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Promotion is something many producers never feel like they are going to need to learn. We focus on learning how to compress, how to use reverb, how to eq, and how to mix and master.
We never think to learn on how to market ourselves, because we always thought that if you made music that is good it would eventually be heard. WELL!!! Not anymore.
In EDM, the market is very saturated and breaking through is one of the hardest things.
Before starting this 10 Step Marketing Plan please have something you feel is unique and yours.
Preparation For Promotion
PREPARE!! So many artist are so eager to release their work on Soundcloud or Youtube but they don't prepare. If you prepare you will be ahead of the competition instantly.
1. Make Sure Your Music Is Unique and Great
The first step in this journey is to have music that is unique and great. If your music is just unique and not great well you will sound very unprofessional.
If your music is great but it's not unique then you will end up sounding like another copycat producer.
The first step in this journey is to find your sound and make sure it's memorable. You want people to know it's you the moment they hear your music, not think "oh it sounds like _______!"
2. Find your Niche and Target Audience
Finding your niche is pretty much finding the genre your are making music for. Identifying your niche is pretty much what genre fits your music best.
The next question is where does the audience for that genre go for their music?Some good places to to observe are blogs on soundcloud, blogs on youtube, and blogs on Facebook.
Make a list for future reference of all the blogs you find and places to market your music.
3. Branding
Your branding needs to be spot on. The brand is going to be your artist name and the music you make. When branding you need to ask yourself:
What do I want to be known for?
What kind of music will people expect from me?
What kind of image do I want to portray?
These are just a few of the questions you should ask yourself.
After you figure out your personal brand make sure to build your Facebook, Soundcloud, and Twitter pages.
If you need more help on branding check this article we wrote a few days ago.
4. Have The Promo Materials Ready
This step is pretty simple and it means you should have everything ready to go. You want all your social media pages to reflect your image.
Banners and profile pictures need to be relatively the same across all your social medias. Have your music with cover art ready to go. If you will be hosting a remix contest make sure your stems and midis are ready to go. You don't want to start promoting and realize your Facebook page is lackluster.
One extra thing you can do is also build a website for yourself. Many artists don't utilize this and it's the best way to have people get to know you.
PLUS: You will look more professional as an artist.
5. MAKE GOALS!!!
No I do not mean soccer goals. I mean make goals like:
How many views do you want your song to get?
How many followers do you want to get out of this?
How many downloads?
I want to get the support from ____?
Setting goals help in making them become a reality. If you are just starting out be a bit humble but don't be afraid to aim for the stars. Making goals increases your changes of succeeding by a a lot!
6. PRESS RELEASE
Press release are pretty much tools that you should be able to give to anyone so they can write about you. Sometimes EDM Blogs will be willing to write about you if your music has that unique touch to it. If they choose to write about you well you are going to need a press release. Press release contain pictures bio and maybe pictures of your gigs for them to use.
Press releases are very common in EDM, but with the bedroom producers this one tool is really nonexistent. GET ON IT!
Release Your Music
7. Reach Out To Blogs
Once you have everything above then the fun part happens. You can now start talking to those blogs you wrote down in step 2 about a possible release. Some blogs charge to post your music and you can even find some that are free. Your goal is to contact them and hopefully have them support your music.
Blogs get thousands upon thousands of submissions so be patient. If your music is unique and professional you should have no problem getting featured.
The next step is to figure out if you can pay blogs to feature your music. Make sure that the blog has good engagement and the artist they feature get a boost from their feature. The last thing you want is to pay a blog with a little bit of a following and get no benefit out of it.
Be wary of people taking advantage of soundclouds full of fake followers as they are becoming more and more normal.
8. Upload Your Music Onto Your Soundcloud and Enable A Download Gate
Upload your music onto your Soundcloud and ask blogs to repost your music. This is a bit different than the step above since you aren't getting featured, your only getting reposted for the trickle down effect. The trickle down effect is just the followers of the blog getting the notification that the blog reposted your song, some might take a listen and others might not.
A download gate is pretty much a tool that many producers use nowadays as a way to get new followers. The way it works is pretty simple.
In order for your fan to download your song they are gonna need to follow you on soundcloud or like your Facebook page.
9. Email List
Remember that download gate? You can ask users to give you their email in exchange for the download. When they do this they give you permission to email them new information about your future song releases and vice versa. A loyal email list is the most powerful tool an artist can have as it helps you maintain fans and keep in contact with them. This is fairly new in the producer world but has been around for ages in the marketing world. So get to getting those emails.
10. Continue Making Music
Once you have done all your work in marketing your songs. It's time to start moving onto the next thing. Ideally you should have 2-5 songs done before you promote your music so you constantly have a stream of music being released. You want to keep moving on. You can't just can't give that 1 track you released your full attention. You need to release, market it and move on.
I hope this helps some of you guys in promoting your music.