As the era of Soundcloud and social media continues to remain as alive as ever, music promotion has taken on new, diverse forms. Targeted messages on Facebook and hard-pushed social media posts have since taken the place of passing out CDs, running bakes sales, and sneaking mixtapes into Happy Meals.
With technology continuously evolving, the need for innovating in the way music is promoted persists and presents a challenge that musicians must overcome. This is why musicians and managers need to look at the process from varying perspectives.
Mindsets for success
Incorporating a mandatory paradigm shift, believe it or not, is the secret for facilitating successful music promotion stints that can slingshot any artist from obscurity to stardom. Promoting music to achieve desirable outcomes entails looking at the process from a different lens in a while to get on with the times and minimize costly mistakes along the way.
If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to revamp your promotional strategy, here are a few fresh perspectives that you should keep in mind:
Music promotion is a skill
The number one reason for most promotional strategies getting little-to-no results (and even a few blocks or bad ratings along the way) is that the musicians treat the process like a task. Admittedly, a low number of YouTube views or Soundcloud plays may be discouraging and frustrating, but you’re deemed to get these types of results if you haven’t developed the necessary skills.
Comparing your results to that of a platinum-winning, record label-signed, multimillionaire artist makes zero sense, especially if you’re an unsigned artist that’s still learning the ropes. Music promotion, in essence, is a skill and not a task, which means that you’ll have to learn, practice, and master it with experience as your greatest teacher.
The “why” is much more important than the “how”
When the term “music promotion” comes to mind or is written in a list of meeting objectives, most musicians think of how they’re going to get a track out in the open. Well, here’s a news flash: you won’t be able to get your Instagram shoutouts and radio plays without first knowing why you want to promote your music in the first place.
Knowing why you want to promote your music will make it much easier to jump in the most valuable location of the entire promotional process: the customer’s state of mind. By knowing the exact reason for promoting your music, you can gain a bit more insight into who will be listening to your music and why they could possibly stay hooked. Once you understand that, you’ll be able to give your music a custom-fit feel for anyone that listens—making it much easier to capture a market effectively.
Every effective campaign is consistent
Consistency is the name of the game when it comes to achieving the best types of results during a music promotion campaign. By constructing your campaigns with consistency in mind, penetrating a listener’s subconscious becomes much easier in the long run. It is a goal that essentially leads to something called the “Last Song Syndrome” or LSS.
Achieving LSS will easily put your song on the map, possibly reaching the point that your music can be simply hummed by someone often enough to entice the curiosity of other potential listeners. Additionally, being consistent with every post, upload, share, music video, and shoutout will also help assure listeners that you’re an artist worth listening to.
Every musician—no matter how successful they maybe—will run into a speed bump in the music promotion strategy at one point or another. Should you find yourself stuck in a rut, then take these mindsets into consideration to get your music promotion strategy back on track!
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