If you’re a musician hoping to get paid for what you love, you will have spent a lot of time honing your skills to finally get the opportunity to write and record music for release. But how do you do it and reach as many people as possible to build your fan base?
Whether you’re a jazz singer, an Asian rapper, a concert pianist or a singer songwriter and want to share your music with the world, here are some of the things you should do in order to get yourself noticed.
Create a buzz on social media
Social media has a huge power when it comes to promoting businesses, so why shouldn’t it be the same for budding musicians?
You should aim to create interesting and engaging posts across a wide range of social platforms in order to reach as many people as possible. You should brand yourself consistently across each of the platforms so that people can find you when searching for your online. Try to keep them to your artist name and use your own ‘voice’
Post frequently enough to get people to communicate with you and to become excited when you release new music.
Make an awesome music video
Interesting and original music videos can create a buzz online, even if the track itself isn’t hugely successful.
This means thinking outside the box when it comes to creating videos for your latest track release- along the lines of Childish Gambino or The Gorillaz which have always had unique and intriguing undertones with storytelling and quirky themes to them which may be more popular than the songs that they accompany.
Taking the time to invest in creative thinking, effort, and time into your videos may mean that you have the potential to reap financial benefits in streaming revenue from all of the shares.
Get Playlisted
On music streaming platforms such as Spotify, many artists will benefit from being added to playlists that are generated and can rack up thousands of plays that will spark curiosity for any of your future tracks- that is in addition to any royalties that you will get as a result of the increased number of plays.
You will benefit from being added to people’s curated playlists, but should try and do all of the things possible to be added to big playlists like ‘discover weekly’.
Get into publications
Placements in music publications can help to build hype around your music and give you a stepping stone in your career. So whether that’s on specialist blogs or in mainstream magazines, you may want to become a DIY PR specialist to make sure you get the best coverage possible without spending too much of a limited budget.
This might look like taking the time to approach bloggers and/or music journalists who will promote your music. Create your electronic press release that will contain information about you and your music and, most importantly, where they can hear it, either online or where you’ll play live gigs (when the world opens up again).
