In this article we break 9 different ways on how to promote your music for free to help gain a bigger audience
[Approximate – 8 Minute Read Time]
I get it. Promoting & marketing your music can be a drag and not something you want to spend your time on, after all you want to make music right?
We’ll I’m not promising any magic miracles but I’m here to help share some ideas on what different online avenues you could go down to get your music in front of your future fans!
Here’s 9 Different and Effective Ways proven by Artists!
#1 – BLOG POSTS & REVIEWS
When people are searching for what music to listen to next, sometimes they like to visit their favourite blog posts to discover something new.
Music blogs are typically a hub where a group running a website can post, review and write about anything music related to share with their audience who visits their website.
Landing a review or post on an established music blog is a great way to push your music to whole new audience (especially if the reviewer is positive about your music.) Usually these websites have a contact form for artists who want to submit their music to them for review. These are typically found at the very top or bottom of a blog website.
WHAT TO DO:
1. Search Google for Edm Music Blogs, or Music Blogs etc etc
2. Make sure the blog is a good fit for your music
3. On that site, find a contact email or submit form and submit a track to the blog.
Worked Well For: Julian Gray
Landing numerous blog posts on Various Blogs
#2 – SOUNDCLOUD REPSOT 2 DOWNLOAD
Even though this method is quite old, it’s still a relatively hands off method of promotion that still needs to be added to this list. If you’re unfamiliar with Soundcloud Reposting, it’s when an artist creates whats called a ‘download gate’ for a song on Soundcloud. This download gate requires anyone who wishes to download the track to follow and repost (share to their fans) in order to download the song.
So that way the downloader gets a free track and the artist gets a new follower and is shown to that users fan base through the repost when the soundcloud stream page shows that the follower has reposted something. It’s a win win. There are plenty of free online services that can help you set up a download gate eg. Artist Union, The Husk, Toneden
WHAT TO DO:
1. Sign up to a Free Download Gate Service such as ToneDen, Artist Union, The Husk (do some research and see which one you like the best)
2. Connect your Soundcloud Account to the service and create Download Gates for some of your tracks.
Worked Well For: Inf1n1te, Antidote Audio and Many Others
Done right and this can create a snowball effect that keeps on promoting your track as more people repost it
#3 – YOUTUBE PROMO CHANNELS
Proven effective over and over and over again. Now that these channels are more known, the bigger the channel is, the harder it is for artists/producers to get on them. Just like the blog posts, these youtube channels can help push your music to a huge audience and all you have to do is search for them on youtube (start by searching ‘music promo channels’) read their about sections if you’re unsure whether they’re a promo channel or not and usually you can find a music submit email or form in their about section as well.
WHAT TO DO:
1. Search Youtube for Music Promotion Channels
2. Make sure the channel is a good fit for your music
3. On the about section on the channel, find a business email or submit music link and submit your music.
Worked Well For: Alan Walker
Alan Walker got his start when NCS uploaded ‘Faded’
#4 – YOUTUBE VLOGGERS
Youtube Vloggers have a great potential audience for you to tap into. If your music becomes a constant theme/soundtrack with that Vloggers videos, their audience will most likely form a connection with your song, like it more and check it out on Spotify and apple music etc etc.
WHAT TO DO:
1. Search Youtube for ‘Vlog’ or ‘____ Vlog’ or ‘your local area’ vlog or vloggers etc
2. Make sure the channel is a good fit for your music
3. On the about section on the channel, find a business email or submit music link and submit your music.
4. If the Vlogger agrees to use your music, make sure they credit you in the descriptions of their videos that use your music, so their fans can find your music.
Worked Well For: Not The King
Not The King Featured on many, many Casey Neistat Vlogs (Casey has close to 12 Million Subscribers)
#5 – POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA
It’s effective, easy and free. The more followers, subscribers and likes you have the bigger the audience you can share to when you have a new release and want to promote your music. The key to posting on social media is not just to share a link and say ‘new tune is out‘ but to create content around it. Share the album art, you playing it out live, a behind the scenes look at the tune or some other creative angle on it!
WHAT TO DO:
1. Create social media accounts and post consistent content on your brand/music/lifestyle etc
2. Build your audiences through interaction and cross sharing different accounts. (tell your instagram audience about your Youtube, tell you Facebook audience about your Twitter etc) Collaborations work great too!
