Hey guys, this is a follow up to my guide on how to sell your music on iTunes and Amazon MP3. In that guide I looked firstly at the process of digitally distributing your music online, and secondly at what you need to do once your music is on there. This second point I don’t think I looked at in enough detail however, so want to talk more about it today.
While getting your songs and albums on to these big online stores is a good feeling in itself, if you want to actually makes sales of your music, getting your music on iTunes is only a small part of what you need to do. Let me explain.
What iTunes And Other Online Music Stores Don’t Do
While getting your music on one of the world’s biggest online music stores is definitely something you will want to do, there is something many musicians fail to realize:
iTunes is a platform to sell your music, NOT a marketing tool.
What I mean by this, is it will serve one purpose: Provide a way for people to buy your music. What it does not generally do however, is help expose your music so more people will buy it.
While they do have their own charts and the odd promotion that can help give artists exposure, they don’t do anything for the average person who sells their music on this platform. Unfortunately, if you’re just starting out and aren’t selling a bucket load of songs already, you will fall into this category.
As with selling on any other platform, if you really want to make sales, you first need to get people aware and interested in your music. If you don’t do this, it won’t matter where you’re selling your digital downloads. It could be on iTunes, your own website, or some other corner of the internet; YOU WON’T MAKE SALES!
Unless you’re willing to promote your music and sales page to people, there’s no point putting your music up to sell in the first place. With that in mind, let’s look at how to get more exposure on iTunes.
How To Get More Exposure On iTunes
One of the best ways to get more targeted people visiting and interested in your iTunes sales page, is to link to it from your own website. This can either be within your shop page, or a link in your sidebar. If you haven’t already got a website, you can check out our step by step guide to building a website here.
You should make it clear that it’s a link to your iTunes or shop page, so people that go on to click through know exactly what to expect. While you could trick people and just say ‘click here’, a lot of people that do click won’t be interested in buying from you. They may even get frustrated with your unclear navigation and leave your site.
Once your link is on your website, the next step is to promote your music and yourself as a brand. This will be in the form of gigs, Youtube videos, and any other methods you can think of or that are already working for you.
Any time you can, direct these people that hear about you to your website. You can do this at gigs by mentioning a free gift people can get by visiting your site (Mention this a couple of times during the gig and also at the end so all the details stays in their heads). You can also do this via your Youtube videos by adding a clickable link within the video, and also within the video’s description.
You will get people coming back to your site, and learning about you as an artist. Some people will go on to click on your iTunes and shop page, others won’t. Those that do though, will often be more likely to buy than if you were to send them directly to iTunes at the beginning. This is because they haven’t been sent cold to your sales page, and all this time they’ve been learning more about you.
They may have heard about you at a gig, went on your website and liked what they’ve seen, then intentionally went on your iTunes page knowing there will be something there to buy. By this point, you know they are interested in what you offer, and will likely buy a song if what they see on your iTunes page is of interest to them.
Those that don’t click over to your iTunes page however, may still do something else that will benefit you. They may sign up to your mailing list which will allow you to keep in contact and continue to ‘sell’ the idea of yourself to them, or they may look at enough of your pages to gain some interest in you. This could lead to repeat visits to your website, and the opportunity to sell them songs or merchandise in the future.
If however they went straight to your iTunes page and they didn’t want to buy, you wouldn’t have the opportunity to get them on your list or to get them more knowledgeable about you as an artist. This will mean you retain less of your potential fans in the long run.
While you may get fewer people landing on your iTunes page in the first place, those that do will be of a much higher quality and much closer to the buying stage. Because of this, you will most likely make more sales instead of people landing on it and bouncing straight off again. This is ideally what you want.
Conclusion
Getting your music on iTunes isn’t a magic formula that will allow you to sell more songs. It’s a platform to sell your music on like any other, although admittedly one that people trust and often use with their ‘i’ related devices.
It’s important to get your music on iTunes, but if you want to sell those songs, you need to promote that page yourself.
Want to learn more about promoting your music both online and offline? Then join over 200 others and check out my online music business course now.