The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing & Newsletters for Musicians & Bands

Email marketing is one of the most important elements of digital marketing for bands and musicians.

Why? 

First of all, it’s one of the only forms of online communication between you and your fans that is entirely future proof and within your control. Think about it - you don’t own your Facebook fans or Twitter followers, Facebook and Twitter do - and it’s entirely legal for them to charge you to reach them.

Email hasn’t changed an awful lot since it was first introduced in 1993. It probably won’t change much in the next decade either.

But that’s not enough for me to recommend it so highly. Email is also incredibly effective when used well. The combination of effectiveness, ease of use, scalability and control are what makes it so appealing, and a powerful tool for savvy musicians.

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49 Ways to Get Free Music Promotion

There’s no shortage of lists on how bands can get free music promotion, but I’d like to add one more. My hope is that this one is a bit more up to date, and shines light on some of the great free tools that have emerged in the past 2-3 years. If you have any other great tips for promoting music for free, feel free to add them in the comments below!

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7 Ways to Double the Size of Your Fan Base

One thing that fascinates me about how bands develop is the ‘leaps’ where a band grows exponentially over a short period of time. Very few bands grow at an incremental rate their whole career – but what causes these leaps?

In practical terms, how can you double or triple the size of your fan base in a short period of time? 

I urge you to not just read this post and go back to browsing Twitter. No one builds their fan base by clicking on links all day. You build your fan base by taking action – testing and learning what works, and eliminating what doesn’t. Try something new today.

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4 Emerging Trends in Social Media & How They’ll Impact The Music Industry

With a rise in social TV, multi-channel engagement, and recent reports suggesting that there are more mobile phones than people in 4/6 of the World’s regions, this year will no doubt be an interesting one for social media, but how will these trends impact the music industry?

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What Do You Enjoy the Most About Being a Musician?

Last month, as a part of a competition I asked 400+ musicians what they loved the most about being a musician. Whilst looking through the responses I realised I had accidentally curated some insanely inspiratinal perspectives. I decided to put them into this poster, which I hope inspires you as much as it did me, enjoy!

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Are you reflecting on your goals as an artist?

The success of large Japanese manufacturing companies is largely attributed to the Eastern culture of reflection and open-mindedness. The leaders who design the future of companies like Toyota spend a great deal of time reflecting on the past and future – something that is not as highly valued in Western culture - where ‘action’ is the so called key to success.

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How Can You Drive Your Fans From Offline to Online?

To get someone to visit your band’s website, they need to have the intent to do so – put in other words, they need to get something out of it for it to be worth their time, which is why “check out our website” is about as effective as saying “we don’t have a website” as there really is no incentive offered for them to do so.

However, assuming you’ve got that one covered (ie. you have some free downloads,  or some awesome photos of your crowd from last nights gig, or maybe even some exclusive videos etc.) here are some techniques to get them to view that content from offline.

Here I’ve suggested five effective methods to take your fans from the real world to the virtual world of the net. Please chip in with your best tips on driving fans online from offline in the comments beneath this article!

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How a Lyric Website, a Memorable 'ah' Noise, and Drake Helped Promote Chase and Status

Okay I thought it was about time for another one of my ‘thinking like a fan’ posts! Last time I posted on Music Think Tank I analysed how a combination of boredom, time, and talking videos converted me into a fan of Jason Mraz, and today I’m going to analyse my most recent ‘becoming a fan experience’ – how I became a fan of a song using a combination of lyric websites, remixes, and ‘ah ah ah’ noise related Google searches.

Typically, most of what I hear about lyric websites (the sites that just list song lyrics) is pretty negative – they’re just dodgy sites set up to profit on advertising when people are practicing for karaoke, but I think there’s more to it. Truth is they’re well optimised for search engines and they’re often what appears in Google when I’m searching for a song by lyrics that I’ve heard for songs that I can’t remember the name of – that makes them pretty powerful music promotion resources.

Sometime in October I was driving to a house party in my friends car and he played a really cool song that I started humming to, I had no idea what it was, but I loved it and foolishly didn’t think to ask what it was (but if I did this blog post probably wouldn’t exist!).

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Is Money Limiting Your Band’s Growth?

You might have assumed from the title of this article that it would be about techniques of acquiring funding to pay for the overheads of running a band, or exploring where best to invest your marketing budgets. Not today I’m afraid.

Today I’m going to challenge the other side of the coin and suggest that money is bad for your band.

To clarify that statement in more detail, my opinion is that focusing on short-term methods of monetising your music career too early on is counter-productive when trying to build a successful and sustainable music career. The classic example is that by selling your music exclusively on iTunes opposed to offering it to fans free of charge fewer people will consume and share your song.

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