In difference to being a Signed Artist to a record label, this option indeed gives you less control over your music, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t the superior choice for many musicians. The decision is entirely up to you, depending on your needs and preferences. They can accelerate your growth far more quickly than working on your own. As an independent artist, you’ll have access to dos and don’ts that you wouldn’t otherwise. Learning from others who have been there multiple times before is fantastic.

Let’s examine in depth the difference, benefits and drawbacks of being a signed artist or an independent artist.

1. Budget and resources

For signed artists, the mastering, distribution, and development of album artwork, marketing, merchandise, touring, music videos, and other costs can be supported by established record labels thanks to their financing and resources. The label will, however, determine the budget and resources available.

VS

For independent artists, It costs money to cover expenses like mastering, distribution, promotion, merchandise and touring. Many independent artists lack the tools and funding that a record label can offer.

2. Connections and a network

For signed artists, signing with a label has several advantages, including access to their network. Significant opportunities may arise for you and your music as a result. Your network and ability to reach wider audiences may be restricted without a label. Larger fan bases will be found for established labels. Additionally, they might be connected to other members of the music industry, including booking agents, music venues, publishing houses, public relations firms, and PR firms.

VS

For independent artists,  just starting to have a small fanbase and professional network. Record labels, on the other hand, will have a larger fan following and relationships with key players in the music business, including promoters, booking agencies, the media, etc.

3. Influence and standing

For signed artists, Numerous record labels, particularly large labels, have acquired ties and influence in the music business. They have a stronger chance of landing publishing and licensing agreements, performances at bigger venues and festivals, press attention, radio roles, and other opportunities.

VS

For independent artists, It’s hard to get started in the music industry. The music industry is complex, and learning every facet of it requires time and experience. There are many elements to manage, including shifting fashion trends, musical rules, and many more. The world is complicated! Learning what works and what doesn’t can also be a costly lesson.

4. Music Promotions Strategy

For signed artists, your music sales will rise when you sign up with a record company that has a strong marketing plan, and you’ll gain access to new listeners and advance your musical career. Additionally, a label might promote music media, have a sizable email list, be active on social media, and more. A record label will also have previous music industry knowledge.

VS

For independent artists, the independent artist option takes time to pursue. Putting your music out on your own can seem like a full-time job. Setting up distribution, making all the release materials, coming up with a marketing plan, keeping track of sales, scheduling shows, and all the other tasks involved with releasing music take a lot of time. Additionally, all of this additional labour consumes crucial studio time.

Check out how to promote your music on a budget here: https://kevineze.com/how-to-promote-your-music-with-zero-budget/

5. Creative authority

For signed artists, A record label gains authority over your song when you sign with them. Without your consent, the label may make arrangements and decisions involving your song. They also have total authority over everything, including messaging, artwork, marketing, and distribution. However, the contract’s provisions determine how much power you have over your music and brand.

VS

For independent artists, The direction of an independent artist’s music is entirely under their control. Additionally, they are in complete control of the distribution, marketing, artwork, messaging, and other factors. A self-employed artist also has the freedom to choose how to carry out their artistic idea. For many artists, it’s the ideal situation.\

6. Formula for profit-sharing

For signed artists, Record labels receive a portion of the money made from music sales, streaming, licensing agreements, and other sources of income. Additionally, some labels use the royalties received from music purchases to cover costs such as mastering, promotional mailers, and other release-related fees.

VS

For independent artists, 100% of the money made from music sales, streaming, licensing partnerships, item sales, and other revenue sources goes to them.

7. Copyright Ownership

For signed artists, When you sign a deal with a record label, the master rights to your music are theirs. Without your consent, they are allowed to negotiate publishing and music licensing agreements. They can retain more of the earnings from these transactions as a result.

VS

For independent artists, the master rights of an artist’s music belong to them. They are free to discuss publishing and music license agreements as well. They also won’t have to stress about signing over their music rights or dealing with confusing contracts or pricy attorneys.

Additionally:

Music services offered to Independent Musicians online: Independent musicians now have access to a wide range of music services and resources thanks to the digital age. Musicians can use services for streaming, marketing, distribution, creating goods, and other things. Additionally, musicians may easily reach new listeners thanks to the internet. They no longer need a recording agreement to distribute their music via streaming services, digital music stores, and music platforms.

Bad contract deals: Many record labels have agreements that are favorable to artists. However, it is well known that large record labels have contractual arrangements that offer the artist a smaller percentage of royalties. Additionally, if you sign with a label, you will have to deal with these intricate contracts and pricey layers.

