Ah, Nashville. Home of amazing food, incredible culture, and the struggling DIY musician.
It can often feel like some bands are huge overnight successes, but the cold hard truth is that being a musician takes a generous amount of time and work. Even more disappointing, most artists will spend more time focusing on business than playing shows or writing songs. The end goal is to build revenue streams from your creativity so you don’t have to moonlight as a Domino’s delivery driver.
Don’t know where to start? No worries. We recommend using these resources to grow your potential audience, jumpstart your online presence, and eventually turn your talent into dollars.
Every Beginning Musician Needs a Fanbase
Noisetrade is a phenomenal resource for people searching for new music. By “giving away” your music to potential fans, artists in return get information on the user, such as their email and zip code. This information is paramount to building a fanbase. Uploading this information to an email marketing list such as Emma or Mailchimp can help with future promotions and campaigns.
Also, artists can submit to be a “New and Notable” artist on Noisetrade. For a relatively small fee, your music can be sent to their online email list of over 1.3 million people. Within a matter of days, you could have thousands of people listening to your music, and falling in love with your art.
Spotify Verification
Remember the huge Spotify debate where we all questioned how long it would last? Now that we as a society have moved on and accepted that streaming is here to stay, DIY artists need to take advantage of the features and benefits Spotify has to offer.
Want insights on your music? Apply for Spotify Verification. This tells you who likes your music and what else they like to listen to, which helps you better understand your audience. Verification also helps syndicate music to Discover Weekly playlists, and builds your rapport as a new artist.
By gaining 250 followers on Spotify (easily done by creating a following on Noisetrade and email marketing correctly), you have direct access to the largest music platform in the world today.
Facebook Marketing
We’ve all been invited to like someone’s band page on Facebook. Usually, these pages are never used properly and are littered with selfies or ten-second iPhone videos from a garage practice session. Don’t be that band.
Instead, look at successful pages that your audience identifies with. What types of content do they publish? How often do they publish? What sort of imagery do they use? Often, you will learn that as a beginning musician, less is more, and quality definitely is more important than quantity. Collaborate with good designers, and create an image that works for you and what you’re trying to say.
If you have a large email list and not many Facebook likes, or vice versa, try to convert them to both platforms. This can be done by uploading an excel sheet of email addresses you’ve collected and running a “page likes” campaign towards that audience. Even asking people to follow you on Facebook via your email marketing attempts will create conversions.
Additional Resources for DIY Musicians That Are Inexpensive
The above resources “cover the basics” when it comes to online marketing. Capturing attention and converting people into fans takes time and money. However, if your budget allows it, we also recommend the creation of these resources for your online presence.
- Professionally Made Website with Tour Dates and Online Store
- Sonicbids Electronic Press Kit
- Curated Instagram Account (No selfies, please.)
The bottom line? Attract your audience to a killer online presence. Then, convert them to fans.
Every musician has to have a functioning online presence to do what they love, writing songs and playing shows. Otherwise, no one will know about it, and all that energy expended is for nothing. However you choose to market your band online, we highly suggest mastering Noisetrade, Spotify, and Facebook Marketing at a minimum. As your band grows, so will your online presence.mido watch dealer Replica Handbags
