How to expand your music audience in three easy steps
Marketing to your fans is essential for your music career, but if you want to expand your music audience, you need a plan for growth. Here are three ideas to make that happen. Read the post.
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Five things to do before pitching your music to Spotify playlists
Getting your music on Spotify playlists can be difficult. Let’s start at the beginning and focus on the things you should have in place before you even start pitching your tracks. Read More.
The musician’s guide to content marketing
“Content marketing” might not sound like fun, but it works, and many of the most successful indie musicians use it (even if they don’t know it). Read More.
Design tips for your next poster, flyer, or postcard
Besides providing basic information, a great poster, flyer, or postcard sells a benefit and triggers a buying action. These design tips can help you streamline the process and serve as a checklist for the information to include. Read More.
How to segment your email list (and get more fans opening your emails)
Everyone says you’ve got to build your email list if you want to be successful in today’s music industry, but most people I’ve talked to have had a less-than-great experience emailing their fans. These tips can help improve your email marketing. Read More.
Great interviews don’t happen by accident
If you want to give great interviews, preparation is key. Here are 12 tips to help you prepare and make new fans when the press comes calling. Read More.
15 music marketing mistakes indie artists make
Reaching fans is certainly easier in the digital age, but that doesn’t mean marketing is easy. Indie artists need to follow some basic marketing tenets if you want to make the most of your marketing efforts. Here are 15 of the biggest music marketing mistakes indie artists make. Read more.
Crowdfunding for Musicians: #DMchat Recap
For the February edition of our Disc Makers Twitter chat (#DMchat), we asked composer, singer-songwriter, and music business/branding consultant Cheryl B. Engelhardt for some crowdfunding tips for musicians. This post contains a selection of questions and answers from our discussion. Read more.
Crowdfunding success is a process, not a fluke
My methodical and logical ways of working at my music career don’t account for “fluke.” I quantify everything. I even have an 8-step process for writing emails. Inspiration, luck, coincidence, and fate, are all concepts I dismiss, claiming that really we have the power to create exactly what we want, with the help of a few key tools. Read more.
What to do after the interview
Last month, we published “How to give a great interview as an indie musician,” with advice on how to give a great interview for a newspaper, blog, magazine, radio, or whatever. A big part of making the best of an interview is knowing what follow-up to do once the interview is over — and a few things to avoid doing, as well. Read more.
Talk the talk: How to give a great interview as an indie musician
If you’re at the point in your career where music journalists and bloggers want to interview you, it’s important to be prepared. Getting press requests but not convinced you know how to give a great interview? These seven tips can help you prepare, focus, and deliver an interview that can impact your music career. Read more.
Crowdfunding for musicians: tips, tactics, and trends
We’ve been covering the topics and trends of crowdfunding for musicians for years. Here’s a collection of posts that tackle topics spanning settling on a platform, setting goals and timelines, pricing rewards, and a whole lot more. Check out these posts, and keep coming back, we’ll keep adding new content. Read more.
Creative strategies to raise money for your indie album release
You’ve got your songs, arrangements, musicians, and studio all set and ready to go; plans for CDs and publicity aren’t far behind. The question? How to pay for it all. Here are case studies, tips, and strategies from musicians on gathering the funds to make their own dreams of an indie album release a reality. Read more.
Home grown crowdfunding tips
There are numerous ways to approach crowdfunding – including home-grown methods that don’t rely exclusively on the websites that facilitate the process. Singer/songwriter Linda Chorney has been creatively financing and her own album projects for decades. I interviewed her to get some of her personal crowdfunding tips on the matter. Read more.
How to crowdfund your next project: 11 steps to success
Crowdfunding doesn’t just raise money, it engages your fans beyond simply asking for donations or getting them to buy your merchandise; a successful campaign makes them feel like active participants, captures their enthusiasm, and helps you spread the word. The key is organizing your efforts to maximize fundraising. Read more.