Getting Started with Marketing for the Indie Artist

As a songwriter, composer, or musician in general you will likely find yourself at a point where you are releasing music. If this is your first time and don’t know where to begin, what sort of content to make, or how to spend your money this post is for you. I have worked as a Director of Marketing for a regional brewery, as well as having been pretty active in the music world and offered some of my services to filmmakers to help promote their film or fund raise for their kickstarter.

I can not stress this enough:

Start Marketing before your Have something to Market

This sounds counter intuitive, but hear me out: it is way easier to build interest in you and your part over time than it is to all at once. My rule of thumb when promoting events (such as my sonic tasting series or murder mystery parties) is to budget for five weeks MINIMUM. The idea is you want to hype up the release BEFORE the release - not only does it give you time to build momentum, but it'll actually help you across various algorithms too if there is all this interest at the time of release rather than long after. It's also a big part of the reason why many artist's ask you to "pre-save" their work before release - they are being effective in their time leading up to it rather than afterwards.

If this is your first time marketing, the two goals you should consider are maximum reach and “Saturation”.

Maximum Reach

Maximum reach is essentially just how many people know about your release. This can be anything from billboards to social media content. If only 1% of people respond to your marketing, that 1% can translate to higher numbers by making the total number of people higher. The more people aware of your existence, the higher your numbers will tend to be.

Market Saturation

The other “goal” you want to achieve is what we call “Saturation”. Saturation is a state that describes when no more of something can be absorbed or added. Think if you were to pour a few drops of water on a sponge vs emptying a swimming pool on it: at a certain point, the sponge stops absorbing water. If your goal is to get as much of that water into the sponge as possible, but you don’t want to waste water, Saturation is the exact point where water can no longer be absorbed but water isn’t rushing through the sponge (that would basically be drowning). What’s important to note is that a sponge that is saturated with water can not take on additional liquids like wine, milk, or gasoline.

To put it in music terms - you want your marketing to be the thing they think about when they think about new music for example. If a listener thinks, “Oh what should I listen to on spotify for my drive today?”, your album should be in their mind ready to go (”at the point of purchase”). Most people won’t see your content and instantly switch apps to listen - getting people to switch apps in general is very hard. These apps are intentionally addicting designed to hook you and keep you in their ecosystem. It is how they make money so it definitely isn't easy.

The Marketing Rule of 7’s

So with marketing, you want your messaging to be repeated constantly to people so that they think about it when they are making their decision and your project is the first one they think of. If people are seeing it for the first time, that’s fine. But trying to get people to remember, take action, or think about you away from the ad takes repetition. In marketing terms, we call this the “rule of 7’s”. On average, it takes a consumer seeing your ads 7 times before they are provoked into action. This is why companies with larger ad budgets do better regardless of their actual quality - they can saturate the market in this way and get people to see their ad/product many times over. I’m sure you experienced this with an artist you may not be interested in, where their billboards, social media ads, and every content creator is talking about their new release - you will genuinely check them out out of curiosity. It’s natural, but you don’t need a large budget to do this yourself. You just need a little discipline.

Social Media

Someone who has 10 thousand (pairs of) ears following them on social media will have a much easier time getting listeners than someone who has 10. It is simply a matter of fact and scale. This is why I encourage you to start “marketing” yourself long before you have anything to release. You don’t need to be trying to sell anybody anything, in fact, that’s one of the worst ways you can build a following. Nobody wants to follow a shill and feel like they're constantly being sold to. Instead, consider making content that people found interesting, informative, or entertaining. I have written about content strategy in the past - here. Building an audience who already know you and are interested in your work in general is one of the best things you can do as a musician. It’ll make your life far easier whenever you want to market/sell something or even find work!

So what is your actual release strategy?

If you have an album/project coming out soon, regardless of the current state of your social media, your goal should be to be in front as of many eyes as possible and the cheapest and easiest way to do that is to pump that content train. And even if it feels like you made 100 reels on the same song already, just remember it may be "old" to you but "new to someone else" as the algorithm is always pushing your stuff to more people. Any BTS or making of material is also EXCELLENT promo, so I highly recommend “building in public” rather than waiting until the album is done to start sharing your work. This is a great way to get people invested and along for the journey and give them a deeper appreciation of the work rather than just appreciating it at face value. (Note: I have a video looking at the build it in public strategy coming on my youtube channel soon - so be sure to subscribe if you’d like to see that!)

So what is your actual promotion strategy for your release?

Well that depends…. the first thing I'd consider is what type of album is it and what are your goals for promoting? Are you trying to push sales, streams, awareness of your existence, etc. Is it a production music album, an album of pop songs, a film score etc? Depending on the context of the album and what you are trying to achieve with it, different strategies come up.

