Category: Music Marketing

Unleashing Your Artistic Potential: A Step-by-Step Guide to Social Media Success

Posted on by localfinderbiz@gmail.com

When promoting your art and connecting with your fans, social media is a powerful tool that can’t be ignored. But with so many platforms and options available, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. To help you navigate the social media landscape, here are some key steps to creating an effective social media plan for your art.

First, it’s important to understand who your audience is. By identifying your target audience’s demographics, such as age, location, gender, interests, and income level, you can tailor your content and messaging to resonate with them. This will increase the chances that your art will be seen and appreciated by the people who matter most.

Next, choose the platforms where your audience is most active. You don’t need to be on every social media platform – focus on the ones where your target audience spends the most time. For example, for visual artists, Instagram is a great option, while musicians might succeed on TikTok or Soundcloud.

Once you’ve identified your audience and chosen your platforms, creating a content calendar is time. This means planning when and what you’ll post and on which platforms. This will help you stay consistent and regularly engage with your audience. To keep things interesting, vary the type of content you post. Share sneak peeks of your upcoming projects, behind-the-scenes photos, videos, and personal anecdotes that give your fans a glimpse into your creative process.

By following these steps and consistently creating engaging content, using relevant hashtags, and interacting with your fans, you can effectively promote your art and build a loyal following on social media. Additionally, paid advertising and monitoring analytics will help fine-tune the strategy and reach a wider audience.

Here is a sample social media plan for an artist:

  1. Define your target audience: Identify the demographics of your target audience, such as age, location, gender, interests, and income level. This will help you tailor your content and messaging to appeal to them.
  2. Choose the right platforms: Research which social media platforms your target audience is most active on, and focus on building a presence. Popular platforms for musicians include Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
  3. Develop a content calendar: Plan a schedule for when you will post content, what type of content you will post, and which platforms. This will help you stay consistent and regularly engage with your audience.
  4. Create engaging content: Share behind-the-scenes photos and videos of your recording process, post snippets of new music, and share personal anecdotes that give fans a glimpse into your life and personality. Also, share your thoughts and opinions on current events in the music industry.
  5. Use hashtags: Use relevant hashtags to help your posts reach a wider audience and make it easier for fans to discover you. Also, consider creating your branded hashtag that fans can use to connect with you.
  6. Interact with your fans: Respond to comments and messages and regularly engage in conversations with your fans. This will help build a sense of community and make them feel more connected to you.
  7. Utilize paid advertising: Use paid advertising to reach a larger audience and promote your music, concerts, and merchandise.
  8. Monitor and measure: Use analytics tools to monitor your social media performance and measure the success of your social media plan. Use this information to make adjustments and improve your strategy.

It’s important to remember that social media is constantly evolving, and it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices. The above plan should be considered a starting point and can be adapted as necessary.

24 social media posts template to promote your catalog published on Spotify

Posted on by Thomas Ferriere

Spotify has become an essential tool for artists, providing a platform to reach a global audience and promote new music. With its various features, such as the “Spotlight” program and the “Discovery Weekly” playlist, it has become easier for new and emerging artists to get noticed. Its analytics capabilities empower them to make strategic decisions on their music marketing.

By focusing on the personal and emotional experiences and benefits of creating and sharing music, these posts can help artists connect with their fans and build a strong relationship with their fanbase.

