How to promote your music

You have just released your new song, but you don’t know how to promote your music? In this post, we explain you the best ways to promote your music to get your it heard all over the world!

Most artists are releasing their music and stopping there. This is a mistake! Your work with your music continues after its creation. You must consider your music as a product and your fan base as clients. Like any other business, if you want to make your music product known to a larger audience, you need to promote it.

At Fly Away Recording Studio in Montreal, we help our independent artists record their songs and make beautiful music videos that stand out. We also coach them on music marketing and growing their fan base.

You will find in this article how to promote your music and create a music marketing plan with our music promotion tips to ensure you skyrocket in your music career!

This post is all about how to promote your music.

Building your brand as a musician

Just like when creating a business, you need to create your brand before even thinking about promoting your music. It means you must identify what makes you unique as a music artist and what makes you stand out from the other musicians. 

Here are the things to consider while building your brand:

Know your audience

First, you need to identify the genre or style of music that best represents your music. Based on this, think about what type of people enjoy this type of music. With this information, you will understand what these potential fans expect from this type of music and what will appeal to them. It will help you create your branding.

Define your identity

Your brand has to represent who you are as a music artist. What are your strengths, qualities and weaknesses that make you different from the other artists? What causes are you standing for and sharing with the audience you want to target? Also, how do you want to communicate with your audience? What tone and language will reflect your personality and resonate most with your public?

Develop your visual identity

Your visual identity is how you will present yourself to your audience. It regroups the type of single/album covers you will produce, the graphics you will publish on social media channels and the design of your website if you have one. Always remember your audience while building your visual identity along with what you like.

Consistency is key

Building a brand is a long process and requires patience, dedication and consistency. You can’t figure everything out about your brand from the beginning. But, when creating any content, whether it’s music, graphics or communication with your audience, ensure it is aligned with your brand. Over time, all these elements will help you establish a strong brand and connect more and more with your fans with clear and consistent branding across all channels and platforms.

Creating a solid online presence with social media

Social media is crucial to building your brand and promoting your music, making it much easier than before. But being present on social media is time-consuming. This is why you have to be strategic about it.

Choose the right platforms

There are many different social media platforms where you can build your branding and promote your content. So you need to focus your effort on the platforms where your target audience is the most active. For example, if your music mostly appeals to a younger public, you should prioritize platforms like TikTok or Instagram.

Post regularly and engage with your fans

Here again, consistency is vital to growing your audience on social media and being discovered more easily. You must publish content regularly on your artist page to inform your fans about your music, latest release, upcoming release, tour dates, press releases and any interesting content. 

Engagement is crucial to building a solid relationship with your music fans by showing them you value their support. You can engage with them by responding to comments on your publications or to direct messages. You can use stories, Facebook Live, or Instagram Live to make your fans contribute to your musical content by asking them what they prefer, what they want to know about you, etc. Encourage them to share your content through covers or dance videos, for instance.

You can also offer exclusive content, such as early access to new releases or exclusive merch (like t-shirts, hats or posters), to help create a sense of exclusivity and community among your fans.

Share behind the scene content

People love to see how you are being creative, how you record your songs, your day-to-day as a music artist, and your upcoming projects. It helps them identify with you and be excited about your future projects.

Collaborate with other artists and influencers

Partnering with other musicians, influencers, and brands can help you reach new audiences and build your credibility as a musician. You can also reach out to bloggers to share your music on their music blogs.

Using music online streaming platforms to reach new fans

Music streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal offer musicians a powerful opportunity to reach new music fans and promote music through their streaming services. Here is how to use these platforms to your advantage.

Optimize your profile

When opening an account on a streaming platform, make sure your artist profile is always up to date, with high-quality photos, a detailed bio and links to your social media and website (if you have one).

Submit your music to playlists

Submitting your music to relevant popular playlists on the streaming platform can help you reach new listeners and gain exposure. You can also contact curators or use services like SubmitHub to submit your music to relevant playlists.

