promotional side of things. Will have to put this into practice.
 
Good thread man, keep it up! Where can we find your music at?

Thanks!
"Ben Franks"
(Solid Sounds Productions)
 
- Develop a clear visual identity. Cloning won't help here.

- Do not overload people with tons of text, artificial photo shoots and countless pixelated youtube videos. Music first.

- Buy ads. Very easy, very cheap and offers endless possibilities on the web.

- Buy ad space in music magazines to massively increase your chances to get featured by their editors (yes, that's how it works - also online).

- Adapt the marketing activities to a specific audience (the smaller the better), not the world.



A VERY important tool is a properly sorted mailing list ("newsletters") for different audiences: press & taste-makers, bloggers, fans, previous customers, etc.

This is absolutely essential and much more effective than passive promotion.

Same here, do not spam!


Oh and another thing might also help. Throw all your "good enough" productions away and hide them in a safe. Present yourself with absolutely killer productions only. It's a very easy step.

:)
 
Last edited:
A good website/tool that i have found usefull is reverbnation has alot of features like stats, press releases, intergrated distribition (if thats what you want) store, blog. I think its great like a one stop shop, plus it allows for intergration with other blogs, website, myspace etc.

If anything it is worth a look to see if it can help any of you.
 
Thanks, I will definitely check it out now! Be sure to check mine out as well, myspace.com/benfranks2009 & my buddy at myspace.com/kencapone.oldworldentertainment
 
Great tips lads, I would have gone to improve the original post, but Moses did it for me.

Thanks again to both of you!
 
Back
Top