If you desire to bring about a significant change, you need to cleverly evade from your comfort zone. Do you really think successful people make it by pursuing trending / common strategies in course of running their companies ?. You need to be unique workaholic character for you to change the world. Now lets apply the same concept in music and im only going to point it towards one crucial factor which is digital music marketing, Why ?, because we are now living in the internet era.
Internet made music marketing easier than ever before. Now the most challenging question is, do you really know what it takes to successfully spread your body of work around the world strategically / psychologically online. One thing i know for sure is that you won't be successful in this game if you don't know how to promote your music effectively and tactically, so I'm going to show you how to do it and I'm going to give examples of notable big artists who did it successfully.
One error people do in music is ignoring ways which were meant to lead them to succes but its not a big problem let me highlight them for you to know and then i will describe how to implement it tactically. First, as usual like what other musicians do, you need to find your target audience depending on your genre. Soon after that you need to carry out a market research, studying more about your competitors and deduce ways to use against your competitors (don't worry we are going to talk more about this below). Then you need to create a budget for your music promotion (the amount of money you are willing to pay for your music promotion).Yes a lot of people rest with confidence on those basic tactics but one thing i know for sure is you can't successfully promote your music without creating a unique marketing plan.
Before you get to the core part you need to know these rules and regulations . These are crucial factors you need to consider first and foremost.
Essential rules regulating you before you start promoting your music online.
Perfectionism
Yes, an unwillingness to settle for anything less than perfection. Why should you alter your self to be a perfectionist ?, so that you will be unwilling to settle or produce an imperfect song or any studio album or lyrical content that does not meet extremely highstandards. People on youtube are willing to depend or rely upon your visuals if they are extremely perfect. These are notable success perfectionists - the late Steve Jobs, the rapper Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West e.t.c, its a long list. One important advantage of being a perfectionist is you force your self to produce quality content. Alright lets talk about the importance of quality content in digital music marketing.
Engaging quality content
If you are really serious about your music career and you really want to build tremendous amount of loyal listeners soon after sharing your songs and videos, concentrate on engaging quality content not quantity. Nowadays most artists are more concerned about the money, so in order for them to generate more money they create a lot of hit tracks. Hit songs are good in generating million of streams faster. What they don't know is that quality content last for years and it will keep on generating millions of streams, sales and fans continuously.
Unique art / style
No doubt about it, it's part of music marketing techniques. People online fall for appealing unique stuff. If you follow and copy trending styles, you won't be able to make it to the top of the mountain, unless if you enhance and change the trending style.
Impact or influential lyrics
You don't want to invest days and hours in creating a song or an album that does not influence any of the listeners. How are you going to build a bigger fan base with garbage ?. You need to create music with complexity and depth.
Why is this a crucial strategy?.
Control of perception
Influential music is effective in changing the way people understand things. For example you might be able to change a drug abuser into a sober soul or you will be able to promote civilization through your lyrical content.
According to my experience as a music addict for 18 years, i consider those factors as essential rules / points to consider and follow first. Please try to be serious, don't spread your garbage online. If get past those factors then itstime for you to know how you can tactically pursue music marketing digitally.
First important step is to create an extraodinary place where people who want to connect with you can get your details ( e.g it might be a manager or an artist trying to promote your music ), so you need an odd professional looking website and social media profile. Why an odd one ?, because you need to keep the user busy with you products. So you don't need a normal looking website, you need to build the best website in the world. I'm going to highlight how you can tactically manage and promote that website later. Lets start with social media sites first.
Creation of strange / odd / creepy social media profiles
Why is this important ?. Let me explain, you need to be extremely artistic either by being creepy or being odd. Take a look at Billie Eilish, she is a weirdo and due to her wierdness and creepy art, she derived millions and millions of fans. You can't attract millions of people by being normal just like other ordinary people. Make sure to engage with fans but not for a long period or you might end up being basic to your fans.
