How TikTok is becoming a Music Streaming Giant

How TikTok is becoming a Music Streaming Giant

by | Oct 27, 2021 | Highlight, Tips

Don’t miss the opportunity of going viral using the tools and platforms created by TikTok to make it easier for indie artists to connect with music fans.

TikTok announced on Music Business Worldwide that they will be launching a beta program (known as SoundOn) that will help upcoming artists move from phase A to B in their music careers. The major problem with attaining exposure on TikTok is that its audience is so vast that artists find it challenging to define their fanbase, sell merch, and hold concerts in physical locations. A good example is Coi Leray, a female artist who is struggling to garner loyal fans among the hip-hop communities despite releasing successful singles and collaborating with established rappers like Lil Durk, Gunna, Wale, and EARTHGANG. With the SoundOn platform, TikTok hopes to bridge the gap between its online platform and the world stage.

Also, they are working with UnitedMasters, an American music distribution service, to help indie artists distribute their music to all music platforms directly from the TikTok app. UnitedMasters is home to popular artists like Lil Tecca, NLE Choppa, Lil XXEL, Tobe Nwigwe.

TikTok hopes to grow its commercial music library as a result of the UnitedMasters deal. TikTok’s commercial music library is a collection of pre-cleared and royalty-free songs approved by the owners (upcoming artists and established music houses).

The short-video sharing app doubles as a social networking platform fast becoming a music streaming giant. Unlike other audio-streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, or Deezer, TikTok has over 1 billion users across planet earth. Gone are the days when TikTok was dubbed the kids’ app; nowadays you can now find users of all ages on the platform. According to Wallaroo, 26% of the 80 million US users on TikTok are within the age range of 25-44 while 80% are between the ages 16-24. TikTok is a digital village consisting of all types of people from diverse backgrounds, age groups, belief systems, or gender. 

Engagement Not Consumption

TikTok pays artists per engagement, not per stream, meaning artists get paid when their music is used to create video content on the platform. Therefore, the amount of views generated by the video content has no impact on the royalty payout. Also, the amount received per engagement is determined by the market share as opposed to the standard metric view system used by Apple and Spotify.

Most artists are generally interested in the TikTok model since it can give their music more exposure. In an interview with Genius, Xeno Carr (a member of the iLOVEFRIDAYS duo) said the exposure TikTok offers on their future projects is far more valuable than the royalty payout they would have gotten from the usual pay-per-stream model.

Where Social networking Intercepts ShowBiz

Although upcoming artists in the music industry can afford to trade music royalties for viral exposure, established artists who will get heard with or without TikTok prefer to get paid by their distributors. Aside from the money obtained from the distribution deal with Tiktok, another possible way of making money on TikTok is by monetizing live streaming. While the idea of paid live streaming is still in its baby phase, it is a promising one.

When artists plan to hold live-streamed concerts, they don’t have to pay for a physical space, plus they can also make tickets very affordable for fans. The reason artists charge $200 – $5000 for concerts is because it is expensive to rent stadiums and halls for shows.

While TikTok has yet to monetize its live streaming platform, it plans to do so after attaining an impeccable user experience. Artists like Ed Sheeran, Justin Beiber, and J Balvin have held separate shows using the TikTok Livestream platform and gained huge success. For example, the J Balvin live stream has about 4.5 million unique views. Finally, the artists in the future can tour with ease and earn more money using the Livestream platform. 

TikTok for Musicians

TikTok for Musicians

by | Jul 21, 2021 | Tips

Communicating with your audience via Facebook or Instagram ads all the time is not sustainable. Big artists like Drake, Sia, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, and many others were able to break streaming records because they understood the relevance of user-generated content, aka free promotion. No other social media platform encourages the UGC culture like TikTok for musicians.

A lot of upcoming artists across all genres have made it big on this video-sharing app formerly known as Douyin. Artists like Lil Nas X, Doja Cat, and Oliver Rodigro among others can boast of millions of Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes streams, thanks to TikTok.

What makes TikTok the perfect viral marketing tool for musicians?

