Effective Ways to Market Music for Low Budgets
How do I promote my music for free? I only have a little money to spare for marketing my song, how should I spend it? What’s the best promotion strategy for my music?
If you’ve asked these questions, then you’re not alone. Thousands of new artists are searching for ways to maximize a low budget when promoting music. In this article, we’re going to cover free ways to invest that return your desired results. Stick around until the end for where to spend your money, if you do have it, to invest in marketing.
But first, what are your goals?
Are you releasing music to earn money or gratification? Are you focused on income or stats? Do you want success now or do you want to gradually build a loyal following?
These questions are important because the answers to them will determine, not only how you should promote your music, but how you should make your music creatively.
If you’re focused on earning money for your offerings, then you’re probably looking for success right now. In that case, creatively you should cater your music to what's popular. Research successful artists to see how their music sounds, and make your music sound similar. The upside of this approach is that if your output is high enough, you can coast on playlist placements and, potentially, the algorithms of Spotify and YouTube. You can always be relevant to a decent number of people. The downside to this approach is that with a low budget, your sound quality (recording, mixing and mastering) could suffer from not investing in it, and your songs won’t match up well next to the mainstream artists’. There is a way around this, but I’ll get to that later.
If you don’t care about instant success and want to build a following loyal to you, and not a playlist, then creatively, do you. Make whatever type of music you want. The benefit of this approach is that once you’ve built your following, you’ll keep them as a fan base and your statistics will be steady. Another benefit is that you can focus more of your budget on promotion, as the sound quality is still important, but you won’t have to compete as much with artists that spend a lot of money on studios, mixing and mastering. Your marketing approach can also be more organic, focusing on a select few niche groups in which your music fits well; and generally, the success is longer lasting.
With that being said, you’re probably reading this article because you want to see some form of success, while having a small budget, so I’m going to explain efficient ways to promote your music to see relative success right now.
As I mentioned earlier, playlists are an easy way to get acknowledgement. Basically, playlists rely on the promotion of songs people want to hear. Independent curators don’t get paid directly from Spotify or Apple, most of them curate for the satisfaction of people enjoying their musical taste. If someone likes that musical taste and you’re on their playlist, they will like your music. Try to get placements on playlists that closely resemble your music so that people don’t skip your song so you can be rewarded by Spotify’s algorithm. Also, explore the world of curators by being a curator, every listener counts and if you can get people to like your musical taste, you can slip a couple of your songs in the playlist for more listeners (don’t make the whole playlist about you, you’ll lose integrity). We have an article that explains how to approach Spotify playlist curators here.
Build a presence on social sharing sites. Social media like Twitter and Instagram count as sharing sites, but these platforms make it harder for you to promote because they want to promote products to you. Also, everyone uses Twitter and Instagram, you won’t stand out. The sites I am referring to are sites like Reddit, SoundCloud, Pinterest, especially if you have great visuals, and BandLab. These sites allow you to connect to niche groups, people who are directly looking for new music. You have to network if you’re not going to spend money on ads and the best people to network with are people who want to find new music like yours.
Collaborate with other up and coming artists. As mentioned earlier, networking is key if you don’t have money to spend on promotion. One of the best ways to get heard by new people is collaboration, as it serves as cross promotion. The people who like the artist you’re working with will hear you and, if you perform well, will be curious to what the rest of your music sounds like. The benefit of this is that you will also learn how the other artist promotes and can adjust your promotion strategies accordingly. Even mainstream artists collaborate to cross promote.
No matter how you approach marketing your music, you will have to invest. Whether it be in the creative, post production, or marketing phase, you can’t cut corners and expect success. The good news is you don’t have to invest money, if you can invest time. Anticlimactic, but hear me out.
If you know how to record, mix, and master how much do you need for an engineer? How much do you need for marketing platforms if you have your own? Taking the time to learn how to function in other areas of the industry will save you money on the back end. My advice is to learn how to record and mix to make your music sound like it belongs with the mainstream artists. Research trends of music and analyze it to understand what your music needs to take it to the next step.
Learn how to improve your aesthetic and become your own brand. Consistency is key when it comes to visuals. Learn how to use Photoshop or editing apps to make eye catching cover arts, profile pictures, and banners. If you build a brand and platform, even something as simple as a YouTube page or Spotify profile, that can grab an audience visually, you can use every visual as marketing. Put your latest release on visuals where applicable and have links to a central place where you can direct people that are curious about your craft.
At the end of the day, as an independent artist, you have to wear multiple hats, especially if you don’t want to spend the money on someone else doing it for you.
If you have set aside a budget for the creation and marketing of your music here are some efficient ways to invest.
Ads are not taboo and can be a smart investment. I mentioned earlier that social media wants to limit independent promotion. This is because they don’t get any return from it, but if you can spend on ads, you can get in front of numerous people. This is where your brand comes into play. Make sure your visuals are intriguing enough to garner a high conversion rate.
Websites are very versatile as it allows you to have a place to direct your audience. Hyper follow pages can look nice, but how many artists do you know that have the same, or similar, hyper follow page? Having your own site allows you to establish and build upon your brand. You can also run ads for other artists for a return of investment. Stoned Produce is offering custom artist landing pages for only $5.99 a month.
Giveaway contests are a great way to approach viral marketing. If you have merch, set up a contest involving your song and give it to the winner. Cash prizes probably work better if you don’t have an online presence. There are also creative ways in which you can market your song around this strategy. Make a dance around it and judge who did it best, or have your people post your lyrics for a drawing.
Subscribe to Stoned Produce because we will be starting a series on mixing basics soon that can help beginners, no matter what DAW. For help with promoting your music with a low budget reach out to us at stonehouseproductions24@gmail.com
