Promote Your Music

Promote Your Music

Learning how to promote your music is one of the most challenging things that an aspiring artists can do. Playing a musical instrument, in fact, is comparatively easy. That is because there are so many people out there trying to promote music. All of them put in a lot of effort to it. Promoting music is, for some, a full-time endeavor. If you can get the backing of a major label, you can have a team there, 24 hours a day, promoting your music. If you can't, you have to improvise. Being an independent band leader can be tough.

Usually, learning how to promote your music starts with learning how to schmooze people. If you can't get a local following, you certainly aren't going to get a national one. You need to be able to talk to club bookers, get to know owners and musicians by name, make allegiances with other bands that play similar sounds, and in general do everything you can to increase local exposure. A lot of people put most of their effort into promoting music online, but it isn't a good first step. First you need to be discovered locally before anyone will pay attention to on the national scene.

After you start to make a little bit of splash, however, online music promotion can make a lot of sense. Ask anyone with a fair amount of success in the industry how to promote your music, and one of the first things they will mention is the Internet. Having a band website is crucial. Having a good name is crucial as well. Once you have a few hundred fans online, all linking to the website of your band, you will get good Google page ranking. If you have a good name – one that is creative, funny, and unlike most of the other music names out there – people will be able to find you easily.

Of course, online or off-line, how to promote your music is about networking more than anything else. The more music services, band websites, blogs, and other places that list you, the better. Basically, you want as many people as possible to run into you. If you do very well at a club, try to get a gig listed as the house band. If you're coming to a particular city on tour, try to get a writeup in the local paper. Talent is half of it, exposure is the other half. Neglect one half, and the music project will fail.