Regardless of whether you’re a developing or established artist, the main goal here isn’t to rack up Spotify streams. Instead, the focus is on maximizing reach for discovery and brand awareness while building your social media following. Why?

Because growing a real audience is the foundation you need before streams, playlists or press can have any lasting impact. You want the ability to directly connect with potential fans so you can nurture those relationships to monetize later. That’s how you build a supportive fan base.

For the established artists, it’s important to regularly attract new eyes and ears to bring them into your marketing funnel. Having super fans is great, but business-wise, it can be challenging to sustain your career without bringing in new fans/customers regularly.

This plan won’t fit every type of artist or genre perfectly, but it should serve as a good starting point to figure out your content strategy.

The $1,000 Breakdown

• $600 → Short-form video content creation
• $400 → Social media ads (reserved only if a video pops off organically)

That’s it. Simple, clear and effective. The approach is a combination of organic posting and the smart use of paid media.
 

Why Content Comes First ($600)

Content is the core of this promotional plan, specifically video. Short-form video (think TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts) is the number one way people discover music today, especially for younger generations. These platforms are discovery engines that help push your content in front of new potential fans.

Many artists hate the idea of creating content, but the reality is that content has been key in promoting artists and their music, even before social media existed. From a marketing perspective, most online attention is on social media, so it only makes sense for artists to prioritize social media to build and grow their careers.

So if you’re serious about promoting a song and getting discovered by new people, you will need plenty of short-form video clips to post.

Here’s how I’d spend the $600:

• Hire a videographer if possible: See if you can find a local freelancer or someone looking for more experience with video who can do a video session for about $200 – $300 a session. For each shoot, aim for 2 to 4 hours at 2 or 3 locations. Within those locations, you’ll use different areas, angles, and backgrounds to give yourself more variety in your videos.
• Do multiple full song takes: Perform the song live or lip-sync it, just like you would in a traditional music video. Make sure to practice and rehearse beforehand so you can maximize your time shooting, especially if working with a videographer.
• Create volume: Chop up those takes into different clips. You can create a clip of the verses, chorus only, verse + chorus, bridge into chorus, or even a few standout lines within a verse. These clips can range from 10 to 90 seconds. If done right, one shoot can easily yield 20 to 40+ usable pieces of short-form videos.
• Switch things up: For each new location, bring outfit changes. Experiment with different camera angles, editing techniques, props or other actors to give you even more variety.
• Add text captions over the video: A lot of people scroll their news feed with the sound off. Using text on the video is one good way to catch someone’s eye and stop the scroll. This can be text captions of the lyrics as you’re performing them, or you can also use a text hook. Your hook should either signal who the song is for, communicate what it’s about, or intrigue the viewer to watch more. Some artists may choose not to use any text, and that can work perfectly fine too.

To learn more about creating short-form videos and what type of video you should be creating, check out this blog here.

After your first shoot, you should have a full month’s worth of daily content. Maybe even more if you post only on weekdays and recycle clips with new captions or hooks.

For posting on Instagram, you can use the new trial reels feature to test content. Posting a reel as a trial will only show it to non-followers to see how it performs before deciding to make it public on your profile and share it with the rest of your followers.

What if you can’t hire a videographer?
Use the $600 to invest in equipment: a tripod, lighting, and maybe editing software. Your smartphone camera is more than good enough, especially if you have one of the newer iPhones or Samsung Galaxies. Ask a friend to help shoot if needed. The key is consistency, not fancy production.

If you are shooting your own videos, check out this blog.
 

When to Use Ads ($400)

The remaining $400 is strictly for ads, but there’s a catch. You don’t spend it unless one of your videos starts taking off organically.

Think of ads as “fuel for the fire.” If a clip is already working well on its own, boosting it will amplify its reach and impact. Otherwise, spending ad money on a video from the beginning without trying it out first is a risky gamble.

Since we’re on a limited budget and you can test it for free, it makes sense to put money behind a video once you know it works as an organic post.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. Post your first batch of 20–30 clips daily (or weekdays only). Once a day is fine.
2. Watch the numbers carefully: If a clip shows strong engagement numbers or signs or signs of virality, consider putting $100 – $200 behind the video.
3. Keep stacking: If a second video also does well, put another $100 behind it. You’ve got up to four shots with that $400.
4. Keep the momentum going: If a video goes viral and attracts followers, use another $300 to create a fresh batch of videos for the same song, in new locations or with new visuals, to keep the momentum alive.

What If Nothing Pops?

 
This is important: not every song is going to hit, and that’s okay. It may take posting multiple videos for months and experimenting with different songs to start seeing traction. Remember that what’s considered “good” music is subjective, so there’s no way any strategy is guaranteed to work right away.

If none of your clips take off after the first $300 session, don’t panic.

Here’s how to pivot:

• Use the second $300 for a new batch of videos, but this time for your next song.
• Keep the $400 in reserve for ads, in case something from the next batch pops.
• What about the first batch of videos? Keep posting them on Instagram as a ‘trail reel.’ This is a useful tool for creators to see how your videos perform for non-followers without having the video visible on your profile. However, you can’t post it exactly as you did before so you’ll need to change it up and experiment with different captions or text hooks.
• If the second song doesn’t move the needle, repeat the cycle with the third. Shoot another batch of videos and you should have $100 left over for ads.

Newer artists often need several songs before something resonates with an audience. It doesn’t mean your music sucks, it just means you’re still developing and experimenting. The problem is not the algorithm. Having the self-awareness and patience to not let poor responses to your videos affect your consistency will give you the best shot of finding success.
 

What About Playlists, Music Blogs, Radio or PR?

 
I wouldn’t spend money on any of these with a $1,000 budget. Here’s why:

• Playlists: Other than pitching to Spotify’s editorial playlists (which is free and worth doing), I wouldn’t pay for any playlisting services. Legit services can be expensive and it usually won’t build a fanbase. Streams and followers are siloed on their respective platforms, so you can’t reach directly to listeners… at least for now. Plus, there are a lot of playlisting scams. It carries some risk if your song lands on a botted playlist with fake streams.
• Music Blogs: We no longer live in the 2000s. Blogs aren’t how most people discover music anymore. Sites like SubmitHub or Groover can be fine to submit your songs for feedback, but don’t expect them to break your career.
• Radio: A majority of Americans still listen to the radio, but it’s a high barrier of entry and radio pitching services can be expensive. Unless your song goes massively virally and crosses over into the mainstream/traditional media, most songs aren’t going to be the right fit for radio programming on the popular stations where you would ideally want your music on. Of course, there are smaller local or college radio stations. But in my experience, it’s not cost-effective compared to what you can achieve on social media.
• PR Campaign: Hiring a publicist is costly, and even if you land a feature in a big outlet, it won’t necessarily move the needle for your business at this stage. Getting cover on Rolling Stone isn’t going to transform your career.

With limited resources, your focus should be squarely on creating content that reaches people where they already discover new music, social media.
 

Scaling the Plan

 
$1,000 might feel like a lot for a new or developing artist. But you can scale this plan down:

• $500 budget: $300 for content, $200 in reserve for ads.
• $250 budget: $150 for DIY content (tripod, lighting, editing apps), $100 for ads if something works.

The same logic and steps apply, but in smaller chunks.
 

Final Thoughts

 
Promoting your music and building real traction is one of the hardest parts of being a developing artist. If you’re not regularly performing live and reaching new listeners in person, your next best opportunity is on social media, specifically through short-form video. It’s been the engine behind breakout artists of all types for years, and it’ll remain essential heading into 2026.

Here’s a recap. If I had $1,000 to promote a song:

• $600 → Shoot short-form performance videos
• $400 → Keep in reserve for ads if a clip takes off organically or goes viral

No playlists. No blogs. No PR. No radio. Just consistent, engaging video content and smart use of ads.

Social media, especially video, is the most cost-effective way to promote your music and develop your brand. A playlist can expose someone to a new song, but a video can communicate a lot more about you. And at the end of the day, you don’t just want listeners who stream some of your songs or buy a vinyl record. You want fans who will recommend your music to their friends, show up to your live shows every time you’re in their city and buy merch regularly to support your career long-term.

Remember, the goal isn’t to inflate vanity metrics like streaming numbers. You want to grow your audience and fans who connect deeply with you as an artist and brand. That’s how you build a music career that lasts.

The post How Artists Should Spend a $1,000 Budget Promoting a Song in 2026 appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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 my checklist that I use for my clients. I will cover the entire process in depth so you can feel confident you’re doing all you can to reach your goals with the release. Whenever you release music, feel free to use this blog as a reference so you have all your bases covered.

My single release process is broken down into 6 phases:

1. Preparation
2. Distribution
3. Promotion Planning
4. Days before the release
5. Day of release
6. Post-release

Before jumping into the process, I’ll go over why you want to release more singles and how often you should do it. If you want free downloadable checklists, links will be at the end.
 

Why release more singles?

 
Many claim the album is dying in this digital age. Although it’s never going to be dead, the traditional “release an album every year or two” model is incompatible with how emerging independent artists build momentum and grow a fan base in this music climate. Releasing singles makes the most sense for those objectives, especially for newer artists on a tighter budget.

1. Releasing singles consistently is more effective for growing your audience. To grow a fanbase, releasing content on a regular basis is needed to build momentum and stay top of mind. Fan loyalty is fickle when we have more music options than we can keep up with. Going silent for an extended period of time can set your progress back.
2. You get more out of each song to engage fans. Producing professional quality music can be expensive. Releasing singles allows you to focus attention on one song and maximize its potential. When releasing an album, you may have a few lead singles, but other songs will not get the attention it deserves. This is particularly true if you haven’t established yourself as an artist and don’t have a strong following yet. Plus, with so much more music being released now, the attention an album gets, even for the biggest music stars, is often a couple of weeks.
3. A single is easier to consume. At the end of the day, music listeners prefer short, consumable pieces of content like a single song or video from artists they never heard. Before serving people full meals, you gotta break it down into snackable servings until you find enough hungry fans who want a buffet.
4. Professionally recorded, mixed and mastered albums can be expensive. Unless money is not a problem, it doesn’t make sense for new, emerging or developing artists to fund an entire album out of pocket without any traction and an existing audience to market to.

This does not mean you should never release larger projects. A collection of songs from an album or EP can allow fans to fully dive into your essence as an artist. Since anyone can release singles, an album release signifies an important milestone in an artist’s career. You’re more likely to get coverage from media, press and blogs for an album than just a single. Lastly, albums and EPs are more eventful, which opens up bigger monetization opportunities like tours and merch.

In today’s music industry, releasing singles and shorter songs is a new reality, but it doesn’t mean you have to conform or compromise your artistry. Just understand that pouring thousands of dollars into an album, when you’ve never released a single song and don’t have a fanbase, is very risky gamble.

How often should I release a single?

 
A singles-oriented strategy to grow a fanbase will work best if you can release singles on a consistent basis. A song every two weeks or once a month is an ideal pace, but this depends on a number of factors.

• Do you have enough music ready to be released? It would be smart to have a handful of completed songs stocked up rather than releasing it as you complete it. This way you’re not stressing out to meet your deadlines.
• Do you have the ability to record and produce the music professionally? Unless your music aesthetic is intentionally lo-fi or rough, it’s important to have your music mixed and mastered. You want your songs to sound great on any device it is being played on. It doesn’t matter how much music you put out there, if it’s not the best version it can be, it will probably not attract much attention.
• Do you have a marketing/promotion budget for each single? You need a dedicated budget set aside for each release. I would say a few hundred per single at least, with the majority of going into video content creation and possibly social media ads. After all, it is pointless to release music consistently if you’re not effectively promoting it to reach new potential fans.
• Are you able to create video content for each release? The most important promotional asset you need to push your single is video content. Pushing your single by itself with only cover art has very limited potential in social media news feeds.
• Do you have the physical, mental and emotional capacity to handle the necessary tasks for each release? If you have a lot going on in your life, maybe like a full-time job, it may not be the best idea to commit to releasing a song every two weeks. Figure out how much time you can set aside to create and release music.

Hip hop artist Russ released a song a week for two years straight before one of his songs took off in 2015 and charted on the Billboard Hot 100. This was how he became a global success, but that’s what worked for him. It’s not feasible for most musicians to attempt this and risk burning out. Depending on your individual circumstances and resources, you need to decide on a release schedule that works best for you.

Find a pace that you’re comfortable with at first and stick with it, even if it’s 1 single every 3 months. You can always pick up the pace later. Consistency is key to build momentum and the better you can stick to your plan, the quicker you’re likely to find success.
 

Phase 1: Preparation

 
Checklist

• Mix and mastered audio file (.WAV)
• Design cover art (.JPEG or .PNG)
• Plan out promo content (videos and photos)
• Register song with copyright office
• Cover song? Secure mechanical license
• Decide on songwriting splits with collaborators​ (song split sheet)
• Register song with PRO (Performing Rights Organization) and MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective) or publishing admin
• Let your music licensing / publishing company know about the release (if you have one)
• Set a release date
• Explore merch opportunities

Mixing and Mastering

After the song is written and recorded, you’ll need to mix and master it so it can sound its best wherever it’s being played. Unfortunately, anything involving music recording, engineering and production are out of my scope of knowledge so I can’t help you there.

But if you’re unfamiliar with the importance of mixing and mastering, you can easily do a search on YouTube or Google to learn more about it. Although it’s best to pay a producer or audio engineer who knows what they’re doing, you should still educate yourself with the basics.

 
Want an affordable service to get your song mastered? Landr offers a mastering service that only takes a few minutes and they let you try it for free. An artist I work with has used them in the past for the projects we released.

Design Cover Art

 
In order to distribute your music to stores, you will need cover art to go with your release. The image format you want is JPEG or PNG.

For distributors like DistroKid, the minimum resolution should be higher than 1400 x 1400. Because your cover will be used in various placements on these digital platforms, you want to make sure it looks good, even on large screens or TVs so aim for 3000 x 3000 resolution.

If you need a tool to increase the resolution of your cover art with minimal quality loss, try this free tool called Let’s Enhance. For example, if you export cover art from Canva at 1400 x 1400, you can scale the resolution up to 2800 x 2800 while keeping the same quality. You get 5 free image enhancements with a free plan. Another option is using CapCut’s Upscale Image tool.

Plan Promo Content (Videos and Photos)

 
Having video content to release with your single is necessary to see the best results. Watching a video creates an active listening experience that makes it more likely for viewers to be engaged and listen to your new track. You don’t need a big budget, high production music video, but you do need visual content to go with your music. A traditional lyric video or live performance footage of the single can be included in the mix as additional content. I mention this early in the preparation stage because you may need extra time to get the video content done in time for the release.

The traditional music video can work fine, but it should not be the only video you have. If your goal is to grow your social media following and reach new potential fans, I highly recommend leaning into creating multiple short-form videos. Chopping up your traditional music video into shorter vertical clips to post on socials is a viable option, but I would recommend doing more.

In the age of TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts, it is essential to have a handful of short-form videos, shot vertically of course, to promote your single. Not just your typical, “hey, I have a new single out” to promote the day of release, but even multiple short teasers leading up to the release. Typically, these are about 15 – 30 seconds in length but generally under 90 seconds.

Additionally, you want to focus on video content that can get the attention from people who don’t know who you are, but can be entertained by or find value in it. Just think, if you were on a crowded street in a major big city, what would you do to get attention as an artist? For video, it doesn’t have to be anything crazy or super creative. It can be simply you performing your new single on video with the lyrics on it. This is the case if you want to post videos for organic growth or use the videos as creative for your ad campaigns.

Depending on what the song is about, there may be an opportunity to get creative with your promo content. Maybe there’s a strong theme or visual component that you may want to commission as an art piece from a local artist you like, specifically for the single. That art/design can be used as the cover art and merch to promote that specific song.

Here’s some other content you may want to have to go with your single release:

• A video that breaks down the story behind the song.
• A video breaking down your favorite lyrics.
• Use video to create a story around the song.
• Performance videos (could be as simple as you lip syncing the chorus/hook in different scenarios or dancing to it).
• Behind the scenes footage of the song being recorded, if it’s interesting.
• Don’t limit it to just video. Make sure to also get behind the scenes photos from the recording of the song and the music video.
• For music videos, take some actual photos (not just stills or screenshots of video). This could be used for video covers on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.
• Have new photos that can be used for the cover art or single announcement.
• Crowdsource footage from fans to make a video.
• Live performance of the single from a previous show.

