How To Get Your Music On Hip-Hop Blogs

As a hip-hop artist, just making music and putting it out there for the world is not enough anymore. Technology has made it easy for almost anyone to purchase the basic equipment and become a rapper. Not only has this made promoting your music more difficult, it’s also made getting your music featured in hip-hop blogs less likely due to tons of artist submitting their music.

However, for those that put in the extra work requred to stand out and get noticed, you might call it “easy”. Most hip-hop artist are using spammy “mass-messaging” techniques and writing unprofessional pitches. So, to help you avoid making some of the same mistakes, I’m going to show you how to stand out from the crowd and get your music featured in hip-hop blogs.

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9 Reasonable Guidelines To Think About Before Promoting Your Music Through Websites

There are so many websites for musicians. Sometimes they look similar with each other. With so many choices, people are getting puzzled of so many music sites to look at. Of course websites like Soundcloud or Bandcamp are great, but what so many young talented musicians missed is why they should sign up for that kind of sites. *It’s not just because other people do it, then you should do it too. We know that music websites is only a tool for musicians.* But musicians are not tools. Every musician should think about how they will promote their music, what is their artwork gonna be and other things apart from the music itself.

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Take Your Music Promotion Up An O.C.T.A.V.E.

Before you choose any of the tactics or methods in this guide to promote your music (This is an excerpt from The Definitive Guide on How to Promote Your Music found over on Starsunderground.com), here are some music promotion basics that apply to ALL of them. Keep these in mind as you move forward. To make things simple, here’s an easy-to-remember acronym to guide you: O.C.T.A.V.E.

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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.

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5 Solid Ways To Check If Your Music Really Is Good Enough To Release

Music appreciation is subjective. We all know this, and it’s one of the reasons why you can spend endless nights debating with your friends over whether the latest Flying Lotus release is really better than his production work with Thundercat or whether there is artistic merit in the Cloud Rap niche and how it might do better to integrate some of the sounds of drum & bass.

It’s rare to find someone who likes *exactly* the same kind of music as you, especially once you start delving a little deeper than “yeah, I guess I like to listen to all sorts of stuff”.

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4 Old-School Promotional Methods That Still Work

Step right up! Step right up! You don’t need to hire a carnival barker, but you shouldn’t spend your entire life online. 

We live in an age where fans receive hundreds of Facebook event invites, and artists see dozens of people click “going” only to perform to crowds that include very few of those people. Artists tweet links to events and send out e-flyers on Instagram, and while everything I’ve just mentioned is a free way of promoting an event or album, is it as effective as some of the tried-and-true ways of the past?

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How To Target Radio Stations That Will Actually Play Your Music

This article originally appeared on the Sonicbids blog

If you’ve been following the Sonicbids blog, you already know the three things you need to be “radio ready.” But after you’ve met those prerequisites, how do you determine which stations or music programs you should submit your music to for airplay consideration?

Radio stations come in a few specific types, and it’s not only AM/FM and internet. Here’s the breakdown.

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SoundOut, TuneCore Track Smarts, ReverbNation Crowd Review, AudioKite, and Music Xray Compared

This is the story of a mediocre song. An objectively mediocre song. My song. Curse you, data!

If you’re looking for unbiased feedback on your latest track, you’ve got five options. Well, five-ish.

There’s SoundOut, which I wrote about way back in 2010.

Then there’s ReverbNation Crowd Review and TuneCore Track Smarts, both of which are powered by SoundOut.

Are all three SoundOut services the same? We’ll find out.

I reviewed AudioKite earlier this year, gushingly. A new and improved version launched just this month.

Finally, Music Xray offers a diagnostics feature, which presents your track to 5 music professionals and 20 potential fans.

Which is right for you?

Time for a good old-fashioned market research shootout!

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What Artists Should Know About AudioKite

Has this ever happened to you? You think you’ve written your best song yet, but an offhand remark from a friend plunges you into self-doubt. Wouldn’t it help to have feedback from music fans of your genre who have no incentive to sugar-coat their opinions?

Sure, you say! I’ll just use SoundOut, or ReverbNation Crowd Review (also powered by SoundOut). Unfortunately, my experience with SoundOut, and those of most of the commenters, left a lot to be desired. I’ve also received a mostly useless - but free - focus group from Music Xray, and even repurposed Jango aka Radio Airplay to create my own focus group.

AudioKite has built a better mousetrap. Here’s why:

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What Artists Should Know About ArtistLink

ArtistLink started as an extension of the Topspin Media platform, so that non-Topspin users could add content to the MTV Artists site. It’s well on its way to becoming the control panel for the music industry.

I encourage any artist with a release on Spotify to sign up for ArtistLink. All essential functionality is free. As of this writing, ArtistLink is basically four services rolled up into one. I’ll go over each, starting with the coolest.

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Promotion for the Independent Musician

In a market saturated with the music of aspiring musicians and already well established acts it can be difficult for new acts to gain exposure. This begs the question, how does an artist stand out and get heard over the masses of music uploaded to the web each day? This guide was written as a follow-up of sorts to our blog “treating your band as a business” and also ties in with our online marketing crash course. The article will be split into two sections: the first pertaining to more traditional “physical” promotion techniques and the second focused on marketing your music online to listeners around the globe.

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Get Free Online Promotion From Your Very Own Digital Street Team

The street team of the past hasn’t changed all that much, only the street they’re working on. Instead of physical flyers they’re sharing and tweeting tour posters, instead of leaflets they’re sharing your Facebook,Twitter and Youtube pages.

The digital street team has more weight behind it than the old model of actually going out and speaking to people. They hold the ears of the 500 or so friends on Facebook plus the number of people following them on Twitter. That is more people than you’d ever reach on a hundred rainy Saturdays standing in the high street. Not only that but your digital street team get more than one chance to influence these people.

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8 Effective Ways to Better Promote Your Next Release

There have been a whole bunch of revolutions lately. One of the ones I’m most excited about is the revolution in the area of recording gear and software. I think it’s really incredible how just in the past few years tools have evolved to the point where people like you and I can get REALLY great recordings on our own, in our own homes.

I think a lot of people are aware of this particular revolution and are really jumping on board, which is awesome! But there’s another revolution I want to talk about today that I think a lot of people are missing… and that’s the promotion revolution! Just like in the recording arena, there are tools that are now available to normal people like you and me that we can use to really effectively promote our music.

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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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