TikTok is more than an app. The platform is home to diverse UGC-creating influencer communities, some of which have well-displayed cultures and subtle rules. These communities live and die by new hashtags and challenges. If a group of influencers like a song

and make a challenge for it, thousands of others might join the trend by creating similar videos with their creative twist. TikTok video editing tools and effects make it easy to replicate trending videos.

Once the TikTok algorithm notices a trend, it pushes it to the “For You” page of tiktokers who have interacted with such videos in the past, the “Explore” page of millions of users following the participating influencers. Depending on the immensity of the trend, it can also make it to the For You page of users who have not interacted with such videos in the past. The TikTok algorithm is designed to encourage trends and of course, keep users on the app. What might have started as a reaction video to a song can become an explosive trend in minutes.

As musicians, we must understand that the TikTok algorithm is friendlier than that of other platforms like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Instagram, for example, only favors established influencers and paid promotion. Facebook is worse. In order to sustain your music business, you cannot rely on platforms that require you to put in dollars every time to get seen. What you need is a platform that feeds off viral content. A community where creating UGC is the culture. A platform like TikTok where artist dreams come true sooner than expected.

How to grow your fanbase on TikTok for musicians

To succeed on TikTok, you must be ready to follow trends without losing your creative touch. TikTok is not the best platform for misoneists, people who hate new things.

According to a 2021 Statista report, TikTok is dominated by users under 30. Three things young people love are fun, more fun, and lots of fun. Hence, to survive on the platform, you have to be fun to watch and unusually creative. Follow the steps below to grow your fanbase on TikTok.

The shorter the better; create short videos

The TikTok community appreciates micro-entertainment; meaning time is of the essence. YouTube is the place to go if you want to create long-form videos, but on TikTok, ain’t nobody got time for that.

The initial duration for videos that can be posted on TikTok used to be 15 seconds. A recent update extended the time limit to 60 seconds. When recording a video on the platform, the time limit remains 15 seconds, but you can mash four 15 seconds videos to make a minute-long video. The TikTok licensing agreement with music companies like Sony Music Entertainment does not allow users to use more than 15 seconds of their artists’ songs in videos created on the platform.

Adopt a TikTok culture

The TikTok trendy culture is divided into countless subcultures, such as punks, e-boys, goths, VSCO girls, dark academia kids, softboi, yee-boy, and many more. These subcultures dictate the fashion styles of specific influencer groups.

In summary, TikTok is not all about creating random videos for trending songs. Behind the scenes, there are hidden meanings attached to fashion styling, dance steps, lighting. The only way to get a better view of how things are run on TikTok is to explore. Believe me; TikTok is another universe on its own.

Before posting content, you need to:

  • Explore various subcultures and choose one or a combination of subcultures.

  • Follow the influencers you like and keep an eye on their fashion styles.

  • Create your fashion style using original ideas and of course, the borrowed ones.

  • Test your ideas and stick to the ones that give you the most engagement.

Draft a content calendar

I hope you have not forgotten the ultimate goal, which is to gain traction using user-generated content. If you are going to turn random viewers into fans, you must keep feeding them content.

Consistency is key.

There is no better way to be consistent than to create a content calendar. The content calendar will contain:

  • The specific date and time the content will go live.  
  • The TikTok account(s) if you manage multiple accounts.
  • The video and description.
  • The hashtags you intend to use.
  • The other social media accounts you intend to repost the content on.

You can post once, twice, or thrice a day. But desist from posting more than three videos a day even if you have a ton of followers.

Why?

You want to ensure a post gets enough exposure before posting another. Unless you are Charli D’amelio or some TikTok influencer with millions of followers, posting 5-10 posts per day is not a great idea. It can hurt your reach.

Use hashtags

Let’s say you made a video for a trending challenge for instance #respectthedrip challenge, you want to make it easy for the algorithm to know what the video is about. Using hashtags help the algorithm understand your post and push it to the For You pages of an interested audience. If the initial users that were shown your content like it, the algorithm will push it to more lookalike users.

