Musical marketing

In addition to the creative process, both musicians and bands need communication and marketing skills. Even having a reputable label does not completely solve these problems – success depends on personal initiative and strategic planning. We’ll share tips that will make you more productive and increase your confidence in communicating with the outside world.

Amped Studio is a comprehensive music creation platform suitable for both newbies and music industry veterans. No matter how impressive your musical creation turns out to be, without adequate promotion it risks remaining unheard. Such projects need to be actively presented to the world and turned into material income, otherwise they will remain just files on your computer.

In Amped Studio you will find a complete set of tools for creating a hit: a variety of instruments, effects, VST plugins, sample libraries, an intuitive interface and high-quality sound. However, in order for your work to reach listeners, you will need to use completely different tools. This issue will be the subject of further discussion.

In this article we will not touch on the production process, recording or any other aspects of creating music and songs. Let’s focus on external aspects: image, knowledge for successful promotion. Let’s talk about the key and specific points.

1. Make or order a cool design. This is the “clothing” of your music on the Internet

You only have a moment to attract the attention of a passing user and interest him in your compositions. Therefore, it is extremely important to pay due attention to the first thing that meets the listener’s eye—the album cover.

2. Fill in the description of your social networks

Try to get used to the role of a person who is not yet familiar with your work. He is interested in what style you work in, how your art is unique, or who it might resemble. Tell us about your participation in music festivals, joint projects with other musicians, interesting moments from your career, or share a couple of key sayings. It is important to be convincing, but not to overload with information – an overly extensive text is unlikely to attract the attention of the audience.

3. Come up with a good description for your album

This is critically important for several reasons. First, it’s important to share information about yourself and your latest project: what it’s all about, the recording process, and who you are in the music world. Engage in dialogue with your audience. A short description of 10 sentences will become the content that will be reprinted or quoted by social network managers and Telegram channel owners. Provide them with discussion material or ready-to-use text. This helps to increase the number of publications – the effect has been confirmed by practice!

4. It is not necessary to have your own website

In most cases, about 90%, your site may experience low visitor activity and insufficient attention from the audience. As a result, you may regret the time spent on its development. It’s critical for artists to focus on developing their social media presence by maintaining close interactions with followers, receiving their feedback, and organically promoting their new works.

In terms of hosting your discography (even in wav format), it’s a good idea to create a page on Bandcamp, using it as an “archive of your music.” There are no restrictions on the amount of disk space, while providing a flexible billing system and reliable infrastructure.

5. Explore how third-party services work for musicians

For example, consider SubmitHub. This service offers the opportunity for musicians to present their work to bloggers and self-curators on well-known platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, SoundCloud and Spotify.

6. Release content regularly (or try to do it more or less often)

Creating tracks and albums takes time, but inactivity in the community for long periods – for example, once every six months – is also unacceptable. This may result in the loss of both current and potential subscribers. Aim to share new posts at least twice a week.

What can you post in these posts? Here are some suggestions: videos from rehearsals; videos or notes from the life of team members; fascinating details about the group itself; stories about the process of creating songs or their lyrics; preliminary announcements of upcoming performances; music compilations; everyday or stage shots.

7. Make at least one good video clip or live video

The atmosphere that the musicians bring to the stage is of great importance to the fans, along with the music tracks. Posting videos of your concerts on the page will allow new listeners from different parts of the world to feel the same emotions as those present in the concert hall. Creating a professional music video is also an effective method to gain exposure on a platform like YouTube. Moreover, not all media outlets can embed audio on their sites, which is why they often prefer to add video materials.

8. Publish only completely finished tracks

Everything that goes on the Internet stays there forever. Over time, you may no longer like the current version of your track, but removing it from some platforms may be difficult or even impossible.

9. Record at least one collaboration for the upcoming album

Teamwork enriches you with valuable experience that will be useful in any field. Plus, adding other artists to your album will make it more diverse and interesting.

You can also take part in your friends’ music videos, attracting the attention of their fans. Or appearing on stage during their performance to perform together is a great way to reach new audiences.

10. Speak at good events

Regardless of size and location – be it small local events or large festivals in neighboring cities. Each organizer invests in advertising the event, ensuring the distribution of announcements and posters. The more significant the event, the more budget is allocated for its promotion. It also gives you access to new listeners who may be interested in your tracks before the concert or evaluate your performance at the concert.