  1. “Just uploaded my new single to #Spotify! Excited for the world to hear it and to reach new listeners! #newmusic #indieartist”
  2. “I had a blast performing at my first virtual concert on #SpotifyLive last night! If you missed it, the full set is now available on my artist profile #Spotify #livemusic #virtualconcert”
  3. “Spotlighted on #Spotify as a new artist to watch! So grateful for the platform’s support and can’t wait to see where this takes me! #newartist #spotlight”
  4. “Excited to announce that my album is now available on #Spotify! Make sure to add it to your playlists and share it with your friends! #albumrelease #Spotifyartist”
  5. “Streaming numbers on the rise! Thank you to all my fans for supporting me on #Spotify; it means the world to me. #streaming #artist”
  6. “Just announced my upcoming virtual tour on #SpotifyLive! Can’t wait to connect with my fans and perform some new music. Make sure to save the date! #virtualtour #Spotifyartist”
  7. “Got my first placement on a #Spotify editorial playlist! Exciting to see my music being discovered by new listeners. #playlist #musicdiscovery”
  8. “Feeling grateful for the community on #Spotify, it’s amazing to see my music being shared and loved by listeners all around the world. #community #artist”
  9. “Just wrapped up my #SpotifyLive session; thanks to everyone who tuned in! Make sure to check out the replay on my artist page. #livemusic #artist”
  10. “The creative process never stops. Can’t wait to share my new music with you all! #artist #newmusic”
  11. “Performing live is one of my favorite things in the world. So grateful for the opportunity to connect with fans through music #livemusic #artist”
  12. “Music is my passion, and I’m constantly inspired by the creativity and talent of other artists. Keep creating! #artist #inspiration”
  13. “Nothing beats the feeling of finishing a new song, the thrill of creating something new #artist #creation”
  14. “Feeling grateful for the support and encouragement of my fans, you make it all worth it #artist #grateful”
  15. “Being an artist is not only about creating music but also connecting with others, making them feel and express emotions #artist #emotion”
  16. “The ability to use music to connect with people across the globe is one of the most rewarding things about this journey #artist #connection”
  17. “Music has always been my escape, my way to process and make sense of the world. #artist #music”
  18. “Creating new music is like diving into an unknown world, the thrill of discovery is unbeatable #artist #discovery”
  19. “Being able to share my music and connect with people from all over the world is a truly humbling experience #artist #sharing”
  20. “Feeling so grateful for the support and love of my fans. You are the reason I make music #artist #fans #grateful”
  21. “The energy of a live audience is truly electric. Thank you to all the fans who came to the show last night! #artist #fans #livemusic”
  22. “Can’t believe how far we’ve come together! Thank you to each and every one of my fans for your continued support #artist #fans #journey”
  23. “I had a blast at the fan meet-up last night; so great to connect with you all in person! #artist #fans #meetup”
  24. “Making music is my passion, but connecting with fans and seeing the impact of my music on their lives is truly priceless. #artist #fans #impact”

These posts focus on thanking and appreciating the fans for their support and role in the artist’s success, help to build a sense of community and connection with the fanbase.

16 Tips To Market Your Music On Spotify in 2023

Posted on by Thomas Ferriere

Spotify is an incredibly powerful tool for aspiring artists. It has changed how music is discovered and shared, making it easier for independent artists to build a fanbase and reach new listeners.

One of the main advantages of Spotify for aspiring artists is its wide reach. Spotify has a global audience of over 345 million monthly active users, making it one of the most popular streaming platforms in the world. This means that when an artist uploads their music to Spotify, they have the potential to reach a large and diverse audience, regardless of their location or the size of their fanbase.

Another benefit of Spotify for aspiring artists is its various features that help them to get noticed. Spotify has a range of tools that help to promote new and emerging artists, such as its “Spotlight” program, which highlights up-and-coming artists on the platform, and its “Discovery Weekly” playlist, which introduces users to new music based on their listening habits. Spotify also has an “artist pick” feature, making it easier for artists to connect with potential fans.

The streaming platform also offers analytics tools that allow artists to track how their music is performing, including how many people are listening to their songs, where their audience is located, and which songs are most popular. This information can be extremely valuable for artists, helping them understand their audience and make strategic decisions about promoting their music.

In addition to the above, Spotify has a feature that artists can use to directly promote their music to the audience. This can be by promoting a new single or album on their artist page, which is then shared with their followers. This feature is a great way for artists to create buzz around their music and can be useful for reaching new listeners.

These features make Spotify an ideal platform for aspiring artists looking to build their fanbase and reach a wide audience. With its global reach, promotional tools, and analytics capabilities, Spotify offers a comprehensive set of resources to help artists take their careers to the next level.

