Marketing plays a huge role in the music industry. In an era saturated with small attention spans, billions of diverse artists and everyone attempting to be the next breakthrough, finding a marketing team that can promote your music effectively can make your music come alive.
From a music marketing agency owner, these are strategies we help with during a long-term campaign. A professional team can allow you to learn key factors of why branding and portraying yourself in a specific way helps gain you fans musically. In my experience, not every audience is attracted to surprise drops, forcing music in their face every day, threatening to quit music frequently, and other obscure marketing. People have tried those tactics to get more listeners, but I've seen them end up with fewer and ultimately fail. Artists see their favorite artists utilize these strategies quite often to gain a quick buzz before a project release, but remember, the typical artist does not have millions of fans, so it might not work. Preparation for releases is essential.
Effective branding can capture the correct audience for your artistry and put the right content in front of them.
Now that this era has tools widely available to assist with marketing, many think this process can be learned and mastered quickly before their releases or without hiring a professional. In some cases, an expert may be needed to understand them and utilize them in a correct manner. From playlist pitching on major music platforms to understanding a social media algorithm, this can take years of experience to perfect, and it is why it's so important to market correctly. Not to mention targeting a specific geographical audience, which can be even more tricky depending on what type of fans you would like loyal to you.
One important thing to learn about marketing is you can't simply just "market." When you release material on digital music platforms, the game plan needs to already be created or you might not receive the positive feedback you would like. A large portion of releasing music is the organization factor of what you are doing far before and after the release. Another important factor is budgeting. Spending large amounts of money to release a song or music video for a song is not more important than that song reaching the people you want it to reach. You may have released a song, but it might not gain traction when there is a misinterpretation of marketing.
Some of the questions you should ask yourself are the following:
• Have I found a team that has expertise in getting results or reaching the audience I'd like?
• Do I have a budget for marketing?
• Is my content planned? (e.g., cover art, snippets, professional photos, music videos, trailers, etc.)
If the answers to the questions above are "no," then I would not recommend pursuing any new releases. Consider working on building your brand with the music you have available. Planning is very important because you should not create content without confirming with an expert what would work best before moving forward. Spending money to create a project with no marketing may result in you sharing music with the same people over and over again without outreach.
Finding the correct team is very important in building your brand correctly. There are marketing agencies that focus on growing numbers, public relations agencies that focus on getting your story out to the public in the form of articles or blogs, and social media managers that focus on building your everyday tasks and scheduling content. Consider case studies, your genre, your niche, the type of content you post and what your goals are as an artist when choosing the right marketing team for you.
The music industry is a business, so you have to treat it like such. Utilizing collaborations with other artists or producers, learning your genre, researching other musicians similar to yourself to see what they do, and networking by commenting on similar artists' posts are just a few steps in the right direction. Collaborations are huge for marketing because the other artist's fans can be exposed to new sounds and you can be exposed to an entirely new fan base. Especially with collaborations, I find that it enables trust because an artist the audience is listening to is now working together with you.
Artists that are fairly new at implementing social media in a professional manner might not go as far as reaching new audiences. Based on my experience, sharing music with your friends or utilizing ads on social media can only do so much because ads are made for products and services. What makes you different than the hundreds of millions that can release music and pay a social media platform for ads? Ads work best when there are clear indications of why you are different and the necessity for it. Professional marketing agencies find the correct audience for you instead of submitting a standard and general ad.
It's important to consider marketing as a totem of the music industry. It empowers artists to build a devoted fan base and propel their careers to new heights. By accepting that putting yourself out there is important, and understanding your target audience, musicians can simply use this as leverage over the competition. Because your favorite artist got popular, it does not mean there weren't years of hard work and preparation with a marketing agency. The music industry may make it seem effortless, so do not let it fool you into thinking artists have no help. To get on the path to success in any industry, you might be limiting yourself by not asking for help. Marketing is the first step.
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