There are other simple video options out there if you don’t want to invest much money or you want to be more anonymous in the videos. I personally wouldn’t recommend it, but you may have your specific reasons for going this route.

For DistroKid users, you can try their music video generator Vizy for a simple visualizer you can post or to use for running Meta Ads. It costs less than $10 each. With the rise of AI in the past few years, you can easily find other options to create quick visuals with a Google search.

The more video content you have to promote the single, the better. Get creative and have fun with it. For artists, marketing with video content is where I would dedicate the most time, money and energy into for the release campaign.
 

Publishing Tasks

 
Are you a songwriter? Make sure you’re a member of a PRO (Publishing Rights Organization) so you can register the song credits and receive performance royalties you’re owed from publishing. Avoid making these mistakes when registering your songs.

Is the song a collaboration? If you wrote the song with other co-writers, get your ownership percentage splits in writing based on how much each person contributed to the song. This document is called a split sheet. Be sure to collect their publishing information like the IPI (Interested Party Information) for each person being credited so you can register it properly. Remember the IPI number (11 digits) is not the member ID from the PRO.

Is the song an original? If it’s a song you wrote or co-wrote with other writers, make sure it’s copyrighted. If you don’t use a publishing admin, don’t forget to register your song with the MLC to collect mechanical royalties for the musical composition when DSPs, like Spotify and Apple Music, stream your song on their platform.

Is your song a cover? If you’re releasing a cover song for a physical format, downloads or streams, you need to get the proper mechanical licenses. Usually, your music distributor should offer you an option to secure the mechanical licenses for your cover song when you upload your music. For example, here are the instructions for DistroKid. If your music distributor doesn’t offer the service, try Easy Song Licensing or Royal Solutions (TuneLicensing).

Do you work with a music licensing or publishing company? If you work with any companies that pitch your music for sync opportunities in T.V. shows, movies, commercials or video games, be sure to let know ahead of time and send them the proper assets.

Are you using a publishing admin? If you use a publishing administrator (as you should if you’re an independent songwriter) like SongTrust, then you only need to register the song with them and not your PRO. For those who are not familiar, a publishing administrator helps you collect money that you’ve generated around the world for the songs you wrote. Although not related to publishing, this is a reminder to also register your song with SoundExchange since it’s an administrative task typically grouped for collecting royalties from your music.

Set a Release Date

 
You should always give yourself a minimum of 2 weeks between the day you upload the music to your distributor and the release date. I would aim to schedule the release 3 to 4 weeks in advance, especially if you want to give yourself plenty of time to properly promote and pitch to playlists. Even if you upload the track far in advance, it doesn’t mean you have to announce the single right away either.

Although the music industry usually releases new music on Fridays, you can technically release it on any day of the week. I would avoid the weekends though. I personally like Wednesdays or Thursdays.

Lastly, be aware of other big name artist releases, events or holidays that may be going on around your tentative release date. It’s not going to make or break your single release, but it’s always better to minimize any distractions that can takeaway focus from your song.
 

Explore Merch Opportunities

 
Creating new merch with a music release is more common with an EP or album. For singles, it may be a bit more challenging and riskier.

But depending on the song, the story, message or theme behind it, there may be an opportunity to create a design to go with the release of the single.

If it’s something you want to explore, be sure to do it early in the process so you have the proper time to execute.

Phase 2: Distribution

 
Checklist of what you should have:

• Mastered song (Typically 16-bit, 44.1 kHz WAV)
• Cover art file (3000 x 3000 resolution JPEG or PNG)
• Lyrics
• Songwriter credits
• ISRC code
• Release date

Once preparation is done, you should be ready to schedule your release for distribution. To get your songs on services like Spotify and Apple Music, you need to go through a music aggregator (music distributor). Although you can easily get your music in over 150 digital stores this way, you will have to manually upload your music to Bandcamp, SoundCloud and Audiomack. Remember to add the ISRC code (discussed below) to those other platforms once you get it from your distributor to link the master recording.

Make sure your song is going to the top platforms:

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• Amazon Music
• YouTube Music
• YouTube
• Pandora
• SoundCloud
• Bandcamp

Make sure to select every store so your single is everywhere. If you’re using DistroKid, be sure to also select Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories and TikTok so they are available there.

Bandcamp

You can upload your single on Bandcamp ahead of time as a draft or private song. Once it’s time to release, you can manually set it to public and your followers will get an email notification that it’s available. Unfortunately, you can’t schedule it to go public automatically. If you’re not selling digital downloads of your music on your website, I would consider doing so with Bandcamp.

SoundCloud

You can get the song ready on SoundCloud by uploading it as a private song. You can schedule a release to go public at a specific date and time, but it’s only available for SoundCloud Pro Unlimited users. If you have free basic plan, you’ll have to do this manually.

Audiomack

If you do hip hop, R&B, electronic/EDM, reggae/dancehall or latin music, Audiomack is another music distribution platform you can upload your music. Similarly to SoundCloud, you can schedule your single to go public automatically. Just keep in mind they only focus on those specific genres. Also, they only pay out master recording royalties and no publishing royalties.

Is the single going to be released again on your upcoming EP or album? When you upload a song to your distributor, they will generate an ISRC code for your song recording. Make sure to use that same ISRC code when you upload the song again for the album. Doing this will allow digital music stores to treat the previously released single and the song on the album as the same song/master recording so your streams numbers are linked.

What is an ISRC code? The International Standard Recording Code is an international standard code for uniquely identifying sound recordings and music video recordings. Every song you upload will have a unique ISRC code like how every product in a supermarket will have a unique barcode to identify the item. You should be able to get this code when you upload your music to your distributor. If you use DistroKid, click on your release in your account dashboard to see your ISRC code. Be sure to include your ISRC when uploading your song to Bandcamp and SoundCloud.

ISRC code location for DistroKid users

Lyrics

Music distributors like DistroKid will allow you to add lyrics so they can submit them to platforms like Apple Music, iTunes and MusixMatch (for Instagram Stories). Here are guidelines on how to format lyrics for Apple Music and MusixMatch.
 

Phase 3: Promotion Planning

 
Checklist:

• Start a task timeline or calendar
• Submit for Spotify editorial playlist consideration
• Submit for Amazon Music Editorial playlist consideration
• Add a Canvas video to Spotify
• Launch pre-save / pre-order campaign link
• Create smart link or pivot/landing page for the release
• Prepare single announcement post
• Day of release post
• Incorporating Patreon
• Upload audio message to Pandora AMP
• Consider windowing your release to maximize revenue
• Consider live streaming to promote the single

After you upload your music to your distributor and a set release date, your primary focus is going to be on promotion and marketing. To make sure everything runs smoothly, create a schedule or timeline of what needs to be done on each day leading up to release day. Set deadlines to make sure you stay on task.

In this section, I will go over tasks for you to consider in your planning process and what you should have ready for promoting your single.
 

Submit for Spotify Editorial Playlist Consideration

Once your single is uploaded, you should submit your song for Spotify editorial playlist consideration. It’ll take a few days for Spotify to get your single into its system. You should receive an email from Spotify saying that it’s been added and scheduled for release.

Submit for Amazon Music Editorial Playlist Consideration

Now you can pitch your new release to Amazon Music’s curation team to be considered for, not just their playlists, but their (radio) stations as well. The process is the same as Spotify, but done through your Amazon Music for Artists profile.

Add a Canvas Video to Spotify

According to Spotify, adding a Canvas video to your song on their platform are likely to see the following benefits:

• 145% more likely to get track shares
• 20% more likely to get added to playlists
• 9% more likely that fans will visit your profile
• 5% increase in streams
• 1.4% more likely fans will save your song

When you share your song to Instagram Stories that has a Canvas video on Spotify, it will show there as well.

If you just need something quick and basic, you can use DistoKid’s free Canva generator as a member.

Launch a Pre-save / Pre-order Campaign

Update: Spotify now has a new feature called Countdown Pages that allows fans to officially pre-save your album release through their platform. Unfortunately, it does not work for singles. My views on a pre-save campaign have changed and I don’t feel it is necessary or worth the trouble.

If you have the time and energy, you can consider launching a pre-order or Spotify pre-save campaign. Pre-orders can help you chart, but the focus should be on pre-save since most people stream music. Pre-add is Apple Music’s version of a pre-save, but it’s only available for albums and not singles.

To improve your chances of getting on algorithmic Spotify playlists, you want to incentivize people to pre-save your song on Spotify. I believe getting pre-saves for your release is the only engagement signal you can build up before it is released. I would like to think that pre-saves can help with getting placed on Spotify’s Editorial playlists, but there’s no real way to test that. At the very least, you’ll be able to make a bigger splash with all your pre-savers getting a notification that the new single is out.

To make a pre-save link, you may have to use a smart link tool to generate one. Not all of them will let you create it for free so refer to this blog to find the tool that works for you.

If you use DistroKid, they will automatically create a free pre-save link / pivot page for you called a HyperFollow page. On this pivot page, Spotify is often on the top of this list so it makes it easier for you to push for pre-saves. Just asking your fans may not be enough incentive for them, so you may want to offer something of value if they do pre-save.

Here’s an example of DistroKid’s HyperFollow page you can use for a Spotify pre-save campaign.

You can check to see how many people saved your release and it will also give you some data about those people. More importantly, it will give you their email address. This is how you can offer something in exchange for the pre-save. It could be access to unreleased content. It could be a free download of the song. It could be a one-time coupon code for your merch store. It could be a giveaway where you will randomly select anyone who has pre-saved the song.

Butterscotch offered to do a beatbox shout out for those who pre-save

Create a Smart Link or Pivot Page

A smart link or pivot page is a web page that contains links to all the different places people can buy or listen to your new release. This a link you would use to promote in your social media posts, Instagram profile, newsletter, IG Stories, etc.

Whether or not you want to want to do a pre-save campaign, you should still have a smart link/pivot page for every release. The easiest option is to use DistroKid’s HyperFollow page because it’s automatically generated for you after you upload your release.

Lastly, you may want to make a shortened bit.ly link for presentation purposes. Insert this link on your social media profiles, posts and video descriptions when the single is officially out. It can also help with tracking clicks and where they are clicking from.

https://bit.ly/sade-life

https://bit.ly/gtap-walk
 

Prepare Single Announcement Post

Example of an announcement post

This is essentially your first post mentioning you are releasing a single. It can be done on social media and through an email newsletter. Some may want to post the cover art for this initial announcement (assuming you have other content like a music video) or save it for the day of the release.

Some artists also like to post a teaser before the official announcement. For example, you can post a photo (not the cover art) and mention in the caption you’ll drop a new song if you get ‘x’ amount of comments or emojis.

You’re not limited to some static photo or cover art either. Nor are you limited to doing it with one post. You may want to make multiple, short form promotional videos to use leading up to the release day. You can maybe perform some of the lyrics acapella in one video. In others, just perform the chorus/hook in a bunch of different ways. A powerful device for promotion is repetition. Usually it’s the chorus that you want to have stuck in people’s heads (earworm effect), so lean into that with these announcement/promotional videos.

In terms of timing the announcement, I would minimize the time between the first announcement about single and the actual release date if you don’t a way to tease or engage your fans until its out. In other words, I would avoid announcing a new single is dropping in 4 weeks and not mention again until release day. Most of the marketing for the single should be happening after the song is out anyway, so it’s okay to have a shorter lead time for the release. You can still upload the single to the distributor 4 weeks in advance and announce the single is coming 1 or 2 weeks before the release date.
 

When and how to release a traditional music video?

If you do decide to have a long-form music video to go with your single release, you ideally want to launch them together. But it’s okay to release the video after the song is already available too. However, avoid releasing a music video before the song is available on digital stores. You need to make sure people have someplace to go to hear and download the song after they’ve seen the video.

If you have enough promotional content, you can release a video with a song the same day. If not, space them out by releasing the song first then the music video shortly after.

With a few platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo) where you can release long-form music videos, there are generally two strategies when it comes to how to release it.

1. You can make it available on all platforms at the same time. It’s more convenient and fewer steps for people to watch natively on the platform they are on.
2. Upload to only one platform like YouTube and direct everyone there. This helps build traction in one place rather than having the views scattered.

To help with funneling views, you can also launch a video premiere on YouTube or Twitch to turn it into a watch party event. Be sure to schedule and promote the premiere ahead of time so people know exactly when to tune in. Let fans know that they can opt-in to receive a notification reminder if they choose. After the premiere is over, you may decide to upload to Facebook.

However, I find that it’s more difficult to pull this off as an effective funneling strategy, which is why I found it’s better to make the video available on all platforms. Deciding on which route to go with will depend on your business goal.

Update: The premiere video feature on Facebook was deprecated August 22, 2022 so you can only do video premieres now on YouTube.

Remember that YouTube favors creators who upload videos on a regular basis (a couple of times a week). The typical musician only uses YouTube as a vault to upload the occasional music video, which is not optimal to take advantage of YouTube’s algorithm. Funneling all your views to YouTube is not going to be helpful unless you’re already consistently active on their platform or if your video goes viral elsewhere first.
 

Day of Release Post

If you have a traditional music video to release with your single, this would be a good day to post a snippet for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X. Choose at least three short clips that are the most engaging. Avoid the intro if it needs to build. Make sure that there’s a smart link to your release in the description of your music video so fans can easily stream, save or add to a playlist.

For Facebook, you’ll likely just use the full music video as the release day post, unless you’re trying to funnel views to YouTube.

If you have short-form performance videos, you can also consider posting this first. Because you can post as much as you want over the course of the campaign, there’s no real right or wrong way to approach this. You can even save the traditional music video a week after the single drops.
 

Incorporating Patreon

If you have a membership business through Patreon, you should decide how you want to incorporate this single release. You may give your patrons early access to see the music video or listen/download the song before it’s officially released. I have a couple of clients that use Patreon, so it comes up naturally for me when I’m planning releases. If you don’t use Patreon, you can ignore this step.

Pandora AMP – Artist Audio Messages

If you have a presence and following on Pandora, you may want to use their artist audio message feature. You can add a 15-second custom voice message to your songs with a specific call to action. Use it to link Pandora listeners to your website to sell merch or target fans geographically to sell tickets.
 

Consider Windowing Your Release to Maximize Revenue

Windowing your release has become an increasingly popular strategy for artists. What this means is making your release available on platform that allows you earn money upfront before it is widely released through streaming. For example, you can make the single live on Bandcamp a week before its official release date so fans can listen to it early and possibly pay for the download.

Consider Live Streaming

If you have the following for it, you may want to go live on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or YouTube to promote your single. You can host a Q&A session to talk to fans about the release and share stories about the song or video.

A platform where I’ve seen this done well is on Twitch. When releasing her video Safehouse, JVNA went live on her Twitch to host a watch party for the premiere on YouTube. In the live stream, she explained what the song was about, broke down the music video, answered questions and shared insights about the process.

JVNA Release Party on Twitch for her new single.

Weeks prior to this, she was on Twitch teasing fans with the green screens as she was getting ready to record the scenes for her music video.

What JVNA did is a bit more “advanced” and she does have a larger following, but it gives you ideas of how you can build excitement and engage fans around a single. It can be as simple as live streaming the day before the release and play a teaser of the song or video.

We did something similar on Twitch as her first live stream on the platform:

If you do go this route, don’t forget to add the live stream event to Bandsintown so your trackers will get a notification. You can also add live stream events to SongKick so it shows on your Spotify profile.
 

Phase 4: Days Before the Release

 
Checklist:

• Have social media posts ready with captions and hashtags
• Design and schedule your email blast
• Get smart link / pivot page ready
• Schedule music video (YouTube and Facebook)
• Create a custom thumbnail for your video
• Prep video clips for social media ads

Plan Your Social Media Posts

You should have your posts all ready to go including captions, links and content you plan to use for your posts. If you have a traditional music video, you may want to use the full music video as the day of release post or just a snippet that leads to a full video.

Primary platforms to post on to promote your single:

• Instagram
• Instagram Stories
• Instagram Broadcast channel
• Facebook
• Twitter (X)
• Post on your Community tab in YouTube (If you have over 500 subscribers…)
• Post message in Bandsintown
• Send message in Bandcamp

Design Your Email Newsletter

Get your email ready to send to your list. Keep the email simple with one focus, which is to either to the music video and/or pivot page where fans can stream the song. Schedule it to send for the day of the release.

Customize Your Smart Link / Pivot Page

Depending on which smart link tool you use, you may need to do some customizations before your single goes live. This includes adding your music video, social media links and Facebook pixel for retargeting.