Collaborate with other artists

By collaborating with other musicians, you can reach new audiences and gain credibility within your industry. You can create tracks featuring another artist or create remixes.

Use the analytics provided by the platforms

Most streaming platforms come with analytics tools that allow you to track how your music is performing and who your listeners are. This information is precious because it will help you know your fans better and create content that appeals to them.

Developing relationships with music industry professionals to boost your music career

If you want a successful music career, you cannot do it alone. You need to build relationships with music industry professionals. But where should you start?

Attend industry events

Industry events like music festivals, concerts, conferences and networking events are a great way to meet music industry professionals. Before you go, know who will attend the event and gather information about them. This way, when you meet them, you will show interest in them and engage in a good conversation. Also, prepare a clear self-promotion pitch about your music and career goals aligned with your branding. Remember to find a way to keep in touch with them by exchanging business cards or social media profiles.

Research industry professionals and collaborate with other artists

You can also search for music professionals and other artists relevant to your music style and career goals. Follow them on social media platforms and engage with their content to build relationships. You can propose to the artists to collaborate with them on specific music projects. This way, they will introduce you to the music professionals working with them, such as producers, engineers and label executives.

Utilizing paid advertising to promote your music

If you have some budget, consider promoting your music with paid advertising. It will enable you to reach a larger audience and get discovered by new people. Since paid advertising can be expensive, we want to leverage it smartly to avoid spending money without getting many results.

Identify your target audience and choose the right platform

Again, knowing your audience is crucial for an effective paid advertising strategy. You want to target the people that will be interested in your music with your ads. You need to consider criteria such as age, location and especially music interests to build your target ad audience. This way, your ads will reach the right people interested in and willing to engage with your content. 

The advertising platform that you will choose is also important. You need to make sure that your target audience is active on this platform. Also, each platform like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or YouTube has its advertising options and costs. You must consider this to choose the one that best aligns with your advertising goals and budget.

Create engaging ad content

Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. What would make you click on the ad you create if you were them? You need to create content that will appeal to this audience and showcase your music in a compelling way. For music ads, choose the music video format (short videos) rather than pictures because it is a more eye-catching format, and your audience will be able to listen to your music directly from your ad and start engaging with it if they like it.

Monitor and optimize your campaign

All advertising campaign platforms provide detailed stats about the performance of your ads. Monitoring and analyzing them is essential to understand what works best and to optimize your ads. The best way to see what is working is to create different ads with different content and test them for a few days or weeks. You can also filter your target audience differently to see the best click-through and conversion rates. Once you have tried and identified what works, repeat it to reach a broder audience and grow your fan base.

Creating high-quality music videos to attract fans

Promoting your music without visual content to support it is very difficult today. This is why you need to create a music video before releasing your new song. Making a music video requires following specific steps to produce a professional-looking video. You can also decide to do all these steps in a music video recording studio like mine!

Choose a concept and tell a story

Before shooting your music video, you must define a clear concept aligned with your branding and the song you are promoting. From this concept, you need to come up with a story. The story will allow you to convey the message of your song and trigger emotions in your audience. This is what will make your music video memorable.

Plan your shots and start filming

Before filming, you must make a clear plan to avoid losing time and money. You need to determine where you will film, who will participate in creating the music video (cameraman, actors, etc.), what clothes and accessories you will use and what video equipment (camera, lighting, microphone, etc.) you will need. Once you have everything set up, you can start filming and collecting the different film sequences.

Edit your music video and publish it

The last steps are video editing and post-production. During editing, you will assemble all the filmed sequences in a harmonious video that aligns with your determined concept and story. This step is done with a video editing software that will allow you to trim and assemble all the pieces of the footage while adding the sound and visual effects of your choice. Post-production is the final step where the music video will be refined and polished. Then the video will be mastered and exported to the format supported by the platforms on which you want to publish it. Once published, remember to promote your music video on social media, music streaming platforms or with paid ads.

We hope this article will help you be successful in your music career by helping you promote your music more efficiently. Have fun!

This post was all about how to promote your music.