Apart from the algorithm boost, niche hashtags like #comedy, #funny, #model, #tiktokindonesia, help you target users who are interested in your craft. You can also target people in your region with location-related hashtags. As a musician, you need to connect with TikTok users in your region, that way you will be able to monetize your music and sell out shows when you start getting tangible traction.

While there’s no restriction on the number of hashtags you use on a TikTok post, no post can have more than 100 characters. A good rule of thumb is to mix the niche hashtags with broader ones like #foryoupage, #viral, #explorepage, etc.

Do not use hashtags that have nothing to do with the video you posted. If you use a dog-related hashtag in a video that has nothing to do with dogs, you will piss off dog lovers and it will hurt your reach. While TikTok does not have a dislike button, they can hold down your video and tag it as ‘not interested’. The algorithm can punish your account if you use misleading hashtags.

Go Live

In case you want to go ‘Jonathan Harchick’ on your followers, the live feature allows you to engage your users for an unlimited amount of time. To go live on TikTok, you must have at least 1000 followers and you must be over 16 years of age. The major benefit of going live is that it increases the bond between you and your followers. Plus, it is easier to get them to turn up at your shows if you can impress them via a live performance.

Go Local

Although I have mentioned this point before, it is worth mentioning twice. I know you dream to blow beyond the borders of your state/county. I understand you want Lil Nas X kinda fame. However, even if you go viral globally, you need to be well-respected in your state because that’s your territory. Submit music to TikTok influencers in your state. Fans in your city will have a hard time forgetting you, but people outside your region? Oof! They can easily be swayed by the trending music from other artists. So get your city on lock.

Share TikTok videos on other social media platforms

What you started on TikTok does not have to end on TikTok. If TikTok was not a social media app, it could pass for an editing tool. Amaze your fans on other social media platforms with the beautiful video you made via TikTok. Doing that can also increase your followers’ count on TikTok.  

How to optimize your music for TikTok

Optimizing your music for TikTok starts from the recording studio. You have to create the song with your TikTok community in mind.

Do you belong to the community of TikTokers that love to create duets or dance challenges to UK grime kind of music?

Are you a musician that creates sad songs like Billie Elish?

What mood does your sound emit?

The good news is that there is a place for you on TikTok regardless of the kind of music you create. One thing you need to do is ensure your video creation process tallies with the mood or message your music carries. The four steps below will help you optimize your music for TikTok.

One song at a time

The truth is you cannot push all the songs on your album (if you have released one) at the same time. You need to focus all your resources on one song at a time to attain maximum impact.

We hope these six pro tips for building a Spotify fan base will help you create this virtuous cycle and take you to the next step in your music career.

Create a hashtag and challenge for your song

Creating a hashtag for your song is like giving it an identity in the ‘eyes’ of the TikTok algorithm. Also, using a hashtag helps you track the success of your TikTok challenge. If you are having a difficult time coming up with a beautiful idea for your song, you can ask your core fans or influencer friends to help you create ideas. Two (and above) is better than one.

Encourage your fans, friends, and family to make videos for the challenge

There are several ways to get your tribe to create videos for your challenge. You can reward them with tickets to your show, merch, a special shoutout on your page, or money. Your TikTok music promotion strategy should target people who know you before proceeding to a new audience. Never leave certainty for uncertainty.

Distribute your song to TikTok

It is needless to say that every step given in this guide would be irrelevant if your song is not properly distributed to TikTok. TikTok does not automatically own the right to publish 15 seconds of your song on their platform. They need your permission. All you need to do is to use a distributor that has TikTok as one of its distribution destinations. And ensure you pick TikTok when choosing the platforms you want your music to be published on. It’s that simple.  

Once your music is on TikTok, you can manage your content and get relevant data using the TikTok for artists app.

6 Pro Tips for a Raving Spotify Fan Base

6 Pro Tips for a Raving Spotify Fan Base

by | Jun 30, 2021 | Spotify, Tips

Some songs become earworms, while some others fail to impress and push listeners to skip them immediately. Music enthusiasts are often on a quest to find their next favorite song that will lead to a new favorite and another one.