If you create your own landing page as I do, you will need to add the direct links to each digital platform your single is going to be available on. You should already have Google Analytics and your Facebook Pixel installed on your website. Usually what I do is wait for the song to release at 9:00pm the day before which is when it goes live for me in California (assuming you set it to release based on New York time). I create bit.ly links for each major streaming platform and add those shortened links to the landing page.
 

Schedule Music Video (YouTube and Facebook)

For YouTube, I recommend uploading your music video as close to when you start promoting. Because not all your subscribers will get notified of your new upload, so it’s important to maximize engagement and views within the first 24 hours of uploading it. This feedback is what YouTube’s algorithms use to determine if your upload is worth popping up on the home page or suggest videos of your subscribers. You can also schedule your video to go public from private at a specified date and time.

Fill in the video description with as much relevant data as possible. This includes:

• A link to your landing page or where people can listen/download the song.
• Lyrics
• A short bio
• Link to your website
• Link to your social media accounts
• Relevant tags

Another good option you have is to schedule your video as a premiere. This turns your music video into a livestream event where fans can gather and watch it together for the first time. After the video premieres, it turns into a regular Youtube video on your channel with the exact same link. If you want to be able to upload the music video to YouTube ahead of time and not have to wait for the day of the release to upload, I would recommend doing this.

The other convenient thing about doing this is that you can embed the video to your website/landing page, include the link in your LinkTree, start adding end cards, include the link in a scheduled email blast, add it to your YouTube playlists and set it as a featured video on your YouTube channel all before the video actually goes live.

An example of a video premiere page on YouTube

If it’s a cover song, make sure you optimize your headline, thumbnail and tags to be seen by those maybe looking for the original song.

For Facebook, you can easily schedule your music video to publish in Meta Business Suite.
 

Video Prep for Social Media Ads

Whether its snippets of your music video or a collection of short-form performance videos, get them ready so you can use them as creative to run ads for Meta and/or TikTok. Ideally, you want them to be less than 1 minute long. Be mindful about the video sizes (1080 x 1920, 1080 x 1080, 1920 x 1080) that’s needed for the various placements on Meta.

In terms of campaign objectives, you may want to drive traffic to the full music video or the smart link to get people to stream the new single. You can also be build up video views for clips you’ve already posted on socials as a strategy to build custom audiences from it to run conversion campaigns down the line.
 

Phase 5: Day of Release Checklist

 
Promote on social media channels

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Instagram Stories
• Instagram Broadcast Channel
• TikTok
• X (Twitter)
• YouTube Shorts
• Post on your YouTube Community tab
• Post message to your trackers on Bandsintown
• Send a direct message to followers on Bandcamp

Upload music video (YouTube, Facebook)

• Embed the video into your smart link, landing page or “Link in Bio” page (Linktree, Beacons page)
• Add smart link in the video description.
• If you upload to Facebook, pin the video to the top and make it a featured video.

Update YouTube channel

• Add your video as a featured video for your channel.
• Add to your playlist for music videos.
• Add a link card to take viewers to your website or landing page.
• Add the art track of your single to your channel as a playlist. This is autogenerated if you opted in to have it created from your music distributor.

Update your website

• Create a page for the single, add a smart link and embed the music video to your home page.
• If you have specific merch for the release, make it available for purchase.
• If you created a custom landing page, make sure to embed music video there and add links to the individual streaming platforms.​

Update social media profiles

• Add the smart link for your single to all your social media profiles.​ If you use a link-in-bio tool like Linktree or Beacons, be sure to update that to include the smart link to your single.
• If you created a banner or avatar graphic for the release, update it at this time.

Add lyrics

• Genius
• Musixmatch: Sync up lyrics to your song to display on platforms like Instagram Stories, Spotify, Apple Music, etc. Some distributors, like DistroKid, offer these services too.
• Apple Music / iTunes (via a distributor like DistroKid)

Make the song public
If you uploaded as private and prepared these ahead of time, all you would need to do is make them public.

• SoundCloud
• Bandcamp
• Audiomack

Launch social media ad campaign

• Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram)
• TikTok Ads
• Spotify Marquee Ads
• YouTube Ads

Phase 6: Post-Release Checklist

 
You did all the planning and preparation. The single officially goes live and you made the initial announcement on your channels that the track is out. As many of you should know, it doesn’t end there. In fact, you’re just getting started.

How long you continue to promote the single is going to depend on your goals, how much promo content you have, your budget, other releases planned and how well the single performs. I would give yourself 2-4 weeks to promote the single

Here are some things you want to do to follow up with your single’s promotion.

• Resend to email List – Send another email to people who didn’t open it the first time. For MailChimp users, here’s how you do it.
• Promote multiple times on social media – Don’t just post about it once. Have multiple short-form clips ready to be used as promo. In fact, create a schedule and map out when you want to roll out all of the other content you have. Because algorithms control what shows up in social media news feeds, there’s a good chance not everyone has seen your post the first time. Avoid spamming posts throughout the day and using the exact same covert art multiple times. You should always have a variety of content to use so you’re not posting the same photo or clip.
• Mix up the type of content – Instead of music video snippets and performance clips, incorporate other types of content into your social media posting. Share behind the scenes. Get personal and tell stories related to the single or break down the lyrics.
• Encourage user-generated content – Think about ways your fans can use your song in the creation of their own content. Keep an eye out for trends and opportunities the song can used. For example, in a meme or dance challenge.
• Create your own themed playlist – Build a playlist around your single with other artists that match the mood, theme, genre or topic. Give it a proper title and create cover art to go with it. Here’s an example.
• Look for playlist opportunities for your song – You can read more here.
• Seek press and blog coverage – Getting coverage on bigger publications isn’t usually accessible unless you’re more established and go through a publicist. However, you can try submitting to these 44 independent music blogs.
• Set up automated payment splits for mechanical royalties – If there are other collaborators on the song, you can easily set up payment splits. Currently, DistroKid is one of the few distributors that offer this.
• Schedule your next release – Lastly, get your next single ready and repeat this process! You have to keep releasing music and build momentum. Remember, consistency is key.

Conclusion

 
My goal was to give you a complete overview of the most important things you should consider for a successful release. At this point, you may be a bit overwhelmed by how much work can go into a release.

Although this is a comprehensive break down of my release process, it doesn’t mean you have to do everything for every single you put out. Ideally, you want to but don’t be hard on yourself if you’re not able to. Even I don’t end up covering it all for various reasons from lack of ad budget to no opportunity to create promotional content. My best advice is to give yourself plenty of time to handle tasks so you’re not doing everything last minute. I’ve had to do that a couple of times and it’s not fun. Use the checklists as guides and do as much planning ahead to stay organized. If you’re just starting out, do the essentials and slowly add more aspects to the release as you get more comfortable.

The post The Ultimate Single Release Checklist for Independent Artist in 2026 appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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 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.

To be clear, when I talk about promoting older songs, I’m talking about creating content like short-form performance videos focused on reaching newer audiences. However, it can also include sharing backstories of a song and behind-the-scenes videos to engage current fans.
 

1. We live in a totally different content climate.

 
We’re not in the 20th century anymore where communication, media and entertainment operated much differently. Traditional media (TV, radio, film, print) had their corporate gatekeepers for their respective content channels. With limited ways to share art and communicate, content was scarce because it was expensive to produce. Plus, distribution to a wider audience was not accessible to the average person.

For the music industry, you had gatekeepers who decided who was put on and what was marketable to the masses. The mindset was to push the new hot thing to get people to buy records and tickets for shows. It was a cyclical cycle that still goes on today. Because music distribution was controlled and commercial music was relatively scarce, it made more sense not to push older songs.

But then the internet, digital downloads, smartphones and social media platforms changed everything for the next 2 decades.

Communication and access to information became democratized. Individuals have become empowered to become their own media companies and build businesses. This ultimately took the power away from the mainstream (traditional media channels) and created a fragmented online landscape of different interests, hobbies and passions.

In this new climate where most music doesn’t follow so tightly with mainstream culture anymore as it once did pre-Internet, there’s no reason not to promote your older songs. After all, there will always be people who have never been exposed to your music, which ties into the next point. With all these changes, it is fair to question and challenge many of these norms and taboos around how musicians should operate.
 

2. Your music is always to new someone.

 
The online landscape has become fragmented with so many different niches, communities and pockets of interest that go below the mainstream radar. We now have very popular musicians in one particular segment of music that most people still never heard of.

This is why there’s always someone out there who has never heard your music. So any old song of yours will be brand new to them.

Usually, your current fans are the ones who would expose these people through word of mouth. Otherwise, they may discover it passively through playlists or algorithms that recommend your music.

Instead of depending on these passive methods, it would be better to be proactive and create specific content to promote your older hits.
 

3. Not all fans were there with you from the beginning.

 
The assumption many artists make is that fans know all your music and only want to hear new material. With so many different touch points online and opportunities for discovery, the reality is that people will become fans at various points of your career. This was true in the past, but even more so now.

Despite your entire discography being easily accessible in the age of streaming, not everyone will want to dig into every project, especially if you have a lot of music.

There’s always a chance newer fans may have missed certain projects of yours, even popular ones. Even though the main objective of promoting older songs is to reach those who haven’t heard your music yet, some of your current fans may appreciate it. Your day-one fans may also enjoy the nostalgia as well.
 

4. Marketing needs to focus on bringing in new fans.

 
It doesn’t always make sense to lean heavily on new, unproven songs to promote music to reach new fans. If you have popular songs in your older catalog, it would be smart to leverage those tracks instead. Set aside a budget for social content or even paid ads using your proven hits to draw in new potential fans on a regular basis. It’s possible to set up an ad campaign promoting older songs using dark ads that don’t get posted to your profile and have your current followers excluded in audience targeting.

Any successful business needs to focus on bringing in new customers, but also keeping customers coming back. The way I see it, new music is generally focused on engaging your current customers/fans. On the other hand, your older proven hits, and even deep cuts, are focused on attracting new customers/fans into your ecosystem.

Or to use marketing speak, your proven songs are ideal for the top of the funnel, the awareness stage, to draw in new potential fans. Your new music is to engage your current fans and generate interest that could lead them to action (i.e. buy tickets to the upcoming tour).

Otherwise, it’s much harder to sustain as a business if you rely solely on your current fans to get your name out there and buy tickets and merch regularly. You need consistent growth to be sustainable. I’m seeing this issue firsthand with the independent artists I work with now.
 

5. Producing songs/albums is expensive so maximize your investments.

 
From an artistic perspective, albums are great and important bodies of work that often define your career and legacy. But from a business standpoint, we should reevaluate how we promote them.

Many fans don’t understand how much producing albums can cost with producers, paying other musicians, studio engineers, graphic designers, mixing & mastering engineers, etc. This is why singles are more lucrative. You get more out of each song by giving it undivided attention.

Typically, you only have 2 – 4 lead songs that are focused on in the promotion for an upcoming album. All the other songs you’re just hoping people will listen through once the full-length project is released to the public.

The attention a new album has in today’s climate, even for the biggest stars, is 1 or 2 weeks. After that, it’s on to the next big thing.

For an independent artist who has spent $20,000 to $30,000 to make an album, that’s a big gamble. You’ll have to hope touring and selling merch will allow you to get your return on investment.

So if there are inexpensive ways to easily promote and bring attention to songs from older albums and songs that didn’t get the same attention in the initial rollout, why not do it years later? Again, with so much content saturation, there’s no reason not to give it a shot and maximize the mileage for something you’ve already paid to make.
 

6. You need consistent content for marketing.

 
There are musicians who hate the word ‘content’ for different reasons, but it is now a core part of the business and marketing. Content marketing is a very popular and effective way of attracting and engaging new fans, especially on social media, because of its potential to scale globally at minimal cost. In today’s digital age, content has become numbers game because of how much cheaper and easier it is to create. The more quality content you post regularly, the better you do on social media. It’s a competitive landscape so consistency is the key to grabbing your share of attention in newsfeeds.

Typically when there’s new music or an album, social media posts increase. This lasts for a few months to promote singles and eventually the album. You have tour and merch posts to monetize the new material in hopes of recouping the cost of recording the new album. Once that cycle is over, then what?

If you want to continue to keep your fan base engaged while trying to earn new ones, you want to keep content flowing regularly even if there’s nothing new to promote.

This is particularly true if you want to take advantage of organic reach and have the algorithm on your side. What better time to post videos and draw attention to older songs people already love?
 

7. You don’t know until you try. What’s the worst that can happen?

 
The fear many musicians have is that revisiting older material may draw criticism. First, you’re not going to lose fans for doing so. Second, if you do, then they’re not the fans you want. There’s always going to be that one snobby, entitled fan who may leave a comment but who cares.

Just like with anything in life, you don’t know if something is going to work until you give it a good try. This may require reevaluating certain outdated beliefs.

So much of marketing and promotion in business requires some willingness to experiment or try something new. If the majority of the music business is still stuck in the past, why not try something that not everyone is doing?
 

Which older songs to use?

 
Let’s say I have convinced you to give this tactic a shot. How should you go about approaching this? Which older songs should you start with?

Your proven hits. Your best songs are more likely to attract new potential fans. Also, videos using your hits are more likely to motivate your current fans to share that content too. This is particularly great for running ad campaigns to create awareness.

Use data from streaming platforms. Look at your streaming data to see if other songs in your catalog have performed very well that were not singles. It’s possible that you have a deep cut that fans naturally love. On Spotify, the more obvious songs are the ones that have made it into your popular songs list on your profile and you’ve never promoted as a single or made a video for it.

Ask fans. Get your answer directly from fans. Ask them in a social media post. On Instagram Stories, use the question box or poll stickers to get ideas.

Get feedback from fan communities. Whether it’s on Reddit, Discord or Facebook Groups, fans are often talking about you. You may not have time stiff through all the different conversations so maybe have someone do it for you. I came across this thread on a subreddit from one of my favorite artists that would have been a gold mine of ideas for which older songs to promote.

What’s trending? If there’s a certain topic trending or a cultural moment is happening and you have a relevant song, make a short-form video performing that song. Maybe there’s a cover song that’s getting a lot of attention and you have a cover of the same song.

Album/song anniversaries. If it’s the 10th anniversary of a song or album, breathe life back into it by creating some short-form videos. For those worried about criticism, this gives you the perfect excuse to cover all the songs, even the non-singles.

Tie your song to a calendar event. Make videos using songs that have an easy association with a calendar event (i.e. Rebecca Black’s Friday, Valentine’s Day, 4/20 or even Christmas) and post it on those days.
 

Conclusion

 
It doesn’t matter what stage of your career you’re in, you should always continue to promote your catalog as part of your overall marketing strategy, especially your proven hit songs.

The exception is if you’re a global superstar and can easily afford to wait comfortably only to put out new music every couple of years. But even then, there’s nothing wrong with staying top of mind in such a content-saturated, attention-scarce world.

Otherwise, for the independent, middle-class artists who have worked hard to get to where they’re at, you should consider revisiting older songs in a fun and easy way. Especially with short-form performance videos being popular, it has become a cost-effective way to promote older material on social media. If done right and consistently, the algorithm on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts will constantly push your video content to new potentially fans for you.

The Moral of the Story: If you want to keep growing sustainably as a business, you need to focus on expanding your fan base by using assets you have available, especially older hit songs. With so much competition for attention in this digital age, you want to make sure you can engage your base regularly but also attract new fans.

The post 7 Reasons Why Every Independent Artist Should Promote Older Songs appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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.
 

The Transition From Long To Short-Form Video

 
With the rise of the internet, smartphones and social media over the past 20 years, we have now officially come to the end of the traditional music video era and the new reign for short-form videos. This transition has been going on for many years, starting with Musical.ly (before becoming TikTok). You can even argue this trend started as early Twitter’s Vine in 2013 with its 6 second looping videos.

With the higher cost of attention in the oversaturation of content in our feeds, the best way to reach fans on social media is through short-form video content. When it comes to marketing yourself and your music, video content is king and this shift to short-form makes it much easier for you. Not only is it typically cheaper to produce, you can often do a lot of it yourself.

This has also influenced how music is being made and released, with songs becoming shorter in length (2 minutes or less) and a stronger focus on releasing singles and EPs instead of full albums.

At this point, it should be no surprise that the importance and validity of a traditional budgeted music video for independent artists has diminished. This doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t do a long-form music video at some point, but it’s challenging to get your return on investment if a lot of money goes into it. I see traditional long-form music videos more of a luxury as a brand-building play than a necessity for promoting a song. Some artists want to create long-form music videos as an artist extension of the music for storytelling and there’s nothing wrong with it if you can afford it.

