Hey, What's up!
Since my last post, I've had a couple of you guys reach out to me for more advice on how to gain more listeners. I'm glad you guys were able to view my blog and find some useful information on how to market yourself as a musician.
In this blog, I'm going to give you guys some tips and tricks on how to gain more listeners. I wish I had known this information when I was just starting out.
#1: Release your music
The first and most important thing is to release your music! In my half a decade in the music industry, I've come across countless new artists who are too scared to drop their own songs. It's either they’re waiting for a "perfect" date or "Now's not the time" or: the songs not “finished yet".
Listen up. The songs never going to be finished. Confidence is key. If you're an artist you gotta commit. You can be afraid of opinions of your art. It's subjective, as long as you like it then that's all that matters.
You have to be your #1 fan.
#2: Knowing your audience
Okay, so you released a couple of songs and now you have a catalogue for people to tune in to. You want to start promoting yourself but you don't know where to start. Before you do anything, you need to know who would actually like your type of music.
Obviously, if you're a hip-hop-related artist like myself, you could easily say teenagers or a younger demographic. However, that information is so broad that when you start releasing ads whether it's on Instagram or YouTube, you end up wasting hundreds of dollars for only a couple of streams. There are tons of ways to find out who your target audience is however, the easiest trick I found was to figure out similar artists that you sound like or your fans listen to.
The easiest way to do this is to go to the bottom of your Apple Music or Spotify profile to the "Similar Artists" or "Fans also like" section and start from there. Then when you start posting ads for your music on the different social media platforms, you can insert these artist names to personalize your ads.
#3: Playlisting
Don't even think about it. You won't be able to reach the most popular playlist like Rap Caviar or Rap Radar without a major label backing you. However, there are some small playlists you can reach to get our music out there.
Using services like Grover and Sound Campaign is a great way to submit your songs to playlists to gain more visibility as an artist. There are tons of services like these out there but those two are my favorite, especially for artists just starting out because they're easy to use. Not to mention if you use Distrokid as your distributor, there are also some internal playlisting services that they also provide.
#4: Features
Features are a great way to showcase your music to a new audience. When done properly, they can almost double your Spotify monthly listeners and boost you in the algorithm of whatever genre you're trying to tap into.
My advice for new artists is to pick and choose your features wisely. When choosing another artist to collaborate with you, you want to make sure that your music sounds similar. When new people come to listen to that track they may also come to your page looking for more music that sounds the same. For example, if you're a rapper, don't collaborate with a country artist unless you already have some country tracks released. Country fans who come from that song and look at your page will see only rap music and most of them will tune out.
Another good thing to look for when looking for features is engagement with their audience. In today's age, a lot of major artists are faking their streams with a lot of their views being "bots". Especially if you're looking for a feature just to grow your fans, you should first check some of their songs or social media posts to see the amount of likes and comments. The number of likes and comments is a good indicator of how many of the streams are actually genuine. if a video has poor engagement then chances are most of the streams came from bots or advertisements. You want to make sure your feature has good engagement because the people taking the time to like and comment on their songs are most likely going to be the people who are going to go through your page after listening to the collaborated song.
#5: Don't get trapped
My final tip is to make music for yourself, not for others. A lot of artists trap themselves in a box by feeling pressured to release the same type of music just to please their fan base. They get an ounce of popularity, then get the sudden urge to keep it by releasing the same type of songs that got them "popping". This is good in the short term because it further solidifies your fan base. However, the lack of creativity is what's gonna send them away in the long run. Being a good musician includes evolving your sound and making the music that you’re passionate about. This will keep you motivated to make more music and keep your audience on their toes and guessing at every release.
Hope these tips were helpful for you artists just starting out. These were some of the things I had to learn the hard way and still keep in mind every time I release a song. If you guys have any more questions about anything music feel free to reach out on my Instagram.