'Being successful in music is 5% talent 95% business skills.' A sad but very true fact. Have you ever wondered why artists with little to no visible talent like 'Nicki Minaj' are so famous? (Sorry if you're a fan). On this post I'll share the five best ways I've found to promote music and get more fans. This is a complete beginners guide to launching yourself into the music business.
Social Networking/Forums
This is an obvious one but I thought I should cover it! Sign up for Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and any other well known social networking site, with these you can share your music, give people updates on releases and press.
Free Downloads
Selling some of your Music for free might sound a little counter-productive, as you've probably put a lot of time and effort into creating it, but you'll notice that if you put a track, or an album up for free, much more people will download it, and maybe even pay anyway (If you're using a service like bandcamp, which I recommend). You could even put a limited time on it 'Free track/album for one week only!'
Create a newsletter
Using bandcamp for your free downloads means that if someone types '£0' when getting a track they must submit their email (you can also do this on reverbnation). With this information you can create a newsletter (I recommend using Mailchimp) and send it monthly, with updates on your new tracks, press information, and give them exclusive offers that no one apart from subscribers gets.
Get a website
If you want to have a good presence online you need to be accessible easily by search engines such as google and yahoo, creating your own website is the first thing you should do! Firstly you need to get your domain name I.E - www.rek-lore.co.uk. Pick something simple and as close to your name/band as possible. I used 1and1 for this. Once you have that you need a Web hosting service, which basically puts all of your data (pictures, videos, text etc) online, otherwise no one would be able to see it, 1and1 also provides this service but plenty of other websites do too.
Once you have these you can start building your website, I recommend using 'Wordpress', it has a a nice interface and it pretty easy for beginners. It's all very well and good having a website, but what's the point if no one can find it? You need to get your website Indexed by Google, which basically means it will show up on google. Click here for a short quick lesson on how to do so.
Create Videos
Using Youtube is a powerful tool, as so many people use it, and if a picture can tell 1000 words, how many can a video tell? You can create videos about a wide range of things, such as music Videos for your tracks, tutorials on music production/composition, Vlogs, Live shows/sets, or anything else music related, the key is to keep it interesting, ask your self 'If this was someone else's video, would I like it?'
- At the end of your videos include links to other videos/websites.
- Include annotations showing where they can access your music.
- Include links to all of your websites in the description of your videos.
Youtube | Facebook | Twitter | SoundCloud | BandCamp | Official Website