Introduction
As an artist, your music is a powerful tool that can connect you with your audience.
But creating music and promoting your music are totally different things.
Most of the artists know their way around in the studio, but when it comes to promoting music, some are left clueless.
If you want to know how to promote your music online successfully and efficiently and get people to listen to it, we’re here to give you some tips.
These tips can really help you to boost your music career and having a music marketing plan is vital if you’re looking to promote music online!
Don’t know where to start or even how to apply to become an independent artist?
This comprehensive guide will show you some of the useful strategies in music promotion online, let’s get started.
Ensure you utilise social media platforms to your advantage.
Social media is a quintessential part of any musician’s marketing strategy. Here are a few examples of how you can use social media to promote your music online:
Facebook Page:
Create your Facebook account (if you don’t have one already) and fill in your information in the “About” section, add photos and videos of you and/or your band playing live. You should post updates regarding upcoming events, new music releases, and other important announcements your fans or general music fans would want to see. Once your page has been verified by Facebook (usually within 24 hours), add various events on Eventbrite to let people know they can reply there if they want to come see and support you live! It is also worth sharing your music on different relevant FB groups.
Do some research about groups, there’s so many.
Twitter account:
Enticing content should be the backbone of all music social media marketing, that goes without saying. But, the most unique ones are more likely to attract attention. When it comes to your music marketing strategy on Twitter, you need to tailor your content not only to the needs of the platform, but also to its utility. One method could be adjusting your material to improve the follower’s user experience. Keep it short and snappy, get to the point!
Twitter is a fantastic way to direct your following to your various other social media platforms. Ensuring that all of your links are listed and up-to-date on Twitter is crucial and will go a long way.
There are countless ways to increase the following of your twitter page exponentially, e.g. using hashtags productively, being an active twitter user, or making your profile stand out. However, if you are a new user trying to gain followers, following other users similar to your profile is a fantastic way to write your profile into the twitter algorithm and get you more exposure. Say for example, you are an up and coming musician within the R & B genre, when someone goes to follow a more established profile, your page could come up in the ‘similar to this’ section, getting you the exposure you deserve. So a key point to remember is to follow tactically!
Instagram Account:
Instagram as a platform holds incredible value for aspiring artists. Its relatively short format allows artists to quickly and efficiently convey their messages and promotions without losing their audience’s attention. When promoting a new track, it’s definitely worth noting that you should promote the parts of the song that are most likely to attract your audience (beat drops when releasing house/techno music). The platform is also fantastic for promoting live events to drive ticket sales, sell your merchandise and can also help you earn money aside from music through brand partnerships or promotional posts, that’s in case you have lots of followers.
Having a strong connection with your fanbase is absolutely essential as it will help your following to view you as an equal and someone to look up to but ultimately as a friend. You can do this by reacting to their comments on your posts, actively replying to DM’s, or hosting Q&A’s and live streams where they can interact with you and find out more about you, your story, and your music!
Reddit:
Reddit has everything. For you as an artist you can find different subreddits (specific online communities dedicated to a particular topic) that might fit what you’re looking for.
For example, Folk music, NewMusic, SpotifyPlaylists etc…
Your next songs are always coming from different ideas, whether you’re a producer or a songwriter. Reddit is the place for exchanging ideas, getting valuable information and asking your questions.
Reddit is also brilliant to promote your music on as it is a totally egalitarian platform.Thus meaning there is a completely equal chance of anyone’s post going viral. The popularity of a post is solely based on how engaging it is and how the other users on the platform interact with it. Key points to remember when submitting to Reddit are to join and post in the right communities that will reach a large quantity of the most relevant people to you. However, don’t begin in the huge subreddit pages, start small and gradually grow.
Linktree:
A platform such as Linktree is highly convenient as it allows you to outline all of your social media links/ticket sales on one neat page. You can then link this to your bio on Twitter/Instagram/Tiktok. Having a neat social appearance will benefit you as your following will be able to easily navigate themselves through all of your pages.
Create a Spotify account (And/or Apple Music).
There are so many different streaming services online in today’s music world that allow us to stream new music online. Spotify and Apple Music are by far the most popular.
Following the steps below can assist you in exposing your music:
- Upload your music to the streaming services using digital distribution platforms such as CDBABY, or Tunecore.
- Claim your Spotify account using artists.spotify.com
- Setup your account with profile picture and bio, image of your band or artist etc…
- Add your music to playlists and add it to your profile so that people can find it.
- You can visit this blog for more information on how to submit music to Spotify playlists: Spotify playlist submission
Find playlists on streaming platforms with your target audience.
Spotify playlists are a great way to get music from independent artists heard by people who don’t know them yet. You can set up a Spotify account and then find playlists with your audience.
