Music Promotion And Marketing – Independent Music Advice

14 Quick Music Marketing Tips For All Stages Of Your Music Career

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a beginner or seasoned veteran.

To get from where you are to where you want to be in your music career, you must come up with a strategy. In most cases, that strategy will revolve around marketing.

Many people have goals. Fewer people write them down. Even fewer people have a strategy. And, only a tiny percentage of people ever action their strategy.

So, whether you’re looking to get more exposure, build your email list, land better shows or sell more merch, here are some music marketing tips you can use as part of your strategy.

8 Things Bandcamp Adviser Andrew Dubber Can Teach About Music In The Digital Age

by Shaun Letang

7 Things Andrew Dubber Can Teach Musicians About Music In The Digital Age It was a shiny day in London, and I was having a coffee with a fellow musician. I realized that the biggest part of the conversation was his ranting about the ‘bad situation in independent local music scene’.

“There’s so much knowledge out there, I don’t disagree with you, but it’s scattered all around the web. Impossible to find the really credible resources!”

And then it hit me:

“Why don’t we stop whining and do something creative instead?”

How To Form A Band – The Ultimate Guide Part 2

by Shaun Letang

This guide on forming a band was contributed by Ruth of Celtic Clan. If you have useful and practical information regarding the music industry, you can contribute a guide too.
This article is part two of the How To Form A Band series. If you haven’t seen the first part already, you can see it on Music Industry How To:

How To Form A Band – The Ultimate Guide Part 1

This is a three part series looking how to set up and run a professional or semi professional band. If your aim is to form a band which can make money from gigging (Or you already have a band but want them to do more with themselves), make sure you read these guides in full.

Start off by reading the above mentioned guide, and once you’ve done, get started on this one.

Now that you’ve caught up with part one, let’s continue on from where we left off.

How to Rock the Audience When They Least Expect It

by Shaun Letang

This is a contributed guide by Nils at Bandologie. “It’s the story of a successful promotional concert me and my band did. The scene? 9:15am in a school break hall in front of shocked pupils.” If you have anything helpful to contribute to one of our sites, contact us here.
Here you can read about one of the most powerful independent music promotion events that I participated in.

At the age of 24, I became a product manager at the major record label BMG. Before that though, I used to play the drums in a heavy metal band for several years.

Like many musicians, we often tried to get local venues to allow us to gig. This though, wasn’t always easy. Most musicians almost beg club owners and bookers to play another gig, but there is a better way: While begging can work from time to time, the only solution to carry on getting gigs in the long run is to get a bigger audience to your concerts. Not easy I know, but true. As they say, “Don’t shoot the messenger”.

Do You Need A Manager For Your Music Career?

by Shaun Letang

This is a guest post by Christine Infanger from Thirty Roses. Want to write for this site? Find out more here.
No matter your taste, everyone likes music. Perhaps some are more passionate about it than others, but everyone has a favorite song; a song which they relate to more than any other.

Music is a powerful, almost mythical force. And, while you often read and hear about the amazing talent of the men and women responsible for the sounds that mean so much to us all, we seldom hear about the people who make it possible for us to hear them; their managers.

It may sound like more than a slight exaggeration to say that without managers, we would never hear music. But if you know anything at all about how the music industry works, you know this isn’t much of a misstatement.

How to Market Your Band With Little Or No Budget

by Shaun Letang

How to promote your music 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:

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.

No Longer Available.