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With the technological advancement that comes with the digital age, it’s undeniable that every aspect of the world is changing and this includes the music industry. With this change, independent musicians can market their music easily without needing to sign a record deal or a promotional deal with a music promotion body.
Everything is seamless and with the right knowledge and implementation of effective music marketing strategies for independent musicians, the musicians can leverage on converting millions of users of the web to their listeners and fans. This has led to a rise of independent musicians marking the rise of independent music promotion.
In the music business, independent musicians are a segment of the industry, and to become successful as one, it’s important to implement effective music marketing strategies for independent musicians. Note that digital music marketing trends change as technology advances. You need to be aware of the market trends and changes to implement them in your strategies.
Now let’s get into the real deal and take a look at 7 music marketing strategies for independent musicians. But before we do, you need to understand the basics.
What Is Music Marketing?
The phrase “music marketing” can be used in different cases to refer to a couple of different things such as:
- Using music in a marketing campaign.
- Musicians market the music they create.
These different cases may lead to confusion whenever the phrase is referenced but depending on the concept or intent, it’s easy to understand which use-case the phrase refers to. In this article, the reference we’ll be making is respect to the second of the two categories. We’ll be discussing top music marketing strategies for independent musicians.
How To Get Started?
Any marketing goal involves selling a product. As a musician, music is your product, and your marketing goal is to sell your product.
Of course, there’s no harm in hoping that one day, a well-known record label will discover you and help to get your music to the top but relying on this possibility may not be best for you hence, you need to begin marketing your product yourself.
Today, the music industry has grown to be very competitive and saturated but with the rise of social media platforms, opportunities to get noticed have increased, helping more artists and musicians get their music out there and share their art globally.
To get noticed in this market, you need to develop a marketing plan. A music marketing plan outlined your music marketing strategy for a period of time.
Creating this plan may be overwhelming especially if you’re new to marketing but this step is important to help create music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you. Once you begin this process, it gets easier and you get to know how to do it quickly.
Here’s how to start creating your music marketing plan:
Define Your Audience
Before you can begin to implement the music marketing strategies for independent musicians, you need to define your audience. These are a group of people that will potentially enjoy your music otherwise known as your music fans.
This is highly dependent on the genre of music you are creating and will also help you define the specific target audience to aim for.
Analyze Your Market
After defining your audience, the next step before diving into creating and implementing music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you, you need to analyze your market. In this case, the market is the music industry, and to analyze this market, you need to identify your “competitors” and how you can be uniquely different from them.
This will be your USP (unique selling proposition). Studying the music market will also come in handy when creating music marketing strategies for yourself.
Establish Your Long-Term And Short-Term Goals
What do you plan to achieve? Are you planning to release new music, music videos, an EP, or an album on a certain date? Do you want to increase your fan base, and listeners? Write out an action plan for yourself to make sure you’re prepared.
Specify your long-term and short-term goals in terms of your music, music marketing, fan base, tours, etc. This will help you to maximize the following music marketing strategies for independent musicians.
Determine Your Music Marketing Strategies
Once you’ve set out your goals, you need to select and implement the exact music marketing strategies that will help you achieve them. This is why I’ve created a list of 10 music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you. Explore these strategies and pick the very best that suits your goal.
These music strategies below were created to take your music marketing efforts to the next level, so explore and choose which works with your goals.
Set A Budget For Your Music Promotion
After determining your marketing strategy, create a marketing budget. This will help you determine how much money you are willing to spend on promoting your music.
Make sure to create and follow this marketing plan diligently using the above steps. It will help you successfully scale your music promotions and take your music career to the next level.
7 Music Marketing Strategies For Independent Musicians
To help you successfully create your marketing plan to scale your music promotion and take your music career to the next level, here are 7 effective music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you:
Build A Music Website
As an independent artist, you’ll need to market yourself online hence having a music website is non-negotiable. This is the bedrock of music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you.
The music website is a one-stop shop for everything about you. If a fan needs to check out your dates, book you for a show, read your background story, or buy your music from trusted music distribution channels, your website is going to be the very first stop.
Another huge reason to go create your website is that it’s a space you have total control over. Compared to social media platforms that are owned by 3rd parties, your website is completely owned and controlled by you.
It’s very easy and inexpensive to build a website these days with content management systems available to the public. You can just create an account, choose a website template, purchase a domain name and launch your website.
You can consider going for a one-page website because it’s more effective when it comes to narrowing the focus of your audience and the traffic is driven to your music website to one thing which in this case is your music.