In summary, Spotify’s reach, features, and analytics make it an invaluable tool for aspiring artists looking to promote their music and build a fanbase, making it an inevitable tool for anyone serious about making it in the music industry.

Here are a few strategies you can use to market your music on Spotify:

  1. Build your audience: Use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to engage with your fans and build a following. This will help you to promote your music and upcoming releases to a larger audience.
  2. Collaborate with other artists: Collaborating with other artists is a great way to get your music in front of a new audience. You can collaborate on a track or even a playlist.
  3. Utilize Spotify’s promotional tools: Spotify has several promotional tools that you can use to promote your music, such as playlists, sponsored ads, and algorithmic promotion.
  4. Release new music consistently: Keeping a steady stream of new music releases will help keep your fans engaged and attract new listeners.
  5. Reach out to curators and bloggers: Reach out to Spotify curators and music bloggers to promote your music and get it included in their playlists and reviews.
  6. Create engaging content: Create engaging and high-quality music videos, artwork, and other visuals to accompany your music, as this will make it more shareable and exciting to potential listeners.
  7. Make use of Podcasts/Radio Shows: Reaching out to Podcasts/Radio shows that play music similar to yours could help you to get your music in front of more people.
  8. Utilize different promotion platforms like hypeddit, Repostexchange, Repostby, etc.
  9. Engage with your listeners: Respond to comments and messages from your listeners to build a community around your music. This will help you to build a loyal fanbase and keep them engaged with your music.
  10. Optimize your artist profile: Make sure that your artist profile on Spotify is complete, including your bio, artist photo, and links to your other social media profiles. This will help listeners discover more about you and connect with you.
  11. Play live shows and events: Play live shows and events to promote your music and connect with your fans in person. This can also help you to create new fans and grow your following.
  12. Leverage playlisting: Submitting your music to different genre-based, mood-based, activity-based, and demographic-based playlists could help you reach out to the audience interested in listening to your music.
  13. Utilize Influencer Marketing: Consider working with influencers or bloggers in your genre or niche to feature your music in their content to get it in front of more people.
  14. Use email marketing: Build an email list of fans and send them updates on new music, upcoming shows, and exclusive content to keep them engaged with your music.
  15. Utilize the power of paid promotion: Paid promotion can include sponsored posts on social media platforms, Google ads, Spotify sponsored ads, and influencer campaigns.
  16. Creating a website for your music can help listeners find out more about you, listen to your music, and purchase merchandise.

Create the content they want to listen to.

Again, remember that it’s important to know your target audience and create the content they want to listen to. And also, it’s important to test out different marketing strategies and see which ones are most effective for your music.

Remember that these strategies will work better when you know your target audience and create the content they want to listen to.

It’s important to keep in mind that growing a fan base on Spotify takes time and consistent effort. Be patient and experiment with different strategies to see what works best for you.

Voice Marketing: How to Develop Voice Strategy for Your Music

Posted on by Thomas Ferriere

It’s a Brave New Smarthome World, and Alexa’s here to tell us all about it! It is estimated that as many as 45 million voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa (and her sometimes awkwardly-less-kind Yandex comrade Alisa) are in use at present, and that number is only projected to grow as the technology becomes better, more affordable, and integrated into our lives.

They’re also becoming more integrated into the music scene (and not just with St. Louis Blues fan’s “Alexa Play Gloria!” posts last year). It’s also influencing the way we market music.

With that in mind, let’s look at how you can make Alexa and other home voice assistants work for you with a smarter music marketing strategy targeted at smart home usage.

1. Know Your Audience

First and foremost, you have to know your audience. What kind of smartphone users are they likely to be? What are they likely to ask Alexa and any other voice assistant for help, and what will they say?

We’ll get into the voice command aspect of things in a moment, but for now, it’s worth noting that different audiences are interested in different kinds of content – and you need to make it worthwhile. For example, U2 recorded behind-the-scenes commentary and released it with their music for Alexa. Fans could access both the songs and these extra goodies, naturally boosting the number of times they were likely to search and recommend fellow fan friends to do the same.