So in summary, which is the better choice of both?

Here, you get to make the call choice. Both solutions have benefits and drawbacks. In the end, everything depends on how much assistance you need as a beginning artist. You will have complete ownership over your music and the rights to it if you decide to go it alone. However, some musicians do require the additional support and communication provided by a record company. Remember that while a record label may require a larger percentage of your earnings, you’re also more likely to discover work and prospects through them. It might even out.

Consider your contract options carefully if you’re thinking about being signed by a label. Is it a temporary situation to gauge your progress? In case you decide it’s not for you, that seems like the sensible course of action. You cannot back out of contracts, thus it is crucial to be certain. Take into account what they can offer you. After all, you are giving them your music and ability, which you are aware of. It’s crucial that the agreement not turn out to be one-sided.

However, they will relieve a lot of your artistic burden because you won’t have to worry about promoting and selling your music. You may instead devote more time to honing the sound itself. There is no disputing that being an independent artist may be difficult. Even yet, it can still present fantastic chances and a sense of accomplishment that is unmatched. If you persist, you’ll realize the advantages and understand why it’s so satisfying. Both this option and picking a record label are not suitable for everyone. Both have numerous advantages and disadvantages that are comparable. Give one a try, and if you decide it’s not for you, you’ll know the other is.

There will always be resources and assistance accessible, regardless of the option you select. Don’t believe that you must be affiliated with a label to receive any kind of support. Keep in mind that you alone are responsible for your accomplishment. There is a wealth of knowledge available to support your success. Spend some time figuring out what suits your music and brand the best. Best luck!

Since the launch of the first social networking site- SixDegrees in 1997, there has been an emergence of loads of social media platforms that musicians have taken advantage of to promote themselves as artists.

YouTube is one of the most populated social networking sites with about 30million active users and 5billion videos watched per day, which is the reason why using YouTube for your music promotion is something you should definitely add to your music marketing strategy.

A lot of music artists are still in the dark about all they can do with YouTube and don’t use it to promote their music in the same way they would use Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Youtube has made it very easy for musicians to spread awareness about their music, but with the high amount of videos being posted on the platform every day (5billion videos per day according to the 2019 statistics) pulling people’s attention in different directions and the competition from similar artists also pulling attention to them, the quality of your content is becoming more important than the number of followers you have and this is the same for all the social media platforms.

For effective YouTube music promotion, having a professionally structured youtube channel is necessary hence, the requirement to grow your YouTube channel.

How To Grow Your YouTube channel for your music.

I’m going to be giving some tips on promoting your music on YouTube, showing both organic and paid things to do. I’m also going to be listing some mistakes artists make on Youtube. Growing your youtube channel is a step to promoting your music on social media and creating buzz for your music on youtube becomes easy. The following are the steps to grow your music channel to promote your music on YouTube.

Have a professional-looking YouTube channel;

You should have a professional-looking YouTube channel. This makes you look more official, authentic, and real and helps you gain more subscribers.

Your YouTube channel should have the following;

• A name that corresponds to your stage name. Do not add “Official” or pseudo-“VEVEO”.
• Your professional-looking profile photo/avatar
• Your channel’s banner is related to your brand.
• A playlist to organize your content
• Links to your social media profiles and your website
• A short bio or description that summarizes what visitors can expect to see on your channel
• Eye-catching customized thumbnails for each of your videos
• A customized URL for your music project example; youtube.com/user/newsong

Post valuable content on a regular basis;

Posting valuable content on your channel helps to grow your YouTube channel and aids your music promotion on YouTube.

You should write songs and post contents that evoke emotional responses from the people that listen to them and watch them.

Songs that have a good beat or tend to get stuck in people’s heads are usually shared the most, meaning they could go viral.

With the numerous amounts of daily posts, keeping attention on you is difficult. There is always going to be a new video that takes the attention away from you.

That is why posting consistently is necessary. Don’t leave your channel stagnant. Continually post content to keep your subscribers engaged. Posting content does not mean expensive videos that are directed by… produced by… or filmed by… and you don’t have to write new songs weekly.

Think of other smaller creative projects that you could make and share with your subscribers.

