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Audiomack ARTIST GUIDE

Artists 101

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How do I market my music?

Marketing your music is essential to getting heard. It’s your messaging that asks an audience to take action. You want to capture the attention of prospective fans with creative marketing, but more importantly get them to press play and become actual fans. Your marketing campaigns will depend on your goals and likely include promotion, publicity, advertising, and more. When you’re starting out, figure out who your audience is, then build momentum by creating content aimed at them.

“Be available to the people that are connecting with your music as much as possible. Go on tour, then go to the merch booth and connect with fans. Hear their feedback. Comment back to people who comment on your social posts. Then, fans start telling other people, ‘Hey, have you heard this artist?’ Build it up from there—can you start getting press? Local press? It’s about building up momentum with your music and your own efforts.

“The most obvious thing is to have the music available easily for someone who’s checking your page. If you happen to make a post that has nothing to do with your music, at least the music is in your bio. There’s a million different tactics to use, but if people see that you really care about your music, they’re going to continue to check for it.”

—Benjy Grinberg, Owner of Rostrum Records

“There are digital marketing companies who do a good job, and some of them don’t. Some buy fake followers and fake posts—it’s definitely very hard. Be outgoing. Early on, the more content, the better. Do those TikTok videos. Tease new music. Show you’re in the studio. You can make a cool moment of a video of you just dancing or singing your song. Then you can get it reposted on a lot of rap pages—that’s a good spot to start.”

—Samuel Cohen, Director of Artist Marketing, TenThousand Projects

“It is a music business paradox that in order to market your music, people must hear it, yet in order to hear it, you must market it. Marketing means sending messages to a target audience that encourages them to undertake a particular outcome. The message you send, the “call to action,” is often a question meant to get your audience to do what you want. With a strong brand, that audience is willing to hear you and follow through. Ask yourself: “Who would be in the audience at my show?” and give them what they want to hear.”

—Mark Tavern, Music Industry Educator

“Most artists are probably familiar with the traditional marketing channels: social media, ads, publicity, playing live, etc.. What the artist needs to do first is try to identify their likely audience. Who’s going to care, and why are they going to care? Work backwards from there. Who is my audience and where does that audience discover music? If you’re a dance artist, your audience might be living on online forums, geeking out about producing. Maybe your audience lives on certain types of blogs. Work backwards: figure out who you’re marketing to and then identify how to get to them.”

—Seth Faber, Head of Artist and Label Strategy, Stem

“Once you get a hit, you have to work on the next hit. A lot of artists get stuck and try to do the most with the hit, instead of worrying about the next one. When you got people’s ears, that’s the perfect time to hit them with more music while they’re more inclined to listen to you. [Once] you got their ears, you gotta keep them in tune. Stay in they face.”

—Sonny Digital, Artist