You and I need to admit that our music taste has evolved since we became Spotify users. Because most of us, in our streaming journey, found that one unknown band who stayed forever in our ‘Heavy Rotation,’ the remarkable artists of whom we became huge fans of, or maybe that groovy beat we played on repeat during the whole summer. These songs often lead us to another artist who takes us to a third one, and when we realize, we are emerging in a new musical style.

These experiences result from Spotify’s algorithm matching music lovers and music they will love. At the same time, it helps us expand our musical knowledge and evolve our taste every day.

However, growing a fan base and standing out on the most popular streaming service in the world are not easy tasks. Independent musicians from all over the globe are fighting for the same ears, developing strategies to

leverage Spotify’s algorithm and get more exposure and organic traffic. In order to help your music stand out and expand your fan base on Spotify, we listed six precious tips that will help you find your fans on the platform. Check them out!

1. Submit Your Music To Playlists

The best way to reach out to new fans and increase the number of people listening to your music is to submit it to playlists on Spotify. Most streaming services  base their music discovery system on playlist engagement, and Spotify is no different. A large percentage of the universal streams on the platform come from the most popular playlists, being those Algorithmic – created automatically by the app and tailored to our music taste; Editorial, the ones curated by a team of Spotify curators; User-Curated, the ones curated by the users. Even though editorial playlists tend to be more significant as Spotify highlights on the platform, user-curated playlists can also have a broad reach. Some of these playlists – curated by brands, artists, influencers, and regular users – fall into the category. 

There are three main possibilities for getting your music featured on Spotify playlists:

A – Submit your track to Spotify editorial playlists via the Spotify for Artists app. The process is smooth and quick, but you need to submit your songs at least six weeks prior to the release. (essa frase ta incompleta)

b – Look for appealing user-curated playlists. Search for curators online and find ways to get in touch. There are services such as curators databases and playlist pluggers if you prefer to have professional help.

C- You could use services like IndieMono, Submithub, and Soundplate. Some of these are free to use.

2. Create Pre-Save Campaigns

Pre-Save campaigns are a great way of generating awareness and creating expectations prior to your music release. These campaigns help artists build momentum before a new music campaign, keeping them warm and ready for more.

When a listener decides to pre-save an album, they receive a notification on Spotify as soon as the expected single, EP, or collection is out so that they can listen to it immediately. Amazing, right? 

3. Create Your Own Playlists

Creating your playlist and highlighting it as your “artist’s pick” on Spotify can bring positive results when promoting your music and fostering fan engagement. Your music selection will also help your audiences to have a deeper connection with your work.

By presenting your music to your fans through a well-curated selection—side-by-side with different artists from the same genre—you can set a great mood and shape your fans’ perception of building the proper branding around your work. When curating your own playlist, add some of your songs together with music from similar artists, your influences, and inspirations. Promote this playlist on your social channels and send a message to the artists you featured so that they might do the same.

But remember: keep your playlist fresh, with constant updates and constantly add new songs. Regularly sharing a list of songs will direct more attention to your music and increase listeners’.

4. Make Sure You Have Some Budget for Online Ads

Integrated digital marketing campaigns are vital for the success of any independent musician. You have to reach new fans where they are hanging out, and it’s most likely this place as social media.

If you are a starting musician without a substantial audience yet, or already an established performer with several thousands of fans, creating paid ad campaigns on social media might be a no-brainer. These campaigns are perfect to immediately boost your reach when thinking about promoting your releases and starting a conversation with your listeners.

5. Use a Download Gate Strategy

Download gates are link aggregators that allow you to give away a downloadable gift in exchange for a requested action, usually social platforms interaction such as follow, like, or subscribe. This tool is often accessible via a website. It allows artists to rapidly accelerate their fan base growth when offering something as the download of an unreleased track in exchange for one or a few actions.

Follow-to-Download Links or simply download gates foster two important dynamics; expanding the reach of your music and improving the quantity and the quality of your following. Most gateways will allow you to add multiple gating steps, such as combining two or more of these social interactions.

In other words, you can make that secret recording available for your fans and only deliver it to those who agree to follow your profile, save your album, or like your playlist on Spotify. These actions can even work together with interactions on other social media channels, such as following your Instagram, subscribing to your YouTube channel, or liking your Facebook page.