Examples of content management systems that can be used to build your website include WordPress, Wix, etc.
Distribute Your Music On All Digital Platforms
It’s become easier to reach your target audience with the rise of digital technologies. Now you can get your music to people who actually want to listen to you. This wouldn’t have been possible without music streaming platforms like Tidal, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Audiomack, Deezer, YouTube Music, Spotify, and Amazon music unlimited.
These platforms solve the problem of getting your original music to your listeners and reducing piracy. They also make it easy for your listeners to access your music easily, thereby making it easy to succeed in creating effective music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you.
It’s important to choose which platform suits your style of music and has your target audience on them more. For example, as an Afrobeat artist, I’d rather choose to upload my music on Apple Music, AudioMack, Spotify, and YouTube Music because I know my target audience is more active on these platforms than the remaining platforms.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put your song up on other platforms, you can. But choose the best that suits your marketing plan.
Use Social Media
Gone are the days when fans preferred their favorite artists to be aloof and mysterious. Today, fans want to have constant access to the music acts they love through social media. They want to know where you are, what you’re doing when your next song is dropping, when is your next concert or tour, etc.
With 49% of the world’s population on social media, it’s undeniable that using social media is one of the effective music marketing strategies for independent musicians that can scale up the careers of these musicians. Social media can help you reach out to your fans, boost your engagements, increase your listeners and also broaden your fanbase.
Make sure to create social media accounts for every social media platform that can affect your music marketing plan positively. After creating your profile, post unique and engaging content, and interact with your audience regularly.
It’s important to consider which social media platform houses your target audience. After understanding this, create your content development strategy and decide what type of content engages them more. Take your time to study your audience as this will help you make critical decisions on what your audience wants to see and hear about you.
Incorporating Content Marketing And Influencer Marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating content that helps you market your music. Research shows consumers are more likely to think positively about your brand and buy your product (your music) when your content engages multiple senses, making them interact with it.
To succeed in creating music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you, implement creating interactive content for your audience either on your social media platforms or on your website.
Influencer marketing is one of the newest branches of digital marketing that is yet to unfold its potential.
Just like celebrities, an influencer is someone who has a huge number of active followers on various social media platforms and can influence the followers to take a particular action. These influencers can be bloggers, bloggers, famous YouTubers, TikTokers, public figures, etc.
To implement and incorporate influencer marketing in your music marketing strategy, you need to find a relevant influencer in your niche and contact them for collaboration. You may not go for mega influencers as they are hard to access at first. You can begin your journey with small influencers.
There are several ways influencers can work with you. They can use your music as a video background on TikTok to create a new dance step that automatically promotes your music to other users.
Create An Email Marketing List
Before reading this, you probably had no idea that email marketing could play a part in creating music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you. Well, I’m here to tell you the importance of email marketing to your music marketing strategy.
Email marketing can be very effective for raising your profile, increasing your listeners and fan base, building a community, and making money from your music. This is the main reason why a lot of music acts encourage their fans to sign up for their newsletters.
Statistics have it that the average open rate for emails across all industries is 21.33% whereas the music industry sees a fractionally Higher percentage of 21.88%. Click rates are also fractionally above average in music.
I mean who wouldn’t want to open a personalized email sent by a popular musician. This will make your fans feel honored. With this, there’s an above-average chance that your fans will open your email.
Promote With Paid Ads
It’s not easy to get organic traffic. In recent years, a lot of posts saw a decline in organic reach.
To avoid this and help boost your music marketing efforts, you need more reach. To achieve this you can use paid ads.
Some of the best tools for your ad campaigns are Google Ads, Facebook Business Manager, and YouTube Ads.
Paid ads may be expensive for some independent artists but it’s essential in creating music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you. This is why it’s important to create a budget for your music promotion.
Reach Out To Media Outlets
Reaching out to music outlets like bloggers will help you create buzz around your music especially if you’re releasing a new song or an album. This is necessary for creating music marketing strategies for independent musicians like you. A lot of people look for new music from different music blogs, to get access to this audience, you need to reach out to them.
You can also reach out to music industry press, local press, local radio, national radio, and playlist curators. These media outlets will have you featured on their shows or playlists thereby helping you reach your music marketing goal.
After successfully implementing these music marketing strategies for independent musicians, you’ll need to know which music marketing tool to use for a successful music marketing campaign. Here’s an article for you.
With the above music marketing strategies for independent musicians, you’re sure to scale your music marketing campaigns and get your music out to more audiences on the internet. Make sure to create and stick to your marketing plan for utmost success in your music marketing.
