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Make It As An Independent

Helping musicians maximize their potential by using online marketing tools, insights and strategies to increase music exposure and attract life-long fans.

MUSIC MARKETING FOR INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

With so much competition for attention out there, it’s harder for musicians to stand out of the clutter. The aim of this site is to guide you through the music marketing and business space to improve your chances of making a living off music and continue making a positive impact in people’s lives.

Smart Links

What’s the Best Smart Link Tool for Promoting Your Music Effectively?

By Music Marketing, Music Tools 5 Comments

When it comes to marketing your music online, a tool/service that every artist needs is a smart link for your music releases. For those who are more marketing savvy, you may know it as a landing or pivot page.

Although Spotify is the most popular paid streaming service, not everyone uses it and it’s not possible to link to all the different outlets your music is on when promoting it. This is where a smart link or music landing page comes in.

A smart link directs the user to a web page that contains links to all the different places people can buy or listen to your new release. In some cases, you may want to include other relevant links, song snippets and videos in your marketing efforts. Read More

Spotify Playlist Guide

Spotify Playlist Guide: How to Improve Discoverability for Your Music

By Music Streaming, Playlists, Spotify One Comment

In this modern digital age, streaming has become the primary way for us to discover, listen, and share new music. For musicians, this accessibility has allowed their songs to be discovered by new potential fans from all over the world.

One of the ways to reach new fans is through Spotify playlists.

Spotify playlists can potentially put you in front of the right people who are more likely to be into your music and turn into proper fans.

As an independent artist, it’s important to understand how Spotify works and how its playlist system can bridge the gap between you and potential fans.

However, the climate for streaming platforms like Spotify has become highly competitive, so just uploading your song will not be enough. Keep in mind that over 100,000 new songs are added to Spotify each day!

In this blog, I will go over the different types of Spotify playlists as a discovery tool to help you get more exposure for your music. Read More

How to Improve Your Song’s Performance in Spotify’s Algorithmic Playlists

By Music Streaming, Playlists, Spotify One Comment

Last Updated: 6/12/24

Want your music to show up more on Spotify’s Discovery Weekly and Release Radar to get discovered by new potential fans?

Discover Weekly playlists have been streamed for over 2.3 billion hours between July 2015 and June 25, 2020. With over 600 million active users, you can imagine it being significantly higher in 2024. Getting on algorithmic playlists, like Discover Weekly, can be a powerful tool to get more exposure for your songs within the Spotify ecosystem.

Spotify’s goal is to make the best song recommendations for their users based on individual listening behaviors, habits and music preferences. They use several metrics to evaluate what songs get included in their algorithmic playlists for a particular listener. No one knows for sure what all the metrics are since Spotify doesn’t share that information publicly.

However, there’s strong reason to believe saves and popularity index are strong signals for Spotify. Generally, a lot of emphasis is on getting more streams, but that’s only part of it.

In this blog, I will break down the save-to-listener rate, popularity index and other key factors you need to know about. Working on these metrics will improve your chances of getting on Spotify’s algorithmic playlists and get more exposure for your music.
Read More

Canva Cover Art Banner

How to Make FREE Cover Art for Your Upcoming Album or Single Release

By Music Business, Music Distribution One Comment

Are you an independent artist on a budget looking to create album or single cover art for your upcoming release?

In this blog, I will go over everything you’ll need to know about cover art, including requirements to upload to your music distributor, cover ideas and other free tools you might need. It’s very easy for anyone to do, even without graphic design experience.

Most importantly, I’m going to show you how you can do it yourself with free apps online, so it doesn’t cost you anything. Read More