6. Share your music with QR Codes

QR codes can be an excellent way of promoting your music both online in the physical space. When aimed at a cellphone’s camera, they are quick response codes that can direct the user to specific addresses on the internet. In this case, drive people to listen to your music! You can send them on emails, post them on your social media channels, print them on your flyers, your promo CDs, or your business card… The possibilities are endless!

Wrapping it Up

Spotify is the leading music streaming platform in the world. Therefore, gathering listeners, attracting followers, and fostering a fan base on the platform is essential for any music artist. The advantages of having your fans on your reach are enormous. The more people play, like, share, and engage your music through your music, and the more people will see your music recommended exponentially.

We hope these six pro tips for building a Spotify fan base will help you create this virtuous cycle and take you to the next step in your music career.

Spotify Popularity Index: A Little Secret to Help You Leverage the Algorithm

Spotify Popularity Index: A Little Secret to Help You Leverage the Algorithm

by | Jun 8, 2021 | Highlight, Spotify, Tips

In a digital age where independent artists are trying to break through the barriers installed by putative gatekeepers of the music industry, the golden key to becoming a successful artist is data. Without data, successful campaigns cannot be recreated and the unsuccessful ones cannot be learned from.

Spotify for Artists only gives  basic information regarding listeners’ demographics and track performance. The information displayed on the artist dashboard only includes the number of streams, listeners, followers, top playlists, and top songs.

This approach, however, fails to take into account other key factors for measuring your songs’ performance. From track attributes – such as danceability, liveness, positiveness, key, loudness, energy – to data regarding how listeners interact with your music. Yet, these hidden indicators are used by the algorithm to rank, recommend, display, and playlist songs on the biggest music streaming platform.

But keep in mind: when it comes to the Spotify algorithm, no song is rated in isolation. 

What is Spotify’s Popularity Index?

The Spotify Popularity Index is a 0-to-100 score that ranks how popular an artist is relative to other artists on Spotify. As your numbers grow, you’ll get placed in more editorial playlists and increase your reach on algorithmic playlists and recommendations. Some say that the magic number is 50!

The Index can be used to monitor and influence the progress of new releases. Each track has its own SPI calculated influencing the artist’s overall index. Yet, while the Popularity Index is majorly determined by recent stream count, other factors like save rate, the number of playlists, skip rate, and share rate can indirectly bump up or push down a song’s popularity index.

How to Influence the Popularity Index in your Favor

To successfully influence your Spotify popularity index, you need to understand that every stream, save, share, like, and playlist recommendation counts. All ways lead to Rome.

Do not forget that the algorithm is the major player here and the index is just one of the factors it considers when recommending booming songs to Spotify’s ever-demanding listeners. 

Spotify Algorithm - BART

Running a pre-save campaign weeks before the release days would give your track all the juice it needs to appeal to your first listeners. The algorithm will have no other choice than to keep recommending your songs to your perceived audience and lookalike audience. If your campaign success is consistent during the first week, there is a great likelihood that you will be placed on several algorithmic playlists.

Your pre-save campaign can give you all the traction you need to “convince” the algorithm to give you a playlist boost. According to Chartmasters: 

“A song is not successful because it is a part of a large playlist. It only gets into large playlists when it’s successful”.

You do not have to leave the fate of your track in the formulaic hands of the Spotify algorithm since you can also appeal to tastemakers by pitching your music to editorial playlists.

Although Editorial playlists give your tracks more exposure compared to algorithmic playlists, songs fall off the editorial playlists easily and quickly unlike algorithmic playlists. You can remain on algorithmic playlists for months.

How to check Spotify Popularity Index

There are several tools you can use to check your Spotify Popularity Index, namely; Musicstax, Chartmetric, Songstats, and Spotify for Developers. The first three tools are the simplest while Spotify for Developers can be confusing to users with no coding skills.

