You’ve dedicated the time and effort to compose the best music project you possibly could. Creatively you feel like you’ve nailed it. Now, the question is how do I get it to the masses?

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of any music release. It may be the most daunting component of the entire process. It’s not that easy to redirect the attention of millennial or any other generation for that matter. Once they are enthralled in their social media platforms amongst other things, you have to have some pretty compelling content to win their interest over other distractions competing for their attention. One of the questions I’m asked daily is, How?

First, I would suggest determining which distributor you want to use to distribute your music. You want to place your music with as many digital service providers as possible. DSP’s like Spotify, Tidal, Deezer, Amazon, YouTube and Apple Music are all paramount in giving your music the best opportunity to be discovered.  

So, once you have recorded, mixed and mastered your record and completed your art design, it’s time to set your release date. At this point the marketing strategy should already be composed and set in place. You need a comprehensive plan to get people to hear and engage with your content. This is where “the fun begins”.

Marketing a record has become one of the most burdensome things to do in music. There are over 300,000 records released every week in the industry, which is well over 1million per month. Breaking through the logjam is going to be quite the task.  It’s going to take a lot of time, energy, dedication and persistence.

Some of the avenues to consider when marketing your music are; sending your music to music blogs, blasting it out to all of your social media pages using post and banners and sometimes even going “live”. Create a visually captivating EPK as well as a professional website. Establishing alliances with relatable influencers. The more impressions consumers receive about a release, the more likely they are to seek more information about your music and potentially purchase it.

In addition to doing all of the above, one of the most significant things you can do as an artist is to build your stream count on playlists. Streams, whether on Spotify, YouTube, Tidal , SoundCloud or Apple Music, are extremely significant in the scheme of your plan. They not only provide you creditability as an artist, streaming on various playlists can build your fan base substantially and display the interest you have in your music as an artist. With that said, one of the first things you should do is hire a promoter to solicit your music to playlist curators for you. When doing so make sure you use a reputable source. If a promoter is found to be buying streams on your behalf, it will have an adverse affect on your campaign and affect you as an artist in a negative manner.  You may lose any legitimate streams and as the artist you could be banned from platform altogether.

As you can see, there is so much to consider when deciding how to pursue your marketing campaign. So now when an artist comes to me uber excited that they’ve finally finished the production of their project after months of writing, producing, collaborating, editing, mixing and mastering, I simply pat them on the back and say good job! Your work is just beginning.  Now on to the real work!

Written By Marc Williams of Indasoul Entertainment.