Shit You Need To Realize As An Indie Artist!

 Indie Artist Facts

The first problem that indie artist face is the fact that they didn’t become musicians because they are in to promoting themselves and their music, people become musicians because they love making music and expressing themselves with their instruments and their voice. Now this is a problem, while we would love to make money by simply doing something we like, it doesn’t go smoothly as we would like. A musician, in order to be successful needs to be good at promoting and marketing. Especially in the first stages in their respective career where this is crucial.

This fact is any musician, without an effective marketing campaign, musicians simply will not be able to do what they like in order to make a living. And the fact remains that you need money to make money, this of course applies to making music as well, money is constantly lost in promotions and marketing, and the bottom line has to leave you in the profit zone.

How and why people buy your music?

When a musician tries to launch a marketing campaign with minimal investment they all tend to do the same thing, send a bunch of E-mails and of course promote their mixtape covers and tracks on Facebook and twitter. After a couple of days of doing this people tend to generally give up after they landed a couple of sales. This however can be a fatal mistake. First of all you need to understand that people who like your music aren’t labeled as those who buy and those who don’t buy, there is a wide spectrum in between. For example. Somebody saw your Facebook post, and actually wanted to buy your new album, but at the time didn’t have the money. That person needs to be reminded of the fact that you have a new album out. Another angle of approach would be a person who wanted to buy your album, and had the money, but at the last moment didn’t do so for reasons unknown. This list of situations can go on for miles, and the bottom line is that keeping an active marketing campaign is a must when you are a musician, don’t just give up after a few weeks of promotion.

Driving our sales

First let me stress how important your mixtape cover artwork or single artwork is hi def and professional that is the first thing people pay attention to so make sure you graphics are attention grabbing.Now you have a basic understanding of your clientele and how they should not be labeled as those who bought your album and those who didn’t. the first thing that any musician should know is where people fall into the previously mentioned spectrum, understanding this will help you drive you sales.

Let’s say that your first step was sending out mass E-mails to the people who are subscribed to you, of course needless to say you had a link in your E-mail to the location where you album can be purchased and downloaded, the next obvious step would be for you to track your analytics. After a couple of weeks take a good look at them. Look for information that indicates how many people opened your E-mail, how many people clicked your link and how many people actually bought your new album, tracking these analytics will give you a good idea where the people on your mailing list are on your spectrum of buyers, and always keep in mind that a lot of people that are on your mailing list could have missed your E-mail for various reasons. As before, constant marketing will help you drive your sales, with the exception of having analytic data that will improve your overall marketing campaign.

Know your audience

Now that you have actual hard data for you to look over, you will have a general idea what type of people actually like your music. The next step you should take is to make a marketing campaign aimed at the people who already bought your music. The first thing that you should realize that this portion of your audience is generally interested in your music and what you have to offer. With this said its safe to assume that they will most probably buy your older albums as well. So take some time to set up a marketing campaign covering your older albums, people who bought your more recent work will be interested, so feel free to cash in on your previous hard work.

The analytics of your older albums

This is something that most musicians simply do not do, and by not doing so, are making a colossal mistake. After you have marketed your’ newer and older albums, take a look at the analytics one again. It is a hard fact that the number of sales will differ with your new and old albums. So what can you learn from this? The differential margin in sales between your old and new work is a direct indicator of what kind of music people are looking for in your albums. Needless to say that if your new album has more sales than the old one, you are going in the right direction. However, if this is not the case, and your older album has indeed more sales than the new one, take a good look at what you are doing with your music, and maybe take a step back, even listen to your old album and see what kind of vibe you are getting from it.

In conclusion

With this article we hope that we have helped all the musicians out there understand how important it is for them to promote their music, and how important it is for all the musicians out there to understand that there is a wide spectrum of people who actually like their music and who actually buy their music. Whatever you as a musician decide to do with your music, remember that your audience and your fans will ultimately be your way to success, or the way to your downfall, so go ahead, listen do what they have to say and promote your music the best way you can.

Smart Online Music Promotion That Works

Online Music Promotion Blueprint

Music is currently an oversaturated industry with a lot of new artists and bands popping up with each passing day. With this said, it’s needless to say that artist all around the world have a lot of problems promoting their work. One of the most popular ways of promoting work are the well-known mixtapes which are found all over the internet and in our local music stores. So what makes a good mixtape? 

There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to this. A mixtape cover is one thing to be aware of. Making good mixtape covers can be underestimated greatly and is usually the first mistake artists all around the world make. When you start making your mixtape cover design you need to have a lot of things in mind. 

For example you want your mixtape cover to reflect the music and the energy behind your music. So it’s needless to say that making good mixtape cover art can be one big step on your way to success. But there are also many other things that need to be consider, like the promotion of your mixtape for example. This is a topic that we will cover later on. But for starters let’s get back to the design of your mixtape cover. As we mentioned before the mixtape cover needs to reflect the music that you are making, what we didn’t say is the fact that a lot of people actually buy albums and mixtapes based on the appearance of their cover art. 