Musicstax is a simple music analysis tool that allows you to check the popularity score by searching for the artist’s name or song. The free tool can also be used to analyze features of a song such as loudness and danceability. The only disadvantage of using Musicstax is its inability to provide real-time metrics, meaning the database is not always up-to-date.

Chartmetrics provides market-level data to artists who want to up their game and understand their growing fanbase. You can get a panoramic view of how many people are discovering your songs on playlists, popularity rating, and growth over a long span of time, conversion ratio, and playlist reach to followers ratio via Chartmetric.

Songstats is an amazing tool that provides artists with the data needed to effectively manage their campaigns. It lets you observe the impact of your campaign strategy and growing popularity index on your track performance.

Conclusion

  • Improve your understanding of your fanbase using advanced tools to crawl data from your Spotify page. Tools like Chartmetric, Songstats, and Musicstax make it super easy.

  • Monitor your popularity growth in the first week of release and make informed decisions using real-time metrics.

  • Use the popularity score as a currency to bypass the gateways of algorithmic playlists.

20 Music Marketing Ideas to Help DIY Musicians Take-Off

20 Music Marketing Ideas to Help DIY Musicians Take-Off

by | May 12, 2021 | Tips

Between the music industry’s digitization and subsequent democratization of tools and access, more new music was created and released than before. Thus, it is vital to have a proper promotion strategy and marketing plan for music artists. Fortunately, there are some great marketing tips for music artists that can help with their music promotion.

1 – Develop a Strategy and Establish Your Goals

Before you start spending money on promotions, you might want to develop a marketing strategy to assess what you can and cannot do properly. If you plan on releasing new music, new album, or music videos, you’ll need to write an action plan with a list of your goals for any actions you want to take. You’ll need to write down all the steps you need to take to reach your set goals.

2 – Define Your Audience

Before you start your marketing efforts to promote your music, you will need to define your potential audience and see how your fans are. The crucial part of digital marketing for musicians is to know where to place their music. Knowing information about where your audience is based and how old they are can create a music marketing strategy that will accurately reach all potential fans.

3 – Use Social Media to Boost Your Online Presence

People spend around 24 hours on the Internet per week. Almost 33% of that online time is spent on social media, which means that people spend approximately an hour per day consuming content on social media.

4 – Keep People Updated on Facebook

Facebook is a great place to organize and promote upcoming events and concerts. You can easily keep your fans updated about your new events, virtual or offline.And it’s an excellent platform to connect all of your fans in one place -it can be through your page, event, or you can even create an internal Facebook group where you can share and be involved with your fans.

Independent artists can highly benefit from creating private Facebook groups when offering different crowdfunding options.

5 – Create Beautiful and Interesting Content for Instagram

Speaking of Facebook, there’s Instagram, Although the apps are connected (not just by the company, but the integration as well)

6 – Communicate with Your Fans Through Twitter

Twitter is a great platform that artists can use to promote new music in a very casual way. One of the best tips for independent music artists is to be active on Twitter. News travels fast on the platform, and you can easily reach many people with your music. All it takes is to post something and wait for the retweets to start.

7 – Take Advantage of TikTok

TikTok has developed into one of the hottest apps available. The userbase of TikTok users is growing daily, slowly reaching the 1bilion number, making it clear that it can be a great channel to promote music, making it an excellent choice for music artists. And artists are using it – there are many bands and individual artists who have signed up on TikTok and created great content.

Since young people enjoy micro-entertainment and short and straightforward bursts of distraction, TikTok marketing can be an excellent tool for any brand or individual to engage with an audience and promote their business, or in the case of artists – music. It is a great way to market your music independently and engage with your fans with simple and fun content you can make without any planning.

8 – Document Your Daily Life

The best way to use your social media channels as a music artist is to give a sneak peek of your life for your fans to enjoy. Document your rehearsals, walks, daily life situations, thoughts by creating videos, posting pictures, using stories on the platforms you can, engage with your people. Keep your fans updated and involved so that you can remain relevant in their lives.

9 – Involve Followers and Fans

A great way to use your social media is to involve your fans in some decisions and engage with your followers on your social media. Ask your fans questions, get them to leave comments, and engage with your posts by involving them in a process. Or just ask them to share their thoughts on your songs and albums. Keep your audience engaged, and you can build a loyal audience that will be there for any event you have.