Creation of an extraodinary artist website
If you check all popular artists, they all have websites. You need a website to put your music / album links ( Spotify links, YouTube link e.t.c) , links to your social media accounts, details about your tour dates / events with tickets link and the most important your "Electronic Press Kit (EPK)" ( I'm going to talk about this, don't worry ). Now what matters is to tactically promote your website.
If you still have enough extra money you need to create another website for blogging. The purpose of a blog website is to enhance your music marketing strategies. This is where you can write stories about your music or articles relating to your music , the positive sides of your lyrical content and the most important advantage of this is you create a link and details about your first personal website, the one we were talking about in the last paragraph.
Now the hardest part about this tactic is you need to hire professional SEO guys and professional writers who constantly update your blog . SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guys are people who specializes on how to effectively and successfully promote your blog or any other website worldwide, by ranking first on the first page of Google or any other search engines. If you rank first on Google, 400 000+ people are able to discover your website depending on the content displayed on your blog and their intention. For example if you want to promote your song about depression and then you write an article about depression and anxiety related to your new song with a link to your song. People who are searching for depression articles will discover your blog and most importantly, they will get to your song about depression since you linked it to this article.
Electronic press kit (EPK)
Use of an EPK another best strategy to follow i digital music marketing. What is an EPK ?, well, it’s a short film integrating sample of your music (playing in the background) with information to specify your character ,your goals , your style of music e.t.c. It should be extremely entertaining or people will end up using your name as meme. If its possible you can hire professional video makers, to show off your professionality to the viewers. Your website is one best place to put an EPK. Ensure that it includes the following:
Biography
a detailed professional-type biography, so that you impress the viewer.
Positive media references
You need to highlight or to show off any media posts that mentioned you or complimented you before.
Links to Your Music source
This is the main thing you created your electronic press kit for, your music. For example links to your Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Soundcloud e.t.c.
Links to Your Social Media sites and your Websites
Make sure you link to your main accounts. If you have multiple social media accounts, choose the prominent one.
High quality / high resolution Photos
Put only high quality pictures because you may chase away journalists or other important figures, who are willing to work with you.
Forby email newsletters
Not just email newsletters but compelling newsletters. Email newsletters are emails sent out to a subscriber list by individuals or corporations. These emails should contains valuable content (new songs, blog posts, news, events / tour e.t.c). This is one of the most important strategy to apply in digital music marketing.
The most essential part i want to talk about is the way you display your headings and the content. Its all about engagingness. You need to write enthralling / logical content and catchy topics , so as to prompt the reader to follow your message /information.
Working with popular blogs / website
Beside your personal websites, you need to work with popular blog post like Dj booth , The Guardian, Hot New Hip Hop e.t.c or any other popular blogs, you just have to make sure that the blog can effectively promote your business. All you have to do is to submit your music links, videos, EPK, and photos so that they will promote your work by reviewing it.
Targeting curated playlists (e.g on Spotify )
One advantage of the digital / streaming era. A curated playlist is a list of songs created by music analysts or online curators, that fans may love or best new songs missed by streamers. Your goal is to make your target song to be in top 5 of the chosen playlist.
You don't just get selected by the curators, there are certain factors they consider for an artist's song to be listed on the playlist. You should make sure that you are verified on that streaming platform and the most important part is to promote your streaming link by sharing it to different sites like social media profilea and your websites. If you really create extremely engaging quality work, you will make it to the top spot
One tactic I encourage you to do is to target lesser known playlists as it will be easier than targeting well known curators. Also it will be way more easier to engage with those curators on social media.
Engaging with prominent producers and engineers
Whether he or she is a well-known best produce or an new producer, try to find a talented production team because apart from your lyrical content the production part is extremely crucial. Your beat / instrumentals engagingness might be crucial a factor to consider when creating a song.
If you really want to make it in digital music marketing, focus on quality lyrical content and uniqueness, thats it.