I have been working with bands for over 5 years now and when I started I had no clue how to really promote a band. I was just a naive college freshman who thought he could be the next P. Diddy. However, I quickly found out that music promotion is not easy. Although things were hard, I stuck with it and picked up a ton of tricks and tips along the way. Below, I will share these tips and hopefully you will use some of the tactics I outline below.
1: MUSIC DOESN'T SELL. It sucks. I mean, it does sell, but not like it use to. I have gone to countless shows and have seen unknown bands, artists, singers, folk dancers, and the like try to sell their CDs for $10 or more. The result is no sales, a ton of plastic that they now own and can't get rid of. My advice for this is to bundle. BUNDLE! BUNDLE! I'll say it one more time, BUNDLE! Sell a t-shirt and package it with a CD. Sell a Poster and package it with a CD. DO SOMETHING CREATIVE OTHER THAN JUST TRYING TO SELL A CD AS A STANDALONE PRODUCT. Believe me, your sales will increase.
2: MUSIC VIDEOS ARE IMPORTANT! I hate it when I see a crappy music video. It is not that hard to make a professional looking music video. Use an SLR camera. If you don't own one, find one to borrow from a friend. If none of your friends have one, then find a friend who attends college. They can rent them for FREE from their university or community college. SLR's allow for manual focus, which gives the video that music video quality that you see from the pros. Also, join a video forum or two. Comb through it, ask questions, and perfect your art. In the end, the time investment will pay out extraordinarily. I mean, by just putting in a small amount of time, you will now be able to produce all your own music videos until your budget increases. This will give you a HUGE advantage over your fellow independent musicians who are trying to make it.
3: SEO: BECOME FAMILIAR WITH THIS. You can find many forums on black hat and white hat SEO. Let me break it down on a very basic scale for you now. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Its how you get your links to show up first when someone types something in Google on the SERPS (search engine results pages). Black Hat SEO is more relevant to musicians because it is a controlled form of spamming. White hat SEO is another form of internet marketing. This includes manually doing things and avoids the automated robots doing the load of the work for you. This is relevant when it comes to social media. I will break down the tactics below.
Black Hat SEO: Here are the tools and methods I talked about above.
VIDEO PROMOTION: there is this awesome tool called TubeAssist. It allows you to make several YouTube accounts, like a video, and then automatically send the video out in a message to targeted people. For example, if you're target audience are Lil Wayne’s fans, and then you can collect users who commented on his video and target them. Opt for the 10-account package. With that package, you can send out 30,000 messages a month. It works. It really does. Breakout videos don't go viral on their own. They need a boost.
TWITTER: Twitter is a great way to get new fans. WE ALL KNOW THAT. But a great way to get people to follow you is by following them. Well this tool automates the process. For $12 a month, Manageflitter will allow you to do this. Say your target audiences are fans of Mumford & Sons. Well you can automatically start following people from their page. Wait a couple of days. And then automatically unfollow everyone who doesn't follow you. Believe me, this is great. You can pick up real active followers this way super quickly. Usually businesses employ tools like this, but every artist should too.
MAGIC SUBMITTER: Need a way to own the Internet? Post relevant blogs, videos, and press releases quickly? Magic Submitter is the way to go. It takes some time to set it up, but after you have set it up, you can automatically upload your relevant news and new music videos (that you have taught yourself to film) up to over 500 websites. Its things like these that get you more organic traffic and help build your fan base. I have always done this with artists, and believe me, it works. You should also get an account with Captcha Sniper. You know those little words you have to type in that are impossible to read? That is a Captcha. Well for literally dollars, captcha sniper integrates with magic submitter and will solve the captchas for you. Now it really is automated.
White Hat SEO: This is a manual method for internet marketing. Below I will outline tools and methods to make this more efficient.
HOOTSUITE: Hootsuite is free. It’s awesome. And you need to sign up for it. You can manage your social media through it. The greatest add on (which is also free) is INBOXQ. It allows you to create a stream, add 3 keywords to each stream (up to 4 streams) and every tweet that contains those keywords will show up. More tweets than you can handle usually pop up. We use two people just to manage one twitter account at a time. However, this is a great way for you to connect with new fans. Type in key words like (new hip hop song) (find good music) (find new music) and so on and you will find people who are dying to hear new music. Well I think that music should be yours. So, the key is to look out for the relevant tweets that pop up and reply to them. Start conversations with the people and convert them to be your fan.
Social Media: Interact, interact, and INTERACT! This is how you build a great and active fan base. ACTIVE fans are the ones who purchase your merch, listen to your new songs, and tell friends!