10 – Create a Cool Website

Nowadays, everyone has a website. And why should artists be any different? A website is a great platform to promote an artist or band and their art. And it’s a place that’s fully controlled by the artist that makes it. You don’t depend on platforms and other websites to post about you – you are the content creator of your website.

However, your website should be a dynamic thing. It needs to adapt and change to reflect you and events that happen in your career. A new album comes out – you need to update the website. The new tour announced – update. Your fans want to go to your website and get informed by seeing the news, happenings, ticket sales, merch, and other things about you and your music. You can set up landing pages that raise awareness, promote a specific song or album, collect email addresses, sell merch, or just keep your fans updated with news or blog posts.

11 – Sell Merchandise

Who doesn’t like to have merch? Merchandise is a must today. People want to celebrate their favorite artist with the world by showing off a T-shirt or pin from their favorite artists. But make sure you have an ad budget and a little sales funnel set to attract new fans and sell your branded products!

12 – Create Compelling Content

Everyone is online, and everyone wants to read something while they are browsing the web. You need to reach people in different ways if you’re going to get them to listen to your latest stuff. Create content for your website and create content you can use to reach out to websites that can feature your content or arrange an interview to talk to you about what you want people to know.

13 – Get Press Coverage

Blogs and online magazines about music are a great way of attracting new eyes and ears to your music. Make sure you contact anyone you can to try and get featured. Work on having compelling content on any platform you can – you never know who you can reach!

14 – Share Your Music on Digital Platforms

One of the best tips for upcoming music artists is to use digital platforms like Spotify and Deezer to share their music to reach new audiences who will potentially love their music. Being on a streaming platform ensures your music is available for fans everywhere. Yet, just being there is not enough.

15 – Get Playlisted

Since streaming is the most popular way of listening to music, platforms like Spotify, Deezer, and Apple Music have implemented new ways of curating music for their listeners with playlists. With playlists, people listen to songs they like and discover new music similar to their taste.

As a musician who is just starting, it’s best to start getting your music placed on playlists. 

You’ll need to get verified on any platform and build your profile. Then you’ll need to reach out to playlist owners and pitch your music. When choosing the playlists you want to be featured in, keep in mind that you can pitch to lesser-known and unofficial playlists. Many unofficial Spotify curators have playlists with a decent number of followers you can reach out to and be featured in.

You can find owners of these playlists on social media to let them know that you love their playlists and ask and point out why your song can be a great addition to it. Be polite and don’t spam them. And of course, as soon as you get featured, make sure you promote the playlist on your social media and website so that people will listen to them.

16 – Create Your Own Playlist

Apart from reaching out to be featured on different playlist, to promote yourself on Spotify or any other streaming platform you can also make your own playlist. It’s always best to have something of your own that you can monitor and be in control of. As a musician, having your own playlist means you have full control of your music there, but you can also associate yourself with other artists and feature them on your playlist.

17 – Establish a Mailing Group And Send Newsletters

An email list is a great and valuable tool for music promotion. Unlike your blog posts and press coverage, an email list is a direct way of building a fan base. When someone signs up for your email list, they are willingly applying to hear from you, and you need to take advantage of that!

So what do you send as a newsletter? Your newsletter should drive people to your website, so make sure you include links and updates about what is happening -like when you have an album coming or a tour. However, you need permission to email a person, so that means you can only reach out to people who signup for your playlist or buy something from your website.

18 – Use Crowdfunding

Many artists often wonder (and potentially struggle with): “How to market your music independently?”. The main struggle with being an independent artist is finding your funding – securing the money you need to create your music without a label funding everything. Among the best tips for independent music artists to succeed is to use crowdfunding to make sure they can create music their fans want. Many bands have turned to crowdfund and started using Kickstarter to secure the money they need to release an album. With crowdfunding, you can offer your fans a lot and get the support you need to give them the music they want.   Just look at what Icon For Hire achieved.

