(Quick recap in case you haven't been following this thread over the past couple of weeks: Someone asked me to explain, in plain English, how I'd recommend an indie artist spend their limited time and money. I turned around and threw that question out to you guys, and you came through with a bunch of helpful and mutually exclusive answers. This week, I'm going to give you my own two cents. Take it, as always, for what it's worth, remembering that it comes via a free newsletter written without all that much forethought from a person who would probably not know you from Adam.
In other words this is gonna be good.)
First, figure out what you want.
Most people who come to me for marketing help tell me that their goal is some variation on the following statement: "I'd like some people to hear and appreciate my music."
That's a great thing to want; also, it's almost worthless as a goal. Like yeah, no shit if you made music you want some people to hear it. That's called making music. Do you bake a cake to throw it away? Music is communication; having it heard is half the point.
(I say this as someone who, literally last month, wrote that my goal for my most recent release was " to say something and have some people connect with it.")
So if you're going to spend time and money marketing your music, it's immensely helpful to have some clarity around what you hope to get.
- Do you want to eventually make a full-time living from your music? Or do you just want to make enough income to cover your costs? Or do you not care about income at all?
- Do you want people to regularly engage with your ongoing artistry? Or are you just hoping to get ears on one particular project?
- Do you want streaming numbers? And if so – are we talking 1,000,000 streams on a track, or maintaining 100,000 monthly listeners for years? Do you care how engaged each listener is, or do you just need to hit arbitrary numbers so you have something to point at when you talk to industry people?
- Do you want to play a certain venue? Do you want to book a certain number of shows? Do you want to work with a booking agent?
- Do you want the love and approval of others?
Ari Herstand has this section in How to Make It In the New Music Business where he recommends writing out exactly where you want your music career to be in one year, three years, ten years etc. – something like that. Actually I forget exactly how he breaks it up, but in general I think writing down detailed plans is great advice, and before you spend a bunch of time or money on marketing, I'd definitely do that.
This is an oversimplification, but I think there are basically two main paths, and they aren't mutually exclusive: 1) play live and 2) build an online platform. If you are up for and into playing live, do that as much as you can. Then do it some more. If this is you, you might not even need to worry about online stuff, depending on what sort of venues you want to play.
But if you do want to build your online presence, here's the three-step plan I'd recommend.
Pick one social platform.
I'd choose Instagram, partly because it functions as something like the industry-standard resume, partly because its algorithm is darn good at showing content to new eyes, and also (and not least of all) because I hate TikTok.
But you can pick TikTok if you want, or YouTube, or Substack, or heck, even Facebook. You just need something with an organic discovery engine (i.e., an algorithm) and a content format you can bring yourself to enjoy, or at least to not hate.
Then...
Develop a repeatable broadcast format.
You need something that you can do again and again and again, without getting flummoxed by the barrier of the blank page or stumped for creative inspiration, for which people will recognize you and which your fans will come to love.
What I'm trying to say is that you need A Thing.
Some examples:
- Idea of the day – i.e., you make a little mini-song each day, filming the entire creative process. (Ethan French)
- You sing a beautifully written song straight to camera. (Brother Tom)
- You coordinate lamps turning on and off to your music. (Charlie Youngson)
- You record to tape in cool locations and sometimes speed it up or slow it down (wynd)
Your Thing does not need to have incredible production value unless production value is part of your Thing. Your Thing should play to your strengths. Your Thing should be immediately apparent when people visit your page.
Are you a great finger-style guitar player? Can you shred? Do you have an ear for cool production sounds? Have you recently found and bonded with an infant dragon? Are you a clever lyricist? Do you have perfect pitch? Can you explain musical theory in simple terms? Do you enjoy doing little sketches to illustrate the ideas behind your songs? Are you able to levitate three feet from the ground while juggling jelly beans?
You get the idea. Jokes aside, the idea isn't to come up with some gimmick; it's to figure out what makes your artistry most interesting and then present that to people. (If you, like me, find yourself thinking "I am not sure my artistry is interesting," then it's a good sign you should work on becoming a better artist.)
Invite people who like your Thing into a deeper community.
This is it, the crux, the whole point of sharing your stuff on social media: you want to get people off of social media. You want to bring them onto a platform where more meaningful connection can happen. That's not to say that social doesn't matter, but it is to put it in its proper place so that it can serve its purpose.
What I'm saying is that you should build an email list. Or launch a Discord. Or start a Patreon. Basically, you should have some online platform where 1) there is no algorithm, and 2) people have to give up something – even if it's just an email address – to join.
Every time you post on social media, mention this platform. It's the end goal of your online marketing, the destination, and you can measure the success of your overall marketing efforts by the quantity and quality of the engagement here.
I'm going to end this here, for now.
The strategy I've outlined above obviously isn't comprehensive; I've got more thoughts on this plan, including ideas for how to structure your deeper community and some ancillary pointers on how to spend your money, which I realize I haven't even mentioned. But then again, I can ramble on about marketing nuance forever, and to go much longer thn I have would make this an obnoxiously long email. More to the point, I have a meeting coming up in five minutes that I'd rather not miss.
So let me know if you'd like me to do a Part 2 on this topic. If you do, I probably will, and if you don't, I definitely won't.
Either way, thanks for reading, and I'll see you here next week.
– Jon
Jon Anderson
Founder @ Two Story Media
Surprisingly Good @ Making Paper Airplanes
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100% Human Guarantee
I wrote this, not AI.
Today's random photo: I bought this book for $5 at a used book store in the Poconos this summer and apparently it retails for like $400. I'm not selling it, but I enjoyed finding that out.
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P.S. – Last week, I shared the wisdom of the crowd on this same topic. You can get their advice here.