Music Promotion And Marketing

Music promotion and marketing is one of the most important things you can do as an independent musician. Many people don't realise how important marketing your music is, so largely overlook it. This is a big mistake, as if people don't know your music is out there, how are they going to buy your music? Read the topics below, and learn how to effectively promote and market your music.

How to Market Your Band With Little Or No Budget

Hi guys, I’ve got something very special for you today! This is a fantastic guest post by Christine Infanger, one of the most helpful and knowledgeable members in our members only forums. She has left more then a golden nugget or two for forum members, so I had to approach her for some information she could share here for free. If you read and enjoy this article (Which you should), please follow her on Twitter as well as sharing this article on your favourite sites (Facebook, Twitter etc). Ok, so without wasting any more time, here’s Christine:

How to promote your music with little or no budget

In an era where social media is a finger-click away and virtually everyone has a smart phone of one kind or another, it’s hard to make your band stand out in a sea of artists fighting for a chance to be heard.

A few years ago I was offered the opportunity to head up the marketing and promotion for an agency based in New York City. They needed a competent go-getter (me) to handle not only the Chicago market, but the Midwestern United States as a whole. Additionally, I was in charge of establishing and maintaining Street Teams for a number of the artists on their roster – both well known and unknown – for the entire US.

This was a prospect which had me giddy with anticipation until the catch came: I was to do all of this with virtually no budget (Read: Money).

Here are a few things I learned. Hopefully, enumerating on my experiences will prove helpful for a few.
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Posted in Music Distribution, Music Promotion And Marketing | 2 Comments »

Why You Should Never Give Out Your Music For Free

You should not give your music out for free

Giving out you music for free is a waste of time.

Yes I know, this goes against everything you’ve been taught so far. We all know how hard it is to sell your music to new fans, so the obvious step seems to be giving out loads of freebies until people are ready to buy your music right? Ummm, wrong!

The thing is, giving your music out for free can actually be doing more harm then good. By doing this, musicians are reinforcing the view that music should be free for listeners. In actual fact, musicians have as much right to make money by benefiting other people’s lives as anyone else does. Would someone makes board games just to give them out for free? Would a cleaner clean a hotel if they weren’t getting paid? Would a bus driver allow free passengers just because they enjoy driving? No, no, and NO!
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Posted in How To Sell Music, Music Business Theory, Music Promotion And Marketing | 12 Comments »

8 Reasons Email Marketing Will Boost Your Music Career

Welcome to email marketing for musicians. Building a mailing list is one of the most important things you can do to boost your music career. By getting people on your mailing list, you can quickly and easily communicate with your fans, and keep them informed about your going ons. Fans are what push you forward in terms of how well known you are and how much money your music career brings in. Because of this, communicating with them as effectively as possible should be a top priority of yours.

In this article we look at the importance of collecting email addresses for your mailing list, and how you can use this process to benefit your music career. We also point you to a good guide at the end, which instructs you on how to set up a mailing list, and how to make sure your list is profitable.

So what are the benefits on setting up a music mailing list? Read on to find out.
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Release And Sell Your Music, Just Don’t Forget To Promote It

Make Sure Your Music Release Doesn't Lack Promotion

When it comes to releasing music, there’s something I’ve noticed: While musicians generally put a lot of effort into putting out a CD or digital release, many put nowhere near as much effort into promoting this release. This is a shame, as promoting your music is one of the most important parts of releasing your music. Whether you’re releasing your music online or as a CD, if you don’t promote it, people won’t know it exists.

So what does promoting your music count as, sending out a few tweets? Sharing a link to your download on Facebook? Well, no. If you want a good amount of people to know about your release, you need to do a lot more promotion then that…
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The Benefits Of An Electronic Press Kit In Music

This is a guest post by Danielle of Artroom Melody. Guest bloggers are wanted for Independent Music Advice, so if you think you’ve got what it take then click the above link.

Today we’re going to look at what an electronic press kit is (Also known as a EPK) and what you as a musician would include in one. We also look at how having an EPK would benefit you. If you haven’t made an electronic press kit yet, now is the time to do so.

What Is An Electronic Press Kit?

First of all, what is an EPK? Well, a EPK is a press kit in digital format. If any journalists want any information about you or your band, they would search your website to see if you have a pack for the media. This will be your pack.

Some of the contents of musician’s electronic press kits can typically be found on their social networking pages, such as their Facebook, Reverb Nation, and MySpace pages. The difference between these sites and an electronic press kit however, is that the press kit takes the fragmented bits of information scattered across various profiles, and merges them into one concise entity. The end result is a single destination for every bit of information a professional in the music industry could ever need to know about you or your band.
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