I’ve made a list of a few video content ideas;

a. Behind The Scene Footage;

Like sound check short clip for a big show, behind the scene footage from filming your next video, a short clip of you in the studio recording.

b.  Chats In The Car;

You could record short talks or interviews with a buddy while running errands, talk about upcoming shows, other things in your life.

c.  Share Music Tips And Experiences;

A great way to earn the following of other musicians is to share tips on what you’ve learned in the long run of your career. Share your mistakes, failures, and how you overcame them.

d.  Meaning Behind Your Songs, What Inspired You;

Tell them the stories and meanings behind each song, what inspired you in writing them. Then pair the clips of you performing the song and you’ll have a really compelling video.

e.  Videos Of Your Band Practice

f.  Interviews with other musicians

g.  Share What You Are Doing;

You could be writing a new song, cooking, working out, doing a fitting, whatever it is you choose to show them. Your fans would definitely enjoy knowing what you are doing.

h.  Frequently asked questions;

A lot of fans will enjoy asking you questions if given the chance to. Give them a platform to submit their questions about you, your career, your music, or your personal life, allow them to get to know you. Answer these questions in videos and post them on your channel.

Post Regularly;

Consistently upload videos, this sets a schedule for you and helps you gain subscribers and fans. They will know you post one or two videos weekly or every two weeks and the specific day you post them. With this, they can easily see that your account is active.

More so, it keeps your subscribers entertained, interested, and excited for more.

Youtube favors content creators who post on a regular basis. If you add new content frequently, your videos may get listed in the ”suggested” section, this greatly increases the traffic to your channel.

Build Relationships And Work With YouTube Influencers And Other Artists;

Working with influencers who have lots of subscribers on Youtube and a big following on other social media platforms is a great way to create awareness about your music.

They are called influencers because they have gained a lot of influence in their niche.

When you work with influencers, the influencers help to promote your music and indirectly promote your channel. this helps to grow your YouTube channel and increase your number of subscribers.

You can reach out to them by sending them a direct message on Youtube or through other social media platforms.

You can also reach out and team up with other artists in your genre & style and share fans.

Start locally with people you actually know then branch out as you grow. Reach out to people who might want to collaborate with you and artists who might want to co-write a song and perform it with you.

Your Videos Should Be Attention-Grabbing;

Internet users have very low patients, they decide within the very first few seconds if they want to continue watching a video or move on to something else.

The first few seconds of your videos should be captivating and attention-grabbing. A great way to draw people in is by putting the major hook or the most exciting part of the video at the very start so it captivates people’s minds.

Attention-grabbing videos lead to converting new viewers to your fans hence helping to grow your YouTube channel.

Your Videos Should Be Search Engine Optimized;

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is simply using phrases and words that people search for on search engines like Google so when they search, your videos can show on search results.

An optimized video can lead people to your youtube channel thereby helping to grow your YouTube channel.

This greatly drives a lot of traffic to your channel and increases awareness. But it isn’t as easy as it sounds because there is a lot of competition out there. Here are a few tips;

a.  Using keywords;

Remember that SEO for everyone isn’t the same as SEO for you as musicians. For starters, your stage name or your brand name is your major keyword.

Your keyword should be in your title and description as it’ll help rank your videos when users search for videos, thereby increasing your streams, subscribers and helping to grow your YouTube channel.

b.  Your titles and descriptions;

Make sure that the title of each video is short, 60-65 characters max is a good target range. YouTube cuts of the title at 100 characters.

Besides, it is likely that 80% of your viewers will be watching your videos from a mobile device, so you’d want to make your channel mobile-friendly.

Avoid click-baiting – using deceitful title and thumbnail that doesn’t relate in any way to the contents of the video just in a bid to entice people to watch your videos.

Create a description that correctly says what a video is about and use tags to further help the description.

A concise and detailed title and description could convert new viewers to fans and help you grow your YouTube channel.

YouTube Premiere

YouTube premiere is a nice way to get the audience glued to your channel and promote your music. This feature is just like a movie premiere.

With YouTube premiere, you can promote your music and grow your tube channel simultaneously.

YouTube premiere lets you schedule a video for upload and create buzz around that video during the wait time with a shareable watch page.

Just scheduling a video won’t alert your fans that a new video is dropping soon. With premiere, your subscribers get a notification of the video drop date and time making them more likely to tune in.

Remember to always share information about your premiere across all your social media platforms, encourage them to share to their friends and followers as well.

Create a buzz and make sure the content of the video is worth the buzz.

Add Cards And End Screens To Your Top Videos

Cards are a great way to grow your youtube channel and encourage fans to watch other videos of yours.

YouTube cards are the interactive cards you see in YouTube videos, usually at the end, that let creators share clickable links to relevant content.

Cards can be seen on both mobile and desktop screens.

They allow you to include a custom image, titles, and call-to-action texts. Add cards to your top 10 videos or top 2 if you are just starting out on YouTube.

