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How To Create Online Buzz For Your Music
Times have changed; music promotion thrives in the online world as the internet makes it so much easier now. Getting signed by a label is no longer the ultimate for musicians. Independent artists have more opportunities than there have ever been to kick start their careers without backing from a record label and high budgets. As an independent artist, learning to create online buzz for your music could open these opportunity doors for you.
From time to time, we see many independent artists like Chance The Rapper, Nipsey Hustle, and Trash Talk amongst others making big wins with their music. All this thanks to the advancement of modern technology and increased usage of social media platforms, there has never been a better time to get your music out there being signed or not.
But to succeed, however, artists will have to be more determined than ever to put in extra energy, more determination and should be ready to put in extra work.
I mean, let’s face it, no matter what stage you are in your career, releasing music into the world can be very daunting. You are not the only one and will never be the only one trying as much to promote your music, getting it to the right places, trying to garner attention from a target audience, building your fan base; the amount of competition is so high and with most of you sharing the same fans.
There are a million other artists creating great music like you, doing the same thing you do, releasing tracks consistently, and putting in promotional efforts as well.
The need to dive properly into promotion and marketing, coming up with creative strategies, building not just your music but yourself as a brand and authority, building your community of supportive and loyal fans is increasing every single day that passes. These can never be over-emphasized.
If you release a track, you have to put in efforts to promote it, to get it to the right people, the magic doesn’t happen by sitting it on a platform and hoping one day it just gets seen and goes viral, this happens one in thousands of upcoming artists.
That being said, I’ve rounded up tips you should fix into your marketing strategy to help create buzz for your music release;
The Quality Of Your Music
To create online buzz for your music, the amount of buzz is heavily dependent on the quality of your music. You can put in as many promotional efforts as you want, but if your songs aren’t the kind of songs people will be eager to listen to, then it is not going anywhere hence the importance of the quality of your music to create online buzz for your music.
People are very quick to judge if new music beats the quality score or not. Your music has to be worth talking about. The way it happens is, one person, talks about it to five different persons and these five different persons talk about it to five other different persons each.
With social media, one person can talk about it simultaneously to 20 different people, and in turn, these 20 talk to other 20s and that’s how it goes viral, before you know it, everyone is talking about your track. But if your song does not appeal to these people, no one is going to talk about it.
As an artist, you should invest your time in the creation and development of your songs. Work with experienced songwriters, skilled producers, and engineers to produce great music with innovative sound, captivating lyrics, and impeccable studio take.
Perform Live Frequently
You should start booking gigs and performing live in your hometown. You don’t have to gain worldwide recognition for that. Opening up for bigger artists for big headliners or arena tours will give you and your music a good amount of recognition.
If your song is quality and something the audience quickly falls in love with, they’d begin to talk about you and try to know more about you. Slowly the word begins to spread and your fan base grows.
At local gigs, you can request a small area to sell your music after performing. This gives you a chance to make some sales and connect with your audience on a personal level. You can as well hire a filmmaker to capture your live performance as a supporting artist and use it for a music video of an upcoming release.
Leverage Social Media
As an artist, building a strong social media presence is a necessity. You should leverage social media to grow your fan base as a loyal support community for you. With a very strong social media fan base, you might not even need to put in so much promotional effort; your fans do the promotion for you.
A solid example of this would be the well-known hit, “Old Town Road”. This song by Lil Nas X became such a major hit after going viral on TikTok. The song began gaining popularity from the “Yeehaw Challenge” on the app. Lil Nas X uploaded the music himself and promoted the music as a meme for four months. Soon, everyone was drinking “Yee Yee Juice” which would turn them into cowboys. The song became a major hit gaining over a billion audio and video streams worldwide and was number one on the Billboard chart.
Here’s a guide to help you promote your music on social media and create online buzz for your music.
Get Playlisted
Algorithmic and curated playlists across Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Audiomack, and other platforms reach hundreds of millions of listeners across the globe, racking up billions of streams. Getting your track on one of these popular playlists could gain you a massive boost in streaming. This greatly spreads awareness about you and also earns you a lot of royalties.
There are plenty of inspiring stories of musicians who got one of their songs on a couple of extremely popular playlists and are now cashing out dollars, loads of it, all due to their song going viral. You should work on getting your music on both the curated and algorithmic playlists.
Promote Your New Release On Blogs
Getting your music featured on blogs and webzines can help build hype. Doing interviews with bloggers in your niche, music publications, and radio stations will attract a large audience.
Hiring a music PR to handle your campaign is generally the best way to go about it. The PR handles the media and public relations on behalf of a musician or music group. They develop strategies to promote and create buzz around a new music release, album, and tour. They create and execute publicity plans for their clients, pitch new stories to media, create and edit press releases, media alerts, and press kit materials.
Of course, hiring a PR is completely dependent on your ability to pay. If what you can afford doesn’t make the cut, then you might have to do it yourself. You can approach bloggers you know personally or through a network, then create an electronic press release that will contain all the essential information about you and your music.
Create An Exceptional Visual Content
To create online buzz for your music, you should also consider creating engaging visual content such as videos, to accompany your music so as to maximize its potential for online success. Although, it is now harder to capture people’s attention and imagination due to the ever-increasing volume of content out there.
If you have a great video but lack a large fan base, you can pitch your video to a media partner or promotional YouTube channel in order to achieve substantial views and reach new fans. Achieving high streaming statistics and view counts are bound to catch the attention of the industry, and they are important indicators of substantial growth. Videos can help you create online buzz for your music, so spend quality time crafting ways to effectively and efficiently make use of them.
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