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Contents
Hi! - Page 3

What Is Music Marketing? – Page 5

Why Do You Need To Market Your Music? – Page 6

How Much You Should Market Your Music If You Want To Be A

Professional Musician – Page 8

How Much To Market Yourself If You're NOT Aiming To Be A Pro

Musician – Page 12

Creating Your Unique Selling Point – Page 14

Top Secret: Leverage Your Music Marketing Efforts (And A Common

Mistake) – Page 17

Getting Fans Involved With Marketing Your Music - Page 20

Ideas For Marketing Your Music Online - Page 22

Ideas For Marketing Your Music Offline – Page 25

Don't Spread Your Music Marketing Efforts Too Thin - Page 27

Conclusion – Page 29

The Next Steps - Page 30

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 Hi!

Well hello there, and thank you for joining me. My name's Shaun
Letang, and I'm the owner of music advice website Music Industry
How To. While that site advises on a variety of issues that musicians
face on a daily basis, this ebook focuses on one of the most
important things every musician needs to learn:

How to market your music!

I wanted to create this ebook as there are lots of talented musicians

out there, that never get where they could be. This is often because
of one of two thing; they don't fully understand what music
marketing is, or they don't put in enough effort to market their
music.

In this ebook, I aim to give you an understanding of how important

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music marketing is in your music career, and get you some much
needed information to get up and running with this side of things. It
will not only show you why you need to market your music, but let
you know how you can get your music marketing campaign up and
running. It'll also show you some of the best practices you should
be putting into affect and much more.

If you find it useful, please share it with your fellow musicians by

sending them to this page.

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What Is Music Marketing?

So, what is music marketing? Well, music marketing, also know as

music promotion, is the process of raising awareness of your music.
By marketing your music, you are getting people to know it exists.
Without properly promoting yourself or your music, no one would
know you even make music.

There are a number of ways in which you can market your music. It
can be as simple as talking to people and letting them know you
make songs, to bigger marketing efforts such as performing gigs,
getting on TV, or letting people on social networking websites
know what you're all about (And letting them listen).

Further examples of ways you can promote your music will be given
as this guide goes on.

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 Why Do You Need To Market
Your Music?

Simple: If you don't market your music, no one will know it exists!
How many sales or fans do you think you'll get if people don't know
you make music? That's right, none! You can record 1000 songs and
have the best album in the world, but if you don't effectively
communicate this message to people, it won't be worth anything.

Proper marketing can make or break your music career, so make

sure you learn how to do so properly.

“But wait...” I hear some of you thinking, “... I just want to make
music and not worry about the marketing side of things. Can't
someone else do it for me?”

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Well... probably not. While it used to be the case record labels
would do all the marketing for you and you just focus on projecting
your talent, this is no longer an option for most new musicians.
Record labels generally won't sign you unless you already have a
proven fan base, and have shown you have the potential to make
money. The only way you can do this is by building up your fan base
and income levels yourself. The only way you can get those things
in place is by making good quality songs AND properly marketing
your music.

While you could always hire people to do the marketing for you, this
can get costly and often isn't a good idea unless you're at a good
level with your talent. If you're paying someone to promote your
music for you, it's hard to get honest feedback from them. They will
tell you you're ready to get your music out there, even if you're not.
After all, they're trying to secure a contract with you and earn a
living themselves.

You will sooner or later find out if the fans don't take well to you,
but by then you will have wasted a lot of time and money on music
promotion. If however you had started out promoting yourself, you
would have got this vibe a lot earlier, and improved your talent
before you took the marketing of your music any further.

So, we should start out our music marketing campaign ourselves.

With this in mind, today we're going to look at some of the ways
you can do just that. Read on to the end to get a good idea of how
you can get going.

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 How Much You Should Market
Your Music If You Want To Be A
Professional Musician

So now you know what music marketing is, and you know that it's
important if you want to increase your fanbase and the amount of
money you make from your talent. But how much time should you
dedicate to promoting your music? Well, that will depend on where
you currently are in your music career. Depending on your current
talent levels, you should take one of these two paths:

1. Your Talent Is At A Good Level Already

If you're already talented and you've made good songs people will

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love, then you're at the stage of your music career where you
should be marketing your music more than making it! That's right;
the making of new music should now take a back seat, and the
majority of your efforts should go into promotions and raising
awareness of your sounds.

