Hey all,
Simon here - I do marketing at iMusician with the rest of the team and… I’m really interested in how you are promoting yourselves in 2022.
I’m hoping that this thread can eventually lead to us finding the different ways that work (and those that don’t) for independent artists / different genres and I wanted to grow this discussion into some case studies and hopefully some tests that we can run together to see what works.
You can also use this to ask me anything (AMA) and I’l try to respond as fast as possible.
But first… “Simon’s very brief state of the advertising market 2022” (let’s see if you agree)
State of the music market 2022 (opinionated)
There are far far far too many options. Too many channels, too many places to build your fanbase and too many places you can very easily lose a lot of time and money to without getting much of a result. We’re all stuck in a “war” between different platforms as they compete with each other to grow their own popularity and, ultimately, make more money for their shareholders. The level to which a Spotify or YouTube cares about the independent musician is, ultimately, very low.
Set & Focus on your goals
Ask yourself… Do I NEED to be on Instagram? Is it actually working for me? Is it where my audience are? Does it actually help ME achieve MY goals, or am I just helping Instagram get more screen time so they can serve more ads? Then repeat this for every single platform out there until you find the one that is actually working.
For an independent musician today the key should be a complete and unwavering focus on what you want to achieve, this should then set out where and how you promote yourself. There are multiple focuses that (i believe) can be generally summarized as the following:
- To grow your listeners / fanbase
- To grow your music revenue
- To get more people to your gigs
The 3 different focuses above should lead to some quite different conclusions on the channels you choose to promote yourself.
1. To grow your listeners / fanbase
If you want to grow your listeners as quickly as possible then you need to go to where they are. By that I mean, it will probably be Spotify, but it is also worth checking out and finding the where communities exist.
For example,
- The electronic scene is strong on Beatport / Traxsource so someone like @A2D might be better off trying to grow their fanbase there, rather than competing with ALL of the genres and ALL of the music available on Spotify (interested to hear your thoughts)
- For “big band” sounds (e.g. @alainhenriot ) then posting to and gaining and audience on Reddit’s Big Band SubReddit might work to get the attention of people who are interested.
2. To grow music revenues (aka royalties)
Growing your music revenue is not the same as growing your fanbase. To grow your (streaming) music revenues you should focus on the platform that can give you the most money. This will most probably be the download platform
- For example, the amount you’re paid for a download (e.g. Apple Music) can be much more than what you get for a stream, HOWEVER, it is important to note that the market size is significantly smaller for downloads.
- By using Bandcamp to sell music & merch… you can tap into a smaller (but still valuable) market of
3. To get more people to gigs
Your gigs can make you much more $$$ than streaming, and it can be seen as a way of growing your profile and following on music platforms. I see this as an entirely separate tactic to the rest and one that, if taken on, could be a great way to build both fanbases and royalties, it will probably work best for those with their own gigs (e.g. not part of festivals / clubs) as you’re much more in control when you’re the main attraction.
There are multiple platforms that will list your gigs for you (Bands in Town, Songkick, and, of course, creating an event on Facebook etc. You can always promote this more by using social platforms (and this is one of the few places I’d suggest using Facebook ads, otherwise I hate them so much)
Example:
Use Facebook ads to create an audience for:
- The city/town you’re playing in…
- Plus those that are interested in the genre you play
- Plus those that follow bands similar to you (big or small bands).
Sidenote: We could do a whole topic on Facebook advertising, let me know if you want this and we’ll set it up.
Keep the focus
Whatever you’re doing, keep the focus. For instance, if you’re growing your following on Spotify, make sure that this is the top link on your Artist Hub page, filter out all other shops on Music Analytics and make sure every link you post allows people to get to Spotify quickly. And… most importantly… DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE (apart from the whole making music thing ) .
Conclusion
This post doesn’t cover half of what you need to do as an independent artist to promote yourself, but I wanted to start this discussion and get you (yes, you!) involved. In the future I’d love to work with you to create amazing content that is valuable to you (everything from a specific focus on how to use Facebook / Instagram / Spotify advertising platforms to “how to’s” on creating a release calendar)
I’ll keep updating this thread as we go, and we can then build out the guides and information you need to succeed (catchy tag line eh! )
Tell me about you
Let’s start this (hopefully megathread) off by answering some of the following questions:
- Where are you focused (growing fanbase / revenue / gigs)
- What are you doing right now for promotion?
- What’s the biggest challenge for you right now?
Also tagging
- @SmokinBrains who asked about this on the Introduce Yourself topic earlier
- @Snowmoney - who have over 3M streams and can probably give some good advice
- @Roger_Ricks - because this guy donates to kids charities and we all need more of this.