You can display any of the following in your cards;

1. Video
2. Playlist
3. Link to your website
4. Merchandise for sell
5. Fundraising
6. Fan funding

They can be used for pre-recorded and live-streamed videos.

How to add cards to your videos;

• Sign in to your YouTube video manager
• Click “edit” on the video you want to add a card to
• Click the “cards” button in the top navigation bar
• Click on “add cards” twice to open the creation window for the card type you want to add. Enter a valid URL applicable to that card type.
• Upload an image, enter a title and description text
• Click “create a card” and push the cards to the time you want them to appear while the main video is being watched.
• Use SEO to help your fans find different ways to spend money on you.

A video can have up to 5 cards and the cards can be edited and deleted anytime.

Yes, you can be on social media and still not make use of it to the full potential, Major corporations have always had their presence felt in the social media world, mainly because they could afford to hire extra employees to manage it all or they paid a large agency a lot of money to run their social accounts. When you have huge funds available anything is possible and you can get exposure from every angle.

The average small business would engage in social media only when they had time. A few updated posts here and there, sometimes it might seem like a big load to carry in maintaining the social media profiles knowing fully well they aren’t on the same platform… Well, to be frank, it is a huge load but why occupy the digital space and not make the best out of it, no matter what your reason for being on social media you have to develop a focused plan with the goal of engagement.

Social media can’t be an afterthought anymore. You need to be active on several social networks and constantly provide new content and interact with your followers. To me, there are six main social networks that businesses need to focus on:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• YouTube
• Instagram

 How To Optimize Your Social Media for Your Business

I’ve pointed 10 ways to pull massive attention to your social media profiles hereby optimizing them

Use the correct image sizes

It baffles me how many social profiles have images that are all blurry and look horrible because the business isn’t using the right image sizes. Nothing looks more unprofessional than pictures that are distorted or pixelated.

There are so many different image dimensions, remembering them all can be difficult, but it still isn’t a good reason not to use the right tools. Before I got accustomed to the Adobe Photoshop software, I used a couple of online photo editors (Google it) to make all of my social media images, including profile covers as well as images to use in posts. You just select what you want to make and use this tool to customize it to your liking.

If you want to make sure you always have the exact dimensions for all of the popular social media images, I made this cheat sheet for you. Take the time to use properly sized images, as it will make your profiles look more professional.

Facebook:

Cover photo: 851 x 315
Profile picture: 160 x 160 (upload as 180 x 180)
App icons: 111 x 74
Timeline: 504 x height is up to you (shared image), 484 x 252 (shared link)
News feed: 470 x 394 (shared image), 470 x 246 (shared link)

Twitter:

Header image: 1252 x 626, 1500 x 500 (redesign)
Profile picture: 250 x 250
Image in feed: 1024 x 512

LinkedIn:

Banner image: 624 x 220
Logo: 100 x 60
Link Thumbnail: 100 x 100

Google+:

Cover photo: 1010 x 608 (recommended), 480 x 270 (minimum), 2120 x 1192 (maximum)
Profile picture: 250 x 250
Image post: 4:3 aspect ratio (800 x 600 minimum)

YouTube:

Banner image: 2560 x 1440 (TV), 2560 x 423 (desktop), 1546 x 423 (mobile)

Instagram:

Image: 640 x 640

Create a smart posting schedule

Ok, so what is a smart posting schedule? It’s finding the right formula of posting enough without posting too much. You want to make sure you put your message in front of a large percentage of your followers, while not smothering the very engaged ones, and pushing them away.

Not all of your followers are active at the same time. You will never get good engagement if you are just posting content once. You need to post it 3 to 4 times to increase the chances of a large percent of your followers seeing it.

Just because your business is open from 9 to 5 that doesn’t mean you should stop social media posting. Your social media should run 24/7, posting every couple of hours. This ensures that there are always new posts to attract engagement without being overbearing. We have all seen the accounts that post every 10 minutes.

What do most people do? They unfollow them!

Use a social media posting tool to make your life easier. While there are paid ones but I use Hootsuite’s free version. It does the trick and you can’t beat free.

Always Tell Your Social Media Followers And Fans To Share

In some of the concluding stages of a proper digital marketing campaign which are the brand promotion & advocacy stages, in this stage, your customers have already built trust with your brand that he/she promotes and as well advocates for your brand even on social media without you knowing about it, well this can happen on social media when you encourage them to do so.

Almost every single follower and fan that is following your social media profiles are two things. They are a potential first-time customer or repeat customers, and they are potential promoters.

