Music Marketing, & Other Career Forwarding Tips & Advice For Musicians
Welcome to Music Marketing World. My name’s Shaun Letang, and through this site I share with you daily (7 days a week) tips and advice on how to better market your music.
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I’m not going to get into a long intro today, as you’ll have more then enough to think about after you read the following post. While I try and cover a lot of ways to actually market yourself, getting the right marketing mentality is just as important. Get this wrong, and none of the rest will be as effective as it could have been.
With that in mind, today I’m going to share with you a guide by Shaun Letang on Music Marketing[dot]com. Here are 4 big things you can do to get your music marketing mentality right:
When it comes to knowing who to listen to in the music industry, it’s not always easy. That said, I’ve never ever heard anyone refer to Derek Sivers as someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s because of this that when I stumbled across the following interview I simply had to share it.
For those that don’t know, Derek is the founder of top distribution company CD Baby. While he has since sold the company, he’s still very involved in and knowledgeable about the music industry.
This interview is taken from Bobby Owsinski’s Music 3.0 book (Also comes in Kindle edition), and gives loads of great incites for musicians looking to further their career. It’s a great read, so you might want to check it out:
While I know some of you already do this, I also know it’s not something all of you would have thought about, so I thought I’d share this strategy here today. The strategy I’m talking about is creating songs about events as they happen, and getting them out there as soon as possible.
Let’s say for example a big sporting event is coming up, or a life changing new story is broken. Making a song about this and getting it out there asap can mean good rankings in search engines for the subject and your music reaching further then it might have if it was just another regular song. Furthermore, people may pick up on your song and want to use it when they cover the subject in future. This can spell increased royalties for you.
It’s also possible to use this strategy when tragedy strikers, as Bob Baker looks at below. Now of course, if you’re talking about tragedy you have to be more considerate, and only cover the subject if it’s heartfelt and helpful to people. Bob looks at that side of things in full below, so read on for some more ideas you can use:
While this isn’t a hard fact I’ve tested or read anywhere, from what I’ve seen the majority of musicians get in the game to make music. Because they love it. Usually the whole marketing side of things is an after thought, and something they see they need to do once they’ve been doing music for a little while. That said, both sides of things (The creative and the business) are essential if you want to build up your fan base and make money from your art.
So how can you strike up a nice balance between the two? And how much time should you spend on the creative side of your music compared to the business side of things? David Hooper looks at exactly this in the below podcast.
If you have similar questions and want to know how to get a good balance, I suggest you have a listen:
While I’ve shared other Youtube marketing guides in the past, the one I’m about to share with you today was actually written by Youtube themselves. Because of this you know it’s something that’s worth paying attention to!
Youtube has released a free ebook specifically for musicians and music industry folk, telling them how to marketing their music on Youtube (I’ll show you the download link in a minute). Subjects they cover include ‘Optimizing for Better Discovery’, ‘Releasing an Album or Song’, ‘Content Upload Frequency’ and more.
This is a great free pdf ebook from Youtube, and it’s a nice change to see a big company coming out with a guide like this. You can download this free ebook and brush up on your Youtube marketing skills here (If you appreciate this Youtube marketing guide for musicians, be sure to share this page with other too):
Getting your music out there on a wider level isn’t just about keeping yourself busy, it’s about doing the right things. That said, with so many things you ‘could’ be doing, it’s not always easy to know which you should invest your time into.
The below post shows you six things that the author Simon Tam of Last Stop Booking feels are truly underrated in a musician’s career. While these aren’t the only things that are underrated and important (I could add a good few things to that list, but I’ll get to them in future posts), I agree that they should be added to your ‘to do’ list.
As Simon mentioned at the bottom of this guide:
“However, the real path to success isn’t from one big instant, it’s from slow, steady, steps that get you there.”
While implementing the following will give you a better chance of a successful music career, don’t expect these things to make you a super star overnight:
Ok, time for another must read guide! Marketing your music is 100% essential if you want to gain a fan base and make money from your music. That said, putting your efforts into bad marketing practices can actually do more damage then good. It can turn potential fans away, and it can waste a load of your time, money and efforts.
Want to know what kind of marketing you should avoid and what you should be doing instead? Then check out this guide by Shaun Letang on Dotted Music for some great tips:
Struggling to get instrumentals for your next project? Want to know where to get beats for your single, album, mixtape, EP or LP? Well you’re in luck, as today I’ve got a guide for you that will help you find what you’re looking for.
This short but sweet video guide by Shaun Letang will show you how to find producers who make your type of music. Watch it, implement, and you’ll have a load of producers lined up throwing you instrumentals.
Note: There are also additional tips in the link provided with the video, so be sure to check that out too:
In my essential music marketing study guide I’ve always suggested you get some kind of footage of yourself out there. That said, I know it can be tough building up the funds to get a professional music video made.
Despite this, there are other ways to get good quality videos made on a budget. No they won’t be TV broadcast quality, but with the rise of Youtube and the ‘online video only’ sensation, this doesn’t matter.
If you haven’t already got a video of yourself out there (Or if you have but want other ideas for making music videos on a budget), read on and implement what you learn:
A while ago I asked a question on my Facebook page to find out if most musicians were focusing on local music marketing or international music marketing. Surprisingly, is was roughly a 50/50 response. Because of that, I’m going to be sharing guides related to both types of promotion over the coming weeks.
Let’s start off with some ways to market your music locally. The following tips are from Michael Gallant on the Disc Makers blog. He gives some really good strategies, so read on for things you can implement right away:
