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As a musician, it's in your best interest to be where people are searching for music. Not only do you want your tracks to be available on the biggest streaming services, but you also want new fans to be able to find you through blogs or more obscure sites. Here are some websites and applications for downloading, sharing, and promoting your music that you may not have considered yet.
1. Reddit Music and Radio Reddit
Many contents that later become viral start their online life on Reddit. This makes it a great place to promote your music. But be careful, there are quite specific rules! You first need to become a Reddit contributor before you start sharing your music on this site.
Reddit is a community of passionate users and they dislike self-promotion. If you go to this site with the sole purpose of advertising yourself, the community might react negatively and it could be hard for you to recover. First become an active member of the site, then share your music with them.
2. Create a YouTube channel
YouTube is one of the biggest sources of online music discovery, which is why you need to have your music present on this platform at all costs.
If you don't have the budget to create music videos, make a lyric video. You can hire a freelancer through the Fiverr website which lists them at very affordable prices or even try to find someone in an audiovisual school who can do this for you to practice editing!
When you upload your video to YouTube, make sure to reference it well (mainly with keywords) so that your future audience can easily find it through recommendations, YouTube searches, and even Google searches, which can be very useful, especially for your covers!
As for YouTube videos, don't hesitate to share them on your social media.
3. Find music review blogs
Getting your music reviewed by blogs is an excellent way to reach people most interested in finding new bands to listen to. Instead of sending your music to every existing blog, find blogs that might be interested in your type of music through services like HypeMachine (in English). Of course, take the time to build relationships with blogs in your musical genre by following them on Twitter, commenting on their articles, and sharing their content before contacting them.
You can also use the online service Groover which allows, for a fee, to share your music with radio stations and labels.
4. List your concerts
Every musician hopes to play in front of a large crowd, but for that to happen, people need to know when you're performing live. Concert discovery apps like Bandsintown make it easy for viewers to find new shows in their hometown, so make sure your next event is listed on these types of apps. Don't forget to list them on your Facebook page too!
5. Sell music and merch online
If you already have a fanbase, selling your music and merch online is an excellent way to start getting them to give some of their money. Bandcamp and BigCartel, to name just a few, allow you to easily list your music and merch, then sell them on your website and social media.
6. Create an email list
Social networks come and go, but email is forever. As a musician, your mailing list is your most valuable asset. If you've built one, every time you release new music or a new merch item, you can generate sales simply by sending an email to your subscribers.
If you haven't created a mailing list yet, you can start now with the help of services like MailChimp or Sendinblue.
7. Promote your music on social media
Sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook offer people great opportunities to find their next favorite band. For effective music promotion on Twitter and Instagram, make yourself visible to people looking for something to listen to by using genre-based hashtags like #rock or #jazz. For Facebook, post engaging content to grow your audience organically through comments, likes, and shares.
A great way to engage your fans while promoting your band is to create your Spotify or Deezer playlist. While you can include only your tracks, we recommend adding songs you enjoy or that have inspired you: it's an excellent way to share your tastes and favorite tracks with your listeners and also to establish a more intimate connection with them by sharing the music you love.
8. Create a website
Every serious musician needs a website that visibly showcases their music and latest products. Listening to your music on streaming services and downloading via certain sites are good things, but your own website will be entirely yours. Having total control over your fans' experience allows you to do everything necessary to sell more music and get more mailing list sign-ups.
If you don't have a website yet, you can hire a developer to build one for you, or use a service like Wix or Wordpress to create one yourself quickly. When you use these services, they usually host your domain by default as a subdomain of theirs (for example, yourbandname.wordpress.com). Instead, make sure to get your own domain name to get all the benefits of search engine optimization, for effective SEO, it works much better than on Facebook or Instagram!
This concludes our article. Don't hesitate to ask us for advice on the subject! Share this article on social media if it has been useful to you or if you think your musician friends might need it too.