Think about it for a minute. These people like your business so much that they want to be connected on social media and they want to receive information and updates from your business. It’s safe to assume that they like whatever it is that you are selling.

People that like your business is your best promoters. When you post a promotion or something designed to draw attraction to your business, ask your social followers to share it with their connections as well.

Even if just a few people share every post, you are expanding your reach for free. Over time, as your social media followers grow, the number of people that see your business via your social promoters, increases.

On one of my food brands on Twitter, I added to its RSS feeds a tweet suffix which states “You like? Please Retweet” and it has improved the engagements of the posts and some happen to go viral.

Interlink All Of Your Social Media Profiles

This is another point that doesn’t need much explaining, but unfortunately, it does. Not only should you cross-promote your different social media profiles, encouraging your followers to connect on every network, but you should make it easy for them to discover your other profiles by including links to them all in your profile.

Take a look at some big brands doing social media the right way. They link to their Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram social profiles, in addition to their app and brand websites.

You want to make sure your visitors can connect to you on as many social networks as possible. It’s common sense. The more social connections you have established with someone, the higher the probability is that they will engage with your business on social media.

Always Try To Complete Your Profiles 100%

Always make use of every opportunity to complete your social media profiles. If they allow you to upload 10 images, then don’t just upload a few. Take full advantage of every opportunity to tell your followers as much about your business as possible.

The “About” sections and bio sections are such a good opportunity to tell your followers what it is that your business does, but so many profiles skip this.

They put a link in their profile assuming everyone will just click over to their website, but one of the main purposes of being on social media is to be able to attract new customers who don’t mind readers, Maybe in the past it works, but people are so comfortable with social media these days that they will often make purchase decisions on social media without even visiting your site.

Maintain A Uniform Look And Feel Across All Of Your Social Media Profiles

This is something that is taught in Digital Marketing 101, all your social media profiles should have the same color theme but yet so many businesses fail to do so.

Most businesses are going to be managing several social media profiles. They all must maintain a very similar look and feel. Use customization options, like Twitter offers, to make your profile feature your logo colors. Also, make sure all of your header image and profile images are similar. You will need to alter them all, according to the image sizes that are outlined in tip number one above, but you can still make them all very similar.

What do the largest companies in the world all have in common? They are all easily recognizable. You can pick them out based just on the packaging or a logo. You need to think like a big company, even if you are a small mom, vegan influencer, and pop business. A consistent business image on all of your social media profiles is a great place to start.

Make Sure You Have A Username That Gives You Custom URLs

This is good for branding as well as for SEO and discoverability in the Google search results. When you create a business page on Facebook it will give you a random URL that doesn’t look good or identify your business in any way. To me, I think it’s strange that they even do it this way, but you need to request a URL change to have a custom page link. How do you do that? Create a username and it would be assigned to your URL

If your business name is Joe’s Car Wash, what looks better if you put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer:

Default/Strange URL – Facebook.com/page/87345354375634875634

Or?

Custom URL – Facebook.com/joecarwash

The custom URL looks better to the naked eye, but it also will help potential customers find you in Google search results. If you are a business, you want as many of your social media pages ranking under your main website in the search results. Social pages have high authority, so occupying page one of Google with these is great for reputation management.

Get Familiar With Data Analytics

This is will greatly impact your pockets. Being active on a lot of social media networks isn’t something one does with a low budget. Either you pay someone or you have to do it yourself, which costs your time. You have to generate content to share, etc. You know the drill.

So, why not make sure that all that stress & hard work is paying off, by making a profit? Find out where your most profitable traffic is coming from. Not just visitor numbers, because 10,000 visitors from Facebook is useless if it didn’t make you any money. 500 visits from a social network that made you a lot of money are more impressive.

Use the data in your analytics to see what social media sources are making you money and what ones are sending traffic that doesn’t convert. Scale up the ones that are working and either make changes or slow down the ones that aren’t making money.

You want to keep profiles on all networks, just to help you fill page one, but don’t be active daily unless they are making you money. One of the digital marketing techniques I’ve learned is to be able to build your ideal customer profile (I’ll explain that in my forthcoming articles), with such information you know what to expect and look for your customers, with your social media analytics (insights) you can track them and if you’re into Facebook/Instagram ads you can retarget them to get the best profit.

I see it as “Putting your money where your mouth is”

Well, that’s all for now. You can also learn about the best ways to drive traffic to your business website as this helps you maximize your presence on the internet to build your purse.

If there are more ways that I didn’t list out in this article then you can drop them in the comment box below, and I also would love to hear how you have used social media to help your business online. Leave a comment, share it with your friends…