The reason for this is simple. From here on you can make a load
more good songs if you want to, but it won't help you achieve your
dreams of becoming a full time musicians if you don't get enough
people hearing and buying it!

Good music without promotion won't benefit anyone's ears other

than your own, so MARKET YOUR MUSIC!

I've seen people 'release' a good song and video, get under 150
people viewing it on Youtube. They then think the answer is to
release another song and video which will hopefully take off better
than their first one. So they release another song and video a few
months later, and what do you know; it gets around the same
amount of views as the first video!

This is a vicious circle that musicians need to

break out of. Simply putting stuff out there
isn't a good idea if you want to take your
music career to the next level, you need to
promote it so it gets in front of new people.
If you only get a few views on your first
video, don't leave it to die out in the
Youtube graveyard. Promote it to new
people and get more people seeing it!

There's no reason you couldn't get at least 2000 - 3000 views on

your first video if you really wanted to, you simply have to keep
pushing it. And if you went through the effort to make a music
video and want to see how well it'll do, this should be your aim. And
don't you think fans of your genre deserve to be shown your good
music? Yes, they do. So be sure to reach out to them and give
everyone a chance of hearing your work of art!

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Don't work on another song until you've given the previous song a
fair chance to take off. The aim is to pick up new fans along the
way, as well as giving something existing fans will love as well.

I'd go as far as to say you should spend 70% of your time marketing
your music if you want to have a financially successful music career,
maybe even more if you can. Making music is fun and the reason
you became a musician, but if you want to make a living from your
talent, you're going to have to start treating things more like a
business.

If however:

2. Your Talent Isn't Quite At The Level You Need To Make It Big
If you want to make it as a earning musician, the only reason you
shouldn't be dedicating more time to marketing over making music
is because you still need to improve your talent or song recording
skills. In fact, if you can't yet create a good enough product to
match the top 20% of talented people in your genre, then you
shouldn't be marketing your music at all!!

The thing is, first impressions count for a lot. It's a hard job to get
people to listen to your music, even if you give it away free. The last
thing you want to do is get people to listen, but not impress them
with your song. If it's bad, the next time that person is given the
chance to listen to your music, most likely they won't take it. Your
new song could be 100 times better than your old song, but they
won't know that because they simply won't listen.

It's hard to shake off a bad image, so be sure to only start fully
promoting your music when your music's good enough. And when
it is, after you've made a few promotional songs along with ones to
sell and perform, spend the majority of time getting those songs
out there as mentioned above!

So that's how much you should market your music if you want to
increase your fanbase, increase the money you make from music,
and generally take steps towards being a professional musician. But

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what if you don't want to achieve any of these things?

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 How Much To Market Yourself If
You're NOT Aiming To Be A Pro
Musician

So, you're just making music for fun and have no desire to increase
the amount of fans or make money from your music. So how much
should you market yourself? Simple, as much or as little as you
require!

Marketing is only needed if you want to be more than a bedroom

musician. If you're happy playing to you and your friends, then
marketing isn't needed.

That said, if you're reading this ebook, my guess is you want to be

more than a bedroom musician. If that's the case, the above 'no

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marketing' statement doesn't apply to you. Get your music
marketing game on!

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 Creating Your Unique Selling
Point

Ok, so marketing your music is vitally important if you want to be

more than just a bedroom musician. That said, just because you
market yourself to people, it doesn't mean that they are all of a
sudden going to become your fan. Yes it will give people the
opportunity to hear you and make that choice, but unless you're
offering something that people really want, all the music marketing
in the world won't help your music career take off.

So what other things do you need in place before you start your
promotional campaign?

Well firstly, you need talent. You should all already be aiming to
make the best music you possibly can, so I'm not going to talk
about that here today. Just know that if you market yourself and

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you're not very musically talented, this can actually do more harm
than good.

Secondly, you need a unique selling point, or USP for short.

