June 14, 2010 How to REALLY Get Your Music on Blogs: Defining Your Music, Your Lifestyle, and Your Fans
Music blogs have become an extremely effective medium for artists to garner positive, and sometimes career-changing exposure for musicians. Getting featured on a blog can cause significant boosts in music and ticket sales for an artist, and there are tens of thousands of new music blogs springing up each day. The potential reach for your music in the blogosphere is HUGE! However, getting featured on blogs is a very meticulous and time-consuming process. Blog promotion can be frustrating at first, but if you are persistent and work hard at it, the benefits for your music career can be astronomical. As with anything, it’s important to have a plan before taking the leap.
When deciding to start a blog promotion campaign for your music, it is important to FIRST take a few minutes to really think hard about yourself, your music, and your fans. What makes your music so special, and different than everybody else’s? Bloggers will usually only feature music that is high quality, and that stands out from the rest of the pack.
Grab a pen, whip open a notebook, and jot down some defining words about you and your music, using the following categories:
- Personality
- Hometown
- Type of music (genres and subgenres) and lyrics (if any)
- Similar artists
- Lifestyle and interests
- Fan demographics (age, sex, location, etc)
I decided to take a few minutes to write down some defining characteristics about The Formatters (some guys I jam with occasionally). Here’s some of what I came up with…
What kinds of words did you come up with? Many of these words will become important keywords that you will use when searching for blogs to reach out to, so keep that list handy.
This post is part one of the “How to REALLY Get Your Music on Blogs” blog series here on Tight Mix. You can download the entire series for free in the form of a .pdf e-book here.
Reader Comments (14)
I'm liking this blog post. I completely agree, part of gaining an audience is through the internet, well for most since it is free. But I think if a song is good it will be shared and re-posted. People love music it's part of our everyday world.
mmmmm target marketing for free, can't beat this ;]
If you miss anything in the next few blog post's i'll be sure to update you as this is something i am working on on a daily basis.
Chris, this is a great idea and a very well written article. Im looking forward to reading the rest of the series! Its nice to see real marketing strategies put into play when dealing with artists' promotional strategies. Putting in this kind of effort will help artists to truly understand who their audience is, or in this case who the bloggers and blog followers are who will most likely pick up and promote their music.
Well done again, looking forward to part 2!
Thank you for this. Exactly the kind of info I need!
http://www.cerebellumblues.com
Thx for the feedback, guys. A few people have told me that the free e-book has some formatting issues, if you have any problems with the download please let me know...
As a writer, your personality description better not use well-worn adjectives. Otherwise I'll pass you up. Also, please keep it short. I don't care so much as what your description is (adjectives, y'all) than who you sound like, or have performed with. That says more than your press sheet. Tough, but I can instantly tell whether or not I will like you or take the time to listen.
Most importantly, if you reach out to me, you better be prepared to continue reaching out and having an "open door" to us. As a music writer, I don't want to just get an email push, then have it impossible to contact you if I have any questions. If you can build a good professional relationship with us writers, it is far more likely we will take the time to write about you instead of someone else. You're competing with thousands of other artists, and-like many writers-real paying jobs and lives. Bon courage.
Twitter: @meandre
Writer/Photographer for Méandre
@John - Incredibly great advice, thanks so much for that tidbit. It's a good idea for musicians to put themselves in the blogger's shoes, and think about how they would react if they were a blogger receiving a music pitch e-mail.
Defining The Barlow Saints
(I figured this was a good place to start) - Great advice and thanks for the post...
Personality: Genuinely happy person. Extremely easy to get along with, introverted, laid back, hard working, stubborn.
Hometown: St. Albans, Vermont (about 15 minutes from the Canadian border)
Genres: Indie, Singer/Songwriter, Acoustic Folk-Rock, Jam
Similar Artists: Ray Lamontagne, Damien Rice, Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews Band, Bruce Springsteen
Lifestyle + Interests: Writing, reading, writing/playing/performing music, playing paintball, watching baseball, football, futball, playing golf, cooking, creating my own recipes, experimenting with electronics, watching live music, being a vidiot.
Fan Demographics: 15-75 age group, mix of males an females in and around the Fairfield County, CT and Burlington, VT and surrounding areas, into mostly original acts of a similar style.
A shameless plug never hurt anyone right?!
Brian Theoret | The Barlow Saints
reverbnation.com/barlowsaints
Hi there. I am unable to view either type of pdf...downloaded or in browser...it seems that all the writing is on top of itself.
Thanks
justyn
pdf seems to be working for most....but for those who are having trouble, i think i know the issue. i will fix it in the next few days, and re-upload it. ill write a quick post on my blog about it when the revised version is up, so if you want to know that info either subscribe to my rss feed or follow me on twitter.
Thanks for all the great feedback everybody, and sorry for my stupidity! its my first e-book....cut me some slack..... ;)
Inrteresting post - here's some further reading I found very inspiring... and true..
http://www.creativedeconstruction.com/2009/12/the-only-reliable-way-to-your-band-covered-on-music-blogs/
courtesy of @refeup
Best,
xR
aka @thehuxcapacitor
@Rich - thanks for the love, and for the link! @refeup has got an excellent blog over there, and his advice is similar to the 3rd part of my blog series, "Becoming an Active Community Member."
Thanks for reading.
I have a new music blog that I just recently started with the purpose of finding upcoming talent and will definately bare all this information in mind. For now, I am pretty relaxed about bands/artist hitting me up for reviews.
www.theartix.wordpress.com
FYI...I just released an updated version of this e-book, if interested please head on over here: http://tght.me/pJrOZm
Thanks!