A fan of heavy metal music will never buy a mixtape that has flowers on its cover, no matter how good the music is, so keep that in mind when making cover art for your mixtape, also if you are not experienced when it comes to making cover design, then you should consider that you hire a professional cover designer in order to get the job done with the best possible outcome.

How to promote your mixtape?

How to promote your mixtape is the topic that we will be covering next. And it’s a tricky topic to say the least, so to put it in simpler terms we are going to go over some of the most common business strategies when it comes to the promotion of your mixtape.

• As we stated before the music market is oversaturated at this very moment, and this is due to a lot of albums and random music being released daily on to this very market, this music doesn’t have quality and good cover art, so ultimately it’s needless to say that this project that is most likely made for fun will eventually fall. This music that saturates the market without any obvious purpose or reason is generally called clutter music, and this is the first piece of advice that we have when we talk about promotion of your mixtape, don’t make clutter music.

• A good word will spread fast, with this piece of advice we want to say that most rappers that make mixtapes and music in general have no idea what they are doing, and their so called music eventually ends as clutter music which is instantly labeled by the community as something that nobody even considers buying. With this said it’s needless to say that you shouldn’t release unfinished product just for the sake of making a name for yourself, this type of marketing often has strong drawback effects, and can ruin your career before you start.

• Eyes see better than ears. By this little phrase we want to say that most people will buy your mixtape just by the look of your mixtape cover art, we said this before and we can’t stress is enough how much making a good mixtape cover design can be important.

• Free music is usually bad music, so don’t give out your mixtapes for free. When people see a mixtape cover and see the label “free” below it, it’s a clear indicator that this piece of music is something that is very low in quality and isn’t worth their time. But don’t charge full price for your mixtapes either, because the price tag can turn away a lot of potential customers when it comes to your mixtape. The best thing we can recommend is that you charge something symbolical for your mixtape I would just ask for a donation for the mixtape . People will recognize that its quality music being developed and the developer needs the financial support.

• Free music is easy to make. A lot of artists are aware of the fact that they will give out their music for free, so the correspondent mindset dictates that they will simply not try hard enough when making a mixtape, when you make music, keep in mind that people will pay for it and try to give them something that is worth their money.

Marketing

When it comes to marketing your mixtape there are a lot of things to consider, for example how to do it. This is the topic that we will be covering next. For starters, you might want to consider that you can “rub-off” somebody else’s success, what we are trying to say that you can go ahead and hire a famous musician to host in your mixtape, and appropriately include him on your mixtape cover art. 

This will almost certainly bring a lot of potential listeners to you. Another way to do this is simply making a mixtape that has the instrumental of famous songs. But this can often be quite tricky because when you attempt this kind of promotion you need to be aware that your final product must be equal or better than the original piece of music. 

Beside the previously stated, there are many other methods for you to promote your mixtapes for next to nothing money spent. Social media like Twitter and Facebook can be quite good for this. If you include a small text and a picture of your cover design when posting on Facebook or Tweeting on Twitter most people will take a look at what you have done, and at least listen to a sample of your music. Making remixes of popular songs can quite often work in your favor as well. So don’t hesitate to make remixes of popular song and put your mixtape cover on top of it all. So let’s revise what we just said.

• Invite famous DJ-s if you can afford it
• Make music over somebody else’s instrumental
• Do remixes of popular songs
• Use social media to market your mixtape

YouTube

Promoting your music over this popular free service can be quite lucrative so don’t hesitate to do so, and remember to put your mixtape cover art as the video and give a link to your album in the description. Another thing that we should add is the fact youtube offers ads now and there dirt cheap and they can get you in front of your target market and build you a solid fanbase .  This method of marketing can quite often bring your YouTube video to go viral, needless to say that this can be a game changer for you, and your career.

 Release Singles

Releasing singles before the full album has proven to be a good strategy when it comes to promoting mixtapes, a good mixtape cover art combined with a good song can go viral in a matter of days, and this will bring a lot of positive marketing and positive feedback for your album and its release date.

Finally making a name for your self

What to do after your mixtape has been downloaded more than ten thousand times? This is the breaking point in musician’s career. We have a couple of suggestions when it comes to this. Corresponding with how popular you are at the moment, try to book a couple of press releases, journalists worldwide are always looking for a good story. 

So don’t be afraid to send out mass E-mails to journalists everywhere. Another good idea can be for you to make charity shows. If you have the ability to cash in your success why not do it for a good cause, people will pay the ticket price to help the needy, and this will increase your overall popularity and give tons of positive feedback. Another good idea when it comes to putting on shows and performances in general is to offer free music. 

Not literally of course, but every big name to day has been a nobody at one point, and made a name for himself by rapping or playing music at clubs for free, if you can achieve this than you are already on your way to success, and not for long you will start charging full price tickets for your performance and that money will surely be well spent on your way to towering success.