19 – Record Music Tutorials

A great way to create compelling content is to offer music tutorials of your songs. People will want to watch you play, and they will like to learn how to play their favorite tracks – yours! So offering compelling tutorials on how to play your most famous songs, and then you can even repost their videos as a way of showing your appreciation. 

20 – Don’t Be Afraid and Release Your Singles

Before you finalize your album and release everything on it, you should release a single or two – or even three. Why? Releasing singles gives your fans a preview of what they can expect with the entire album. If you’re an independent artist using crowdfunding, singles are a great way to attract more people to fund you.

 

 

5 No-Brainer Tips for Artists Engaging with Their Followers

5 No-Brainer Tips for Artists Engaging with Their Followers

by | Jun 1, 2020 | Tips

In today’s fast-paced social media-driven world, it is essential that you continually engage with followers on any variety of social media platforms.  Not only to put yourself and your work out there, which you should be doing already as an artist but to truly help foster a passionate community of art and artist that you want to see come to fruition around you.  Here are five quick tips to keep in mind, so that the community you build around yourself and your art is engaged and excited about the work you are producing.

1- Find Your Core Audience

There is such a variety of social media platforms now with new ones catching on seemingly daily.  It is imperative to latch on to the select few that are going to show off your work in the best light and that have active users who want to engage with others in their creative spaces.  I’m not just talking about followers in general but finding people who really love and support the artist they follow.   

Diligently research each platform you come across and look up people you admire in your creative discipline to see how engaged their followers are.  This will help you gauge if that platform is right for you.  Sites like Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Behance, Deviantart, and are all great jumping-off points but there are handfuls of others that work in just the same way for sharing work and engaging with followers.   Each has different features and tools you can use to make sure that you are focusing on the ones that will help you actively directly reach your core audience and fans.

2- Be Active in the Online Community

Too often we passively stand on the sidelines watching what’s going on in the community but never getting involved or just ‘liking’ things passively.  Take the time to comment and share other artists’ posts and works that resonate with you and that you think will resonate with your followers.  This type of behavior with not only help you continue to be active and present in the online community, but hopefully some of your own works will resonate in that same way with other artists, and they will help you spread the word about your work and potential upcoming events you are involved with.

3- Respond to Followers
“Questions / Request / Comments”

As an artist, and especially one trying to build a devout following, do not overlook talking with your followers about questions they have, request being sent in for posts and content (i.e. commissions), and thanking or responding to people for kind comments on your work and posts.  This type of engagement and action from you will let your followers know that you see and hear them and appreciate their engagement with your work.  It might become tedious to be hyper-engaged especially when your following outgrows the time you have, but it can make someone’s day by kindly responding to a comment or following new accounts pointed out by followers to grow your digital reach.

4- Share your Work and Process
“When Applicable”

I know that this one might be the biggest no brainer of them all, but I feel like it needs to be said.  Too often I see artist accounts dormant for months on end, and then they wonder why nobody from the community is engaging with their posts when they finally emerge from their creative cave with finished work.  You don’t have to share your whole process or even a small part.  But showing a close-up of one section of a painting before its finished, or brush strokes you are practicing on a blank canvas, or even sharing what your workspace looks like after a particularly vicious creative outburst can engage followers into wondering what the outcome might be and eagerly anticipating when your next show or sale is going to be.

5- Be Yourself and Be Real

This might be the easiest or hardest tip to follow them all depending on who you are.  It is so easy to be fake online or to try and make yourself seem larger than life.  Please refrain from acting in this way.  Not only is it pretty see through to your followers, but it will dim down all the credibility and good juju you have built up over time being an active part of your creative community.  If you have nonstop work to share, share it!  But conversely, if you have a terrible creative block, let your followers know that too.  If you have kept in mind the tips previously mentioned, hopefully, your followers will help lift you up, suggest ways to break out of your creative rut, and encourage you to keep going because they do in fact enjoy the things you share with them.   

Being an artist is hard, but with the advent of social media, there are now more ways than ever to get in contact with and show your art to people who will like it.  Hopefully, some of these tips will help you out when it comes to building a following and engaging with that following to cultivate a strong online creative community. 

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