For people who have a passion for music, writing a song and performing is the best way to spend all their time. However, if your music is also your business, you also need to focus on promoting it. 

Promoting your music is very important if you want to make a living out of it. You need to reach out to your target listeners and make them love your songs. In addition, you also have to think of a way to let other people know that your music exists. While this sounds hard to do, there are several ways that you can do to promote your music.

1. Create Your Marketing Plan

The rule of thumb in starting a business is to know your goal and identify your target market. Once you have both, that is when you can develop a product that will cater to the needs and demands of your market. The same rule applies if you are a musician.

First, you have to understand the personalities of your target listeners. As a musician, there is a great possibility that how you consume your music is similar to how your listeners consume theirs. The important thing is to understand your target market, so you could provide them with the music that will suit their taste.  

If you already have a small fanbase, you can do a survey so you could find out more about them and their preferences. You can also look for forums online for people who like your genre and then join their conversation. This will help you find out more about them and use that information the next time you create a track.

2. Find Where Your Target Audience Is

Once you found who your target market is, the next thing you have to look for is where they are. Are they online, offline, or both? It is not enough that you know the habits and demographics of your own listeners. You also have to know where they are searching for music.

There are several platforms where musicians like you can find their target listeners. This includes SoundCloud, YouTube, Spotify, and Mixcloud.

What is good about the music-sharing platform is that most of them are social. This means that while you are looking at what your potential listeners like, you can also find where they live, their daily activities on the platform, as well as how they interact with the other users of that platform. The more you can dig around to such data, the better you can target your potential listeners.

3. Get Into the Data

If you are trying to target people from a particular area, then you have to go to that area and observe. When you are online, however, doing such gets much more complicated. For this reason, you need analytics and data. 

The best way for you to get data on SoundCloud is to subscribe to a Pro account. SoundCloud has upload restrictions when you are using a free account. Apart from that, it also prevents artists from accessing any data. If you want to avoid these restrictions, then you have to subscribe to SoundCloud Pro. 

Subscribing to SoundCloud Pro also gives you more upload time, usage, as well as traffic data. If you are willing to pay a monthly fee of $7 or $15, then a pro account is the best way for you to be able to gather the data of your listeners. 

However, if you do not want to spend on a pro account, there are other ways that you can access data. For instance, you can use YouTube or Google’s analytics dashboard. 

Of course, YouTube’s dashboard will only give you data about those who view your channel. However, you can still use those data to see the other things that your listeners listen to. 

In addition, Google Analytics is among the most powerful free analytics program on the internet. It can tell you where your audience is, how old they are, as well as their interests. This is important if you are planning when to release your next song, or you are planning to go on a tour.

Moreover, if you are a social media savvy person, you can also use Facebook and Twitter’s own analytics platform. Through these tools, you will be able to get additional data, which is ultimately important if you are planning your next moves.

4. Use Social Media to Promote Your Music

After preparing your promotional materials, then you are good to go. Your goals are set, you have identified your target market, as well as gathered data. For this reason, it is now time to promote your music on social media.

There is a vast array of social media that are present on the internet. However, that does not mean that you need to use them all. Just look for a few that you can use to best reach your target listeners. 

The best social media platforms that you can use for promotion are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can use these three to drive engagement and tell people the latest news about you and your music. You can also use relevant hashtags to create organic buzz.

In addition, you can also use free download options, discounted merchandise, and other incentives. Offer your target audience with these in exchange for email sign-ups as follows.

Needless to say, social media is an excellent tool that utilizes growth. You can even use these platforms to interact directly with your fans. The more you drive engagement, the more it is possible for you to get more fans.

5. Reach Out to Tastemakers and Send Sample Tracks

Once you have already grown your fanbase, you can try reaching out to tastemakers. You can send your track to a blogger for a chance to get featured in a blog. Apart from this, you can also send a radio DJ a track sample. These small steps will produce big results when properly executed.

Date: July 28, 2020 / Categories: SoundCloud Plays, / Author: Joy P