Retro TV Commercial

Most of my articles have addressed songwriting from the business to business perspective—you are creating songs or instrumentals that you want to place in film or television, or get some artist with a track record to release. For those of you who also make CDs, or at least recordings, there is also the issue of promoting your music, and yourself as an artist.

Music marketing is big time, especially online marketing, and it’s almost easier to talk about what you can’t do (for the moment) than what you can.  But we will give it a shot.

Social networking is a big step forward, as is selling (or giving away) downloads, and putting together electronic press kits to help the world know about your music. There are even online public relations services to get the word out.

If you are looking for airplay for your music, sites like www.AirPlayDirect.com are there to provide that connection.

Sometimes it is all far too much.

So let us divide these up a bit and see if any hold promise. In this article, I want to look at social networking and electronic press kits. Next time we will focus on online PR (how it works and how to use it).

SOCIAL NETWORKING

As Kavit point out in a recent article, there are some good strategies for using the various social networks to get attention. Better yet, many of them are interconnected. I put songs up on reverbnation. Whenever I post a new one, there is an announcement on my status update on twitter, myspace, facebook and, of course, reverbnation. In fact, any status update I make at revernation goes to all those places. This probably produces a certain amount of yawn inducing overlap, but it is efficient. A variation is that myspace and twitter are also now linked. All of this incestuous sounding linking is free, and fairly easy and quick to do on days when the wind is from the West and the Powers That Be are smiling. As a result, this falls into the “why not?” category of promotional activity.

Similarly, Fanbridge helps you collects fans from several social sites and provides a way to send out blanket emails to them, announcing gigs, your upcoming CD, or news from the band. (Does anyone e-mail anymore?) If your fans read emails, this is another brainless way to stay in touch. Actually the content should NOT be brainless–just the distribution method. Send out things the fans will find interesting or save the electrons. We don’t need more garbage out there. Your fans (and I) will appreciate you all the more. But inside information, or thought provoking ideas could score some points.

I should point out that Reverbnation also provides widgets you can use to collect fans, and others to  put your songs on Facebook and so on. It’s all very powerful in terms of efficient promotion.

ELECTRONIC PRESS KITS (EPK)

These started with a bang. Who could resist sending stuff out electronically? Everything you needed to know about a band, including songs and videos. But SPAM filters and the vast amount of stuff cluttering in boxes put paid to the idea.  It is just as effective to send links to songs on broadjam.com or Reverbnation. They let you send links to specific songs you have posted. It is a bit classier than sending an mp3 and doesn’t foul up the inbox.

But an EPK is an online presence, and lets you provide an information rich link in your signature line. And so, such an account, say with www.sonicbids.com or Airplay Direct, can do you some good.

All of these are useful, but not enough in and of themselves. Also, there are about a bazillion of these now; and don’t take my naming these as a recommendation as to what will work for you.

Ultimately If you want to be noticed, your music heard, you will need the market muscle of public relations. Public relations can be proactive, where these sites are reactive, and it can be targeted to a niche, genre, or just a good story.

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About the Author

Ed Teja

edtejaEd Teja is a musician, composer, and book author who writes, arranges, and performs a variety of music.


3 Responses to “Promoting Your Music”

  1. Interesting post m8. Also don’t forget to visit BeatzReport.blogspot.com and find the latests news and releases from the global house music industry.

  2. I will be coming here once again…Nice blog

  3. Great articles. Theres a lot of nice information here, though I did want to let you know something, I’m running Redhat with the up-to-date beta of Firefox, and the design of your site is kind of wonky for me. I can read the articles, but the navigation doesnt function so well.

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