This is exactly the kind of strategy needed in today’s interconnected world. You need to know what your audience wants and how to deliver it to them in such a way that they, in turn, want to share it with others. That’s how you go viral, and it’s also how you score a bit better on your voice devices’ music marketing.

2. Advertising for Mom and Dad

One of the biggest obstacles to advertising online has always been the age barrier. Let’s face it – if you’re over 50, chances are you’re much more likely to feel social media, apps, and other aspects of the Internet are less intuitive than those who grew up with them.

That being said, voice assistants buck that trend largely due to the “voice” part. Even if “the Karens” in your life don’t know a thing about Instagram’s interface, anyone can say, “Hey, Alexa….”

That makes voice assistants much more accessible, making them such an attractive marketing choice for musicians looking to get their music out to people.

It also means that there’s nothing wrong from a songwriting and singing perspective with a little retro chic. Mom and Dad may not care about Billie Eilish, but they may sing along with Ringo every time it gets to “Billy Shears” on Sgt. Pepper, so keying into nostalgia trips and music business mainstays like that is a great way to get older audiences to listen to you.

3. Advertising for Shared Audiences

This, in turn, brings us to the all-important factor of finding a way to reach shared audiences. Smart homes are shared by the whole home, so you want to make sure that you appeal to as many people in a potential family of listeners as possible. That doesn’t mean you should go against your core demographic, of course, but it does mean that in crafting the words you use to market your songs, you should consider a wider audience and keep in mind how not just your fans but everyday people might use Alexa.

4. Get on Playlists

This brings us to playlists – you need to be on them at all costs. This is one of if not the biggest ways to score new listens and fans from people who may not have even heard of you in the first place but experienced you as part of a playlist.

Anonymous people across the country and globe may not know you, but they know “Soft Rock,” or “Pop Music,” or “Easy Listening,” and they search for it. We’ll get more into what and how they search in a moment, but for now, suffice it to say that appearing on these banner playlists that cover whole genres of music can be a great way to expose yourself to a new audience.

The same goes for Artist playlists that include others. Organically-Generated Playlists on “Artists Like Famous Artist X” are crucial for getting exposure, so do what you can to make your songs and search terms organic playlist-friendly.

5. Know How We Speak (and Type)

You’re likely to find differences in how websites tell you to list your search terms for your songs, and that makes sense. On the one hand, voice assistant technology is built around us speaking, which encourages search results that mirror the way we speak. You don’t speak like a robot, with choppy, imperfect grammar, but you may type like one when searching for something online.

Therein lies the dilemma – when using voice assistants, you want to target naturally-sounding phrases, but for online-based searches, you need to use SEO keywords, which sound more robotic.

6. Test Your Search Results in Yourself

Last but not least, you should always take the time to test your search results in yourself. That goes for any search engine, of course, but it is especially true regarding voice assistants. It’s one thing to have an idea in your mind of how you “should” appear on playlists, but quite another to actually make that work. You may think that you have worded things naturally, but you yourself say something quite different when requesting things from your voice assistant.

Try speaking to your voice assistant, note what works and what kind of grammatical structures and phrases you use, read about what others do, and model your search phrases accordingly.

Doing all this can give you the best chance of making your content more accessible in an era where new fans are a simple “Hey, Alexa…” away.

Spotify Music Marketing: Spotify Ad Studio for Musicians

Posted on by Thomas Ferriere

It’s the age-old struggle of musicians everywhere – how to translate their skills with music into something that can put bread on the table and hopefully earn them a bit more. That’s part of the point of a platform like Spotify. Not only can you get your music out there less expensively and to a wider audience than ever before, but it also opens up all manner of advertising opportunities that can help pay the bills to keep you jamming for years to come.

Of course, there’s every chance you’ve heard this song and dance before and don’t feel inclined to hit “Repeat.” After all, it’s notoriously difficult to make it big as an artist, even with online mediums democratizing the process a bit more. You may not have to deal with sleazy managers and the gatekeepers of The Music Industry™, but that doesn’t mean that you can automatically get people to click on your songs and translate them into an artistic and advertising success.

