The Original Promotion Mega Thread

#8

It is really annoying to me to see all my sales and streams. The variation across platforms is huge, and Spotify is one of the lowest. We promote Bandcamp, Amazon, iTunes…dont even share Spotify links. But I guess it is worth to be on there for organic finds.

#9

And what about cost versus benefit? :game_die::game_die: :chart_with_downwards_trend: :chart_with_upwards_trend: :moneybag:

#10

Depends on how much you value $60-80 for having your stuff on there. For me, I think it’s worth it. I only ever have like, 13 monthly listeners… so it’s almost zero ad revenue… but it’s cool to see the stats and more music out there is more music out there.

Millions of people use spotify, almost exclusively… so (I think i mentioned earlier) it’s nice when I have a coworker, or meet someone at a party who has spotify on their phone, and can just save the albums. Rather than being like “ok go to bandcamp, download and send it to your email” or use soundcloud, which isn’t very mobile friendly and has a lot more ads.

#11

it’s great exposure to CASUAL listeners, I’ll say. versus BC and SC has a ton of other artists on it networking.

edit

also when you use an aggregator like CDBaby, it adds your stuff to itunes, pandora, last.fm… all the other services too, so. It’s a lot of coverage. as @relic said, it really depends on how much you market too.

#12

Interesting… I guess I should get over my (apparently) irrational fears of wasting time or money and just jump in. After all… I’m in the business of composing and producing music and I need listeners.

Maybe it’s less about comparing and more about “more is more.”

Thank you!

#13

You might find this discussion useful as well: How do you Instagram?!

Having tried a fair few services, my advice would be to not spend any money until you are ready to undertake or pay for a planned out and “aggressive” marketing campaign. I’m really not joking at all : ) Even if your music is pretty damn good unless you aggressively pursue putting it right up in people’s faces, you would just be spending money to dump your tunes on the pile.

There are plenty of free venues where you can dump your tunes on the pile.

  1. Figure out how and why you’ll use multiple social media platforms.
  2. You’ll want to use YouTube as well. And here I’d strongly consider doing some kind of gear oriented live versions of your music or music videos (see your local Uni for film students who come free or cheap).
  3. Consider pro accounts on some free services (if the pro features seem useful). And, shit, there is something to be said for paying for pro accounts just to make you look more serious.
  4. Get professional art work done (again see your local Uni for free/cheap work)
  5. Put a media packet together. (local Uni)
  6. Get some basic bio copy written you can use across platforms.
  7. I’d also consider getting into the tutorial game. A lot of people seem to get plenty of attention that way as well.

And this is, I think, the most important: figure out where you can get your music heard in real life. It is so hard to get noticed on the internet and my experience and the experience of friends and acquaintances has been that all the online stuff is great way to enhance the access of IRL fans.

And I’m truly not mocking Nostromer here, but paying $60-80 to get 13 monthly listeners is about what I’d expect if one is just uploading their music and hoping for the best. So you would have to decide what that is worth to you.

Yes, there are some electronic musicians who are kind of just “internet famous”. I feel like that is actually the more difficult route.

#14

OK… now I’m completely overwhelmed by your 7 part list. So far I’ve done:

I’m on Instagram and participated in the thread.I find both useful. So that is a partial :white_check_mark: for #1
2 through 5 and 7… I got nothin’
6 I kinda have, at least my Bio is consistent on different platforms.

Gotta get to work… :person_climbing:

#15

FWIW, many of these are not things I’ve done myself or done consistently, but if you work at getting it all setup you’ll have that network in place and fans will be able to pick and choose the venues through which they can experience what you have to offer. I’m kinda just spitballing here, but I’ve really come to the conclusion that your music being good enough just isn’t enough and that just uploading it to the web isn’t enough by a long shot.

The problem isn’t even all the poor to mediocre electronic music online–its the vast amount of very listenable to great electronic music online.

#16

Not mocking at all! I didn’t put anything into it, and didn’t have any expectations. Honestly, I just put my music on spotify just for the sole sake of myself saying I had it on there because it would feel “final”. I also wanted it on the itunes store, where I got a lot more hits. (Itunes takes 50% though)

I agree with you on all points, aggressive marketing is the way to do it. They say if you really want to start getting a following, you should really spend 2/3rds of your time to marketing, and 1/3rd producing. It’s quite skewed.