So if you’re still early in your career and you don’t have a budget, your focus should be strategically using short-form video content to build an audience/fan base at scale.
 

Short-Form Video Basics

 
Short-form video is essentially any type of video content that is optimized for social media consumption. More specifically, I’m referring to videos of you performing the song similarly to how you would in a traditional music video. Here’s an overview about short-form videos that you need to know.

There are 4 fundamental characteristics that make a short-form video.

Vertical / Portrait Oriented Video – The video orientation naturally fits with how people consume content on their smartphones. It takes up more visual real estate when someone scrolls through their feed, making your video more noticeable. This means you should be filming with your phone upright (portrait) and not turning it to its side (landscape). If you’re shooting on a camera, it’s best to shoot in 4K so you can crop the footage to fit a 9:16 orientation. The orientation of the video does not effect the potential for the video to go viral. However, vertical videos are more immersive and engaging so it gives you a better chance.

Length – The video length is typically less than 1 minute, but what is considered optimal is debatable and will vary by platform. With YouTube shorts, it has to be less than 180 seconds (179 seconds to be safe) or it won’t be recognized as a Short. Whereas with Instagram Reels, it has to be no more than 3 minutes or the algorithm won’t recommend your video to non-followers. For TikTok, you can’t have a song in a video be longer than 60 seconds due to licensing agreements. In general, short-form videos between 15 to 30 seconds will get the most engagement. The length of the video is key because the average person isn’t watching long videos while scrolling on social media.

On Video Captions – If your music has lyrics, there should be text captions on the video itself, usually in a color like yellow so it stands out more. Sometimes the text will have a black or white outline to help it stand out and not blend too much into the video. Having the lyrics on the video itself is important because many people scroll their news feed without the sound turned on. Seeing text changing in the video also catches people’s attention. Having lyrics is not necessary as some artists prefer a clean aesthetic, but it may vary by song or video. It’s at least worth testing with or without lyrics to see what may perform better with your audience.

Optimized For Short Attention – We all know that attention spans continue to diminish in the digital age, so the video content needs to jump right into the action. This means no slow or long intros. Generally, you need to hook viewers within the first few seconds. This can entail starting with the hook or chorus of a song. Some may even add a visual element in the video editing to draw attention, like camera shake, starting upside down or in black and white.

As an artist, there are 3 general ways you can approach short-form video for potentially reaching new fans.

1. Directly music related: This entails things like performing original music or covers, sharing, playing beats, producing music, mixing mashups live, DJ sets, etc.
2. Making music content tying in interests / hobbies / passions: This is incorporating music and other interests like dance, sports, food, pets, drugs or fitness. For example, making songs based on food recipes like how Good Boy Noah has done with his puppet cheetah.
3. Brand or personality focused: This is more about showcasing your personality whether it’s from doing meme content, reaction videos or short skits, but not music. This can naturally overlap into your interests and hobbies if it’s a part of your brand.

What I’ll be covering is content that is more specific to musicians and involves music performance. Regardless of which way you want to approach it, the intent for your short-form video should seek to either:

• Entertain
• Inspire / Motivate
• Educate

If you’re able to accomplish those things, you’re more likely to have your videos shared and engaged with.

As for where short-form video content is shared, the 3 platforms you’ll want to post on are:

• TikTok
• YouTube Shorts
• Reels (Instagram and Facebook)

Each platform has their differences so you’ll need to make sure you optimize your short-form videos to fit the platform you’re posting on.
 

Short-Form Video Setups & Examples

 
Here are some basic short-form video setups / ideas to consider starting with. Most of the examples shared below are from hip hop / rap artists because that’s what I normally listen to and come across but it can still be applied to other genres and styles. It’s up to you if you want to do an actual live performance or just a lip sync. Lip sync is much easier to film while performing the song live in a video can require more work to capture good audio, but it comes off as more authentic.

Please Note: All setups discussed below involve a performer in the videos. Technically, you can execute short form videos without you physically in it and just have the lyrics go with your music over stock footage. The problem is this isn’t going to be effective for most, especially if you’re not an established artist yet.

However, if creating video content on social media really isn’t for you or you don’t plan on doing live performances, then you may want to consider other music marketing options.
 

1. Performing with still camera on a tripod

This is the simplest thing you can do. Set up your smartphone or camera on a tripod and record yourself. This can be easily done in your home, the backyard or at a local park. Because the shot is still, you’ll want to make it interesting with the background, what you’re wearing or any props in the video.

Once you get comfortable, think about other visually appealing or interesting places. This can be done in national parks with beautiful landscapes, popular vacation spots, tourist attractions (in front of the Eiffel Tower) or busy public areas with tons of people behind you. Just be aware that some places have strict rules about filming so be careful and be discrete.

Examples

• LaRussell in front of a house
• Tanner Adell at a barn
• Stevie Ray at his doorstep
• Mei Semones playing the guitar at her doorstep
• Shanin Blake in a living room
• Shanin Blake on a log in nature
• Infinity Song (Band) in front of an old structure
• Amp Live (Producer) in his studio
• Amp Live on a beach
• Samara Cyn sitting on a chair on a green hill
• Samara Cyn sitting on steps in front of green wall
• KODUKU singing in an open field
• Mary Ann Alexander singing at home with short intro
• Alam Khan playing the Sarode at home (Instrument Only)

2. Using actual live show performance

If you’re already doing a live performance (hopefully in front of a decent sized crowd), you can have someone record you on stage performing full songs. This can also be staged and done in a larger backyard area and a crowd of people. You can then extract the best segments and add lyric captions on top.

LaRussell is someone I’ve come across who has done this a lot. Here are my favorite examples of his:

• Show performance
• Festival performance
• Backyard performance

3. Performing the song in one static location

For this setup, you’ll need someone to film you. The idea is you’re performing in one area, but the camera will be moving with and around you to make things more interesting.

LaRussell is someone who does a great job of this as a majority of the short form videos he puts out uses this basic setup.

Examples:

• A-1 and his producer in a park
• LaRussell performing on the street
• Pink Sweat$ performing live in a parking garage
• Russ in Paris with the Eiffel Tower behind him
• THRONE in a room
• RMS on a street
• Alexia Evellyn in front of a waterfall
• Miles Minnick rapping in an alley street
• Norman Sann rapping in a parking lot

4. Performing the song with constant movement

Instead of standing in one area, you as the performer can be constantly in movement. It can be as simple as walking straight towards the camera or moving around within a scene.

The rap duo Flyana Boss has done a great job of executing this with running in their videos, which has prompted many viewers about how they were able to pull it off as smoothly as they have.

Examples:

• Shanin Blake slow walk towards camera
• Pink Sweat$ on a moving boat
• Flyana Boss running out of a restaurant
• Flyana Boss running in Disneyland

5. Performing a song while doing another activity

Another setup to change things up is to perform while doing another activity. This can be done with a static camera or someone else to film you.

The activity can depend on your personality and interests that make sense with your brand or the song you’re performing. Or it can just be completely random or unexpected to create some intrigue.

Rapper Locksmith created a video series called Lock Lyft where he invites fans on a car ride and he performs for them while driving.

Examples/Ideas:

• Driving (Locksmith)
• Biking (Flyana Boss)
• Cooking
• Rolling up a joint
• Exercise
• Hiking
• Roller Skating / Skateboarding
• Household chores

6. Performing with props or extras

Incorporating props or other extras into your setup is an easy way to make your videos more interesting. This can be something as simple as a big hat, a mask, green screen, other performers or even the rain. You can also try using your pet or your kids.

The band Walk Off The Earth and LaRussell does a really good job of using props in their videos.

Examples

• Static performance with kid
• Juggling a ball with paddles
• LaRussell with a photographer in front
• LaRussell shot through a basketball hoop
• LaRusell with bikers
• Coyote staging a set in a kitchen with props and actors
• Pertinence in front of a car and hanging mic
• Scoochie Boochie in front of volcano using greenscreen

7. Performing and acting out the lyrics

Lastly, consider creating a scene and acting out the lyrics you’re performing as if it was a one shot music video. Let’s say you’re performing a song about a break up, have someone in the shot pretending to be your partner and reacting to the news. Here’s an example of that from Russ (TikTok) and another on Instagram for the same song.
 

Short-Form Video Creation Tips

 
– Do multiple full takes. When filming, rather than just doing a verse and hook in one take, do multiple takes of the entire song so you can extract the best parts as different videos. You can do this to test which parts of the songs perform better.

– Maximize each location. One location can be used to do multiple songs and in different parts of the space. For example, let’s say you film in a park. You can shoot standing on a table, sitting on a bench, in front of the playground, on a swing or slide, on a basketball court, etc.

– Schedule a day for content. If possible, dedicate a day for content (“content day”) where you can record multiple videos in one session to save time. Performing 3 songs in 3 different locations in a day can potentially yield up to 18 to 36 short videos for you to post.

– Stay organized. Create a system to keep all the video files organized because you’ll be posting these videos multiple times. If done right, you should have an organized library to pull from to be consistent with your posting.

– Perform versions of songs already on socials. If you do a lip sync, just make sure to do it to a version currently available on social platforms, like TikTok and Instagram, so that you can add your song from within the app itself. This allows you to earn royalties from your video and it displays your artist and song name in your post. When you upload your music to an aggregator like DistroKid, they will have an option to distribute to social platforms. In most cases, a platform like Instagram can auto-detect the song and tag it on the post without you having to manually add and sync the track.

– Practice before filming. Make sure to really practice and rehearse your performances, especially when shooting with a videographer. You want to make sure you’re respectful of their time. Keep going even if you mess up a part. This saves everyone time, especially if you hired someone to film you.

– Don’t put text captions on the bottom. Captions are traditionally on the bottom, but it shouldn’t be with short-form videos. The placement of text captions for your lyrics should be placed closer to the center of the video because of the overlays that TikTok and Instagram has. If you have the text too low, it will overlap with the title, caption and engagement overlays on the bottom. If you have the text too high, it may likely cover your face and you definitely don’t want that. You should be able to see a preview of where the overlays are before posting to see if it clashes with your text.

– Autogenerate captions to save time. You can auto generate captions for your videos in typical video editing software like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro, which is what I use. The same goes with mobile as my preferred app for editing on my phone is InShot and it has the ability to auto generate text captions from the audio. There are also free online video editing tools like CapCut and Veed that offer free plans. Instagram and TikTok also have a feature that can generate captions for you. Regardless of which tool you use, it will require making edits as it won’t be perfect, but it will at least save you some time.

– Keep testing. Don’t assume something doesn’t work the first time you post it. There are a lot of variables involved when you share something to social media, whether it’s the day of the week, time, platform, world events, the song or the video content itself, so you can’t draw conclusions after one post.

– Experiment and get creative. A lot of what was covered in this blog are basic starting points, so there’s definitely room to get creative and experiment. There are other elements, concepts, edits, props or camera tricks that can be incorporated to create a more visually appealing experience. Maybe there’s an opportunity to turn your videos into a series or highlighting a fun alter ego.
 

Final Thoughts on Short-Form Video

 
Creating short-form videos to promote your music doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. As you’ve seen in the examples shared in this blog, it’s actually quite the opposite. Many artists have found success doing simple, straightforward performance videos to promote their songs on social media. If you’re consistent, you should see gradual growth of followers as these platforms will start to suggest your videos to new audiences.

I found viral success posting these types of videos on Instagram and TikTok. Read my full breakdown of this album release campaign that led to multiple videos going viral and Snoop Dogg reposting one of them.

But remember, creating and sharing short-form video content is only one part of marketing. It’s an important tool for attracting new potential fans and engaging your current supporters, but there’s a lot more that goes into the marketing process. I’ve covered many aspects of it on various blogs on this website. Just don’t expect that this is the only thing you need to do to build a music career from scratch.

If you’re just starting out and have a few releases on digital platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, don’t be afraid to throw some ad money behind these videos to get some feedback. If you encounter a situation where one of your videos goes viral organically on a platform, then you definitely want to spend money for ads to add gas to the fire.

Lastly, music quality still matters. Your success with short-form videos is still going to be dependent on how good your songs are. If you do short-form videos consistently for a year or so and still haven’t gained traction, maybe your songs aren’t good enough yet and that’s okay. As long as you like your work, keep learning and improving upon your craft.

Not all songs should be fully marketed with a budget, but sharing these low-cost performance short-form videos is a great way to see what songs are ready.

For more specifics on how to shoot video with your smartphone, check out this blog here:

6-Step Guide to Make Quality Cover Song Videos With Your Smartphone

The post How to Create Short-Form Videos to Gain New Fans As A Musician appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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. This was an interesting time in history because new technology (the internet, email, CDs) was being introduced to the masses that would later have a positive impact on independent artists. It helped level the playing field with the music gatekeepers beginning in the 2000s and beyond. 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.
 

The Back Story / Context for this Topic

 
Feel free to skip down to the next section if you want to get right into the lessons. I share some historical context about this topic and include my personal connection to the independent hip-hop scene beginning in the early 2000s.

Compared to present times, a lot has changed since the 1990s regarding the music industry, technology and even culture.

Before the internet became a household consumer good, many soon-to-be-big-name artists across the U.S. hustled from the ground up starting in their local scene and launching their music careers. Many stayed independent while others signed record deals or started their own labels.

For these hip-hop artists, their origins often involved selling albums/mixtapes out of their trunks or backpacks on the streets to random passersby. Instead of recording demo tapes to submit to the major labels, they dubbed their tapes or burned CDs to sell directly to customers in their local area.

As the internet became more accessible in households, we saw the DIY independent music scene really flourish in the early 2000s and into what we have today.

Yes, the gradual decline of CD sales due to the rise of online music “piracy” also started around this time and would become a major road bump for independent artists. However, you can argue that illegal file-sharing networks (Napster, LimeWire) also helped spread their music further to new fans who would eventually buy their merch and pay to see them live. Successful independent artists like Immortal Technique embraced the technology and encouraged people to “steal all of his music”.

This DIY movement in music was important because it challenged the commonly-held belief that you need a major label to grow a fan base and make a living as an independent musician.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of these independent artists from this period and see how they think and operate. These are the same underground hip-hop artists I listened to during my college years and became fans of for over 20 years. My passion and understanding of independent music is based on being a fan of their work.

I was first inspired to write about this topic when I saw independent rapper The Grouch on the SteeBee WeeBee show a few years ago. During a time when the internet was still in its infancy stage, The Grouch shared some cool details in this interview about what it was like to promote and sell your music independently before the internet.

The Grouch is a hip-hop artist originally from Oakland who has been putting out music independently for over 30 years. He is a part of a bigger hip-hop crew Living Legends. My client Eligh is a part of the same crew and makes up the other half of the long-time recording duo The Grouch & Eligh.

Among their music peers, the Living Legends crew in California were considered the most DIY/independent hip-hop artists at the time. They literally handle everything themselves from throwing their own shows, recording their own music from home, making their own tapes and selling on the streets.

It is said that Master P, one of the most successful independent hip-hop artists and entrepreneurs, actually learned and was inspired by Bay Area artists like Too Short and E-40 who in turn inspired the likes of The Grouch and Eligh.

Most of you reading this probably don’t listen to underground hip-hop, which is okay. I’ll be referring to hip-hop artists because that’s the scene I got into in college and shaped my identity. As I have written on my About page, it was my passion for underground hip-hop that ultimately led me to create a music blog for independent artists in the first place.

Although a lot has changed since then, I wanted to share 9 important lessons from the 1990s independent music grind that still apply today. You might not listen to hip-hop, but these lessons can be applied to any genre of music. After all, we’ve seen the DIY ethos practically start with punk rock subcultures as early as the 1960s.

For further visual context, there’s an excellent Netflix series called Hip Hop Evolution that covers the beginning stages of the genre and how many artists in different parts of the U.S. got started independently. I highly recommend it as I think it’s important to understand the history of independent music if you’re trying to make it as an independent.
 

1. Selling physical products / merch is essential.

 
The biggest source of income for independents during the 1990s was selling physical music, like cassette tapes and later CDs. The larger profit margins from selling these items were what really allowed independent artists to sustain themselves financially.

One of the big pioneers of this independent spirit of selling out of the truck was Oakland rapper Too Short who offered to record a personalized shoutout on his music tapes in the 1980s. He charged $20 for this custom tape and it blew up.

In Houston, Texas, DJ Screw would sell $15,000 worth of mixtapes a day in the mid-1990s. He made seven figures a year selling tapes out of his house, his car trunk and at car shows. In 1998, he opened a shop just to sell his mixtapes!

