For context, my original question was: "If you could give somebody one piece of music marketing / life advice, what would it be?"
The following responses are presented with only a few very minor edits and without any comment.
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"Pursue your music without expectation." – T.
"After you (think you) finish something, give it at least 3 days to 'bake.' Then re-check without listening to it in the interim. Tweak what needs tweaking and re-bake for 3 days. Then, you can say it's done... but listen to it again 30 days out and make sure it's really done." – Gary
"Put your energies into writing and producing a great song. A great song will lend itself to strong video content, but a strong ad for an average song won’t get you the saves and streams you want. Meta ads give your song a chance at being heard, but no amount of ad spend can make people like it." – Heather
"Do what you really want to do, without lying to yourself." – E.
"There's some nuance here, but in my opinion aligning your music, brand, and social media identities before even touching paid media is the best thing an artist can possibly do. Gives them the indicators that people are responding before they start spending all-to-precious resources on it. Especially in those early stages where those resources could be spent on something like a mix engineer, y'know? :)" – J. Chris
"What I think would be extremely helpful for people is to have a budgeting checklist. Without going into a lot of detail:
- Distributor: $75
- Distributor added fees: $50 per song
- Signing up for PRO: $50
- Sound Exchange: $0 – ?
- Workshop and seminar fees: $0 – ?
- Meta ads - $1,500
- Google ads - $300+
- Advertising playlists $100+
- Radio distribution (per song): $175 – $2,000
- Video production: free (just time consuming) – $6,000+
- PR firm or publicist: $1,500+
- Print advertising: $75 – $3,000:
- Photographer: $75 – $2,000
- Etc.
After two or three releases a person should have a decent idea of what their priorities need to be and should be able to travel through all these steps with greater ease; however, it is never that easy, and some should just sign up for Bandcamp and leave it at that." – Garry
"Find a way to assess the quality of a project before you push the publish button. Ask yourself, 'Is this the best it can be?' This may mean involving some other folks to get their opinion. Be honest and revise your product if it's not the best it can be. Is that guitar solo really necessary? Is the mix bang-on? Etc. Be ready to put extra work in before publishing/releasing." – Finn
"Don't stop learning and don't quit." – Will
"A harsh, truthful saying from my late mother: 'Don't worry, people aren't thinking about you as much as you think they are... they are too caught up in themselves.'" – Dave
"You must collaborate. You must choose collaborators who 1) you really like their music and 2) they have at least 3X your streams. I've thoroughly enjoyed my 3 collaborations so far, but the one that packed a super punch was with someone who had 5X our streams when I approached him. That song is now both my and his most-streamed song. Collaboration is the way to glory, artistic achievement and wider reputation!" – Chris
"Marry well, have rich relatives, win the lottery, etc." – Jeffrey
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Good stuff, guys.
Thanks so much to everyone who responded; it was genuinely a lot of fun to read your wisdom, and I'm looking forward to applying some of these pearls to my own music and life.
See you back here next week. For now, I'm off to buy a lottery ticket.
– Jon
Jon Anderson
Founder @ Two Story Media
Surprisingly Bad @ Writing Recipe Cards
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100% Human Guarantee
I wrote this, not AI.
Today's random photo: a recipe for taco soup written by our friend, Sarah, that makes the recipe cards I write look like the scribbles of a deluded child. Whenever I make this recipe, I am simultaneously impressed by Sarah's handwriting and ashamed of my own.
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P.S. – The most recent email I wrote that was not a request for advice or a promotional thing was titled "Virality Is Dead." You can read it here.
P.P.S. – Last week's Music Ads 101 class was great. If you missed it but still want to learn how to get your music heard with ads, then good news! – all the recordings are now live in our Music Marketing Club.