So above are some of the tactics we have used in the past and still use. Try them out and see the influx in fans you get. I promise if you put the work in, you won't be disappointed.
Heath
President
Build My Band, Inc.
www.BuildMyBand.com
1: MUSIC DOESN'T SELL. It sucks. I mean, it does sell, but not like it use to. I have gone to countless shows and have seen unknown bands, artists, singers, folk dancers, and the like try to sell their CDs for $10 or more. The result is no sales, a ton of plastic that they now own and can't get rid of. My advice for this is to bundle. BUNDLE! BUNDLE! I'll say it one more time, BUNDLE! Sell a t-shirt and package it with a CD. Sell a Poster and package it with a CD. DO SOMETHING CREATIVE OTHER THAN JUST TRYING TO SELL A CD AS A STANDALONE PRODUCT. Believe me, your sales will increase.
2: MUSIC VIDEOS ARE IMPORTANT! I hate it when I see a crappy music video. It is not that hard to make a professional looking music video. Use an SLR camera. If you don't own one, find one to borrow from a friend. If none of your friends have one, then find a friend who attends college. They can rent them for FREE from their university or community college. SLR's allow for manual focus, which gives the video that music video quality that you see from the pros. Also, join a video forum or two. Comb through it, ask questions, and perfect your art. In the end, the time investment will pay out extraordinarily. I mean, by just putting in a small amount of time, you will now be able to produce all your own music videos until your budget increases. This will give you a HUGE advantage over your fellow independent musicians who are trying to make it.
3: SEO: BECOME FAMILIAR WITH THIS. You can find many forums on black hat and white hat SEO. Let me break it down on a very basic scale for you now. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Its how you get your links to show up first when someone types something in Google on the SERPS (search engine results pages). Black Hat SEO is more relevant to musicians because it is a controlled form of spamming. White hat SEO is another form of internet marketing. This includes manually doing things and avoids the automated robots doing the load of the work for you. This is relevant when it comes to social media. I will break down the tactics below.
Black Hat SEO: Here are the tools and methods I talked about above.
VIDEO PROMOTION: there is this awesome tool called TubeAssist. It allows you to make several YouTube accounts, like a video, and then automatically send the video out in a message to targeted people. For example, if you're target audience are Lil Wayne’s fans, and then you can collect users who commented on his video and target them. Opt for the 10-account package. With that package, you can send out 30,000 messages a month. It works. It really does. Breakout videos don't go viral on their own. They need a boost.
TWITTER: Twitter is a great way to get new fans. WE ALL KNOW THAT. But a great way to get people to follow you is by following them. Well this tool automates the process. For $12 a month, Manageflitter will allow you to do this. Say your target audiences are fans of Mumford & Sons. Well you can automatically start following people from their page. Wait a couple of days. And then automatically unfollow everyone who doesn't follow you. Believe me, this is great. You can pick up real active followers this way super quickly. Usually businesses employ tools like this, but every artist should too.
MAGIC SUBMITTER: Need a way to own the Internet? Post relevant blogs, videos, and press releases quickly? Magic Submitter is the way to go. It takes some time to set it up, but after you have set it up, you can automatically upload your relevant news and new music videos (that you have taught yourself to film) up to over 500 websites. Its things like these that get you more organic traffic and help build your fan base. I have always done this with artists, and believe me, it works. You should also get an account with Captcha Sniper. You know those little words you have to type in that are impossible to read? That is a Captcha. Well for literally dollars, captcha sniper integrates with magic submitter and will solve the captchas for you. Now it really is automated.
White Hat SEO: This is a manual method for internet marketing. Below I will outline tools and methods to make this more efficient.
HOOTSUITE: Hootsuite is free. It’s awesome. And you need to sign up for it. You can manage your social media through it. The greatest add on (which is also free) is INBOXQ. It allows you to create a stream, add 3 keywords to each stream (up to 4 streams) and every tweet that contains those keywords will show up. More tweets than you can handle usually pop up. We use two people just to manage one twitter account at a time. However, this is a great way for you to connect with new fans. Type in key words like (new hip hop song) (find good music) (find new music) and so on and you will find people who are dying to hear new music. Well I think that music should be yours. So, the key is to look out for the relevant tweets that pop up and reply to them. Start conversations with the people and convert them to be your fan.
Social Media: Interact, interact, and INTERACT! This is how you build a great and active fan base. ACTIVE fans are the ones who purchase your merch, listen to your new songs, and tell friends!
So above are some of the tactics we have used in the past and still use. Try them out and see the influx in fans you get. I promise if you put the work in, you won't be disappointed.
Heath
President
Build My Band, Inc.
www.BuildMyBand.com
