Making money with music through booking, licensing, and media opportunities can only happen if people know how to contact you. Follow this checklist so you don’t miss any money-making and publicity-generating opportunities. Read the post.
When emailing music bloggers, there are a lot of factors that go into whether or not your emails get read. These best practices can improve your chances of getting noticed and taken seriously. Read More.
Musical gifts are not meant to be kept to ourselves, which means at some point you’re going to have to deal with connecting with your audience: AKA the consumers of your musical product. Read more.
As a music publicist, I’ve worked with a lot of bands and musical acts. In more than a few cases, I’d say the artist’s interview skills could have used a tweak or two. Allow me to share some interview tips that will make you way better at giving interviews and help you get the most out of every one. Read more.
Most bands do a traditional media campaign (newspapers, magazines, radio), as well as a new media campaign (podcasts, music blogs, MP3s). Music publicity is not just compiling lists and following steps mechanically, it should be fun and is a chance to channel the same creativity you put into your music to build a buzz. Read more.
Social media has become the center of the universe when it comes to music promotion. While Facebook and Twitter typically play prominent roles in an artist’s music marketing strategy, creating a musician blog is often is overlooked. To build a base of long-term fans, it helps to establish a presence online and deliver high-quality content to keep them entertained. Maintaining a musician blog offers four unique opportunities you should consider. Read more.
Introduced as a micro-blogging platform in 2008, Twitter has become the standard for real-time communication between bands and their fans. In this post, we dive into this social media platform, which has enamored so many musicians and confused so many more. Twitter for music promotion can be highly effective, but you need to understand the nuances of the platform first. Read more.
Facebook, the biggest of the social networks, is arguably the most difficult for musicians to navigate and use effectively for music promotion. So let’s break it down and focus on the things you can do to optimize your Facebook band page and make the best use of this platform in your social media marketing. Read more.
Investing your time, talent, and emotional capital by sharing what you find compelling can help to not only build an audience for you and your own music, it can help you better define your brand. And these days, aside from the music itself, branding may be the most important element in determining who makes a living in music and who continues as an infrequently paid music hobbyist. Read more.
MTV Research released a report that explains how Millennials expect “zero distance” from the artists they like, an effect reportedly caused by social media. Millennials crave “constant access” to artists, want the artist to act like a friend, and expect an artist to be constantly accessible via social media. But don’t expect to sell your music to this group. Only 28% of the people surveyed had bought music within the past month. Read more.
An important aspect of digital PR is developing and maintaining relationships. From the smallest local music blog to the biggest global music review sites, most content and support comes from nurturing relationships, because people are willing to support the people they like. A key to effective relationship management includes creating new content while nurturing the relationships that are developing. This can be done by focusing on social monitoring, social media content strategy, and creating a VIP experience. Read more.
Revised January 2019. Whether you’re contacting magazines, music blogs, radio shows, record labels, music distributors, or promotional services, you have to check their specific submission guidelines before getting in touch. This is the most fundamental rule of music promotion. Read the post.
Working with an established, professional publicity firm might be the ideal, but unless you have a few thousand dollars available, you may need to design your own music PR campaign. A self-propelled campaign can be effective if executed properly, which means effectively managing the Pre-, During-, and Post-PR phases. There are several pitfalls that can derail the success of a campaign. Read more.
As an independent musician, digital publicity can be a fantastic way to set yourself on a path towards success. But like much of digital marketing, the process and results can feel a bit nebulous if proper goals aren’t set in place. Setting goals for your publicity campaign can help you to do two critical things: 1. Hire the right kind of publicist, and 2. understand the value of the work. Read more.
Whatever your instrument or genre, as an independent musician, I bet you’ve probably spent time gazing at the arts section of your local newspaper or favorite music magazine and wondered, “How can I get there?” While talent, hard work, business chops, persistence, and luck have a great deal to do with it, there’s another tool that can help — a good publicist. Read more.