Are You on Budget? Here Are 5 Best Strategies to Promote Your Music
Learning how to promote your music is essential, but nobody said it would be easy. Especially you need to learn this crucial step if you want to succeed in the music industry. But don’t let people blind you: not everything depends on money!
Yes, money does help. For example, major labels can push releases into the ears of millions of people. But they can do this because they have capital and large promotion strategies. If you are on a budget, you don’t need to thrive for money day and night.
So, how to promote your band when you don’t have much money?
Strategy 1: Develop creative consistency
If you think you can get success and results after just one release, you’re mistaken. You need to release music consistently. Aim for one release per month if you can. If you’re releasing on labels, constantly having a flow of new music to send to them is key.
Not only will this increase the total amount of plays you get over all your tracks, but it will also help you grow your audience and have loyal fans. At the end of the day, there’s no promoting music if there’s no music.
If you can’t finish a song once every month or so, then you may have a workflow or general commitment issue. Commit yourself to a schedule by setting a goal to finish and release one track every two weeks, or one track every month.
Just make it all consistent.
Strategy 2: Have a plan for your release
It’s not easy finishing a song but having a specific plan is always a good idea. You need to learn how to be patient for your song release and wait before releasing and ask yourself what else you can do to increase your audience and promote your music.
Instead of carelessly uploading your songs and hoping for the best, create a plan for how to promote your new music release. Your plan doesn’t need to be super complex; just experiment with it but please put one in place.
Strategy 3: Build and leverage your network
If you don’t have a network yet, you need to find ways to build it because you can’t thrive in this industry without one. You can take 2-step action:
Figure out who in your current network could help promote your music. Do something for them first, so they don’t feel taken advantage of.
Grow your network. Strengthen it and connect with more people.
Start forming relationships with people who can help promote your music. It’s much easier to ask someone for a favor if you’ve already added value to their lives. Overall, your network can also teach you a lot about how to promote your music.
Strategy 4: Create your own artwork & videos
If you want people to pay attention when you promote your music, well-designed, eye-catching, and suitable artwork is key. There are 2 ways to make creative artwork if you don’t have designers-friends or you are not a designed yourself, since they are pricey:
Way 1: https://fiverr.com. You’re not going to get unique, original, super-fancy designs, but you’ll get something good enough, for the price of a couple of coffees.
Way 2: design it yourself. If you have a decent eye for what looks good and what doesn’t, but you’re not familiar with professional graphic design software, then use a tool like Canva, which is free and user-friendly. You can create social media posts, logos, cover photos, ad graphics, you name it. Plus it’s easy to promote from, as you can share straight to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Regarding videos, there are also some options if you can’t afford freelancers:
Option 1: Promo. Good for marketing videos but not super cheap ($49 for one video).
Option 2: Pexels. Stock video resource. You might have to do some digging to find exactly what you want, but there is some high-quality stuff here.
Option 3: Renderforest. Great for reusable templates — lyrics videos, visualizers, etc.
Either way, you will have to keep up with your artwork and videos if you want your music to be recognized and your audience to grow.
Strategy 5: Build a promo list
You should have a database of contact details for blogs, playlist owners, artists, and other people who can help promote your music. Create a spreadsheet and add contact details for 5 blogs, 5 YouTube channels, 5 playlist owners, and 5 other influencers.
How to find details:
Look on the blogs and YouTube channels for contact details.
Ask people in your network for details and email addresses.
Use Google. Look for other promo lists (people sometimes give them out — whether that’s a wise thing to do or not is up for debate, but they’re out there).
Your promotion list is not a spam list. In other words, when you release a track, don’t just blindly send it to everyone on the list with a generic promotional email. It will seem impersonal.
The bottom line
You can get your music heard. If it sounds decent, you plan out your releases, and you remain consistent, you can get your music heard. However, you may still be disappointed. It might not be exactly like you expect, but you may have to wait longer than you think.
Don’t ever give up! Your time will come. Just stay consistent and try your best and you will see results eventually.