A USP is something that helps you stand out from the crowd, and
makes what you're offering only obtainable by going to you over
your competition. Sometimes you will already have a USP by simply
being yourself, while other times you will have to consciously create
a USP to add more value to yourself as a brand.

An example of a natural unique selling point is a singer with a

distinctive voice. They don't have to put this on or do anything to
make this happen, it just part of who they are. Yet this voice can
help them stand out from the crowd, and make people buy into
them over someone with a much plainer voice.

An example of a created USP on the other

hand is your dress sense. If you haven't got a
stand out voice, as in it's not majorly
different from what's already out there, you
could always dress differently than other
people in your genre do. For example, a big
part of Nikki Minaj's image is her colored
hair (Not to say she doesn't have any other
unique selling points, but that's not the
point I'm trying to make). This makes her
stand out, and adds to the package that her fans by into.

You don't have to go as extreme as colored hair though, you could

always just have a set style which is different from what everyone
else in your niche is doing.

A final example of a created USP is the way you deliver your songs.
You could have a certain saying that fans will come to know you by,
or you could deliver your lyrics faster or slower than others do in
your genre.

It doesn't matter what it is and it doesn't have to be something

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huge, BUT you should try and offer something different to people
that they're not already getting to a high level else where. Adding a
unique selling point to good music will help potential fans choose
to follow you over others. It'll also help people relate to you, and
hopefully buy into your brand for the long-term.

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Top Secret: Leverage Your Music
Marketing Efforts (And A
Common Mistake)

Ok, so let's get into the good stuff. If you follow this one tip, you will
give yourself a better chance than the majority of independent
musicians out there!

A common mistake when promoting their music, is many people try

and reach their fans in the wrong places. Further more, they try and
gain potential fans on too much of a small scale.

An example of this is Facebook and Twitter marketing. While I

encourage all musicians to use these tools as they can be very
handy for getting yourself out there, when used wrong they can be

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more of a hindrance than anything else.

Forget adding people on Facebook and Twitter one by one, there

are two big problems with doing this:

1. It's Time Consuming.

Adding fans one by one is a long process. This will take a lot of
time out of your day, and get in the way of other more
beneficial things you should be doing.
2. You're Not Reaching Your Core Audience.
If you're adding a load of random people on Facebook, there's
a good chance that the majority of them aren't going to be
interested in what you're offering. This means you're wasting a
load of time and effort in adding people that will never be a
fan of your music, and you'll probably get marked as spam a
lot too. This can, and probably will, lead to Facebook deleting
your account.

So, if you shouldn't be sitting on your computer adding people on

social sites all day, what should you be doing instead? Let me tell
you:

Finding out where your audience hang out, and reach them all
there at the same time!

Makes sense right? Why try and turn people into fans one by one
when you can reach a load of people that are already fans of your
music all at the same time? Doing it any other way is an uphill
struggle, and won't give you as much results in the long run. Yes
you may get a few fans by reaching people using the 1 by 1 method,
but it's a constant grind.

Making it in music is always going to be a

grind anyway, but you don't want to make it
more of one than it needs to be. Further
more, you'll find it nearly impossible to build
up any real traction.

On the other hand, if you can reach a load of

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very targeted people in a short space of time, you will be more
likely to get a much better reaction. Not only will you be able to see
people instantly enjoying your music, but as there is more people
finding out about you at the same time, the chances of 'word of
mouth marketing' are much higher as well. People will start talking
about you, and as other people interested in your genre also just
heard about you, they will be able to relate and carry on the
conversation.

Now two questions remain:

1. Where does your audience hang out? And:

2. How can you reach a load of potential fans at once?

Well with regard to where they hang out, this can vary. It will of
course differ based on what genre of music you make, but if we're
looking at things in broad terms, there are two main places; Online,
and offline. We will look at these places more specifically below,
and look into some of the most popular places you will find a load
of people who are into the types of music you make.

Now to the second question. Once you find out where your
audience hang out, how can you reach them all at the same time?
That one has a answer I can give a lot quicker: By using established
outlets to get yourself heard! This can be in the form of a
community radio station, a popular website, a popular Youtube
channel, and the like. Once again, we'll look at this more below in
the 'Marketing Your Music Online' and 'Marketing Your Music
Offline' sections.