As for The Grouch, he talked about how he would go to local record shops around the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1990s and sell a bulk of his CDs at $10 a piece. He would make his rounds to hit up each record store and make about $7,000 each stop and as high as $11,000. His music was flying off shelves so these record shops had no problem writing these big checks.

Getting paid opportunities to do live shows wasn’t as accessible for independent artists back then. So if you were relatively unknown and not getting airplay on the radio, you had to have physical products to sell.

The need to sell physical products is no different in today’s music climate. Although with streaming platforms, the average fan doesn’t need CDs, vinyl and cassette tapes to listen to music. But the need to have some kind of physical product to sell is still necessary.

This is where understanding branding comes in. You need to know what merch to make for your target audience. After all, merchandise is the physical extension of your brand and you want fans to consume it as a way to support what you do.

One of the big challenges with merch for independent artists is having the money to front for the production. Making products in bulk like vinyl, CDs, shirts and sweatshirts can be costly.

Thanks to advancements in technology, dropshipping services like Printful, make it easier for creatives to sell merchandise without any upfront capital or pay any costs to get items made.

2. Keep pushing out music – make more music, more money opportunities.

 
This should come as no surprise. The more music you put out, the more opportunities you have to make money from it and grow an audience. Specifically, more physical products to sell. Obvious right?

As mentioned earlier, the profit margins from CDs during this time were what allowed independent artists to flourish financially.

Within a major label system, there can be a lot of bureaucracy and politics when putting out music. For independents, there’s no such thing so use it to your advantage.

The Grouch knew he couldn’t sell 100k copies of an album without the financial backing or advance a typical record label could provide. But he would have a better chance of selling 10k copies of 10 different CDs.

Over 25 years later, these underground artists have large catalogs with over 20 albums worth of music. To put into perspective, just with The Grouch and Eligh alone, they have 40 released albums combined, which doesn’t include any albums as a crew and features for other artists.

Was flooding the market with too much music a bad thing? Nope, fans ate it all up. Even today, no fan is going to tell their favorite artists to stop putting out so much music. It’s a necessity for emerging artists in today’s music industry to release music more frequently and consistently.

Nowadays, with relatively less demand for products like CDs and tapes, putting out a lot of music isn’t necessarily going to earn you more money with streaming as the preferred method for music consumption. With streaming royalties so low (roughly 3,000 streams will be equivalent to what you make from selling a $15 CD), the average independent artist can’t sustain from it alone.

However, putting out more quality music has an exponential effect. Pushing out more songs won’t necessarily mean you’ll generate cash in the short term, but each one will give you a chance to build off momentum with proper marketing. It gives you more “content” to promote yourself and get discovered on social media.

Even though not all songs will be a hit, they will be added to your back catalog and accumulate more streams over time as your fan base grows. As the saying goes, old music is always new to someone. And if one of those songs takes off or goes viral, it’ll definitely help lift the rest of your discography.

3. Have the ability to record and make music from home.

 
The ability to make music at home is drastically different than how it was in the 1990s. Equipment was more expensive, and it sounded much more complicated using things like an ASR-10 and SP-1200 sampler.

Recording and producing music at a professional studio is pricey. If you have the resources and space to do it from home, you can save a lot of money and potentially accomplish a lot more.

For The Grouch, he was doing 4 track recordings at home and using music samplers to make beats. In the 1990s, you didn’t have affordable DAWS (Digital Audio Workstations) on portable laptops and free YouTube education on how to use them.

A lot of these hip-hop artists at this time were teenagers so buying $2,000 – $3,000 recording equipment was relatively more expensive to them.

Take advantage of the technology today to record and make music from home. Russ is a great example of a modern DIY artist. In this video, he talks about putting the “gym” at home.

You may still use a professional recording studio to record the final mixes, but the early demos and mixes can start from home to save money.

4. Word-of-mouth is still important. Otherwise, meet your fans where they’re at.

 
Back in the days, you discovered new music from either the radio, magazines, TV or from a friend. Your friend likely gave you a dubbed tape or a burned CD from another friend’s sister’s cousin’s older brother.

Today, word-of-mouth is still a popular way of learning about new artists whether it’s a friend making an in-person recommendation or you seeing a social media post about it.

On the flip side, getting exposure to new potential fans in the 1990s was a different story. Because many of these local artists weren’t getting coverage from traditional media like TV, magazines or radio, they had to depend on doing things in person and hopes that would lead to word of mouth recommendations.

For the Living Legends crew, they took it to the next level. The Grouch talked about how they would save up money and periodically check flight prices at a local travel agency. The tactic was to find popular artists in the same lane and physically follow their tour routes. They gathered up whatever money they could scrap together to fly to different cities (and even countries like the UK, Germany and Japan) to promote their music and sell tapes outside of these shows. Because of their persistence, these artists would often let them be the openers and get direct exposure to their target audience.

It was a totally different time culturally, where now soliciting random strangers on the streets is no longer as effective today.

Fortunately, you can get people’s attention and put your music in front of people without having to do any traveling because of the internet. We now have the option of running hyper-targeted Instagram and TikTok Ads to fans of artists with a similar sound from the comfort of our homes.

5. Use your money wisely. Investing back into your music career.

 
You hear it all the time. Treat your music career as a business because that’s what it is. For businesses to grow, you need to invest money into it and not blow the money you earn on things that won’t further your career.

When The Grouch was a teen, his day job was delivering pizza. The first day he got a credit card, he maxed it out as you would expect a teen would do.

You might think it was for clothes, going out with friends or some form of entertainment. Not at all. He bought an ASR-10 to make music from home. Although he went into debt, it was an important investment for his music career and his close peers.

To tie in with the previous point, The Grouch would grind by selling tapes on the streets so his crew could have money to buy plane tickets to promote their music at shows from signed groups like The Pharcyde. It was well worth the investment as they eventually got noticed and opened for these artists. This is a great example of reinvesting the money you make for the long-term growth of your career.

You can argue that there are a lot more distractions to waste your money today and that the cost of living is higher, but if you really believe in your music, you’ll make the right decisions. For more on this, I wrote a blog on the top things you want to invest back into your music business.

6. Team up with other independents.

 
Being an independent artist doesn’t mean you have to do it all by yourself. Being a part of a crew, artist collective and/or community is a big advantage.

I’ve talked about having a community mindset in a previous blog and it is certainly applicable here. A lot of these independent artists worked together with others in the same area or city. Many developed their own crews or collectives so they could collaborate and even release albums together. It made a lot of sense back then because resources and knowledge were limited and you were more likely to get further by teaming up with others.

The Grouch and Eligh are a part of the California hip-hop crew The Living Legends. Crews like this were very common all over the United States in the underground scene.

Being a part of a music crew may be more of a “hip-hop” thing, but you can still incorporate this concept even if you do any other type of music. Find other like-minded artists you can befriend and collaborate with musically. Maybe even become really good friends. It’s all about building a network with a community-oriented mindset.

7. Fill a need that’s lacking or do it better. Innovate.

 
One of the reasons why these DIY artists were able to win over fans is because they offered something unique or different. These underground movements were often providing alternative sounds the mainstream didn’t want to shine a light on, hence underground. For many, it was a countercultural movement in music.

A lot of these Bay Area hip-hop crews had artists representing different types of styles, voices, identities and personalities that attracted those who didn’t feel they could resonate with what was being offered in commercial music channels.

On the west coast for example, the dominant subgenre played on mainstream media was gangster rap that glorified things like drugs, objectification of women, violence and money.

Music from California underground crews like The Living Legends and Hieroglyphics and SoleSides (Quannum Projects) was quite the opposite. Their songs had a more lighthearted vibe with relatable topics. It had substance that the average person could relate to. More importantly, they were innovative with their art.

Here’s an audio clip with Andre 3000 of Outkast, who currently has the best selling rap album of all time, talking about how influential and innovative the Hieroglyphics Crew was on him personally and the impact it had for hip hop during the 1990s.

Of course, you don’t have to be a gangster to like or listen to gangster rap, but these independent artists from this time provided multiple alternatives to what was readily available on the radio or TV.

To be fair, it’s a bit harder to fill a need in music today because of how the internet has already opened so many doors for artists around the world that typically wouldn’t have been given a chance by a major label. It doesn’t help that the 1990s wasn’t as musically diverse and intertwined as it is today. But it’s not impossible to create your own lane today by doing something different as we’ve seen artists like Post Malone, Lil Nas X and Hobo Johnson do it in more recent times.

8. Be adaptable, diversify and experiment.

 
Society, culture and technology are always changing so don’t ever get complacent with what currently works.

The biggest source of income for independents in the 1990s were tapes and CDs. Touring was optional to bring extra income and engage with fans. The rise of MP3s and music piracy would eventually disrupt this business model dependent on record sales and begin a drastic shift towards digital music.

The Grouch says he was a go-with-the-flow guy so he wasn’t opposed to this change. Although it affected the money he would make in the short term, it also would help get his music out to more people and created a demand for other income sources down the line.

As an independent artist, you’re generally going to be more nimble, giving you the advantage to adapt more easily. You should be looking for the next big thing to give you an edge. This line of thinking also applies to social networks, platforms and apps. MySpace was once the top social media platform for music, but others like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube would overtake its place.

9. Embrace the entrepreneurial spirit. Develop your hustle and start the grind.

 
Despite how accessible it is to build a music career independently today, there’s still a desire to get signed by a record label. Why? Because there’s a lot of work, development and resources that goes into being a full-time artist that many don’t want to deal with.

Regardless if you want to earn a record deal or not, you still need to show you can build momentum with your music on your own. Since artist development isn’t required to start, labels want to see proof of concept and major buzz before even considering it. For artists, this requires an entrepreneurial mentality and dedication to building a business.

All these independent artists I’ve mentioned so far, and many others during these times, embraced the entrepreneurial spirit. Chances are they didn’t think of themselves as businessmen or entrepreneurs but that’s what they were. They got their hands dirty in the different aspects of the music business and made it work with the limited resources they had. Because they believed in their art, failure was not an option for them and they stayed persistent through any obstacles that came their way.

With so much competition today, it’s easy to get discouraged, especially when you’re not seeing much success early on. It’s up to you to develop yourself to become a well-rounded artist and business person. It starts with embracing the entrepreneurial spirit, having self-awareness and welcoming the inevitable challenges.

Conclusion

 
There’s always going to be a debate about which time period was actually harder to be an independent artist in.

Was it before the internet where it was more profitable selling tapes and CDs, but the potential for exposure and scalability was very limited?

Or in present times where income with music streaming is limited, but you have the ability to grow and scale your music worldwide with social media?

To me, the answer is obvious but I would love to hear what you think!

The post 9 Lessons Today’s Musicians Can Learn from the DIY Independent Music Ethos of the 1990s appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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.

 

Define Your Genre

 
To find music blogs that are best suited to promote your music, you must first define your genre or genres. If you put in the work ahead of time by carefully selecting which blogs fit your style, you will maximize your chances of getting attention. Avoid sending mass emails to a bunch of music blogs; this technique rarely works and you will most likely end up with an empty inbox.

First, write down the primary genre or genres that your music represents. Let’s take an indie pop artist as an example. Numerous subgenres fall under the umbrella of indie pop: indie rock, alternative, bedroom pop, dream pop, lofi and others. It is crucial to define these keywords to then find music blogs that promote artists in your genre already. While many blogs promote a variety of musical styles, there are some that are only focused on certain genres. Use this to your advantage when doing your research.
 

Make A List of Similar Artists

 
Once you have defined your genre and subgenres, make a list of similar artists that fall under the same categories. Make a list of at least five artists that are in the same universe, ranging in notoriety from emerging artists to more established bands. If you need help writing your list, try looking at the “Fans also like” section on Spotify either on your own profile or the profile of similar artists.

For example, here are five artists in the indie pop scene: Pi Ja Ma, November Ultra, Alice Phoebe Lou, Benee, and Vampire Weekend. These musicians share certain similarities in genre but are very different in terms of style and notoriety. Pi Ja Ma is an emerging indie pop artist from France whereas Vampire Weekend has been around for over a decade, playing their hits to stadiums around the world. However, it is important to analyze the media coverage for all five artists, no matter their notoriety.

The “Fans also like” section on the Spotify profile of French indie pop artist Pi Ja Ma

Find Music Blogs That Promote Your Genre

 
Using your list, you can now start researching which media and music blogs have written about these five artists. You can start your research by looking on their social media accounts and seeing if they have reposted articles that they have been featured in or shared interviews from music blogs. After scanning their socials, go ahead and look them up on your preferred search engine. For the emerging artists on your list, it will be easier to do your research because there will be less content to filter through. If you look up Vampire Weekend, for example, you will most likely find pages and pages of content and some of the biggest blogs in the industry talking about them. Try filtering the search results by date and dig back in time to figure out which music blogs were talking about the big bands before they made it big.

Let’s take French indie pop artist Pi Ja Ma for example. She has been profiled by some of the bigger French news outlets such as Liberation and Marianne, but there are also a number of small indie music blogs that have written about her project, including Modzik and MusiK Please. Go through each artist on your list and write down who has been talking about them, no matter how big or small the media is.

By using this technique, you can avoid searching “best indie pop music blogs” on your search engine and really do some real research. Because the music industry is constantly changing and evolving, it’s crucial to stay up to date about who is being talked about and more importantly, where.
 

Start Small: Choose Independent Music Blogs Over Big Media

 
Every emerging artist would love to land a feature in Pitchfork, but sometimes it’s best to start small and focus on music blogs that are more accessible. Many of the bigger music blogs are not open to unsolicited submissions and are curated by journalists and PR agents. Independent music blogs are usually more receptive to pitches and are looking to promote underrepresented and emerging artists. If you manage to get your music featured across multiple small music blogs, your audience will grow as well as your legitimacy in the industry.
 

Find Music Blogs With a Local Focus

 
Another technique to narrow down your search for music blogs is to think locally. Are you a band based out of your garage in Brooklyn? Seek out music blogs that promote the Brooklyn indie scene. Did you or do you study at a university that has a music blog or radio show? Reach out and pitch your project. I personally have reached out to the local music blog of my hometown to promote my project even though I moved away a decade ago. By brainstorming with a local focus in mind, you can find music blogs that will take a personal interest in sharing your music and telling your story.

Independent music blog “the deli” that promotes emerging artists from local scenes across New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago

Find Music Blogs That Correspond To Your Identity

 
Every artist represents an overall image that encapsulates more than just their sound. Ask yourself: what defines me as an artist apart from the genre of music I play? Perhaps you are a woman navigating a male-dominated industry. Reach out to feminist music blogs that promote women in music. Maybe you are passionate about fashion or cinema. Find music blogs and media outlets that talk about these cultural intersections! With a bit of time and well done research, you can find music blogs that make space for your voice. The only thing left to do is pitch your project!
 

Our Selection of Music Blogs By Genre

 
Hopefully with these strategies you will be able to personalize and narrow down your list of music blogs to contact. If you want some more tips, here is a list of our top music blogs that you can contact directly on Groover sorted by genre. You can also discover the full list of music influencers categorized by genre and location on the bottom of the Groover homepage!

Pop:

High Clouds – Belgium
Music & Fashion Blog – France
Plastic Magazine – United Kingdom
Longueur d’Ondes – France

Rock:

The Joy of Violent Movement – United States
Indieoclock – Brazil
MOWNO – Italy

Rap, Hip-Hop, and RnB:

Wordplay Magazine – United Kingdom
HipHop Paranoia – United Kingdom
Interlude – France
Backpackerz – France
Dummy Mag – United Kingdom

Folk:

York Calling – France
Berlin On Air – Germany
Tonic Grain – United States

Electro:

Meet & Greet – France
Riptide Mag – France
Guettapen – France
EKM.co – Canada

The post How To Find Music Blogs To Promote Your Music appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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.
 

Why Care About Amazon Music

 
Before we get into submitting, I think it’s important to touch on where Amazon Music stands in the music landscape.

Although we commonly think of the Big 3 (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube) as the most popular platforms for people to listen to music, Amazon Music has the subscriber base to be up there with them with roughly over 60 million subscribers.

Back in 2019, they were touted as the fastest growing streaming service over Spotify and Apple Music. Aside from being the largest online retailer in the world, how did Amazon Music grow so fast? Their line of smart speakers, the Echo and the Dot.

