Online Music Marketing and Artist Promotion

In this day and age there are so many tools and resources available to the Independent Musician to assist in marketing their music and promoting their brand. Social media served as a major milestone in this indie artist marketing  revolution. Thousands of artists and bands have taken advantage of the many benefits of social media and web 2.0 and thousands more have not. It seems that music fans were ecstatic at the opportunity to befriend their favorite artists and have access to all sorts of music on demand. MySpace certainly was an eye opener for the world of music marketing and independent musician promotion.

I think the biggest question now is… what’s next? If your marketing model is solely dependent on or social networking websites I think it is time to really consider some possible alternatives. I personally believe that the social networking bubble is poised to pop. I know I’m not alone in that theory but I’m sure that there are those that disagree. Most people I know who used to spend a lot of time on MySpace visiting bands pages and checking out new music are tending to go to their MySpace page and go directly to their inbox and sign out.  Predicting where it is going next is like throwing a dart into a dark room hoping that there is even a dart board in that room at all.

I don’t have a crystal ball so I am not going to attempt to predict the next hot marketing venue for musicians or music as a whole. But here’s a thought that has been a solid investing concept for quite some time… Diversify. I definitely suggest that musicians put some energy into social networking. There are still huge benefits to be realized through social networking websites, I’m just saying its time to get ready for the idea that the boom is over. In that case look for other baskets to put the rest of your eggs in.

Do you have a blog? That’s also a great way for you to connect with your fans. You’ll have to put a bit of energy into driving traffic to your blog but most of the techniques to attract traffic are also good ways to connect with your fans. The more you are doing to connect with your fans the more success you’ll enjoy. Seems to me that things like Pandora or Spotify are heating up (I know I said no predictions but this is really a question mark more than a prediction). How’s this for a sign of the times… MySpace just bought ilike.com. Major companies are starting to advertise on these Internet radio stations. You can too. Check out my post on August 12 about My Music Success teaming up with XL Radio to provide air play and advertising time for Independent Musicians. TuneCore
has a relationship with Jango Radio where they are able to guarantee airplay if you are working with TuneCore.

There are also several really effective creative things you can do. Think about different marketing and promotion avenues you can go down and don’t be afraid to learn something new. You might get it wrong the first couple times you try it, but if you eventually learn how to take advantage of a new resource you will be happy that you tried. Stay tuned for future posts about new marketing and promotion ideas. I will post on anything new I stumble across as well as anything I think of in the meantime.

Tom Siegel