How do you market your music?

Hey all, as the topic says, I'm curious as to how you all market your music?

Honestly, it's bamboozled me for years. With the exception of one or two of my remixes piggybacking on the success of their originals, I'm lucky to receive 50-100 hits on my own tracks, and usually people's responses are positive. So I dunno.

What's your tips, if any?

I'd love to know how to do that without spamming it everywhere.

I have one song, that made 1k without me posting it anywhere and i was just surprised But i guess it's because it's marihuana-themed and named after a famous rifle...

Yeah I don't think spamming everywhere's the key. Pretty sure most people will just breeze over what you post anyway (how many of you actually click on people's signatures?).

Currently all I've done is post on SoundCloud and YouTube with some metatags and keywords and hope for the best. Not the best success story thus far lol.

I guess the next step would be to construct a press kit and send demos out to some popular magazines, music sites and radio stations, particularly ones that specialise in my music genres, to help gain a wider audience.

I'd also like to play live, but living in a small-ish town (Cairns, Australia) there isn't much of a scene to do so with.

I generally just share stuff I make with my friends. My most viewed YouTube video at the moment is actually just a mashup of Weird Al's "Inactive" with the original "Radioactive" that I did in the wake of Mandatory Fun's release, currently at 801 views. Unfortunately thanks to the oh so wonderful system that is Content ID and disagreements between YT and GEMA, it's blocked in Germany.

Whenever someone spams their video to me (happened with an ALS Ice Bucket Challenge video linked through my ask.fm box) my only reaction is to block them on the relevant service, click the link, and hit the dislike button.

Moving to a city or visiting a city with a great electronic dance scene was huge for me.

I had a release party in Orlando (didnt dj I mainly produce) but the vocalist and another producer/dj friend of mine played with a bunch of other djs the whole night and it was awesome.

Wouldn't have happened if it wasnt for the team of people I had behind it, But i would def try to visit a city with a good scene

just share your music as free downloads and play it in gigs and give it to other djs

This is more like how you sell your music, but selling music is also marketing.

As a Songwriter/Producer I am going to release my first album "when I finish it sometime in the near future" and to market my music when I get started (I am "Signed" by RecordUnion and) I'll use them to release my music on major Digital Music Services around the world (Spotify,iTunes,Amazon & many more) : 25 dollars to market 12 songs/Album for a year.

This also gets/can get you discovered by SONY MUSIC and If you're making "Music that is good enough" You could be picked up by a bigger Label in the future. But the most important part is that you should not be limited to making music you don't like. I'll always write the music I want to write and If nobody likes it I'll become my own small Music Label and help other songwriters and release their music (That's a dream for the future).

DREAM BIG

How do I market my music? I don't. Not yet. I've got plenty of time to be famous - right now I want to focus on improving without having to worry about appealing to a specific fanbase.

Cantor: I just wanted to, honestly, say, that i admire your attitude towards life philosoühy and talent grooming (if that makes sense).

Depends on the kind of music you want to market.
For non-electronical music (or in some rarer cases even for that): Play Gigs. Play all the gigs. Invest some money into making physical copies of your work and sell them on your gigs. Build a local fanbase, it will expand over time. Always be on the hunt for gigs that might present you to a bigger audience. Festivals are great for that. Other than that: Produce quality content. If you are on YouTube, make music videos. Make them as good as you can. Have a convincing website (or at least a well kept Facebook page).

That's my advice.

I'm finally getting to a point where I have a growing fanbase and am getting booked in the USA (I'm from Canada). The best way to do this is honestly through building connections/collaborating. So basically, my marketing plan is to work with other good artists to cross pollinate fanbases. Also, make sure your image/brand is easy to connect to. It's extremely difficult to build fans if you don't have some sort of an image for them to cling to. 99.99% of successful artists have some sort of a theme.

walterwilde wrote:

I'm finally getting to a point where I have a growing fanbase and am getting booked in the USA (I'm from Canada). The best way to do this is honestly through building connections/collaborating. So basically, my marketing plan is to work with other good artists to cross pollinate fanbases. Also, make sure your image/brand is easy to connect to. It's extremely difficult to build fans if you don't have some sort of an image for them to cling to. 99.99% of successful artists have some sort of a theme.

So yours, for instance, would be?

CantorsCantor wrote:

walterwilde wrote:

I'm finally getting to a point where I have a growing fanbase and am getting booked in the USA (I'm from Canada). The best way to do this is honestly through building connections/collaborating. So basically, my marketing plan is to work with other good artists to cross pollinate fanbases. Also, make sure your image/brand is easy to connect to. It's extremely difficult to build fans if you don't have some sort of an image for them to cling to. 99.99% of successful artists have some sort of a theme.

So yours, for instance, would be?

That's my logo. My image when performing live is white or black eye contacts. It's a playfully (ironically even) satanic/evil image that has been done before but I think it's fun. I make sure to consistently upload tracks and engage with my audience on Facebook as well. I also sometimes make videos as people connect to and remember videos easily.

According to my experience, my most played tracks on Soundcloud are tracks with awesome names (Infected, Meteor Strike) and many of my most viewed YouTube videos are remixes.
My best advice is giving your tracks badass names that will be interesting and energetic (Dont get me wrong.your track should also be good. A cool name is not enough) and remixing songs.
Hope I helped you,
The Waiter.