In 2024, it’s time to go beyond online music marketers, playlist pitching, and begging your friends to listen to your new song. Skip the inbox and DM spamming tactics. This year, go for something new and exciting (for you). Check out this list of 10 creative music promotion ideas and start making (sound)waves today!
1. Stickers
While we don’t condone vandalizing stuff, people love stickers, and they are a great curiosity builder. Handing out cool stickers or placing them in strategic places will get you curious traffic to your music profiles, social media profiles, or a Google search. Consider creatively incorporating your identifiable logo, a way to find your music, or social media handles into your stickers for music promotion that grabs the attention of adventure seekers.
2. Create a Podcast Intro
One of the easiest ways to get people to remember your music is by having them listen to it, even passively, many times over. Can you recite the theme songs to your favorite shows from childhood and teen years? Well, this idea is similar in that it places your music front and center to a podcast, web series, or other regularly scheduled entertainment platform consistently. I think of “What You Thought” podcast here because the theme song shares the show title, and artist Alpha Memphis is shouted out every single week. The promotion is insane.
Consider the music promotion tactic of working with a growing platform that shares your ideal listener avatar to create a custom musical introduction or outroduction to their show. Keep the sound consistent with your music, and soon enough, with credit and curiosity, you’ll pick up listeners who already love what you do and want more.
3. Hand Out Business Cards
This one is so old school, but as someone who is old, I love to get a business card from an artist. I love it when I see someone perform and they are prepared to connect with me and market. You don’t have to do anything crazy here, but the more branded and personal your business cards (flyers, pamphlets, freebies, etc.) are, the more you will stand out as a professional. In a digital world, having something physical as part of your music promotion is special! It’s a personal touch.
4. Add Links to your Email Signature
While you may not consider it an exciting place to market yourself, email is still a communication tool in 2024. Using your email signature to include links to your EPK, social media profiles, personal websites, and streaming catalogs is an incredible way to share your content passively with everyone you connect with via email. It’s a no-brainer. Update your email signature right now.
5. Be an Early Adopter of a New Platform
Is there a new app out there that you just learned about? Jump on it, build your profile, figure out how the app works, and test out ways to market yourself, your brand, and your music as an early adopter. When you get into an app early, particularly one with a social aspect, you have the benefit of a small audience while you test things out AND you look like a pro when everyone else finally comes along. Even if the app doesn’t take off or build you a massive audience, it’s a low-risk way to test new marketing strategies that may have a huge payoff (think TikTok).
6. Host a Social Media Challenge
Yes, another social media option. If you don’t love being in front of the camera or you have limited funds to make high-level professional video content, you don’t need to panic. User-generated content is a powerful way to share music and to get some usually free advertising for you as an artist or a particular project. One way to build some buzz is to announce a social media challenge, a dance challenge using your music, a contest style option, a pre-save challenge or drawing, whatever!
There are so many ways to spin it and build your audience once you have a goal for what exactly you want to promote (song, album, social media profile, etc.) and how you plan to reward your participants or winners (live chat with you, re-sharing their videos, shoutouts, a signed copy of something, a personal video). The options are endless and for nearly zero cost because you control the budget for creating the challenge and rewarding the participants. Time to brainstorm your next challenge!
Bonus? Now, you have loads of user-generated content you can use and share to promote yourself!
7. Invest in Professional Video Content
Professional quality video performs better across the board, whether we are talking about social media platforms, YouTube, or some other viewing place I haven’t considered yet. It doesn’t have to be shot by a professional, but the quality of your videos does determine how far it will go. If you are ready to shell out some coins, this is one area that I would recommend investing in. Get some music videos done, have some high-quality clips shot that you can repackage and repurpose later, have a videographer capture you performing on stage or out in the streets, and let everyone know you take this music thing seriously, but show up like a professional.
8. Organize Live Stream Collaborations
Cross-marketing is a great way to increase your audience, listenership, and social media following. Doing a scheduled live stream with another creative in a related field can help extend your reach. Consider a live performance with a featured artist where you both stream simultaneously, stream together in one location, or each go live on different platforms. Performing, discussing a specific topic, or having an open forum for your fans and followers are great, simple, and fun ways to connect with your audience and grow by sharing similar interests with another creative and their audience. Build hype and publicize the live event beforehand to maximize your turnout.
9. YouTube Playlists
There are a couple of cool things that you can do with playlists. Of course, you can submit your videos and visuals to large playlists for inclusion, similar to audio playlists on the major streaming platforms. Additionally, consider creating your own YouTube playlist with all your music videos and visuals in one place. Sort the playlist from newest to oldest by publication date, and always add your latest music to the list so it lands on the top. When sharing your new visuals, share the link to your master playlist, and your new track will play first, BUT if your intended audience lets the list play, they will discover more visuals from you that they are likely to love as well.
10. Play Live and Mingle
Lastly, but certainly not least for our list today, I recommend that all independent artists build their performance chops by performing live in any capacity, anywhere they can when first starting. This builds your fan base with new listeners that you entertain when appearing live. Arrive early and connect with people at the venue by introducing yourself and handing out promotional materials to build hype for your performance. After your set, stay a while, support the other performers, and continue to network with both the other artists and the audience. This human touch makes a BIG impact!
Share Your Fave Music Promotion Tips!
If you have great promotion techniques that are kicking butt and taking names, don’t gatekeep! Drop them in the comments and help this community rise.
Using brand ambassadors I believe can promote somebody’s music. By combining it into a independent film studio can further engage the musician / actor with their targeted audience. Including social media and their artwork as a promotional marketing tool
That’s actually a really solid idea! It kind of blends the idea of using influencers and social media content creators in a way that builds in brand loyalty. Thanks for reading and commenting!