3. When you have a new track, share it and talk about it on your different social media accounts.
Worked Well For:
Well, everyone who makes music and has social media accounts!
#6 – SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS
Landing on Spotify Playlists are key (obviously this requires your music to be on Spotify first and while getting your music up there may not be free, this method to landing on Spotify playlists is)
There are two ways to do this
WHAT TO DO:
1. Search for Spotify playlists created by users with a large playlist following and see if you could see yourself on that playlist amidst other similar tracks
2. If so, find the playlist creator on the web or Instagram and ask if they’re looking for new music for their playlists. (if so, send yours across)
1. Next time you have an upcoming release, make sure to schedule it ahead of time, a couple of weeks before the release date
2. Log in to your Spotify for Artists account, select music, select upcoming, and fill out the submit form.
#7 – $1.80 Strategy
Created by Gary Vee, this method is to build up your interaction with other accounts on Instagram or Youtube or whatever social media site you want. (Don’t be put off by the title, it’s still a method of free music promotion, it’s just what it’s named) By building up your interaction in your community/industry, others (from your interactions) are more likely to check out your account and therefore your music.
WHAT TO DO:
1. Search for hashtags in your niche eg “bass house, dubstep, ableton, musicproducer“
2. Leave comments (also known as “your two cents“) on 10 posts for 9 of these different tags. You can leave comments such as, what you liked about the video or photo, ask the person who posted it questions etc
3. Repeat daily
By doing this you’ll be commenting on 90 different posts and interacting with these posts (actually make the comments meaningful and about the post, not just promotion/spam) Do the $1.80 strategy daily and within a week you’ll have interacted with 630 posts that are now suddenly aware of you.
WORKED WELL FOR:
Gary Vaynerchuck – The Pioneer of the strategy
#8 – COPYRIGHT FREE MUSIC
The idea behind copyright free music is that anyone can use a copyright free song in their youtube video and still monetise it. Youtubers are always looking for good copyright free music and if you can provide that music and land yourself in a big Youtuber’s video, thats a nice and easy way to promote your music through their video!
Remember by being copyright free, you can’t claim your song and get the ad revenue from that video that has your song in it, you’re effectively giving Youtuber’s permission to use your song(s) in their videos and you wont claim on them. If you can land your songs in heaps of different youtube videos then that is a win!
WHAT TO DO:
1. In your video descriptions, put the tags “royalty free music, copyright free music, copyright free”
2. If you want, put ‘Copyright Free” in the title of your music videos
3. Make a little note in the description of each video/song thats going to be copyright free. “Yes, you can use this song in your video copyright free, but remember to credit me in your description” – This way if anyone likes the song in someone else’s video they can trace it back to you.
4. Hopefully other Youtubers discover you music and then want to use it in their videos!
Worked Well For: NCS
With over 20 Million Subscribers, NCS is notorious for Copyright Free Music
#9 – PLAYLIST CREATION
As well as submitting your music to Playlists, why not create your own Playlists as well filled with your tunes and your favourite tunes. If you playlist becomes well searched for and popular then it’s another audience to help promote your new songs by putting them in the playlist when they come out. You can do this on Soundcloud, Youtube and Spotify, but for the example below, we’ll use Spotify.
WHAT TO DO:
1. Make a Spotify Account
2. Click the 3 dots next to a song and select Make New Playlist
3. Keep adding to the playlist, your songs and songs you like.
4. Rename the Playlist something people want to search for or listen to eg. (Best Future Bass of 2020)
5. Give it a description with keywords relating to your Playlist name and share a bit of your personality
6. On your Spotify for Artists Account, click the Profile Tab
7. Scroll all the way to the bottom and click the pencil tool next to “Artist Playlists”
8. Search and add your playlists
9. Share your playlists with your friends and fans to start getting the playlist an audience.
So….
Feeling inspired yet? The above are my top ideas when it comes to how to promote your music online. The best thing is they’re all methods you can do for free. All you need to do is put the time in and start building your audience up through these methods. If you don’t want to do all 9 (although i think it’s a good idea if you do) then just focus on the two most beneficial ones, getting on Youtube Promo Channels and getting on Spotify Playlists!
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