Similar to our article ‘Easy Marketing Strategy for Producers’, this article will explain how you can start marketing your project. It is important to know that posting on social media by itself will NOT be enough to get your music heard to the masses.
Prepare Your Marketing Strategy
Most artists start off with singles and then build up to an album. When you are a beginner, you want to publish singles rather than albums. Publishing singles consistently will grow your music more than publishing a debut album.
If you are already working on a album, it might be a better idea to release the album as singles. That way you can release a single every week and that will build consistency for your music. I recommend having 15 finished tracks before posting the first single.
Sign Up & Schedule on Social Media
Let’s face it, there are so many social media sites to share your music. It is best to sign up for all of the major platforms before posting. If you are an artist you need to be on all the platforms to make an online presence. This will make you look professional and it will give people more options on how to visit you.
The essential platforms for artists are Spotify, FaceBook, Instagram, SoundCloud, Youtube & Twitter. It is important to stay active on all of these platforms especially when you are just starting out. This may seem time consuming but you can streamline these tasks by using scheduling tools.
Most of these platforms offer scheduling for your posts. Scheduling ahead of time can save you loads of stress but you must have multiple projects ready for publishing. When you schedule your posts, it is important to keep a consistent day and time for the same kind of content. Consistency will build predictability and that will tell your fans when to expect content from you.
Sharing Your Music
Once your scheduled posts are posting, it is time to share with the masses. To share the released track, first, pick the platform you want to hyper-focus on. Once you picked the platform, use that link to post on as many communities as you can. From Sponsored Ads to local directories like Craigslist, there are plenty of music communities you can find on the internet.
Reddit is one of the most powerful online communities out there. Reddit is a large network that has thousands of communities. Posting your music on there can literally make you viral. Chance The Rapper has been known to be an active Reddit user during the start of his career. Although Reddit is this powerful, you must abide by each communities’s rules. This is the part where most people get confused.
Build Reddit Karma
Reddit uses ‘Karma’ as part of their great anti-spam system. Karma is gained when a user upvotes your contribution to whatever community. For example if you post a funny meme in a funny community, people will upvote your post and you will gain karma. One of the fastest way to gain Karma is by asking a question on the ‘Ask Reddit’ community. Another way is to look at the Reddit homepage and browse through the trending communities. Once you find a trending community, go to google and search up a meme that will relate to that community. Post that on there and see your Karma fly!
Join Hip Hop Communities
Now that you have Reddit Karma, you may join lots of communities and post your links on there as long as you follow their rules. Some popular hip hop communities are hiphopheads, rap, hiphop, listentothis, music, makinghiphop, and IndieMusicFeedback. It is important to READ the rules of each community before you post because most communities have a specific title format you must follow. For example, listentothis requires the title format to look like this: Artist Name – Song Name [Genre] (Year).
This single strategy alone will promise to deliver plenty of new feedback. Make sure you engage with each community you are a part of. This is how you will b able to avoid any bans. It is worth noting that you simply can not spam your link to multiple communities because Reddit will be able to detect the same link across many different areas. So, you will need to alternate links or post other relevant content that is not yours. Reddit will see you as a contributor and you will now be able to post your music links more often.
Radio Feedback
Radio hosts are still somewhat of gatekeepers of the Hip Hop industry. Radio is a direct way to reach thousands of people in your area. Most radio stations go through hundreds of applications a day for radio play. Although this may be the case, stations still offer DJ Feedback for a usual fee of $30. This is a great way to directly communicate with a radio station that can potentially play your music.
The reason why DJ Feedback works is because if you truly have a great song, they will indeed place you and see how well the track does. Most radio stations have some kind of a leaderboard for the submissions, really giving a chance on becoming viral.
I advise you to search up the website of your local radio station and see how to submit your music. Sometimes they offer free submissions but it might take a lot longer for them to listen to your track. That’s why I would rather pay them so I can get the potential placement a lot sooner. On the radio station’s website, they will usually have some kind of DJ feedback service for a small fee.
DM Hip Hop Fans Directly
Directly communicating with the Hip Hop fans is a sure way to get their attention. This includes DMing on Soundcloud, Instagram, Youtube etc. Although tedious, this is a bulletproof way to grow your content. The hardest part with dming potential fans is somehow convincing them to give you a chance, and trust me, begging does not work.
So, how do we communicate directly without being annoying? It’s simple, offer some kind of incentive. Offering an incentive will make people want to interact with you quickly. Incentives can be anywhere from a free story post or a chance to be mentioned in the next track! Fans love to feel connected and special, and so if you can provide this for them, they will be glad to help you.
Conclusion
These marketing methods are fairly simple to perform. These do not require a lot of skills, no email marketing, no sponsored ads etc. Learning the methods will not take a lot of time and they will prove effective if done correctly. What do you think? Are these simple enough? Any other easy methods we missed? Comment below!
This is actually helpful cuz I have multiple songs so that’s a tip I might use