So with this in mind, read on for some cool ways to both market
your music on and offline.

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 Getting Fans Involved With
Marketing Your Music

Before we look at some ways to promote your music both on and

offline, I wanted to quickly talk about getting fans involved in the
marketing of your music.

All to often I see musicians treating fans to a one way relationship.

They simply put out music and post a couple of random updates on
Facebook, but don't interact with fans outside of that.

Now I know some like to keep a boundary between them and their
fans so they appear as something 'harder to reach so worth having',
and I totally understand this tactic. BUT, it makes it a whole lot
harder to get new dedicated fans when your fan base is still small to
medium in size.

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Instead of distancing yourself from personal interaction with your
fans, it might be time you think about embracing this interaction
instead. After all, a happy fan is often a loyal fan. And a loyal fan will
talk about how great you are to their friends. This is how word of
mouth marketing works, and is as easy to implement as having a
good two way relationship with your fans.

Now I'm not saying you should reply to every one of your fans
individually about every little thing, when you start to get more fans
this will become virtually impossible. That said, you should still
make the effort to address your social fans (Rather than just post
messages to buy things), and thanks them in status updates and
the like.

You should also get them involved by

building up a 'street team', whether this is
an online one, or a street team in the
traditional sense of things. Often fans will
love the opportunity to get to work with you
on a project, so not only will you be getting
your music heard in places it may not have
been heard before, you're also building up a
stronger relationship with your street team
members and turning them into long-term
loyal fans.

Don't underestimate the power of getting fans involved in your

music career, especially when you haven't got the budget to hire
anyone else to help with promotion. As you get more of a budget to
invest in things, consider hiring a part or full time team of
professionals to help you out.

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 Ideas For Marketing Your Music
Online

Online music marketing is probably the path most independent

musicians take when it comes to getting their sound out there. This
is partly because the ease of it (You can promote your music from
the comfort of your own home) and partly because of the potential
reach. With the internet you can access people in nearly any
country of the world.

That said, just because all these people can potentially hear you,
making them WANT to hear you is a whole other challenge all
together. So using our leveraging tactics, what kind of online music
marketing can you do to get in front of more people? We look at
some below...

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Baring in mind you'll want to leverage established platforms rather
than building up a fanbase slowly yourself, we're going to want to
initially build connections with other media outlets, rather than with
fans one by one. Yes you should reply to fans when they reach out
to you, but you shouldn't initially be trying to reach out to them in
this manner. Instead, put the majority of your time and effort
building up relationships with people that can get you out there on
a much wider scale.

Types of people and places online you want to build up

relationships with include:

• Big Websites In Your Genre.

• Online Radio Shows That Cater To Your Type Of Music.
• Music Forums In Your Genre.
• Youtube Channels In Your Genre.
• Facebook And Twitter Groups And Pages That Cater To Your
Type Of Music.

All of these places have two things in common:

1. They have people who like your type of music watching them.
2. They have a much bigger reach and influence than you.

People that listen to these channels and read these websites

respect what their owners have to say. Therefore, if a owner of any
one of these mediums tells it's followers you're the next best thing
since sliced bread, you are bound to get an influx of people visiting
your website and taking notice of you.

From this point it's down to you to give people a good impression
of your self and get these people on your mailing list, but you'll have
a much easier sale on your hands than if you was just another
random musician blowing their own trumpet. A neutral and
respected third party bigging you up is always more effective than
you doing it yourself, so bare this in mind.

While these big platforms may take longer to cover you and it may
feel like you'll start seeing quicker results from Twitter adding,

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when you do get a break through, the
results will be a lot bigger.

The great thing about this style of doing

things, is you can leverage your first success
and use it in your musical CV. When you tell
other big forum owners and radio stations
that you've been featured on a well
respected Youtube channel, many will be a
lot more likely to listen to you and in turn
give you a slot on their outlet. After all, if 'That person' featured you,
they can't miss the opportunity of also covering potentially the next
big thing.