#17

I did also like your point that having it on Spotify makes it easy to share IRL.

#18

I’m aware that Spotify hardly pays for anybody, yet I use it constantly and even have an artist page thanks to Distrokid Records 34927348295.

I know people complain about not making more than $0.02 after years of consistent plays, but in a world where we’re all making music… I don’t really understand where the high expectation comes from. Music is worth your $20 total to upload and stream as much garbage as you’d like and I honestly don’t care if Spotify is collecting all of it. It’s all getting funneled to Drake anyway so he can drink his purple drank

Insert trump picture or something douchey here

#19

So is the $20 a monthly subscription to Distrokid? That sounds about right from what we researched for the netlabel for a single artist account and I do believe it is unlimited. If one is releasing enough music $240 a year is a deal compared to 60-80 a release.

I think you make a good point about expectations and that is the point I’ve kind of been tip toeing around in a couple threads including this one.

#20

If you stop paying monthly do they remove it? That was kind of my catch with CDBaby, was the $60 was a one time fee, forever, and for all other services and shit. I don’t want to have to worry about more monthly subs… I already deal with enough of that shit.

PLUS LET ME AHEM MENTION THE ANNOYING SOUNDCLOUD PAY MODEL HERE…

I’m premium, yet i need ANOTHER subscription to SC “go” for ad-free listening? Fuuuuuuuuuuuck

rant over.

#21

+1 - Also I’ll say that $60 one time fee doesn’t work for everyone, but it does for me because it takes me like 5 fucking years for every full length album I release… so…

if I was one of you glorious bastards that could pump out EPs and full lengths left and right, I could see how it would work out good. Or for that matter, want singles on Spotify… I haven’t really hopped on the “singles outside of soundcloud” phase yet in my music vision.

#22

Yeah, that’s the one part that sucks. CD Baby is technically better in that way

#23

When I was shocked by the one time fee price above in this thread, I was totally thinking of the single artist distrokid subscription.

But yea, now that you mention it, a $20 a month subscription probably wouldn’t do me any good. I realistically make about an EPs worth of finished songs a year haha. I kinda envy all the people that only care about writing music, I split my time 50/50 between honing my DJ skills and making tracks.

I think the route I’ll take in the future is to just make singles, get them mastered so I can mix them with commercial tracks. Put out mixes w/ my own tracks and send people to BC.

#24

I dont use it i just upload my herp derp experiments online and leAve it there as an archive mostly on yt and bc and sc, but then again i’m too lazy to market it nor do I expect anyone to listen to some of my other experiments out of all them maybe 10-25% percent would actually be listenable but even some of those I’m like I’ve exhausted this creatively so I just move on to the next track, and some of the stuff I made is honestly like the electronic version of a creed limp biz kit mashup, I’ve probably only made one ep that is actually listenable, all my other stuff is really just jam sessions, and me practicing sound design and other tricks on how to reproduce a certain sound…

#25

Yea it really depends on what your goal is. The internet is amazing for storage and access. For people doing electronic but not dance or pop stuff there aren’t many live venues outside of city centers so I dont even know how yall get heard off the internet.

#26

Once Spotify for artist is out of beta, uploading your music directly into Spotify will be a seamless as uploading music on to Soundcloud. This is will cause a lot of BC and SC artist to come over to Spotify more willingly, in the near future.

As regards to Instagram, it’s really gimmick for electronic music producers, people are literally getting followers for just remaking Pokemon songs and playing 4 chord progressions on modular synths, people prefer the appearance of looking like an amazing musician, rather than actually being critical of the music they listen to.

Honestly I want to put my music out on these platforms, however I want to first reach a certain quality threshold in terms of my music, before I start investing in my artistic career. I’m like 21 right now, and most of these famous producers are old as fuck, so I’m in no rush.

#27

Its weird, change. Us old men don’t like it but its going that way anyway so best not complain about it too much. Simmer down gramps