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The most important thing for any music artist is to create good music. But it doesn’t stop at that because if you want to sustain your music career, you’ll need to get the music to your audience using the best music marketing tools.
If you’re just setting out a music marketing strategy, or you’re just beginning to look into how to market your music on platforms, the number of online marketing options at your disposal can be quite overwhelming for you. Although these platforms are free or very affordable hence they pose little to no risk.
For a successful music marketing process, there’s a need for you to learn your audience’s demographics- who your audience is and where they are, then aim your marketing strategy to platforms they will use.
To better make your music marketing strategies successful, I’ve culled out the best music marketing tools for musicians like you that should be added to your music marketing Arsenal. These tools will help you find more fans and build a lasting relationship with them through your music.
The following are the best music marketing tools for musicians:
1. Music Website
If you’re an independent artist, there’s a need for you to create a music website. Launching your own music website not only allows you to have control, and a completely branded outlook, it also gives you the freedom to not adhere to character limitations compared to using social media where you have to adhere to rules. Creating a music website allows musicians to present themselves as they are and at their own will hence the reason it’s listed as one of the best music marketing tools.
The music website allows your fans to easily find your music online. It serves as a one-stop-shop for your fans to be able to get and listen to your music, watch your music videos, learn about upcoming shows and find out more about you.
The music website also serves as an important way of building your email list. It also includes data that lets you understand the demographics of your fans, letting you market your music to a more targeted audience.
Having a proper website that preaches your style and your kind of music isn’t only aimed at your fans. If you represent yourself well on the website, you will have a strong impact on attracting Talent buyers, music journalists, and other music industry professionals.
2. Mailing List
Although most musicians overlook creating a mailing list, a mailing list is the most important music marketing tool for any independent musician hence why it’s added to the list of the best music marketing tools for musicians.
Compared to social media, communicating with your fans through their emails lets them receive every update about your music without missing any information. Social media feed doesn’t show every project your post on your fans feeds more so, not everyone is on a particular social media platform. An email with a link to click is a more focused way to directly reach every one of your fans and get them to do any of your biddings with a great email write-up.
In addition, the analytics tool with most email marketing software allows you to measure each mail sent out. The software provides you with important information about the health and engagement level of your list. You can use this data to test, tweak and improve each email sent out, to make sure you’re getting the most out of every campaign.
Click-through rates, open rates, new signups, and unsubscribes will give you insights into your biggest fans’ demographics and the kinds of emails they react to. This can help greatly in deciding dates for your next tour, or to make your fans anticipate when your next music will be dropping.
To help you successfully promote your music using Email marketing, here’s an article on the steps to promote your music using email marketing.
3. Google Analytics for Music Marketing
Google Analytics is the pioneer of all analytics tools. Although Google Analytics has been in existence for 15 years, its longevity isn’t the reason why it’s listed as one of the best music marketing tools. It provides you with tons of information about who visits your website, both broad and hyper-specific.
3 important Google analytics features used in music marketing:
- Acquisition (All Traffic): This feature allows you to see which social channels, email newsletters, search engines, websites, and so on, are driving people to your website.
- Audience (Demographics): This feature allows you to learn more about who your website visitors are and where they come from. It lets you know their age range, location, gender, language, etc.
- Real-Time: This is one of the best features of Google Analytics. It lets you see the real-time traffic flow on your website, which is particularly important for you as a musician especially if you have an ongoing project like a new music release or mee tour date announcements.
If you need to understand your audience insights especially for paid media efforts, using Google analytics will be a part of your processes.
4. YouTube for Musicians
YouTube has become a huge driver for music discovery with the platform’s new YouTube music feature. Now fans can share and consume music as they wish. It also has a community tab that supports different ways to connect with your audience via text posts, photos, etc.
The platform also allows live streaming which connects musicians to their fans in real-time and watchers can even donate “moolah” in the form of a super chat in the comments.
YouTube is one of the best music marketing tools because you can market your music on the platform and gradually build a dedicated following of subscribers by uploading your music videos to your custom channel.
The video content can also be linked to other social media platforms, this is a way to drive traffic to your YouTube channel. You can do this on your email newsletters or as a short teaser on Instagram.
To top it all, YouTube is free to use for music artists although you can monetize your content and generate another stream of income from your video content.
5. Spotify for musicians
Since its inception, Spotify has been in widespread use by music listeners. Spotify allows musicians to upload their music on the platform and promote the music for listeners. Spotify for music artists has grown more robust since the pandemic, with most musicians shifting their focus to recording and streaming versus playing live.