The Amazon Echo, and their voice assistant Alexa, launched in 2014 and was a first of its kind. In the market of smart speakers, Amazon has had a commanding hold as the number one device. As of June 2021, they currently control 69% of the U.S. market share. To put their dominance into perspective, their next biggest competitor, Google, only has 25%. So If you were to ask Alexa to play music, of course it was going to be streamed through Amazon Music.

Just to clarify: Google’s YouTube Music is their music streaming service. YouTube is the most popular platform that people will find, discover and listen to music globally, but YouTube Music does not have the paid subscribers that the others have.

Amazon may not be the first platform you think of when you hear video and music streaming, but they are in the mix to compete. Don’t forget they also own the most popular live streaming platform Twitch, which is their gateway to a much younger demographic. Despite being known primarily for hosting live video gaming content, Twitch continues to increase their viewership in the music category.

With all this said, we should never discount the reach and influence Amazon has in music and content distribution. As independent artists, it’s important to take advantage of every avenue that makes sense, especially when it’s free.
 

Who Uses Amazon Music

 
Before submitting your music, you should understand the demographic of people who actually use Amazon Music and why it makes sense to submit your releases for their playlists.

In general, newer technology, like streaming, is more likely to be adopted by the youth. As the leading platform, Spotify skews to a younger crowd because that’s their target market.

The advantage that Amazon Music has is it reaches a wider age range but skews to middle-ages and older. “About 14% of subscribers to Amazon Music are aged 55 or older, compared with just 5% of Spotify’s customers,” said Steve Boom, the vice president of the Amazon Music Unlimited service. This is due to the success of their smart speakers and the convenience of having a music streaming platform easily accessible through these devices.

Do you know what streaming platform your fans use? If you’ve ever released music before in the past, you should know what streaming service/platform your audience prefers. Smart links are useful, but it would be good to know if a lot of your audience actually listens to your music on Amazon Music.
 

Get Access to Your Amazon Music for Artists Profile

 
Before you can submit your new release, you will need to claim your Amazon Music for Artists profile. It’s their version of Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists. As of this writing their artist portal isn’t as polished as Spotify for Artists, but it will surely get better overtime.

If you’ve never released any music yet through a music distributor, you will need to do that first so that your Amazon Music artist profile is created. If you don’t have a music distributor yet, I recommend you check out what I recommend as the best music distributor for independent artists.

Aside from submitting new releases, having access to your Amazon Music for Artists account will give you access to helpful tools and analytics including how many times your music was voice requested through Alexa.

How to Claim Your Profile: Originally, you had to download their app (iOS / Android) to claim your Amazon Music for Artist page, but you can now also do it on desktop by going here:

https://artists.amazon.com/select

It’ll ask you to log into your Amazon account. If you’ve ever purchased anything from Amazon, this is the account you would use. Otherwise, create a new Amazon account. You don’t need to be subscribed to their Amazon Prime subscription service.

Once that is complete, you’ll be taken to the ‘Claim an Artist’ page. Search your name and choose the correct artist profile from the list.

You’ll be asked to verify that you are the artist or represent the artist:

• Input the artist name and the role (artist, manager or label)
• Link any of the artist social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)
• Connect your music distributor account. The only available options are: CD Baby, DistroKid and TuneCore.
• Add any additional information to show proof

Verification can take minutes or even several days depending on the information you submit. I find that connecting at least one artist social media platform and one of the three music distributors used (assuming you used one of those) will get your claim request approved more quickly.

However, if you’re a newer artist, it may take longer and require more proof. One thing you can try, if you’re having trouble getting approved, is adding the email address associated with your Amazon account to your social media profiles and website where it can be publicly seen. Instagram and Facebook allows you to add an email address that’s visible on your profiles/pages. You may even consider just temporarily adding your Amazon email address to your bio and point it out that both emails match up in the box where they ask you for more information.

If your claim is successful, you should get an email about it and you can move on to the next section below.
 

How to Submit Your Release to Amazon Music for Playlists

 
The process is going to be similar to submitting your song for Spotify editorial playlist consideration. One of the big differences is that you can actually submit a new song up to 14 days after it has been released. Spotify only accepts unreleased music for their playlist consideration.

First, upload your new song or release to your music distributor like you normally would.

Once you do that, your music distributor will send out your release, cover and metadata to the various stores/digital outlets. When Amazon Music receives it, it’ll show up in your Amazon Music for Artists account.

Desktop: From the ‘overview’ page in your profile, just look under ‘Artist Tools’ and click on ‘New Releases’. If you uploaded new music through your distributor, you should see it here.

Mobile App: From the ‘overview’ tab, tap on the bottom right icon of the person which will take you to ‘Profile & Tools’. Tap ‘New Releases’ up top to see new music you can pitch.

Unlike Spotify, you can pitch multiple songs as long as they are uploaded as separate releases and songs up to 14 days after its release date. This means you can pitch each of your songs uploaded as a single track, but you can only choose one song to pitch in a 10 song album uploaded for release.

There’s also a new feature called ‘Intros’ that allows you to record or upload a short audio recording up to 15 seconds that is played before your new release. As the name implies, Intros allows you to introduce your new song or release to your fans in a personable way. You should see it next to the name of your release next to the ‘pitch’ button.

A new feature on Amazon for Music Artists called Intros

The process to pitch your song is quite short and straightforward. Here’s a great infographic that Amazon Music provides that outlines the process for you:

Amazon Music Submission Questions

 
Why are you pitching this song? This is where you get to sell your song to Amazon Music’s curation team in 1,000 characters or less. You’ll want to focus on what makes this song special. It can be the story behind the song, how it came about, etc.

What genres best describe it? Choose up to three.

What version of the song is this?
– Original
– Remix
– Live
– Cover

Does this song have lyrics? Yes or no.

Select the primary language of this song? Search and select the languages that apply.

What artists have a similar sound? Select up to 3 artists that share a similar sound to you and the song you’re pitching. This is a question that the Spotify pitch tool does not ask you.

Where are most of your listeners today? Search and select the countries that apply. You should be able to get this data in your Amazon Music for Artists page, Spotify for Artist page, Facebook or Instagram Insights.

Song Mood? Select up to 3 that apply for your song.
– Angry
– Cool
– Dark
– Fast
– Happy Mood
– Heavy
– Intense
– Light
– Mellow
– Motivational
– Relaxing
– Romantic
– Sad
– Sexy
– Soft
– Upbeat

Song Category? Select up to 3 that apply for your song.
– Chilling Out & Lounging
– Happy & Upbeat
– Hard & Heavy
– Relaxed & Laid Back
– Work, Study & Reading

Review your answers then hit submit when you’re done.
 

Conclusion

 
That is how you submit your new song release to Amazon Music for playlist consideration. If you’ve done this for Spotify, it’s basically the same process with similar questions.

I highly recommend taking advantage of this free tool for every new release. There are no guarantees, but it’s worth a shot.

The post How to Submit Your New Release for Amazon Music Playlists and Stations appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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, staying top of mind with different touch points, accessing data to make better business decisions and having products to sell them.

Please Note: This blog contains affiliate links to products and services I personally use and recommend. Using these links helps to support my work at no extra cost to you. Read my full disclosure on all the companies I’ve partnered up with here. For full transparency, I will label any affiliate links so you know.
 

Music Distribution

 
When you’re just starting out, you can get away with uploading your music on free platforms like SoundCloud, YouTube, BandCamp and AudioMack in the short term. This is especially true if you’re starting music out as a hobby and having fun with it.

The problem is these aren’t usually the go-to places to listen to and discover music (with the exception of YouTube) if you want to take music to the next level.

Eventually, you’ll want to get your music on digital service providers (DSPs) like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. As an independent, you’ll have to go through a music aggregator like DistroKid (Affiliate) or CD Baby to do that, but it’s relatively inexpensive depending on what service you go with.

You may want to consider using some free music distribution options. TuneCore has a free plan that allows you to upload unlimited music to the top social platforms (TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) but they take a 20% cut of your royalties.

RouteNote offers a free plan where you can uploaded unlimited music to all the top DSPs and take 15% of of your royalties you earn through them.

The company I personally use with my clients and recommend only be as low as $23 a year. Read my breakdown on what I think is the best music distribution for independent artists.
 

Website

 
Some may say it’s debatable, but I’m a big believer that independent artists need to have a website if they want to be a professional. It doesn’t mean you need to have one right away, but at some point, you want to have online real estate that you own and control. it’s something you The main benefits of having your own personal website:

• You can set up an online shop to sell your music and merch directly to fans without a middleman taking their cut.
• Establish your own personal online space where you can control your story while actually owning the property. Remember your social media accounts are on rented land; you don’t actually own your followers and your profile.
• Create a landing page to drive traffic from your social media ads. This way you have a place to market new potential fans and further develop your relationships with them.

As someone new to the music business, you can hold off in the short term since it can be a bigger expense. There are a bunch of different website platforms to choose from, but it can range from $100 to $300 a year. On top of that, if you don’t design it yourself, it can cost hundreds of dollars more depending on who you have doing it for you.

If you’re looking for free options, Wix and Weebly offer free plans for you to try out. However, I highly recommend not using them as a long-term solution. You can read more about my thoughts about them and the drawbacks they present here.

Although I’ve created over 50 websites on WordPress, my personal favorite website building platform right now is Squarespace (Affiliate). I have partnered up with them to offer you 10% off your first-year subscription if you click this link and use the coupon code D4MUSIC10 when you check out.

For example, I’ve recently built this website for Rocky Rivera using Squarespace.

If you do decide to create one yourself, you’ll want to incorporate these 11 things into your musician website.

In the mean time, you can get away with you using a micro website or a “link in bio” page instead of a full website. Linktree is a popular option, but the one I like best is Beacons. Not only does it look better to me, but it also offers more features and tools with the free plan. I personally use it myself.
 

Target Audience

 
You can’t market effectively without defining a target audience. Who are the types of people most likely to become fans of your music and how do you go about reaching them? This is all needed to help guide your strategy and build a foundation for your music career.

There’s not necessarily a tool or service that you need to figure this out, but more so a strategy or mindset. What I like to say is you need to niche down and build within a community. I wrote a very detailed blog on this that you can read here.

Once you have an audience, the next step is knowing how to reach them. If you have the budget, I’m a big advocate of paying up for Facebook, Instagram and YouTube Ads. Just be warned that it’s easy to waste money if you don’t know what you’re doing or if you’re music isn’t good enough to be marketed yet.
 

Email Marketing

 
You’ll often hear that having an email list is essential for your music business. Emailing fans is a more effective way of maintaining a direct relationship with them compared to something like social media.

Email marketing services can be pricey, but Mailchimp is actually free. Even though features are limited in their free plan, you can still build a list of up to 500 email subscribers without paying a cent. My biggest issue with Mailchimp is that they’re expensive if you have a lot more email subscribers. It can cost almost $60 a month with around 2,500 subscribers. I know an artist who was paying $250 a month because they had a ton of email subscribers.

I started using ConvertKit (Affiliate) recently and it is another great option. They recently increased the number of subscribers allowed in their free plan to 1,000 subscribers. I don’t have as much experience with them compared to MailChimp, but I do like that they are moving more towards the music space with their latest acquisition of FanBridge, an email marketing service for musicians.

These are both excellent free options when you want to limit your expenses earlier on in your career.

Bandsintown has a free email marketing service currently in beta. This could be something worth checking out.

The best budget friendly option right now is using Beacon’s email broadcast tool. I’ve already converted a few of the artists I work with to Beacons because it’s just more affordable once you hit a certain number of email subscribers. For unlimited email sends and a bunch of other features, it cost $25 a month paid annually.
 

Content

 
Whether you like it or not, you’ll need content as a tool to promote yourself and your music. This is often the biggest challenge for artists, at least being able to create and put it out consistently. It’s important to understand that content marketing is arguably the most effective and scalable form of marketing.

Photos

You definitely need high-quality photos to use in your promotion like social media posts, websites, EPK (Electronic Press Kit), online profiles, covert art and more. For some things, you may be able to get away with using a newer smartphone as long as you have the right lighting.

There’s a good chance you may know a photographer that may be able to do stuff for free or cut you a deal. Ask people you know within your network for recommendations.

Videos

When it comes to marketing yourself and your music, the most important type of content is video. You don’t need to pour your life savings into one high production video, but some moving picture with your music in it will do.

Here are some video content ideas that don’t need big budgets. You may be able to do it yourself with some simple video editing and maybe another person to help out with the recording. It is entirely possible to produce quality video content that can go viral using your smartphone and free video editing tools available.

Short-Form Video – This type of video has become increasingly popular with the rise of TikTok over the years. Because it’s shorter and easier to digest, it’s the ideal way to market yourself and your music on social media. Read more about how to get started with my dedicated blog on short-form video, specially revolving around performance of a song. You can also learn a lot from an album campaign release using them.

Green Screen – Perform your song using a green screen as a backdrop so you can change the background to anything you want. Here is a video using a green screen that I edited. Instead of different scenery, I used different solid colors for each element of the song:

Lyric Videos – Another low-budget option is doing a lyric video for one of your songs. You’re basically overlaying your lyrics with the song over some stock footage or B-roll video. Here’s an example of a lyric video that uses b-roll footage:

You can also do an animated lyric video. If you’re not good with video editing, you can find some budget-friendly options over on the popular freelance marketplace Fiverr. They are an affiliate so please read my full disclosure to learn more about what that means.

Live Performance Video – For these types of videos, it doesn’t exactly have to be “live” but it should look like you are. It can be recorded someplace in your home or somewhere outside for a nice backdrop. If you are filming outside, be careful with where you go because some places don’t allow you to record without a permit or permission. For example, national parks. Here are some examples of videos I’ve shot and edited:

Music Visualizers – Maybe for whatever reason, you weren’t able to record a video for your release. One option is to make a music visualizer around your cover art. If you use DistroKid (Affiliate) to distribute your music, you can actually create a free, short mini video to use on social media. You can also pay for them to generate a music video visualizer for the full song as well.

The key to good content is something that is shareable so make sure whatever platform you’re on, that others are able to share it. This means not having a private profile or account.
 

Playlisting

 
One of the best free playlisting opportunities for your upcoming releases is to submit your song to be considered on Spotify’s editorial playlists and Amazon Music’s curated playlists. Getting on one of these playlists won’t make you a global superstar overnight, but it’ll give you a nice little boost of momentum. It isn’t easy to get placed, but it’s worth a short for something that is free.

Another free tool you can use is Playlister by DistroKid. It’s currently in beta as of this writing, so you’ll need to enter the password “gravy” to use it. This tool allows you to get contact information from Spotify playlisters based on any genre or keywords you provide. Because Spotify does not provide a way to reach out to playlist owners, it can be a challenge to pitch your songs. With Playlister, this process is much easier to pitch your songs.

For more on Spotify playlists, check out my guide here.
 

Music Blogs

 
Another route for marketing your music on a budget is pitching your songs to independent music blogs. A publicist can cost a lot of money so it’s a great starting point if you don’t quite have the funds and video content to use in Facebook, Instagram or YouTube ads. Just keep expectations in check as music blogs just don’t have the same influence they used to before social media dominated online attention.

A popular tool to help with not only pitch to music blogs, but also playlists and influencers, is SubmitHub. They do have free submissions you can choose from, but I feel it’s not worth your time. It’s cheap so I’d recommend paying up to $30 or so in credits to submit to their premium blogs.

Another similar tool to consider is Groover. They are based in France, but you can reach bloggers from all around the world. I personally have not used them yet, but they look to have a lot of the same blogs and similar pricing to SubmitHub.

Lastly, I put together a list of 44 blogs where you can submit your music for free, a lot of which accept submissions through SubmitHub.
 

Merch

 
We all know that there’s very little money to be made from marketing and promoting your actual music in this streaming age. The real money, aside from performing at live shows, is selling merch like tees, hats and posters.

Merch can also consist of selling CDs of your albums as fans still like having something physical to take home as a memento or collect. This still has good profit margins, but the demand for them isn’t what it was pre-streaming.

If you’re a relatively new artist, you’re probably not going to want to sink money into getting CDs or vinyl pressed up (definitely not vinyl as it’s expensive). That’s an investment you’ll want to hold off on, but there are ways to make money selling physical products without money upfront. This is where print-on-demand comes in.

Print-on-demand (dropshipping) services like Printful (Affiliate) allow you to design products to sell and will handle everything from production to fulfillment. You don’t have to do any work other than promoting the products on your website. There are no fees or costs on your end. You only make a profit for items you sell. To learn more, I cover this topic in-depth here.