Leveraging previous successes is important if you want to keep up

momentum and grow as a musician, and something I will talk a lot
more about in future.

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 Ideas For Marketing Your Music
Offline

A big mistake many musicians make, is they only ever promote

their music online. Why is this a big mistake? Well, mainly because
all the extra exposure they leave on the table! There are a lot of
established offline mediums you can use to get your music out
there, so you should put as much effort into getting on them as you
would getting on the online promotion sources.

Some of the ways you can promote your music offline include:

• Performing Live Gigs In Venues Where Your Target Audience

Will Be.
• Making Music Videos And Getting Them On Relevant Music TV
Channels.

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 • Getting Your Music On Local Radio Stations.
• Appearing In Radio And TV Adverts.
• Having Your Flyers And CDs In Industry Related Shops.
• Using Street Teams To Spread Your Message.
• Doing Your Own Street Selling And Promotion
(You're not leveraging anything here, but we'll look at why this
method of offline promotion can still be useful below).

Even just missing out the first of these things will mean you'll reach
a lot less of your target audience than you would otherwise.
Performing gigs gives you a chance to get an instant reaction from
your music, and connect with potential fans on a much more
personal level. It's possible to plant seeds a this stage, and do the
early relationship building needed to make life long fans.

Music videos on genre specific TV channels

(Or general ones), appearances in other
people's projects, street selling and the like
are all other ways to get your face seen and
your music heard. While street selling
doesn't keep in line with our leveraging
method, it is still good for starting to
understand what makes people buy from
you. Once you learn the factors that will
make people make a purchase from you,
you can use this throughout your music career to greatly increase
the amount of sales you end up making.

I'd suggest a healthy mix between both online and offline music
promotion. Both have their uses, and should be used together
rather than have it a 'one or the other' type situation.

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 Don't Spread Your Music
Marketing Efforts Too Thin

The last real point I want to make today is this: While it may seem
like doing as many different promotional activities as possible is the
way to go, often it isn't.

If you've got a big marketing budget and a load of people working

for you, then of course promoting your music in as many ways as
possible is a good idea. That said, if you're a solo act who's
balancing making music and marketing themselves, often there will
be a limit to what you can do in terms of daily promotion.

While I strongly encourage you learn to promote yourself, you don't

want to dedicate so much time to it that you don't get time to
make music anymore. After all, I'm guessing that's where your real

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passion lies?

Not only this, but if you try to have your 'hands in all pies', you won't
have enough time to dedicate to making any one or two methods
really work.

My advice to you is this: Initially, try out a few methods of

promotion that you feel may work for you. At this stage don't be
afraid of trying out more than you normally would, you won't be
doing them all long-term.

After a while, you will start seeing a few marketing strategies that
work for you better than the others. At this stage, ditch all the
methods that aren't working, and focus more heavily on the ones
that are.

This is running with your winners, and will help you stay motivated
as you will start seeing results sooner rather than later. Once you've
got these methods down and you've rinsed them for all they're
worth, you can start to incorporate new strategies if you have the
time and man power.

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 Conclusion

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Making good music alone isn't
enough to make you a well known and paid musician. People won't
find out about you simply by you being able to make music, you
need to do everything you can to get your music out there. This is
the process of music marketing, and a process you have to
undertake if you want to be more than just a 'bedroom musician'.

Using other people's established platforms is one of the best ways

to do this, and one of the fastest routes to success as a musician.

Now, if you signed up to get this guide for free, you'll be emailed
parts 2 and 3 over the next few days.

If you stumbled across this randomly on the internet however, you

won't get those emails and other helpful ebooks. :(

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That said, you can click here to to sign up and get them! :D

The Next Step

So now you've got a good base knowledge on music marketing and
what it entails. But how do you really get your music out there?

How do you take full advantage of memorable gig performances,

high converting websites, big Youtube channels, other big
musician's audiences and more? How do you create a product
launch strategy? Should you provide singles or albums?

And how do you get these all pressed and if needed and
distributed? Most importantly, how do you increase your fanbase
and make more money?!

Stay tuned to our emails and we’ll show you next steps each and
every week. :)

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