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Lyrics they say, are powerful. When you write and perform good songs, fans memorize them and sing along. Once you grow and have created a fan base, some fans may tattoo their favorite lyrics from your song on their body. Now, this is huge right?
As an independent artist, you want to make sure you leverage the power your lyrics wield in your music business and marketing. This way you can market your music using your lyrics.
Back in the earlier days of the internet, searching for song lyrics was one of the top things done on the internet. People would print out their favorite song lyrics and sing/rap along so they’d memorize them faster.
The good news is, your lyrics can be easily accessible by audiences in this present day compared to a few years ago hence you can easily market your music using your lyrics.
In this blog, I’ll cover everything you need to know about lyrics as an independent artist and how you can market your music using your lyrics for every single you’ll be releasing.
The Basics of Lyrics
Before we get to how you can market your music using your lyrics, you need to know the basics of lyrics.
Copyright Your Lyrics
Copyrighting your musical compositions is the first and most important thing you should do as a songwriter. The musical composition includes your lyrics as it’s vital to protect your creative and financial assets.
Pay and register your songs with the copyright office to be able to achieve this. Although it’s not economically feasible to register all your songs before releasing them, it’s ideal to save up your songs to register them in one larger batch before releasing them. Just always remember to copyright your music especially when you’re beginning to break into the mainstream media with your music.
Archive Your Lyrics
Create an online storage system where you can organize and categorize all your lyrics. You can store them on Dropbox, Google Drive, or even iCloud. Make sure you and any of your team members can access it.
Having your own personal library will help you if you ever get to forget your lyrics, especially if you haven’t performed your songs in a king time. Although with some of the steps I’ll be listing below, you’ll be able to access your lyrics by just googling them but still, it’s cool to have your own personal library.
5 Ways To Market Your Music Using Your Lyrics
1.0 Add Your Lyrics To Your Website And Other Music-related Platforms
Since your fans may be listening to your music via your website or any other music-related platforms, you need to make your lyrics easily accessible to them on the platform. This will help you market your music using your lyrics.
It’s advisable to have a dedicated page for a release on your website. On this page, fans will be able to listen directly or watch a music video. Include the lyrics on the same page.
This will help your website rank higher in search results when someone searches your lyrics to a particular song. This also helps your website’s SEO and drives traffic to your website. This is how to market your music using your lyrics.
In case you want to know other ways to drive traffic to your website, here’s an article for you.
You can also go on to add your music to platforms like musixmatch, genius, etc.
2.0 Create An Account With Genius And Add Your Lyrics
Genius isn’t only a platform for lyrics, fans can annotate lines in a song to provide different contexts around the meaning and inspiration of the lyrics. Different fans can go on to draw their theories and so on. This is an indirect way of marketing your music using your lyrics.
I recommend you create an account and add the lyrics for all your releases.
After creating an account on Genius, don’t forget to get verified so you can have more control over your own songs in case your fans add your lyrics before you or provide incorrect information. You can also add comments as the verified artist which is an awesome way to engage with your fans and provide original insights into your writing.
3.0 Add Plain Lyrics After Uploading To Your Music Distributor
You can always add your lyrics to your music distributor after uploading your music on the platform as these platforms provide you with this feature to help you market your music using your lyrics. Distributors like DistroKid and CD Baby usually have a place for you to include lyrics after uploading your songs on them. Providing your lyrics automatically gets it sent to digital stores like Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal, which will use and display them.
This way whenever anyone is streaming your music on music streaming platforms, they can access your lyrics too. This easily helps you market your music using your lyrics.
For DistroKid users, click on the individual release from your Home Screen to find the link to add lyrics to an individual song. Make sure you pay attention to the format you’re required to use to upload the lyrics because different platforms want it typed out in a specific way.
Common Guidelines For Submitting Lyrics
- Provide only the actual lyrics. Do not add any other information.
- Begin each line with a capital letter.
- Do not use any punctuation at the end of the line except exclamation marks and question marks.
- Any repeated line should be written out. Do not write chorus X2.
- Only separate sections of the song with one blank line.
- Any background vocals or Ad Libs must be added at the end of the line in parentheses.
- Write out explicit lyrics instead of censoring them.
- Avoid having long lines. Break up long sentences into different lines.
With the above guidelines, you can easily have your music on streaming platforms thus helping you to market your music using your lyrics.
4.0 Add Synced Lyrics For Instagram Stories And Spotify Through MusixMatch
I’m sure you’ve been wondering how to get your lyrics to show on Instagram stories and have the words synced perfectly to your song. Well, this is all done by Musixmatch.
Synced lyrics are also supported by Apple Music, Tidal, and even Spotify. This way your listeners can easily sing along while listening to your song and reading your music. A good way to market your music using your lyrics if you ask me.
Spotify announced in late 2021 that the app will be showing synced lyrics. The lyrics will be gotten from Musixmatch which is the same source Instagram gets its lyrics from.
How To Have Your Lyrics On Musixmatch
All you have to do is to get in Musixmatch and get verified as an artist.
To get your lyrics synced to your music, you’ll be asked to sign up for an account and then provide your Spotify and Apple Music links. After submitting these links, Musixmatch will email you back to verify your identity.
After verification, you’ll need to take a brief course on how to submit and sync lyrics. You need to pass this course before you can add any of your lyrics to their database which shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes.
Add the lyrics to one of your songs then go on to click the sync tab. You can do this on the desktop or the mobile app.
If you’re a Distrokid user, you can directly sync your music on Distrokid since Distrokid and Musixmatch are now partners. This way it’s easier to get everything in place to market your music using your lyrics.
5.0 Create A Lyrics Video
A lyrics video can serve as a low-budget promotion tool while you’re trying to market your music using your lyrics. If you don’t have the time or you’re on a tight budget to do a music video, Lyrics videos are an alternative for promoting a new release.
Lyrics videos are usually very simple where the lyrics are shown in sync along with the song over some basic visual component. You can use a static graphic background or an animation as the imagery for the music video.
If you don’t have the video editing skills to create a lyrics video, you can hit up freelancers on Fiverr and use one within your budget to help you create a lyrics video. You can also reach out to people within your network who can do this efficiently.
Although Fiverr is a great platform where you can get video editors within your budget, you also have to be careful with who you deal with on the platform. Remember the lyric video is aimed at helping you to market your music using your lyrics, if you’re looking for promotional services, be wary of who you contact on the platform so as to not be potentially scammed.
Music promotional services are different from lyric videos. You can get anyone with video experience to create your lyric video but not everybody can help you with music promotional services. Make sure to confirm your choices first.
Although creating your lyrics video is a step into helping you market your music using your lyrics, you need to upload these lyrics videos on streaming platforms like Youtube. Through Youtube, your lyrics video will reach more viewers and potential listeners can easily access the video thus helping you achieve the aim to market your music using your lyrics.