What should you make and what kind of designs should you use? For that, you need to know who your target audience is and how your brand reflects that. This blog I wrote will help you to determine what merch you should be making as a musician.
 

Graphics, Logos, Cover Art

 
An important factor in music marketing and branding is the visual component. Not everyone can afford a graphic designer or access paid software like Adobe Photoshop. There are free or cheaper Photoshop alternatives you can try if you want to attempt creating them yourself.

If money is tight, one of the best options to help you with graphics is Canva (Affiliate). It’s a free, user-friendly app to create a wide variety of graphics from templates. For example, I did a whole blog on creating free cover art for your next release using Canva.

There are a lot of bonuses and features that come with their paid plans, but the free plan allows you to do most things you’ll need without having to pay.
 

Branding

 
Good brands are memorable and carry a positive reputation to the ideal people they are trying to reach. This is why understanding branding is massively important to your success as an artist.

Yes, you need good music, but you also need to make sure your presentation and content stick in the minds of your ideal fans. You want fans to emotionally latch to who you are and what you stand for so they are willing to financially invest in you.

Branding can be a confusing topic for many artists. The good news is I have a free branding guide for musicians that you can use to help you figure this out.
 

Music Promotion

 
Releasing music can be a tedious process. There’s a lot that goes into the planning and strategy, so I actually put together a very detailed release checklist for independent artists. This will ultimately save you a lot of time, and money, by allowing you to focus on the right tasks rather than wondering what you should be doing.

When it comes down to the actual promotion of your music, there are good and bad ways to go about it. A very useful tool for promoting your music are smart links. Assuming you’ve paid a music aggregator or distributor to upload your music on major streaming platforms, this is a great way to share your music. I covered a bunch of free options for you in this blog here.

As for running social media ads, there aren’t any free options as you will obviously need a budget to run them. But, in this video below, I break down when you may want to consider running Meta or TikTok ads when promoting your music:

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A post shared by D4 Nguyen (@d4_nguyen)

Analytics / Insights

 
Data is power. Having good data to have for your analytics helps with making better business decisions in your music career. As a musician, you have free access to a lot of this information on the various platforms you’re likely on already.

You can learn information about your social media posts, the type of people who engage with your content, what are the top cities your fans are in, your best performing music and much more.

Facebook Page Insights

Instagram Page Insights

Spotify for Artists

Apple Music for Artists

Amazon Music for Artists

TIkTok

Google Analytics – This is installed on your website. Many popular website platforms will provide you with some website traffic analytics of their own, but Google Analytics is more powerful. It may be too complex for non-tech savvy musicians, but it’s good to add to your website to collect data over time for someone else to review.
 

Other Free Tools and Apps

 
Outside of marketing and promotion, you’ll need other free tools to help with your day-to-day tasks. Thankfully, our smartphones allow us to stay productive while on the go. I compiled a list of free mobile apps that can be useful for musicians.

Have you considered leveraging the power of artificial intelligence? With the rise of AI, more powerful tools are becoming accessible to the public that can help musicians in areas like business-related writing, song lyrics, music production, graphics and video content. Check out my beginner’s guide to AI for musicians to see a list of 25+ AI tools to try out. Many of them are free or inexpensive.

Conclusion

 
Hopefully, this blog has helped put the pieces together for you and pointed you in the right direction about marketing your music with little to no budget required. There’s a lot that goes into marketing and not every area is going to be your priority. You don’t need to have everything done and in place right away.

The last bit of advice I want to end with is this, which touches on another question I get a lot. Of course, I’ve already written a whole blog on what you should know about starting a career in music, but many have asked me, how should I actually start?

Your priority is to set some kind of foundation for your online presence, which usually entails optimizing your social media profiles. Focus on posting video content, whether that’s writing original music, recording performance videos, doing covers or fun videos on TikTok. Most importantly, treat it like a hobby first and have fun with it.

Hold off on thinking about monetization and focus on building an audience through your content organically. Don’t completely neglect how you might want to monetize, but don’t fixate on making money so much that you become impatient.

While doing all of that, you want to dedicate a lot of time putting yourself out there and meeting people. With your niche and target audience in mind, use a community-orientated approach to grow your network. This can be done online too, but I think it’s best to do this in real life and with real people in your city.

The post How to Market Your Music With Little to No Budget (Resource for New Artists) appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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.
 

Why scammers will continue to succeed…

 
Before diving into the details, it’s important to address the root of the issue. The real underlying problem that allows music promotion scams to continue is this:

This is about to piss off some ppl but it needs to be said.

The reason why there are so many music industry scams is cuz scammers know new artists n producers are gullible enough to think they can pay their way to success.

YOU CANT. Make dope music n content, n SHARE it.

— KATO ON THE TRACK (@KatoProducer) July 1, 2020

The big 3 reasons why scammers continue to do what they do is:
1. A lot of artists lack music business education and hands-on experience with their careers.
2. Stuck in the belief/mindset that you can pay for shortcuts to success.
3. Scammers know your pain points well.

Being aware of these 3 things will make it harder for scammers to take advantage of you.
 

Lack of Education and Experience

 
In this digital age, anyone can upload a song to SoundCloud or YouTube and say they have a music career. After all, getting your music on digital service providers like Spotify can cost as little as $20 a month. Because there are no formal requirements to start a career in music, it’s easy to overlook the importance of artist development. This leaves aspiring musicians very susceptible for scammers to prey on their ignorance.

The key aspects to building a music career are in learning, experiencing and doing. The music business has so many facets and components that most starting out are left in the dark. Even on a societal level, ignorance and a lack of education make you a target for scams. Scammers love to prey on naive people. It’s nothing to be ashamed of either, as happens to the best of us.

When you don’t know any better, it’s easy to think that you can just pay some random music promotion service to gain fans. Unfortunately, marketing and promotion isn’t just about putting your music on playlists and blogs.

I’m always a big advocate for doing it yourself first so you can get hands-on experience. This way you know what to look for if you do want to find someone to do music promo for you. You really have to accept that no matter how talented you are, you need to dedicate time to educate yourself about the music business and how things work. Reading blogs from websites like mine is a great start to learn the different aspects of the business.
 

Lack of Patience (Shortcut Mentality)

 
A lot of aspiring and emerging musicians do not realize that it takes a lot of time to develop into a professional artist. It’s easy to look at popular artists who blow up seemingly overnight from a viral video and think that’s the reality and not the exception.

It is situations and stories like this we see that reinforce this shortcut mentality. When you have artists who really want something and don’t want to put in the time and work, they focus on paths of least resistance. This lack of patience drives this need to look for shortcuts and hacks for accelerated success. Artists feel this social pressure to “fake it ‘til you make it” and focusing on vanity over substance and relationship building. That’s not how success works out for most.

You can work smarter, but there are no shortcuts to success. No matter what anyone says or tries to sell you. Anything that may seem like a shortcut will have some negative repercussions that will set you back.

Developing into a musician who has the talent, skills, knowledge and experience to be professional takes time. Music promotion can only help you so much if your music and brand isn’t ready. This is why I emphasize playing the long game and moving away from a shortcut mentality.
 

Scammers Know Your Pain Points

 
The biggest pain point or problem emerging musicians often have is getting more people to listen to their music and building a fan base.

Scammers know your pain points or what you struggle with as an artist, so they do their best to exploit it for profit. They know the right things to say to get your attention and ultimately get you to pay for their affordable “promotion” packages. In the world of marketing, it’s a common tactic to use certain psychological triggers that revolve around your pain points. This is done to get your attention, show that they understand your problem so you ultimately decide to take action with their services.

They show you pictures of the most popular Spotify editorial playlists with millions of followers and throw them around the word “guarantee”.

After all, a frustrated and desperate artist tries anything, even if it goes against their better judgment.
 

Common Types of Promotion Scams and How To Spot Them

 
When it comes to music promotion, there are scams you should be aware of. When I refer to something as a “scam,” it doesn’t always mean they’ll take your money and ghost you. These music promotion services can look and operate like a real business with what looks like, at first glance, an authentic online presence and a large following. They’ll know all the right things to say to catch your attention.

However, upon closer examination, it’s all fake and their efforts won’t actually yield any results. In some cases, you may not even realize it’s a scam. Paying for these services will make you feel you’ve accomplished something, but it won’t benefit your career any real way.

Music promotion scams are everywhere, but here are where you’ll likely encounter them:
• Social Media (Instagram, YouTube, SoundCloud)
• Random Cold Emails
• Websites from Google Searches
• Freelancer Marketplaces (Fiverr)

Disclaimer: To be clear, not all music promotion companies are scams. The following companies and services I reference are what I judge to be scams. I have never used any of these services for myself or any clients, although I know someone who has. I share my skepticism of these types of “music promotion” services based on my experience in the online marketing space. I bring this up because it’s possible some of these people behind these services aren’t intentionally trying to scam musicians but may not realize what they offer isn’t actually effective. I debated referencing actual companies and services, but I feel it’s important you actually see real examples of what I’d caution you about.
 

1. Fake Followers and Streams

 
Let’s talk about this first because it is so prevalent. So many artists put such a high value on vanity metrics like social media followers and music streams. Instead of growing it organically through good content and strategic collaborations, musicians resort to faking it.

Don’t trust any service that says they can give you real followers and music streams fast. 99.99% of the time, it’s all going to be fake. Real growth is always gradual so any sharp spike in your followers is a sign of bots at play. No matter how much they say and try to convince you that they are real followers and no bots, it’s a scam. No matter how enticing and cheap it is to do, don’t do it! If you need more convincing, here are 4 reasons why you want to avoid fake fans.

There are services out there that will offer to “grow” your following organically or manually, which is more gradual. This is not necessarily a scam, but you have to pay attention to their methods. Even if they aren’t using bots to follow your account, they can use bots to “grow” your following using tactics like follow/unfollow on Instagram. It’s not against terms of service, but it’s a sleazy way of getting followers, in my opinion.

Avoiding these fake follower services is easy but be careful with any marketing agencies and labels you work with too. You could be working with real people to promote your music, but it doesn’t stop them from buying fake followers and streams to give you the impression that they are doing the job you pay them for.

The best way to avoid this type of scam is to know how to increase your followers naturally. Here are 3 general ways:

• Doing it organically by posting great content using proper tags.
• Run targeted ad campaigns (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube) on the native platform to expand your reach to specific audiences.
• As a byproduct of some other form of promotion or exposure. For example, if someone sees you perform live. Or if a big-name artist or brand talks about you and tags your handle in their Instagram Stories.

Buying fake followers is one thing, but there are services out there that will promise you more song streams to boost up your numbers on Spotify. Unlike having fake fans, this can have more serious repercussions if you’re caught. You don’t want to have to deal with having your music removed and your account terminated from the platform.

Like I touched on earlier, the reason why people succumb to buying fake followers and streams is the lack of patience and having the wrong mindset. You may think it’s harmless to buy a couple of thousand followers or song streams to create a positive impression on your social profiles, just don’t do it!
 

2. Social Media Promotion Scams

 
There are “services” out there that will offer various promotion packages to feature you on their social media accounts. They’ll offer a wide range of different placements to get you exposure like an Instagram Story or in a newsfeed post.

At first glance of their profile, you’ll see an impressive number of followers. The account will feature a bunch of other emerging artists, like yourself, to give you social proof that others have done it too. The name of the account may be associated with some famous artist or band to give you a sense of familiarity even though they have no connection to them.

However, once you dig into their account, you’ll see a lot of red flags. The problem is most of their followers are bots so that exposure on their social media account won’t do you any good.

Not all these types of social media promotion accounts are this obvious as the ones I show below. Here is a list of things to watch for:

• Check their followers. If they have an unusually high number of followers for a music promotion “company” (really, a million followers?), chances are it’s fake. Look at who the followers are. Do you see a lot of accounts with no profile pictures and posts, but follow a bunch of other people? Do you see a pattern of foreign languages used in the accounts? These are telling signs that the followers are fake so you’d be paying to promote your music to bots.
• What’s their post engagement like? If they have a million followers, but all their promotion posts result in 100 likes and 5 comments (most of which are spam), you should be wary. For video posts, those views can be faked so don’t base it off that either.
• Do they have a website? Having a website does not guarantee that it’s a legit company, but not having one should raise some suspicion because they’re likely trying to remain more anonymous.
• Are they just “promoting” to one broad general audience? If it looks like the account isn’t being selective with the type of artists they promote, regardless of musical style or genre, there’s a good chance it’s a scam. A scammer wants to make as much money as possible so they’re going to promote anyone who pays them. Remember that good marketing should be targeted and any promotion company that doesn’t acknowledge that is not a good company or a scam.
• They are pitching their services to you. Whether it’s a comment on a post or direct message, scammers are likely to approach you to buy their “promo” packages. This can be easily automated with the use of bots so you’ll be greeted with very generic messages.

Here are some examples of scam accounts you want to avoid:

ShadedRecords – Example of a social media promo scam

ImagineDragonsRecords – Example of a social media promo scam

Maroon5Records – Example of a social media promo scam

If you have to pay someone to be featured on their social media account, there’s a high chance that it’s a scam. As you’ll see, this is a common thread with the other scams.

Although I referenced Instagram, this type of scam can also take place on other platforms too like SoundCloud and YouTube.

Here’s an example of a trickier scam that involves the use of big-name artist accounts. In a nutshell, there’s a music promotion company that sold placements for a “mixtape” hosted on SoundCloud. They somehow got access to these big-name rapper accounts to lure these emerging artists to buy a slot on this playlist.

Over the past few months, a company named DaBlock365 has been working with several notable rap artists — including Fat Joe, Benny The Butcher, Jadakiss, and Dave East, among others — offering indie rappers "mixtape placements" for between $500 and $650 per slot. A thread…

— Z (@djboothEIC) June 29, 2020

I won’t get into all the details, but you can read and learn more about this elaborate scam here.
 

3. Music Blog Scams

 
If a blog requires you to pay to guarantee a feature on their blog, it’s likely a scam. Take a step back and think about it from a reader or visitor perspective. Why would a music fan read this music blog? To learn of new songs and artists from a trusted source, right?

If you were a genuine music fan, would you really take the recommendations from a source that charges artists to be on their website? Wouldn’t this raise suspicion? Like, is this artist being talked about because their music is actually good or because the blog placement was being paid for? It’s hard to trust someone when money is a factor.

There are plenty of legitimate music blogs out there that you can submit your music to get exposure for free. When it comes to evaluating what is real or a scam, here are some things to consider:

• How much traffic does the music blog get? When it comes to music blogs, it’s hard to know how much traffic they get. One clue is to look at their social media presence to see how many followers they have and how much engagement their posts get. If they don’t have social media, I would be very skeptical because they may be trying to hide any indication of social proof. You can also use search engine tools like Ubersuggest to estimate monthly traffic.
• Do they charge you to get guaranteed coverage on their blog? As I touched on earlier, paying to get a review, interview or feature on a blog is a red flag. There is an exception, although it’s without some criticism. There’s a website service called SubmitHub that allows you to easily submit to various music blogs and playlists for feedback and placement. Their goal was to address the massive number of submissions music blogs receive. There is a difference though. You do pay a small fee (a couple of dollars) to submit to each blog and guarantee a response or song feedback, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll cover you or add you to a playlist. The cost is to cover the time of the blogger to listen to your song.
• Is the music blogger in another country that’s commonly associated with scams? Typically, you see people in countries like India and Bangladesh run these types of scams and are known to run bot farms. There are other places too, not to single them out, but those are what I’ve noticed more personally.
• Is the blog generating high amounts of traffic not related to showcasing and promoting music? For example, a website could write about music news, music equipment reviews or music business advice to drive traffic to their website. Or they can post about the latest news on popular artists that can get people’s attention searching on Google. It’s search engine optimized so that it ranks higher up when people search certain keywords. They do this to fool you into thinking their blog gets a lot of traffic, but they charge you to feature you to visitors that have landed there for something completely different. Getting a feature on a blog like this isn’t going to be effective because most of the traffic generated to the website is there to learn about the best recording software.
• Are there real people running the blog? I’ve actually encountered a music blog that was pretending to be an American musician, but the domain name and website was hosted in India. When you research this person’s name, they’re not tied to any real person and it’s always the same generic photo used across all platforms.

Here’s an example of a music blog you want to avoid. They claim to get 100,000 monthly visitors or 3,000 monthly readers.

Now if you look up how much traffic they get, it’s a good amount. As you can see with Ubersuggest, they get about 57,000 visitors a month.

