Nobody Cares About Your Music (As Much As You) An Honest Assessment of Music Promotion

A truthful assessment of music promotion. The reality is simple. Your success starts and ends with you. Because at the end of the day nobody cares about your music as much as you.  So if you don’t make the effort, why would anyone else? 

I don’t know about you, but I can’t move on social media for ads proclaiming they have cracked the Spotify algorithms. Buy the training course for guaranteed success they proclaim! You know the formula… Cue the overly enthusiastic salesman, gesticulating wildly down a camera before cutting to a small chart that appears to show extraordinary Spotify streaming growth. “I’ve cracked it, he claims, and you can too!” All you need is my heavily discounted course, book, webinar - Insert ridiculously high regular price (that nobody has ever paid) replaced with highly discounted, sale price, wow what value!

Sorry to break it to you, but they are all lying. Save your money. There are no guarantees in music, and no one person or one thing can guarantee successful music promotion. Sure he might have got lucky and his approach might have worked for him, but that doesn’t guarantee success for you and even more, damming 99% of you won’t hit a million streams on Spotify or play Glastonbury.

If that’s depressing, sorry, but it’s the truth. The good news? There are lots of things you can do to positively impact your music career and give yourself the greatest chance of success, and while the brilliant basics might not be sexy, they are the closest thing to a guarantee you have.

Music promotion. Lessons from a music blog

As a music blog, we get sent a lot of music. We see the best and the worst of music marketing and promotion. It’s no surprise the artists we choose to support share some similarities.

• They make great music
• They produce beautiful content to support their music
• They sell us a story, not just a song
• They are polite and appreciative
• They build and maintain a relationship with us

Conversely, there are lots of artists that never make it past the front door. Here are some important home truths

• If you are not happy with the recording - why would we be?
• If the cover art image looks less than perfect to you, it will look terrible to us!
• If you include broken links in emails or blog submissions - we will ignore you!
• If you can’t be bothered to supply the info we need - why would we seek it out?
• If you are rude - we will remember and actively avoid supporting you!

You have one chance to promote your music and you go and do this…

Towards effective music promotion

I recently watched a conversation on YouTube between Andrew Southworth and Jesse Cannon. It was set up as a two-sided debate about the best way to promote music. But it became abundantly clear a blended solution is the only way. There is no golden bullet solution and from my experience of the ‘Breaking The Band’ project you quickly realise bands don’t ever break because of one thing, success is about lots of baby steps that build continuous momentum. 

Just using targeted Facebook ads (Andrew Southworth) is not enough, and equally a sole reliance on organic networking and relationship building (Jesse Cannon) will only get you so far. But get both working together and you might just get somewhere.

Facebook ads driving to a landing page and onto Spotify can deliver great results. But there are lots of individual elements that need to work together for these ads to succeed.

Creative:

Guess what? Music promotion isn’t just about music. Consumers engage with their eyes before their ears. 80% of consumers view Facebook and Instagram with the sound off, so don’t rely on your audio to drive ad clicks. Successful ads are visually engaging first.

Audience Targeting:

Unless you are reaching the right audience engagement you won’t find listeners, and few listeners will become fans. Targeting choices must be individual decisions taking into account your style of music. A pop artist can have success with broad targeting, but try the same approach with Death Metal and it will fail.

Read the rest of this article at https://www.rightchordmusic.co.uk/nobody-cares-music-promotion-rcm/

Further reading

• In search of meaningful engagement in music promotion
• Facebook Ads why is it so hard for musicians to promote their music
• Why unsigned bands should stop wasting money on radio pluggers

Words Mark Knight

Nobody Cares About Your Music (As Much As You) An Honest Assessment of Music Promotion