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Is Your Music Self-Promotion Effective Enough?

Is Your Music Self-Promotion Effective Enough?

Uche Ibe

Guest Post by Uche Ibe

Are you sick and tired of all the failures you have been experiencing with trying to promote your music?

Do you really wish for a simple strategy to get your music heard by the people who matter?

As an independent artist without a huge budget and manpower to spend on advertising and promotion, you need a plan for advertising your music without burning out.

But the truth is that most people fail in this area.

And what makes it even worse, is that they often have no idea why their promotion is failing.

But you are in luck.

‘Cos in this article, I will be telling you 7 reasons why your music self-promotion is failing, and what you can do to get better results.

1. You are sitting and waiting for a miracle to happen

This is probably the number one reason why most independent artists fail at promoting their music. And it is simply because they have no strategy in place.

They believe that all they have to do is to record the music at a pro studio and some big record labels will discover them and sign them up. The truth is that the chance of this happening is very slim.

As an independent artist, you need to get up, work hard, and get your music heard by the right people.

First, you need to have the mindset that promoting your music needs to be part of your plan. Whatever excuses you have been coming up with as to why you have no promotion strategy in place needs to stop now. There are so many ways you can go about promoting your music. The first and most obvious way is to maximize the power of social media.

By doing so, you get to build a fan base of people who love and look forward to your music and will help you share and make your stuff go viral.

2. You keep throwing stuff on the wall and hoping for something to stick

While the first point mentioned above is all about having no strategy in place, this second point is simply about having no well-defined strategy or plan to follow.

As I mentioned above, you can go about promoting your music many ways.

However, the truth is that if you do not stick to one specific method and learn it properly, you are going to find yourself without any results.

Take for example social media promotional tactics. There are so many different social media platforms that trying to learn all of them at once is going to be a complete waste of your time.

Instead, what you can do is to pick one or two of them and focus all your energy there.

This way you will find that you are able to build your brand and get noticed much quicker.

3. You have nothing to differentiate you from others

This is a huge point and something I see many artists failing at.

There are a million artists out there and each one is trying to promote their music and get heard.

So what is that one thing that stops the listening audience from listening to others instead of yours?

Why should they leave what they are doing and give you their time?

I know it might sound a little harsh but until you become a big star, no one really cares about you or your music.

Your job is to change this opinion and show the people what you have to offer.

It might be something as simple as getting a unique artwork to go with your music or adding a little humor into your interviews.

Whatever it is, you want something that differentiates and separates you from the masses all trying to get the attention of their audience.

4. You are targeting the wrong audience

You definitely know that your music is not for everyone.

You cannot be a country musician and expecting hardcore metal fans to be your audience.

There is going to be a mismatch and this is something you do not want.

What you can do is to create very detailed fan profiles that target your audience.

So for example, your audience might be something like “youths in their 20s who live in urban cities and are accustomed to the 'hip' life. They enjoy shopping, traveling, and spending time with their friends on weekends. Some of their musical interests include Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Lil Wayne.”

By doing so, you have been able to niche down and select only those that are interested in your music.

Once done, you can then go where your audience hangs out and connect with them.

5. You are spamming people

It can be very tempting to post an ad on craigslist, buy email addresses of so-called music blog editors in your area and then send them an email promoting your latest music.

While this might look like a good idea at first, the only thing it will get you is a blacklisted email address and probably a few cuss words from some angry people.

Sending your music to people who have no idea who you are is simply a no-no.

You need to give people a reason to want to listen to your music and see what you have to offer.

One way you can do this is to get to know people first and build that relationship.

There are so many networking events that you can attend in order to connect and meet with music editors and bloggers.

Try to build the relationship first and all the other perks will follow.

6. You are buying fake followers and views

With social media being a huge promotional platform, there is the tendency to resort to buying fake followers and views for your music.

However, what happens is that all that views and followers are really bots and automated software that adds nothing to your brand.

Instead, they can damage your reputation and wipe out all the hard work that you have put in to grow your social media audience.

What you can do instead is to focus on building a real following and ignore everyone who promises to help you get a million views overnight.

While it might take a little time building up your real followers, the advantages and results far outweigh the responses you will get from bots and automated software.

7. You lack business knowledge

Now before you scream at me by saying you are a musician and not an entrepreneur, allow me to correct you right there.

You definitely are an entrepreneur and you need to learn how to market and promote yourself if you want to be successful.

If you are serious about making a career for yourself with your music then you need to treat it as such and get serious about marketing.

You need to acquire the right entrepreneurial skills and give yourself that extra push that lands you the right gigs and gets you noticed.

The truth is that nobody is going to do it for you and the sooner you get to doing it, the better.

Remember that your career is in your hands and you should not rely on anyone to make it happen for you.

Conclusion

Promoting your music is very important and something you need to take seriously.



If you want to see any success with your music, then you need to make sure that you have a detailed plan on how to make sure that your music gets seen and heard by the right people.

If not, you may find yourself, 10 years later wondering what went wrong and how no one heard your music.





Uche Ibe is a passionate singer and blogger at www.welovesinging.com. He enjoys teaching people how to sing and helping them become better singers. You can connect with him by visiting his blog or sending him an email.



Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Tunedly.