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Music Promotion

7 Reasons Why Every Independent Artist Should Promote Older Songs

By Music Marketing, Music Promotion One Comment

The generally accepted norm in the music industry is that you never promote your older songs once new music has been released. I understand that artists don’t want to live in the past and revisit older music. As an artist grows and evolves, it’s more exciting to promote what’s new and current.

Many artists, especially more established ones who have been in the industry before social media and algorithms were even a thing, are hesitant to promote older songs. Not only do they feel it’s a bad look, but they think fans only want to hear new material.

If you’re in the middle of a campaign to promote a new release, your focus should be solely on that. However, you may have down periods that present a perfect opportunity to try something like this.

In this blog, I’ll will share my 8 reasons why we should challenge this old way of thinking and suggestions on how to go about promoting older music to reach new fans. Read More

How to Create Short-Form Videos to Gain New Fans As A Musician

By Music Marketing, Music Promotion, Video 2 Comments

Over the years, I’ve noticed that emerging artists’ number one problem is marketing their music to gain new fans and grow a loyal fanbase. It’s the most common question that I see in my inbox.

In our current climate, the key to getting yourself in front of potential fans cost-effectively is through short-form video content. Typically, musicians associate this type of short-form content with the dance, lip-sync and crazy challenge videos found on TikTok. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be any of that. This trend of short-form videos can actually be quite simple and more in line with what’s natural for musicians, which is “live” performance.

Short-form live performance videos have grown in popularity in the past couple of years and have shown to be effective for marketing new music and even helping some artists go viral.

In this blog, I cover all the basics you need to know about how to go about creating short-form videos as a musician to promote your music on social media. Read More

Living Legends. Photo by D4 Nguyen.

9 Lessons Today’s Musicians Can Learn from the DIY Independent Music Ethos of the 1990s

By Music Business, Music Promotion No Comments

We all know it’s hard to get your music noticed and grow a fanbase in today’s content-saturated world. Have you ever thought about how much harder it would have been to make a living with your music as an independent artist WITHOUT the internet and social media? Or how about without powerful computers (desktops, laptops, smartphones) to conveniently record and produce music from home?

In this blog, I want to share some key lessons we can learn from DIY independent music artists from the 1990s, specifically in the underground hip hop scene in the United States. Even if you don’t listen to or make hip hop / rap music, you should be able to learn something and gain perspective that applies to you today. Read More

How To Find Music Blogs To Promote Your Music

By Music Marketing, Music Promotion No Comments

This is a guest post by Mackenzie Leighton from Groover.

As an independent musician, good media coverage is the key to growing your fanbase and establishing notoriety. It can be overwhelming to find music blogs to submit music to when there are endless options to choose from. Some artists may choose to work with public relations agents that do this work for them, while others prefer to get media coverage on their own. If you want to send your music to blogs with guaranteed feedback, check out Groover: a platform that connects artists directly with influencers in the music industry.

Here are the best strategies to find music blogs so that you can successfully pitch your music to the right people and get media coverage.
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How to Submit Your New Release for Amazon Music Playlists and Stations

By Music Distribution, Music Promotion, Music Streaming No Comments

Last Updated: 8/10/22

Following in the footsteps of Spotify, Amazon Music has launched their own submission tool for artists to pitch a new song release for consideration on one of their editorial playlists and stations.

This is a brand new offering so I have yet to submit a song for any artists yet, but I wanted to put this on your radar. In this blog, I will go through how it works and why Amazon Music should be taken more seriously. Read More

How to Market Your Music With Little to No Budget (Resource for New Artists)

By Music Marketing, Music Promotion No Comments

Last Updated: 7/15/24

As you can imagine, this is a very popular question I get from aspiring and emerging artists. It always revolves around marketing music without a budget.

“How do I start a career with no money?”

“How do I market my music with little to no budget”

“How do I promote my songs if I’m broke?”

For so long, I’ve avoided answering this question directly because I didn’t want to support this idea that you can build a sustainable music career by depending on free or cheap options. But then I realized that I’ve indirectly answered this question throughout multiple blogs so I decided to put it all together in one resource.

In this blog, I will cover budget-friendly ways to tackle the different areas of music marketing. It’s important to understand that marketing encompasses more than just music promotion to reach new potential fans. It also involves other things like how to maintain relationships with your current fans, accessing data to make better business decisions and having products to sell them. Read More

How to NOT Get Scammed with “Music Promotion” Services

By Music Business, Music Promotion 3 Comments

Navigating the music business can be very tricky, especially for newer musicians. It’s hard to know who to trust when there are many people looking to exploit and take advantage of impressionable artists who will try anything to make it in this business.

The music business, like other entertainment industries, is filled with scammers. It is such a lucrative career path that many have set up operations to take advantage of these artists to make money. The area you’ll most likely encounter scammers in the music industry is in music promotion. After all, one of the biggest struggles artists have is getting their music heard and gaining exposure to build a fanbase.

There are a lot of music promotion companies out there, but not all will serve your best interests. This blog will help you make better decisions when looking for ways to promote your music while avoiding potential scams. It’s already challenging for musicians not making enough money from music so the last thing you want to do is spend on something that doesn’t work. Read More

Submit to Music Blogs

40 Music Blogs to Submit Your Songs for Exposure… But Is It Worth It?

By Music Marketing, Music Promotion 2 Comments

The biggest challenge emerging artists face is building a loyal fan base. Nowadays, it ain’t easy to get people to listen to your music in our content-saturated digital reality.

At the same time, there are different strategies and tactics to promote yourself and get your music in front of new potential fans. One of them is pitching to independent music blogs that have their own dedicated following. These bloggers are music lovers who enjoy sharing good music with their readers.

I created a list of 40 active music blogs that, as of 2023, you can submit and pitch your songs for exposure, at little to no cost… but is it really worth your time? Read More

Single Release Checklist for Independent Artists

The Ultimate Single Release Checklist for Independent Artist

By Music Business, Music Distribution, Music Promotion 9 Comments

Last Updated on 6/17/2024

Planning to release a new single? Don’t want to miss any steps?

Putting out a new song is relatively straightforward, but there are a lot of things that go into the process of a successful release.

In this blog, I will discuss everything independent artists need to know about releasing singles. On top of that, I will share all my personal checklists that I use for my clients. I will literally cover the entire process in depth so you don’t have to worry about forgetting any steps. Whenever you release music, feel free to use this blog as a reference so you have all your bases covered. Read More