Submit your music to the playlist, and if accepted, promote it on social media or in other ways. However, it is crucial to note and understand that there are 3 different types of Spotify playlists available on the platform. Editorial Playlists, Algorithmic Playlists, and User-Generated Playlists. Editorial playlists and Algorithmic playlists are playlists created and curated by Spotify. User generated playlists are playlists that are curated by different people not associated with Spotify directly. You can
Search for the best music blogs to submit your music to.
Blogs are a fantastic tool for independent artists. To get your music heard by the right people, you’ll need to find the best music blogs to post on. To do this, search for “best blogs for [genre]” on Google or another search engine and look at the list of popular music blogs available online (here is a great link to help) .
If you find a blog that looks promising, check out their posting policies to make sure they accept submissions from artists like you! I also recommend checking out a few different sites, as each music blog has its own audience, which means that advertising there will yield different results than advertising elsewhere.
When submitting music online:
Make sure all song files are clearly tagged with artist name and title information (eg, Your Name -Title Of Song). This makes it easy for people to find them on the site if you listen later after a successful or unsuccessful review period. The success of your submission will depend on how much attention was paid to your song during the initial review period. However, you should be wary. There may come a massive influx of new content in some weeks or months as songs grow in popularity due to the buzz generated by success stories published through social media channels and more…
Research YouTube channels with a similar target market to yours.
Once you’ve found some YouTube channels, check their stats! You should want to see how many subscribers and views they have, what kind of engagement they’re receiving from their videos, and their audience retention rate (how many viewers watch more than 30% of their videos). Once you’ve done that, watch and read through the content on each channel. Do they make similar types of videos? If so, this is someone who might be interested in collaborating with you or participating in a sponsored video campaign, and thus definitely worth reaching out to, in order to get them to promote your music. YouTube is clearly fantastic for music promotion but not just for new music releases, it is also the hub of all music videos.
Consider TikTok influencers that can work with you.
If you’re looking for new ways to promote your music and boost your music career, you should definitely consider TikTok influencers. Tiktok is a platform that has seen rapid growth over the last few years. To put this into a quantitative measure, in 2018 Tiktok had 133 million active users, fast forward to 2022, the platform is expected to reach 1.8 billion users (a staggering 1238% increase!) These influencers on Tiktok can help you reach new audiences and distribute your music on Spotify. It also massively helps promote your music on social media.
Tiktok is hugely popular among millennials and Gen Z due to its unique ability to create videos with different filters, effects and audio tracks before publishing them as ‘stories’ right away.
One of the biggest musicians in today’s era Lil Nas X owes his success to Tiktok and the influencers on the platform. He, along with established country singer and actor Billy Ray Cyrus, released the song Old Town Road and it broke records becoming the number one song in the charts and staying there for 17 consecutive weeks. The song gained popularity thanks to influencers using the song in the background of their videos, thus creating a viral trend. There are currently over 860,000 videos online using the song, accumulating over 1 billion views. Subsequently, Lil Nas X has gained 28.3 million followers on his personal Tiktok account and is now an established artist and influencer.
Get in touch with Radio Stations
Radio stations know the successful approach of how to promote your music. If you want to be able to hear your song on the radio, you need to know which radio stations to reach out to. Once you know what they’re looking for, reach out to them and pitch your music. To help with your research, click here.
A good way to find out who is interested in a certain genre of music is to do an online survey. There are many websites listing station requirements, so if you send an email and don’t hear back soon, it should still be pretty easy. You can also find out if there are local radio stations nearby playing the same type of music that you create, and let them know about the careers of your band or your career as a solo artist! There is no harm in trying all options!
Still stuck? Try a Music Submission platform to help you get your song on Playlists!
A music submission platform can help you get your music onto Spotify playlists, Radio Stations, Blogs, TikTok channels, YouTube channels and more.
You can try our platform One Submit, it’s easy and cost efficient. You can create a campaign and submit your song to as many playlists as you like, within your music genre.
What’s the summary of tips for great ways to promote your music
- Take advantage of social media.
- Create a Spotify account to share with your friends and family.
- Find playlists for your target audience (e.g. pop playlists or rap playlists) on streaming services and upload your music there to get plays and followers on the platform itself.
- Find a blog and submit all the songs from your album. When they accept one of the tracks, they will publish it on their website and promote it on their social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But if not all of your songs are accepted… don’t worry. If you release another album in the next few years, you can always try again later!
- Last but not least, research YouTube channels and Tiktok influencers with a similar target market of general music fans. You can find the people who will relate to your music via a few quick searches and use them as a base target audience.
To conclude,
Use these tips if you want to know how to promote your music. Remember that building a following can take time. Don’t get discouraged if things don’t go as planned. The most important thing is to have fun and keep making music.
Good luck!
