As the old saying goes, “you have to spend money to make money.” But when it comes to promoting new music, that’s easier said than done! If you don’t have a lot of money left for your marketing, you could be left scratching your head, wondering how to market your upcoming music release effectively.
Fortunately, there are ways to promote your new music on a budget. Let’s take a look at seven of those strategies one by one.
Social Media Hype
The first place to start is social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitter. These platforms are some of the most cost-effective, user-friendly places to market anything, including new music releases.
Say that you want to release a new single or a new album. The best place to announce that upcoming release is on your Facebook page.
Even if you don’t have a lot of followers yet, starting your marketing efforts on these platforms will give you a good baseline from which to extend your other ads or promotions. Plus, the more people you get to listen to your music, the more people will check out your social media pages and become followers.
Over time, this marketing effect will snowball and allow you to promote new music releases much more efficiently.
Blogging About Your Journey
Have a personal website? If not, make one. Then start blogging about your personal journey as an artist.
People love underdog stories. If you’ve been working hard to release music for several years, it may be effective to write about your musical journey as a marketing tactic.
For instance, say that you want to release a new single. You can make a blog post describing the single’s inspiration, musical source, and the unique challenges or difficulties you had in creating this piece of art.
Blogging about your journey is a good way to connect to other artists or music fans in your genre, especially if you make music in a relatively niche or unknown genre. Plus, a blog post is a perfect opportunity to link to the download page for your new music release, whether that’s on Spotify or some other music platform.
Get Endorsements from Friends and Family
Friends and family members are expected to be in your corner no matter what. So have them listen to your new music, then spread positive word-of-mouth about the release to their friends, acquaintances, and coworkers.
Endorsements from friends and family might seem like a cheap way to promote your music, and it is! But it’s also a good tool you can’t afford to ignore, particularly if your marketing budget is less than full.
Make Engaging, Epic Album Covers
What’s the first impression that a potential listener has of your music? The album, whether it’s a physical album or a digital album cover. Therefore, it’s only logical that you should make epic, eye-catching album covers for every piece of music you create!
Fortunately, you don’t need to hire an expensive graphic designer or go to school for graphic design yourself. Instead, you can use free online tools like PosterMyWall to whip up great-looking album covers for your upcoming music releases.
Once you have great album covers ready to go, you can print them out for the physical albums you produce and send to your friends and family members. Alternatively, you can make digital versions of the album covers and post them everywhere online, including your social media pages, your personal website, and more.
Don’t give up this opportunity to make an excellent first impression on new listeners. A good album cover is like a good book cover: it inspires people to check out what lies beneath the surface.
Connect with Content Creators
Content creators, like YouTubers, music review platforms, and so on are excellent contacts, especially when you are trying to promote an upcoming music release.
In the run-up to releasing a new album or single, reach out to content creators who cover music releases in your genre or subgenre. See if they will be willing to give your music the spotlight for an upcoming episode, podcast, etc.
These content creators already have built-in audiences. If you’re lucky, this bit of affordable promotion could result in you getting new listeners from those audiences.
Pitch Your Music to Blogs or Reviewers for Free
Blogs and music reviewers in particular should be major targets for your music marketing strategy. If you don’t have a lot of money, your best bet to spread the word to as many people as possible is to ask well-known reviewers to check out your sound.
It doesn’t matter whether those reviewers like or dislike your music. So long as they provide their readers or listeners with an honest review of your sound, you have a great opportunity to broaden your audience and bring people to your music for the first time.
Of course, make sure that you offer your new music to those reviewers for free! That way, they get extra traffic and promotional profits without having to spend a cent on an unknown artist like yourself.
Partner with Other Artists
Speaking of unknown artists, it may help to partner with other artists at the same stage of their careers. When you partner with other artists, you can cross-promote each other’s work by recommending that your listeners check out their stuff. In theory, artists who partner with you will do the same thing for your new music releases.
Not only does this look good from a promotional perspective, but it also gives you and other artists the opportunity to grow each other’s audiences organically and cooperatively.
Wrap Up
Even if you don’t have a big marketing budget, you can still promote your new music releases with the right strategy and market savvy. Keep in mind that no one makes it in this business alone; partner with as many people as possible and you’ll have more marketing avenues to reach a wide audience of prospective listeners. Good luck!