Spotify was added to the list of the best music marketing tools because the platform was not only built for musicians to get their music on the platform but also give insights into how the music and the artist are performing. The platform also has non-analytic tools important for music marketing.
Here are the music marketing tools in Spotify for musicians:
- With Marquee, you can advertise within the platform. This serves as a pop-up notification to targeted fans.
- With the platform’s customizable profile feature, you can add and update photos, bios, and other aesthetic elements as frequently as you want.
- You can utilize the canvas feature to add looping videos to tracks.
Spotify provides an opportunity for your music to be discovered and heard by new potential fans because it provides streaming services.
As your following on Spotify increases you can extract the data from that engagement alone to create a viable music marketing strategy for a targeted audience.
6. Instagram Shop for Music Marketing
Instagram allows you to share your everyday moves with your fans. But this isn’t the only feature that Instagram offers. Although most people have the misconception that Instagram shops are only for e-commerce stores, musicians can also use it as a way to market their merch or vinyl eps.
The aim is to create a solid call-to-action (CTA) for whatever you’re promoting and get your fans to click on the CTA to acquire what you’re buying.
This can be used as a way to drive traffic to your website as the merchandise will be displayed and bought through your website.
These are the steps to set up an Instagram shop for your music:
- Make sure what you’re selling complies with Instagram shop’s policy.
- Set up a website domain where you can sell from, for example, add your merch store or music store to your official website.
- Convert your Instagram page to a business profile.
- Make sure your content is actionable and clickable by adding shop tags to your Instagram posts.
Instagram is one of the best music marketing tools as you can add your songs to Instagram’s music catalog so that people can share them whenever they use them on their stories or short reels.
7. Buffer
Buffer is one of the best social media management and scheduling tools, especially for digital music promotion. It’s added to the list of best music marketing tools because it helps you simplify your online music promotion.
As live concerts and touring ramp in the near future, there’s definitely going to be a need for Buffer to help simplify your social media channels while still keeping your fans engaged.
3 ways buffer simplifies online music promotion:
- With Buffer, you can create a calendar. This calendar serves as a social media schedule that buffer will automatically slot your posts into.
- Based on your levels of engagement, posts that perform well, and any actions your followers make, you can tweak the schedule easily and efficiently.
- You can also collaborate with other team members right on the platform. You can collaborate to create a working social media management plan, which is much easier than a Gmail thread or group text.
Although buffer is free when you get started, it also has a la carte pricing structure that allows you to zero in on publishing and analytics tools that serve your music marketing strategy.
8. Canva for Musicians
Canva provides you with an alternative for photoshop. Instead of hiring a graphics designer or spending time stumbling through photoshop, you can easily get on Canva and music marketing materials you can use for your music marketing. This is why Canva was added to the list of the best music marketing tools.
4 music marketing materials you can make with Canva:
- You can make pre-sized social media graphics for your Facebook headers, Instagram stories, YouTube thumbnails, even Pinterest pins.
- You can also make analog materials like business cards, flyers, concert posts, tickets, t-shirt designs, countdown graphics, etc.
- You can also use Canva to make brand kits with logos, fonts, custom colors, etc. that are shareable with other brands or team members for collaboration.
- You can make pre-designed video elements with ways to insert your own content.
Although Canva has a pro feature that comes with more tools to create better designs, most of Canva’s robust features are absolutely free of charge.
9. Snapchat
In terms of creativity, Snapchat serves as a very creative way to market your music. With Snapchat, you can easily connect with your fans, especially if your audience is of a younger age hence it deserves to be one of the best music marketing tools.
This app is all about being personal, casual, and spontaneous as this can serve as an effective way to market your music online without feeling like you’re “promoting”. It also eases you off the pressure of trying to create the “perfect” content, because nothing on Snapchat is archived.
You can also easily promote your music on Snapchat by creating a custom filter that your fans can use to take pictures and post while indirectly promoting your music.
10. TikTok
TikTok has been a huge game-changer in terms of promoting music online without doing music promotion acts. The app has made it easier for musicians to easily drive their music to mainstream media by creating them as sounds and letting their fans use them on their videos.
TikTok grew rapidly during the pandemic and since then it has seen rapid growth in its popularity. And the best part of the app is, once you gain exposure on the app, your music will be revealed to a different generation of fans in different locations all over the world.
It’s also played a huge part in breaking international barriers in music. As anybody can use your music to create a video clip shared with their followers. This indirectly promotes your music. All of these are major reasons why TikTok is one of the best music marketing tools to use.
Here’s an article on how you can successfully create a TikTok music promotion campaign.
