January 5, 2016 3 Tips For Promoting Your Mixtape In Hip Hop
Releasing mixtapes are an important part of your career. It’s one of the moment that your handwork and patience is put out in the world and into the hands of your fans. It’s exciting and for most artists it’s rewarding. However, with all of the excitement, it’s easy to only focus on your mixtape release and forget about promoting it.
A lot of people in the industry will tell you that you should only focus on creating good music, but I think that’s one of the biggest lies told in Hip Hop. You have to promote your mixtape if you expect to reach those outside of your own fanbase. Having a successful mixtape release isn’t magic.
With that said, I’m going to give you 3 tips that will help with promoting your mixtape in Hip Hop.
1. Mixtape Hosting Platforms Are Your Friends
Mixtape hosting platforms will make it easy for:
- Your fans to stream your mixtape
- You to acquire some of the platform’s listeners
- And a place for you to collect your stats (views, listens, downloads, etc..) in one place.
You might be wondering why collecting your stats in one place is important.
To keep it simple, your stats will help you measure your popularity, marketing success, and be used as credibility when trying to structure partnerships with brands and labels.
A few popular mixtape hosting platforms you can use:
- Datpiff (How To Put Your Mixtape On DatPiff)
- Livemixtapes (How To Put Your Mixtape On Livemixtapes)
- Spinrilla (How To Put Your Mixtape On Spinrilla)
2. Connect With Hip Hop Blogs
Popular blogs and magazines rarely post independent rappers. Why? Because they don’t need to and independent rappers aren’t usually able to add much value to popular blogs and magazines
But, that’s ok. There are still a ton of smaller blogs that are much happier to work with you.
You should be targeting them
Look for the blogs in your city that support local independent rappers and professionally contact them.
This will help you: How To Get Your Music On Hip Hop Blogs
3. Send Genuine Emails To Influencers
An “Influencer” is exactly what it sounds like; someone who can influence things in an industry. In the context of music, it’s someone who can help “put you on”.
Generally speaking, these people will be very connected and will be extremely busy. It’s not going to be easy to get in touch with these people, but it’s possible.
When emailing influencers, you’ve got to stand out. They get a million emails per day. You don’t want to be another trash bin rapper.
Here are a few tips:
- Research if they have any guidelines for emailing them
- Research a bit of background on who you’re contacting.
- Avoid words like “check me out”, “I’m the hottest in {insert city/state/planet}”, and similar phrases.
- Keep your email short
- Avoid making the email all about you. Write about the benefits that the influencer will get from giving your music a shot
- Don’t tell them to listen to your mixtape. Give them 1 or 2 songs to check out.
- Ask for something specific, not broad. “Give me feedback” is too much work for someone.
- Follow up after 7 days if you don’t receive a response.
- If you do get a response, thank them for their time.
- If they gave you some advice, follow it. Then follow up with them afterwards letting them know of the results
These tips will help you with promoting your mixtape, but they are not a “fix-all” solution. There are more ways to promote your mixtape and the specific methods you choose will depend on your unique situation.
Remember, releasing a mixtape is an important and exciting part of your career. Don’t let the excitement keep you from having a successful mixtape release.
If you have any questions about these tips or promoting your mixtape in general, leave a comment below and I’ll respond ASAP
Who Am I?
I’m Darius Burgan, the creator of ArtistShortcut.com. I specialize in digital marketing and helping music artist with their digital strategy and overall business. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like to work: Darius@ArtistShortcut.com
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