Online Music Marketing and Artist Promotion

I completely understand that you are a musician, not a salesperson. You’re into creativity, not marketing. In my experience, artists don’t want to take themselves to school on the business end of their creations. Here’s the thing, and I have said this before, but if you don’t make money with your music then its a hobby not a profession. I don’t want to put that down in any way. Keeping your passion as your hobby is sometimes the way to go. You’re a lot less likely to get squeezed into a box. 

Let’s say you are going to go the professional route… you’re going to have to learn something about marketing. There are many ways these days of marketing your music without knowing the first thing about the traditional marketing techniques utilized in print, radio and television. The use of social networking websites is a good example of powerful marketing techniques that don’t necessarily require a professional marketer to be successful at.

Marketing (in its traditional sense) is an art form within itself. There are several aspects of marketing that a marketing professional should be well trained in. Such as the visual affect of the layout of an ad, or the sound or the color and so on. The of marketing that deals with developing a direct relationship with your customers (fans). In my opinion an artist would benefit greatly from studdying copywriting and adapting the tried and true techniques as well as the newer techniques adapted for the Internet to their music or brand.

In my searches I found Aaron Poehler, a professional freelance copywriter, who has a very useful blog post entitled On Music Copywriting and Copywriting for Musicians (Not Copyrighting). I encourage you to check out this post as well as some of what the copywriting experts have to say. Pick up a book on copywriting. There is not a lot of material out there specific to copywriting for musicians but the concepts are adaptable.

I know this is many times exactly what musicians and artists do not want to do, but if you are going to promote yourself in your music career (and I recommend you do), you will need to take yourself to school to learn the ropes of both the new and the old.

Tom Siegel