11. Submit applications for participation in playlists

Playlists grouped by specific themes are the most popular on the Spotify and Apple Music platforms. Such collections can be created by large music communities, websites dedicated to new music, and bloggers. In addition, there are editorial playlists, for example, with the key new releases of the month, which are sometimes provided with open access – anyone can send a request to have their tracks included.

12. Save your project often and have the multitrack in WAV

This advice may seem cliché, but our experience with musicians is that approximately 70% of albums recorded just 7-8 years ago are not preserved in the original files or WAV format. Trying to put such an album on platforms like Apple Music or Deezer with only an mp3 version is often doomed to failure, let alone creating a remix.

13. A good track – catchy and expressive

Focus your track on those elements that you think are the most interesting and expressive. Don’t forget that today’s music world is teeming with offers – often listeners explore tracks from new artists by listening to them for just 20-30 seconds. Therefore, it is extremely important to instantly grab the attention of your audience. This may not apply to genres such as ambient, but it is important to understand the general principle: the unique feature of the track should be noticeable from the very beginning, or emphasis should be placed on this element throughout the composition.

14. Subscribe to important email newsletters, music pages and channels

Don’t limit yourself to following what’s new in music genre communities, it’s also important to keep abreast of general trends in the music industry. It is useful to know what is happening in the world of music: major festivals and their organizers, dates of city holidays, the content of music blogs and corporate publications, as well as information about creative competitions. Don’t forget about communication: writing letters to people who are of interest to you can open up new opportunities.

15. Ask your friends to listen to your music on streaming services

Or at least leave a like on your artist page. While this won’t directly increase your income (unless you have 100k friends), it will help the platform’s algorithms understand that your music should be recommended to other users with similar music preferences.

16. Publish your album to databases and streaming services

For example, you can post information about your release on Discogs, the largest text archive of music, with five million pages. Also update the information on your album pages on Last.FM. Despite the fact that in 2021 the site is no longer as popular as before, it still has a high citation rate – many blogs borrow information from it. As for streaming services, a lot has already been said about them. Now there is a clear trend: even in Russia, people increasingly prefer to listen to music by subscription, which deserves delight! It is worth mentioning that such services perform well in Google search results, often occupying the top positions.

17. You need to maintain one social network with music-related content

This is pretty radical advice. We ourselves do not always adhere to it, but we understand its importance. Give people a chance to see a piece of your life. What kind of person are you? What motivates your band members? Tell us about your inspirations and your favorites. Share moments from the lives of people around you, your travels, hobbies, interesting incidents, behind the scenes, humor and everyday life. A good choice for this would be to post photos on Instagram or create short videos on TikTok, for example.

18. Offer a post with news about a new song or album to different communities and social networks

Your content is more likely to be published in the community when it closely matches its format and style. Provide a detailed description, add a link to the community, use relevant hashtags, attach audio tracks and cover art.

19. Explore how social media and music services support musicians

Leading music platforms and social media actively support creators of unique content. In the past, such opportunities were available only to stars with an audience of millions of listeners (for example, cooperation between a social network and a world celebrity), but now certain functions have become available to a wide range of artists. Eg:

• Spotify for Artists – a toolkit for increasing the effectiveness of your presence on Spotify. Allows you to create thematic playlists, view analytics and announce concerts;
• Repost by SoundCloud – support for premium SoundCloud users. It offers reposting of your music in the service’s playlists, includes monetization of already released tracks, or provides distribution services (posting music on other streaming services).

20. Hire session musicians

A session musician is a professional hired to participate in the recording of tracks or albums, as well as for live performances and tours. Typically, such a musician is not part of the permanent composition of the team and is involved on a temporary basis.

The involvement of session musicians often occurs when the team lacks the necessary experience or resources to independently perform certain musical parts in the studio or on stage. They are also invited to add novelty or sound features to the compositions.

Consider how many musicians appear on Massive Attack’s records, or how many different bands have collaborated with keyboardist Don Airey. To find session musicians, use local resources in your city or search for them online through social networks, forums, freelance platforms, or specialized web services such as mixluv.com or soundbetter.com.

21. Prepare an advertising campaign plan in advance

If a label is responsible for promoting your album, you need to check with them about the details of the marketing strategy. Ask what platforms they plan to use and what channels you should join. Formulate a joint action plan and discuss the conditions for publishing content. Invest in targeted advertising and paid publications. Identify a few key platforms to test different marketing activities that are best suited for you. Keep in mind that you only have three days of peak interest after the album’s release to take full advantage of the novelty of the release.