But you have to ask yourself, how did they get that much traffic and do visitors actually go to the website to learn about new music and artists that paid to be featured? The answer is no. The blog has generated a lot of traffic through search engine optimization (SEO) for a bunch of other music-related content from music production, gear and best artist lists.

If you look at the top pages, you can see the top artist lists blogs drive the majority of their traffic. They can sell you on getting you more exposure from the high traffic their site gets, but do these visitors actually spend time to learn about these artists? Maybe, but I have my doubts.

Now, this person seems real and actually gets good reviews on Fiverr from musicians who I have used this promo service. Again, this makes it tricky to know who is legit, but the average musician may not be aware of these subtle tactics.

When someone is curating artists to be showcased, it should be based on what the blogger authentically likes and advocates for, not because they were paid to.
 

4. Playlist Placement Scams

 

Similar to the first two scams involving social media and music blog placements, the playlist scam involves paying to get on certain user-generated playlists. The highlight is often “real organic playlist followers and listens.”

These services will often guarantee you a spot in their highly followed playlists that will claim to get you more exposure and generate more listens to your songs. However, you’re either not going to get any listens because the playlist followers are fake and/or you’ll get listens from a bunch of bots.

Having bots listening to your music seems harmless, but it can mess up your algorithmic associations on the platform. Let me explain.

Bots are programmed to generate streams. The songs a bot will listen to can be all over the map in terms of music styles and genres. In other words, it may follow an unnatural listening pattern.

As I’ve written about before, platforms like Spotify keep track of user listening patterns to help make recommendations to others. Their algorithm will have a tougher time recommending your music to real potential users when your songs are mixed up on playlists with a bunch of random songs and bots listening to all types of music.

Another playlist scam to look out for is one that promises to get you on bigger Spotify editorial playlists, which are curated by Spotify’s team. You can’t pay your way on to these playlists so anyone saying that they can is trying to scam you. In case you didn’t know, you can submit your unreleased song to be considered on Spotify’s editorial playlist for free.

It’s very important to note that Spotify’s terms of service states that you’re not allowed to charge or pay to get on a Spotify playlist. If you’re caught, it can result in your songs being removed or even your entire catalog banned.

Here are things to look for in playlist scams:

Are they charging to be added to a playlist? There’s a difference between paying for someone to pitch your songs to be considered on a playlist and paying someone to guarantee a spot on a playlist. Just because they don’t guarantee you playlist placement doesn’t mean it can’t be a scam either. Be aware that there are legit playlisting services out there that will help pitch your song to real music curators. The money you pay these companies is for their time and access to the relationships they’ve built with these playlisters. However, the company isn’t allowed to pay anyone to get your song on a playlist because they don’t want to violate Spotify terms of service.

Can you see the playlist beforehand? This can help you decide the quality of the playlist. Is it branded with a nice cover photo? Are there thousands of songs on the playlist? Do they host multiple playlists with roughly the same amount of followers? Are the playlists well curated? If the songs are just a random mix of styles and genres, you should be skeptical. Worst yet, if the playlist has hundreds or even thousands of songs, is anyone actually going to get to it?

Are the followers on their playlists real? A playlist is only good if there are real followers who actually listen to it. Here’s a good guide on how to spot a fake Spotify playlist.

Here’s a great example of what I would consider a scam.

Example of a Playlist Scam – Modern Music Marketing

• There are no links to their social media accounts. They actually have a Facebook page, but it’s full of the same self-promotion for their “marketing” services.
• There is no human presence anywhere. It’s all stock photos or generic videos that keep it very anonymous.
• Their “refund policy” is completely unrelated to what they’re selling.
• They claim to be based in Los Angeles, California. The address found in their privacy policy for their office is: 14 Circle Drive, Millington, NJ 07946 United States. The address listed to mail back refunds is 1200 Brickell Ave, Miami FL 33131, which is for a virtual office space. The strange thing is don’t sell physical products. How can you trust all these inconsistencies?
• Their testimonials are from big name artists, like RUEL, Dermot Kennedy and ROLE MODEL, so it doesn’t seem real. For such an anonymous “company,” it’s very hard to believe them.
• There is an option to schedule a call, but all these other signs make me very suspicious and skeptical of this service.

If you want to know how to leverage Spotify playlists to improve discoverability for your music, check out my Spotify playlist guide.
 

5. Publicist Scam

 
The reason why you would need a publicist is to get coverage on various media outlets they have an established relationship with. If you have an interesting story or angle that is newsworthy to a publication, they can use their connections to pitch you to get a story, song/video premiere, interview or review.

The problem is most artists aren’t ready for a publicist, especially newer, emerging artists. You often need to have established a recognized brand or have done something extraordinary that makes it worth covering to a mainstream audience. A publicist can’t just pitch anyone that can pay them, otherwise, it can jeopardize their reputation.

If you get approached by a publicist saying they want to work with you, here are some basic things to keep in mind to avoid getting scammed:

• If someone charges you to get exposure on big music publications or media outlets (Complex, Rolling Stones, Variety, Pitchfork, Billboard), you need to be very skeptical. If they guarantee it, then it’s likely a scam.
• Hiring a real publicist can be very expensive. A good, experienced one can easily be thousands of dollars a month. Be wary if you get quoted a price that seems too good to be true.
• Are you actually at a point in your career that you should pay for one? You have to be honest with yourself if you’re truly ready to pay a music publicist.

Summary – What to look out for in potential scams?

 
To wrap things up, I wanted to cover the key points of what you should take away when you’re seeking help with music promotion:

• They aren’t selective and will work with anyone who pays them. If you’re a scammer, your primary goal is to make money off naive people. This means removing any roadblocks like being selective with who they work with. The fact is, not everyone is ready for music promotion. A legitimate company shouldn’t work with anyone that pays them. If they don’t have some assessment process when it comes to who they decide to work with, you may want to be careful. I know that I wouldn’t want to work with an artist who isn’t ready because the campaign will more likely fail and that will look bad on me. Since the business model of these companies is based on profiting from each request, they don’t care how good the song is or if your branding is strong. They just want your money.
• Be careful of ‘one size fits all’ approach or cookie-cutter promotion. Again, scammers aren’t really trying to help with the effectiveness of their promotion. They want to maximize profits with minimal work so they want to stay away from customization. Every artist is different so you need someone who can cater to your specific needs. You want to know that they’re being more strategic with how they’re promoting you.
• Are they personalizing their messages in their pitches to you? Now in most cases, I would never trust a cold email or direct message from some random “music promo” service. But if a music promo company or service is approaching you, are they personalizing their message? Do they use your name and show that they’ve taken the time to learn about you? Chances are, they’re not and that’s how you can tell they’re scammers. It’s not difficult to copy/paste the same message to everyone, hoping that someone takes the bait. You can program bots to do this.
• They make guarantees for specific results. Making big promises is a red flag for a scam. It’s hard to guarantee good results with music promotion so be very skeptical when you hear lofty claims.
• If you have to pay to get on a blog feature, playlist, mixtape or social media account, be very skeptical. This is known as payola. In my opinion, this type of exposure should not be paid for. If you’re being featured somewhere, it should be because your music is good or you’re doing something right as an artist. Once you introduce money into the equation, it loses integrity.
• Are the prices unbelievably cheap? It’s not always going to be the case, but a very telling sign is the asking price is very inexpensive. I’m talking like between $5 – $100 dollars for their service. For me personally, I would not do any type of music promotion for any artist for less than $500 because I understand how much time and work goes into planning and executing a proper music marketing campaign. If prices are that cheap, you have to think about how much work they are really doing for you. Oftentimes, you’re paying for access to their “followers” but are they actually real people? On the flip side, some scammers will charge a lot more money because we associate higher costs with higher quality. You might think you’re getting better service because you’re paying more, but it’s a trick. Be aware of this pricing psychology.
• Where are they based? Usually, scammers who use bots in some way or run scam-like operations reside in other non-Western countries, like India, South-East Asia, Russia and parts of Africa. This is not something that is going to be promoted or made public, but they may slip up and reveal this in other ways.
• Are they real people? Is there an about page where you can read about the person or see photos of the team behind the service? Of course, this can be faked to a degree as well, but I notice most scams websites I’ve come across don’t even bother. Remember, anonymity is a sign to be suspicious about. Although I don’t do music promotion as a public service, I have an about page that shows I’m a real person.
• Do your research and play detective. Look up the name of the company or service on Google. Find out who is behind it and look up to see if their identity is real. There is just so much that can be faked online, you need to dig in as much as you can before paying anyone over the internet.
• How is the promotion actually done? Is it just posting something on a website or social media account? Is it an email blast to a large subscriber base? Or is it done with legitimate paid ads on their respective platform? This is very important that they are transparent about what they are doing and their methods.
• Is their following legit? For social media accounts, see if they have a website or do they purely operate on social media which could be a sign. Check their followers and see if they look legit. It’s pretty easy to tell when they have accounts with nothing posted and no profile pics. Accounts with very few followers look random.

Conclusion

 
Music marketing isn’t easy, and it can be frustrating when it feels like no one is listening to your music. Although you do need good music and video content, you also need to have good branding to go with your promotional efforts.

You can spend a bunch of money to get exposure, but if your branding isn’t there, it’s not going to stick. Your brand needs to be memorable and draw people in. This is why I emphasize brand development for artists as a fundamental step towards a professional music career.

Not all artists are ready to be promoted or take the next step. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t promote your music, but don’t resort to questionable scam-like promo services taking advantage of your hopes and dreams. There are plenty of legit ways to promote your music. But even legit marketing efforts that you’ll spend money on aren’t going to guarantee you any level of success, especially overnight as one may hope.

I only covered the scams related to music promotion, but there’s a lot of scams in the music business. Be skeptical and cautious out there. Do your research! It’s cliché, but if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.

Follow Up: A common question I get from people after reading this blog is, “what are legit music promotional companies out there that I try?” Honestly, I don’t know of any because I’m the one that handles the marketing and promotion for the artists I work with. I’ve never had to outsource that type of work to others so I can’t recommend any one. However, I highly encourage you to learn how to do it yourself first before you look for someone to do it for you.

I want to make it clear though that I am NOT a marketing and promotional company that openly takes in any clients. But if you want pay for a consultation with me first and try to work with me, please refer to this page here.

The post How to NOT Get Scammed with “Music Promotion” Services appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

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?
 

Is Submitting to Blogs Worth It?

 
This may seem a bit hypocritical. I believe submitting your music to independent music blogs for exposure is not the most cost-effective use of your time and energy. Why write a blog about where to submit if I feel this way? There are a few reasons.

1. The problem that independent blogs and smaller publications face is that social media and streaming platforms have basically replaced them as the go-to source for discovery and dialogue around music. We are more likely to learn about new music from our friends and playlists (curated and algorithmic). Music blogs just don’t have the same power and influence they once did over a decade ago with social media taking over our attention online. If music blogs are local mom-and-pop shops, social media is the Wal-Mart or Amazon of attention that just took over your town. It’s what most people check when they wake up, during their work breaks and before sleep.
2. Part of it is my DIY mentality where I feel you shouldn’t depend on someone else’s validation and following to get some exposure. Although leveraging someone else’s audience can be an effective way to accelerate the growth of your fanbase, we have many, many tools and platforms to get in front of potential fans directly without an intermediary.
3. Blogs can get bombarded with submissions just because there are so many artists looking to get put on and validated. Unfortunately, at the same time, there are way fewer music blogs still operating today. Many of them closed down and are slowly becoming inactive. This makes it a bit less enticing to pursue an independent music blog.
4. Although doing a little research and pitching your song doesn’t take too much time individually, it can add up if you’re pitching to a bunch of them for every release. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get accepted, let alone a response, as acceptance rates tend to be very low.

What Value Do Music Blogs Have Today

 
You might be thinking, why would I compile this list of blogs if I don’t think it’s the best tactic. I believe blogs can still have some value and serve a purpose for newer, developing artists who aren’t ready to invest a lot of money right away.

This isn’t to say independent music blogs are completely dead. After all, breaking into mainstream music publications with more attention and larger audiences is not feasible for most musicians. At least with independent blogs, there’s always going to be niche pockets of readers all over the web that stayed loyal to these blogs all these years. I’m all for starting niche and making your way up to other avenues.

The main point I want to get across is it’s about diversifying your marketing/promotional efforts. Even for more established artists, you shouldn’t just focus on music blogs or getting on playlists.

I’m an advocate for paid options like Instagram and Facebook ads, but I still feel it’s important that musicians have different options because not everyone wants to, or can afford to, invest big money early in their music career. Not only that, running social ads effectively has a learning curve.

Going back to the original question of should you submit to blogs. If you have the time for it, you should definitely include it as a part of your marketing plan, but it should never be the core component.

For developing artists, you should definitely experiment with submitting to blogs. After all, there are only so many options you have to get more exposure with minimal financial risk. If you’re just starting out and don’t have much money, it’s worth a shot.

Lastly, I know it’s easier said than done, but try not to take any feedback or the lack of response as a sign of your worth as an artist. Always remember that what’s considered “good music” is subjective. Not all bloggers are musicians either so their criticisms can only help so much. At the same time, no musician makes great music right away. Be open to feedback and seek constructive criticism as you develop as an artist.

If you are looking for professional feedback for your music, you can try platforms like Crowd Review (AudioKite) and Fluence.
 

Important Tips About Submitting to Blogs

 
Before getting into the list, I wanted to go over a few pointers you need to know.

– Don’t just blindly submit to every blog just because you can. You’ll still need to do some research on what are the right blogs for your songs. Make sure your style or type of music makes sense for what they are looking for so you’re not wasting anyone’s time. This will mean you’ll need to listen to some of the songs they cover to see if your music fits.

– Bloggers prefer new or unreleased music. If your best song was released over a year ago, don’t even bother submitting it. You want to use a song released within the first couple of months. The sooner the better. They want what’s new and fresh in order to ride any momentum your song may have.

– Personalize your pitches and keep them short. Instead of just sending a generic greeting, try to include the specific name of the person you are pitching. Most of the time, it will be on the contact or submission page. This shows that you’re not sending out mass emails. Your pitches should only be a few sentences long where you touch on who you are, what you want and about the release. Lastly, be specific in what you’re looking for – getting featured, a review or an interview.

– Send direct links to your music. Unless it is requested, DON’T send MP3s or any file attachments that need to be downloaded when submitting your song. You’ll need to upload it on a platform that doesn’t require someone to login or subscribe to a specific service to listen like Spotify or Apple Music. Read carefully on what platform they prefer, but usually, the top option is a public or private SoundCloud link. If you have an EPK (Electronic Press Kit), you may want to include the link to it as well.

– Read the submission directions and guidelines carefully. Each blog may be different in what they expect. Some only want to cover singles while others may want only bigger projects. Some only want new music while others may only cover it if it’s not released yet. You may also have to contact someone very specific and not use their general contact form or email address. Take the time to investigate all of these details, as it will increase your chances of success.

– Follow up once and don’t spam. If you don’t hear back, follow up once and move on. Never spam and keep asking because that’s a recipe to get ignored. Chances are the blogger didn’t see it or they’re not interested. Try again for the next release.

– Watch out for scams. Be really careful about any blogs that ask you to pay to submit your music to a blog and do a review or interview. If they charge, do a bit of digging to make sure they even have a real audience that is going to even see it. Check what’s their social media engagement like. This even applies to the blogs on SubmitHub. It’s very easy to get scammed or pay for something that may look legit but won’t do anything for you. Here’s a good example that you’ll likely want to avoid.
 

Music Blogs

 
Here’s the list of blogs I compiled for you in alphabetical order. There’s a well-balanced mix of blogs focusing on different genres and based in geographical locations. I made sure to only include blogs that are active as of November of 2023. If you feel like you have an active blog that belongs here, feel free to contact me.

As you’ll see below, lots of music blogs now use SubmitHub to handle and filter the large volume of submissions they receive. You can always go there directly for more details and stats on these blogs, as well as other blogs to submit your music to. There are two types of submissions, standard (free) and premium (paid). I would not bother with any of the free options (very limited) and would buy credits for premium submissions since it’s inexpensive.

SubmitHub is a legitimate platform but does carry some controversy with their pay-to-review model. Some see it as a form of payola while some question the integrity of bloggers operating in this model. Personally, I think it’s a great concept, but it is definitely not perfect.

Although I have not used them yet, you may want to consider using a submission tool like Groover. From the looks of it, it’s very similar to SubmitHub in pricing and blogs you can reach except they are based in Europe.
 

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