How To Effectively Promote Your Music Online

Nowadays, we just can’t promote our music the way we did 10 years ago.

With the rise of social networks and mobile technology, musicians, bands and artists rely more and more on Internet to market their work and their brand.

Thousands of independent artists make a living from their passion and grow their fanbase - almost for free - using online tools and channels. So why not you?

In this article, you will find 8 ways to effectively promote your music online!

1. Your Artist Website

Let’s agree on one thing: your website should be at the center of your promotional strategy. It should be an esential platform for both your fans and the pros.

Hence it should reflect the slightest changes affecting your music career: new singles, albums, videos, tours, sponsors, etc.

Simply use tools like WordPress.org, a good webhost and a music theme, and you are now in control of the image and the direction of your music project online.

For example you can create a blog to share directly stories with your fanbase (reviews, news, opinions, diary, etc.). You can also create an online store to sell your music and merchandising.

If you are a serious about your music career, you need a professionnal site to share your songs, photos, videos, dates and much more.

Make sure you always keep it updated and optimized (SEO and user experience).

2. Your newsletter

The newsletter should be the most precious tool of your marketing 2.0 arsenal.

Unlike some other methods in this article, the point of the newsletter is essentially to promote your music to your current fans in order to boost their loyalty even further.

Indeed, only those who have deliberately enrolled in your email list (either from your website or at a concert) will receive your promotional emails.

This is great news because these people do want to know more about you, your music and your universe.

The email will do this job brilliantly, as you will have much more impact than using social networks. It is therefore a formidable way to attract the attention of your fans and engage them.

3. Social media tools

These days, everyone is on social networks. Therefore, if your music project is not present on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, you do not exist.

Of course, signing up is not enough. You must use them to their full potential. It begins by considering these tools as means of interaction with your community, rather than mediums to sell and get free promo.

Your audience is more interested in your stories than your coupons or the 10th announcement of your concert next week.

Remember this: for 1 openly promotional content, you should have at least 4/5 posts engaging your audience.

4. Youtube

If you make music today, you can not miss out on YouTube.

Youtube is THE first tool for music discovery on the Internet. Why ? Because nowadays music is also appreciated with the eyes.

Just show a little creativity to take full advantage of this platform: make a cover of a famous song, share your live performances, make vlogs, etc.

If you do not have the budget or the time to invest, just put the cover of your album to illustrate your audios, while ensuring SEO (tags, description, title).

This is probably one of the simplest and most powerful ways to broadcast your music on the web.

However, it takes some work ahead if you want to make it the headquarter of your business and grow the amount of subscribers.

No matter what is your strategy, create your channel and keep uploading.

5. Soundcloud (and friends)

Soundcloud is experiencing a huge craze among artists (especially among producers, rappers and DJs), as it gives the possibility to anyone to easily share music with millions of visitors each month.

Thanks to its flexibility, its super targeted groups and its virality, the service attracts more and more established artists and new talents. So be there, if it’s relevant to you.

I also invite you to discover Bandcamp. This all-in-one tool is amazing to promote and sell your discography and can be very convenient and very cost effective, due to the plethora of features offered.

However, this is more of a distribution tool (like BandPage or ReverbNation), that you should really consider only if you do not have a band site.

6. Music platforms

By distributing your music on larger platforms (Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and more), you appear alongside hundreds of thousands of artists worldwide.

How can this help you?

In addition to selling your music and facilitating access to your songs, these services often offer recommendations, a “discovery” feature or playlists generated by users that may include your music.

After all, being associated with an established artist that your potential fan love can only be beneficial for you.

7. Influencers and online communities in your music genre

If you want to promote your music, it should not only be about getting in touch with your fans or the mass market.

Indeed, it is highly recommended that you go out of your comfort zone and reach out to new fanbases to convert them to your brand.

For this, contact the influencers and music communities in your music niche.

Start for example with music blogs. These sites are constantly looking for fresh and relevant content to share with their own audience.

No need to aim for a publication in a huge music magazine, many specialized blogs are accessible to all and allow you to grow your audience overnight.

The key is to choose well the sites to whom you send your music. Make sure it fits your music project, particularly in terms of music genre and location.

From there, briefly contact bloggers by email with a link to your music, in order to know if they would be interested that you share your story and music with them.

However, be sure to build real relationships. Don’t just send a bunch of emails and pray that it works.

Apart from music blogs, there are many alternatives that you can use with some tact and research to get in front of a massive audience. For example:

• Music forums
• Web radios
• Facebook groups dedicated to music
• Curated Youtube music channels
• Spotify playlists
• Other artists and bands

8. Other music promotion tools

Of course, there are dozens of other ways to spread the word about your music on the web. For example, we could mention:

• Concert Promotion: In order to advertise your upcoming concerts, you can start by referencing on Bandsintown, Songkick and create an event on Facebook.
• Podcasts: Very underrated, audio podcasts made by musicians are a perfect tool to make the connection between your story and your music. The same way as a blog or vlog, you give your fans the opportunity to get to know you better, in the backstage.
• Crowdfunding: Although one might think that crowdfunding campaigns purely concern your current fans, this is wrong. As an epic project for any band or artist, you inevitably attract new fans during this intense marketing period.
• Online Concerts: Using services like Concert Window, Periscope or Facebook, you can broadcast a live concert… from your bedroom (or anywhere else, duh). Use this method to give a sneak peek to your fanbase and encourage your fans to make a donation or buy your music.
• Facebook or Google Adwords: Sometimes it can really be worth it to pay to buy fans. Use advertising to promote your concerts and music. Simply choose your budget and target audience (for example by age, region and music taste) and have fun. It takes a lot to experiment before finding the right formula, but it’s worth trying.

I invite you to explore each of these methods and to see what works for your music project and what does not.

MarketingMusical.fr is a website dedicated to help French-speaking bands and artists thrive in the digital world and boost their music carreer using top music marketing strategies.