Outside of content, there are music blogs, podcasts, youtubers/content creators, spotify playlists, etc. You may be able to find some who may be willing to do things for free, but others (likely better options) cost money. You should be following these blogs or content creators and seeing what they are interested in regardless. Releasing anything without understanding your market/the various channels of promo is kind of a crazy strategy. A painter doesn’t just go to the MoMa and a filmmaker doesn’t just go to Cannes. They are at their local galleries and film festivals where you can meet people with like minded interests or they follow blogs/content channels/publications etc where they can stay up to date with the new releases, trends, etc. Each genre of music or format (ie "production music", "Film score", "pop" etc) has different channels of promotion with different popular publications, norms, etc that you should be aware of when marketing your project - there's no use promoting library album to 1st graders, but if you wrote an album of children's music a school assembly might be a great opportunity to perform!

As a musician, this can take the form of open mics, music blogs/content creators, your own performances, etc. You should ideally try and make contact with these creators/bloggers long before you have anything to release and even try to be friends with them (networking!). Be genuine, don’t just make it a business thing, be their friend. If you support them, they’ll be way more likely to support you. Even if they were to just share on their story, that is a whole network of people who are now seeing your work.

With that…

Don’t forget about your collaborators!!

Everybody knows that film making is a team sport, but people seem to forget music is too. Yes, the project is your passion project and likely under your name and your name alone, but be thankful and grateful for their help! Make reels about their contribution, showcase them and tag them as a collaboration post on insta or whatever platform you use rather than just crediting them at the bottom of the comments. It’ll expand your reach and give them more of a personal stake in your project as well. You can even make some content together talking about the project together. One of the best, easiest, and fastest ways to grow your network is to tap into somebody else’s.

There was this one project I worked on when where it was time to promote the release of the film, the director made it all about them and their journey and how it was a huge accomplishment for them. Now don't get me wrong, it definitely was a HUGE accomplishment but the actors and everyone else involved really didn’t feel like re-sharing because it didn’t feel like “their” project with the way everything was framed. So first off and to be blunt, most people don’t care about you. They care about how you can help them. And this doesn’t mean you need to help them carry their groceries in, but what about what you are releasing is relevant to other people? This can be anything from you make music that lets people know it’s ok to keep going even when all hope seems lost or your music is very funny and gives people a laugh. Ask yourself genuinely, “Why should they care?” and lead with that. Don’t make it about yourself, make it about them and you will find success.

Put your money where your mouth is (our rather, don’t!)

I wouldn't toss money into any sort of promo until you've experimented a ton in your own content and learned how to make a good reel/ad. Running ads (such as meta ads for example) will amplify the content you already made - as in it wont make it any better or worse. So keep that in mind if you're still very new to this. Content creation is NOT as easy as it looks. Yes, generating content is easy but making something that resonates and goes viral very much is not. Don’t be discouraged if it feels like you’re getting nowhere. The average engagement rate is between 1-3%, and that includes comments, likes, shares, and saves combined! So like music, it takes a lot of reps and experience to get really good at it (I’ve only ever had one reel go semi-viral and it’s mostly popular with high school music students - not really my intended audience). So if you’re not making “effective” content already your time and money is much better spent making more content and getting your reps in versus wasting it on one ad that is not going to perform well anyway.

This is where an ad or marketing agency can come into play by the way - you can pay them for their experience on creating the ad, how to run/optimize it, etc. But even so, you should learn these skills yourself as it can be incredibly rewarding and useful over time to know how to build an audience, create engaging content, and market projects on your own. Once you build the engine, you just need to maintain it so get out there and start creating!

Friends & Family

Lastly, I think the thing many people over look is - you likely have friends and family! Reach out to them, ask them to take a listen. Don't be ashamed/afraid to even ask them to share it. Not everyone will, but I guarantee there are a few people in your life who care and would love the opportunity to support you - even if it's in a small gesture like posting it on their socials.

Email lists

One last note, no matter where you study marketing or who from you will quikly learn the importance of an email list. Building a marketing engine (ie, a following) on any platform is inherently a HUGE risk as you can always be banned or the platform can be discontinued, or any numerous number of things. You do NOT own your followers and you will lose all that you built unless you get their emails for a mailing list. There are various ways to get email subscribers but the easiest is to just ask for it. You can even offer something free in return (a "lead magnet") or collect their email at the point of sale. Whenever I worked in person events/festivals this was a goldmine for putting a google form in front of somebody's face and collecting their information while we chatted about our products. Find creative ways to do this yourself because this can be incredibly powerful and break you free from the algorithm.

Speaking of - I have a mailing list (link below). I send out an email about once a month on the various projects I have going on but also the books I'm studying and other things I am doing/working on as a fulltime freelance composer. I even offer a free (lead magnet!) 7 day email course on how to land your first gig as a composer if you're interested. Thank you for your time, congratulations on your release, and best of luck!

ScoringTech.Net is operated by Joe Chris as a means of trying to give back to the composer community. Consider joining the monthly mailing list to have these articles sent to your inbox on the first of every month! Follow me on instagram @Joe_Chris_ , youtube, or Join our free discord community where we host monthly composition challenges!