That’s why you’ll want to take a look at this guide to doing just that and boost your advertising game on Spotify Ad Studio.

1. Understanding Ads and Metrics

Spotify has responded to criticisms from its creators that its platform is hard to advertise on with Ad Studio, a new extension on the site that allows you to advertise and gain extra money for your songs.

Of course, as with any launch, there were immediately some questions, namely how to keep track of clicks, listeners, and other vital metrics, which are important for crafting any strategy.

Spotify’s new setup allows marketing via several kinds of advertisements, including:

  • Display ads
  • Audio ads
  • Video ads
  • Brand podcasts
  • Sponsored playlists
  • Organic playlists

It also distinguishes between Pre-Exposed and Already-Extant Listeners to help you see if your band (and brand) is growing. The former category refers to Spotify listeners who listened to a song 28 days before they heard the ad. If they have, they qualify as a Listener, but if not, they are a New Listener – an important distinction to make as it might mean they’re new to the band and brand, which can help both track data on conversions made after that first exposure to both.

The conversion window is pretty wide at 14 days since nobody wants to interrupt a great song by clicking on an ad immediately. What’s more, we live in an age of replaying songs over and over if we really like them, so a user might replay a song a few times if they like it, developing a greater bond with the song and band before finally deciding hey, why not click that ad in the corner?

2. The Importance of Playlists

There’s no denying it – getting on playlists is one of the biggest and most significant steps you can take toward launching yourself toward Spotify stardom and starting to see some real money come back your way. According to Spotify’s Ad Studio Guide, users are likelier to continue listening to you if they add you to a playlist. That’s pretty common sense, but what really makes that significant is that users who streamed songs multiple times within that 14-day conversion window were twice as likely to continue listening to artists 30 days after they’d heard or seen the ad.

In short, if you can get added to people’s playlists, you can increase your chances of being heard (and multiple times at that) while simultaneously improving your conversion rate.

Getting listed on organic playlists by having music that meshes with Spotify’s algorithms for crafting them is already a great way to get free exposure, so this is where you should focus your efforts.

3. Interest-Based and Real-Time Targeting

There are two main advertising approaches on Spotify – interest and real-time context targeting.

The former is just what it sounds like, targeting people based on their interests. Every musician crafts an image and eventually a brand for themselves, and like molten metal filling a cast, fans often fit right into that mold.

Taylor Swift fans have a very different average age range and set of interests than, say your average Punk, Goth, or Grunge band.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions or that people can’t like more than one kind of music, but simply that the kind of bubbly, perky ads targeted at Tay-Tay’s Teenage Girl to Millennial Woman core demographic probably won’t score as well with Kanye West or Heavy Metal fans. Of course, if you already know some of your fans’ core interests from your own interactions with them or past marketing deals, this can help bolster your targeted ads all the more and help you and the company advertising boost your chances at scoring conversions.

Real-Time Targeting, by contrast, works to time ads to the optimal time of day. You may be more receptive to ads about coffee or yoga in the morning, for example, or different food products around lunch and dinner time. Timing is everything in art, and it’s true of marketing as well, making Real-Time Advertising on Spotify so critical to your overall music marketing efforts.

4. Target Your Audio Advertising

You’re a musician, so audio ads are where it’s at. Spotify offers guidelines on how to boost your audio advertising, with one of their most important pieces of advice to target the audio in your ads by considering your speaker.

Soke ads are better suited to different speakers. For example, if you’re running an ad for women’s clothing or beauty products, you definitely want a woman and not some creepy old man reading that ad.

The same goes for advertising your band in advertisements as well. Oftentimes, it’s best to use your voice and the familiarity of using the first-person. That said, you can also recruit friends or professionals to read different forms of the same ad for different regions.

For example, if you’re going to drop a new song or album or have tour dates to announce, getting people to read the advertisement in English, Spanish, French, German, Hebrew, Arabic, or whatever other language fits the region in question can help you connect that much more with your audience. Following these steps, you can up your promotional and advertiser money game on Spotify.