How To Promote Your Music Online

photo credit: TBSteve

The music industry has changed so much over the past 20 years. These days, thanks to the internet there are opportunities for any musician to have their music heard all around the world.

One of the questions I’ve been asked a bit recently by other guitarists is ‘How can I promote my music online?’ And its a good question.

Do you use Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Reverbnation or one of the many social networks out there? And how do you use them effectively?

In this article I’ll provide an overview on the subject of How To Promote Your Music Online. In future articles I’ll go into a lot more detail about the various options that are available. So, if you haven’t already subscribed to my newsletter list, do so, and you’ll be notified when I write future articles.

The Most Important Thing For Promoting Your Music Online

Here it is, the most important thing to know about promoting your music online…you must have a website of your own.

You can use any means you want to promote your music – set up the best Facebook page you can, build the biggest Twitter following and get thousands of YouTube subscribers, but the big problem is this – any of those places can shut your account down at any time. You don’t own it – they do.

If you have your own web site on a domain that you own, no-one can shut it down.

Go Where Your Fans Are

How To Promote Music Online - Picture of Music Fans

photo credit: notsogoodphotography

This is marketing 101 – go to where your customers are. In the pre-internet days, a band would build up a local following and then try and gather new fans in neighbouring cities and grow from there. These days, the whole world is full of potential fans. The problem is finding them.

One of the most important things you can do is build up a picture of your typical fan – are they male or female, how old are they, what other bands or musicians do they like?

Say your band sounds like Coldplay. Are there forums where Coldplay fans hang out? Join them.

Can you do some cover versions of songs that other artists have done and attract the attention of their fans that way? Boyce Avenue do a great job of this on YouTube where they do stacks of cover versions and get lots of subscribers as a result. This has helped them build a big fan base that they can play their original music to.

The point here is to get your name (and music) in front of people who may like it. Don’t wait for them to magically find you – go to where they are.

Engage With Your Fans

The internet gives us unprecedented access to our heros via Twitter, Facebook etc. When Nile Rodgers toured here earlier this year, I had a short Twitter conversation with him before the gig. If you watch his Twitter account he’s constantly engaging with fans.

This is something you can do to build a relationship with your fans. Take the time to thank people for mentioning you via social media. I spend 5 minutes each day on Twitter interacting with people and thanking anyone who mentions me or tweets one of my articles.

It’s part of the Wow factor – interact with your fans, even when you’ve only got a few.

Know Who Is Talking About You

How will you know if people are talking about you? You may not, but Google will tell you!

Many people don’t know about a cool Google application called Google Alerts. Google is constantly sending out its GoogleBots to trawl the internet with the aim of improving its search results. You can set up a Google Alert for a particular word or phrase. So you may set up an alert for your band name or the names of your band members. Google will send you an email with details of where they’ve found new instances of those words or phrases on the internet. So if your band gets mentioned on a forum somewhere and Google sees it, you’ll know about it.

So set up a Google alert and become aware of when you’re mentioned online.

Social Media Rules

Social Media for Musicians Facebook Like Stamps

photo credit: Steel Wool

The biggest change for promoting bands over the past couple of years has been the rise in influence of social media.

I mentioned earlier about going where your fans are – they’re usually on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc so make sure you have a presence there. Some people would read my first point about the importance of having a web site and decide that I’m against social media – nothing is further from the truth! I think social media is a huge opportunity for musicians today – the issue is that it’s only a means to an end.

My suggested strategy is to build up your fans on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc, but make sure that everything you do directs them back to your main website – the one that you own. I know of bloggers who have built up massive followings on YouTube only to have their accounts suspended because of a breach of the YouTube rules.

So I reiterate – you don’t own your social media accounts and they can be lost in an instant. You do own your website. So base everything around your website.

Get Email Addresses

photo credit: caribb

Get email addresses of your fans so that you can communicate with them regularly. Again, you can build up a huge amount of Facebook fans and communicate via Facebook, but if you lose your Facebook account, you’ll lose the ability to contact those fans.

You need to build up an email list that you own. I use Aweber on this site, and on the other websites that I manage.

How do you get people do subscribe? Give them an incentive.

On this website I encourage people to subscribe in exchange for access to the 7 Chords In 7 Days guitar course. It works well for me.

If I had a band, I’d give away some subscriber-only songs in exchange for an email address.

One major strategy is to convert your Facebook fans, Twitter followers and YouTube subscribers into people who subscribe to your email list.