It’s important to understand that people won’t just follow you when you release that mixtape, album or single.

To cultivate a fanbase you have to be someone worth following. Someone that your fans will look up to, and in turn be inspired by you…

How Do You Define Music Marketing?

The simple answer is that music marketing is defined as how musicians effectively build an audience of fans and build rapport with these fans over time through effective communication.

Obviously, with musicians, the ultimate goal is to sell more music, sell more beats, sell more t-shirts and concert tickets. We all can agree on that.

Your audience will want to invest in you, to follow your story, and will want to feel part of the journey.

Just being original, or different won’t suffice. You need something that will attach your personality to the music.

How To Tell Your Story

How many times have can you post the same songs and the same album covers over and over again on social media and expect people to follow you.?

It’s crucial to understand that storytelling is the ESSENTIAL ingredient when it comes to music marketing. If you are struggling to decipher what storytelling is with the music industry look no further than the artist that inspired you.

Try and record yourself asking questions that will help to draw the story from you.

Consider Who?, What?, When? and Where? Method?

• Why Did I Make This Record?
• Who Helped Me Make This Record?
• Where Did I Record The Song?
• What Was The Mood Like In The Studio
• Was It Hard Or Easy To Write The Record?
• What Went Through Your Mind When You Heard The Final Recording?
• How Does This Album Differ From The Other Songs Your Have Made Before?
• Who Inspired You?
• When Did You Get Started In Music?

This is the main strategy I use over at The Corporatethief Beats when I am promoting my hip hop beats.

These are some simple questions that your future fans might ask? Also the help you cultivate a narrative around your music career.

Rather than relying on the music to promote the music, now you are using the power of story and content as a promotion tool to share your music.

Then you can record this into mini segments like for stories or shorts for sites like Instagram, Twitter and Tik Tok.

Long-form content can be added for sites like Facebook, Instagram TV and YouTube.

Remember We Live In The Times Of The SCROLL BUTTON. !!!

Most people will scroll past with the volume on mute. It might be a good idea to add subtitles or graphics to the video just to BREAK THEIR ATTENTION SPAN…

Building Your Narrative

One of the major mistakes that we musicians make with social media is that we treat it like PROMOTIONAL MEDIA.

It’s time to build a narrative around your project with words, photos and videos over which you have complete control.

The core issue I have with social sites like Facebook and YouTube is that we are competing with advanced algorithms for attention.

The sad reality is that the draw of related content on the same page makes it all too easy for someone to ‘click away from your content to something else.

One way around this is to Build A Website and an Email List.

Click here to learn about effective music marketing, learn how to build an artist website and email marketing for musicians.

Learn How To Curate Content

Your site can be your social hub where the focus of your fans is solely on you. You can create a website for a couple of bucks today…

It doesn’t have to be complicated, either. Many sites are now Curated Content sites or Content Aggregators where they syphon popular content resources in from sites Reddit, SoundCloud, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.

Consistency is key. So your site needs to update a couple of times a month. And it needs to be promoted with the use of your email newsletter and social sites.

There’s got to be a reason for your fans to come back and visit your site repeatedly. Your site’s audience will give up if there’s nothing new to see for weeks on end.

Use your site to push your story with a new blog post or video. If your audience knows they are getting new content every couple of weeks, they’ll spread the word.

How To Outsource Your Music Marketing?

Let’s face it marketing promotion is a pain in the butt…

There are simply too many tasks for one person to focus on. It’s so easy to burn yourself out or spread yourself too thin. There is just never enough time to create and manage every single site.

Some of the most successful musicians have one secret weapon when it comes to music marketing. Outsourcing!!

Outsourcing the majority of the grunt work within your music marketing is the best solution. Hiring help to do mundane, repetitive music promotional tasks is something that will free up a ton of your time.

Here are 2 of my favorite places to outsource…

Onlinejobs.ph This is my preferred method of outsourcing my music marketing tasks. All of the freelancers here are from the Philippines.

Filipino’s influenced by American culture. Their level of English is very high. This is a significant reason why I outsource all my work to the Philippines. Filipino’s are incredibly hard working.

Fiverr is a global online marketplace offering tasks and services, beginning at $5 per job, hence its name.

This site is primarily used by freelancers who use Fiverr to offer services to customers on a global scale. … You can find a freelancer to carry out Graphic Design, like logos, or artwork.

You can hire virtual assistants and social media managers. You can find people to distribute your mixtape to hip hop blogs who will post your music.

Some of the services here are amazing, and some are complete trash. Please read the reviews before purchase or hiring anyone from Fiverr.

Never be afraid to try new things and hacks to help you in promoting your music. When things get rough and hectic, you can always hire someone to assist you with your task like a virtual assistant who will work on your music marketing strategies.

If you found this article to be an eye-opener please feel free to share this with someone you think will benefit from it.

Keep your chin up and keep working hard…

Daniel Hartnett, aka The Corporatethief Beats, is a hip-hop beatmaker, songwriter, and music marketing blogger from Dublin, Ireland.