How to promote your music during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Now is a great time to promote your music:
During this time of uncertainty, we all need to be safe and practice social distancing to “flatten the curve”. Although shows and other social gatherings have been cancelled, the online community is thriving, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to utilize this opportunity to promote your music.
Unfortunately shows and other revenue streams for musicians have taken a hit, but that’s in almost every job, and tons of people are home right now scrolling through social media, working from home, or simply bored. As an entertainer, it’s your job to entertain fans and keep the music alive. While you cannot perform at a venue and greet your fans in person, there are many other ways to keep the online community engaged until this pandemic passes. Here are a few ways to keep your music engagement alive, and up those numbers for the months ahead.
1. Media Content
If you have been doing online promotions for a while, you may have a bank of photos, videos, and music you haven’t released yet. This is a great time to re-organize your library and post some old (but new) content on your social media to create buzz. Even if you have to capture some new content in your home or backyard, so be it. Let the world be your audience rather than the local community.
2. Live Stream Concerts
If you perform on stages you can perform everywhere. Artists worldwide have already begun steaming live performances of their songs from the comfort and safety of their home. It’s not the real thing of course, but it’s the best we all can do. If you are connecting with your audience and they support your music online, it also may not be a bad idea remind your audience about your existing releases on Spotify, Apple Music and the other streaming services. All of this isn’t the same as selling tickets however, but if income is what you’re worried about, you could set up a donation/pay streaming account to live stream your home shows. In addition to this, your organically creating media content to put on your YouTube channel, or short snippets to post on Instagram.
3. Press! Press! Press!
News coverage can drastically change how your audience understands your music and your media personality. Write ups range from artist biographies to press releases and much more. Remember your story is important, and for many people having that opportunity to read a written piece of your history is important to them. Take Spotify’s artist bio section for a moment; it consists of a biography section, photos, and links to four websites online. Those four social sites (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Wikipedia) are rarely completed due to Wikipedia’s guidelines for articles on their site. One of the conditions are to have a minimum of ten (10) articles written about your group, or topic, to be cited as sources. As your career grows, remember to constantly collect these article write-ups about your music, tour, or story to establish a credible biography for Wikipedia. On the other hand, you can get people to write about you today for a little cost that contributes to that 10 article minimum.
4. Advertising
Taking advantage of marketing trends can really help your brand or music grow. Right now would be the best time to promote upcoming releases, via social media marketing and advertising. Think about what I said before, your audience is the world right now. This means that setting up a campaign to promote your music is basically guaranteed to succeed if you have the right content. Say you do make a video to create buzz about your live streams or already booming music streaming content or a music video you released recently; it will get attention. In all, take this opportunity to further your fanbase online, and of course promote positivity across your channels.
5. Finish working on that website
Not into web design? That’s fine! There are many web design tools out there that help you create a website from scratch or from a template for very little money. Most charge a subscription, but once you find the one that works for you, don’t waste time. Artists that are serious should have a singular landing page to promote all their musical works, updates, links, biography, videos and more. Also, look into getting your domain before the website so you can plan around how much your domain name will change from your social media usernames.’
6. Recording at home
We already did an article about building your home studio, but if you haven’t finished building yours, now wouldn’t be a bad time to. Many recording studios have made the switch to online only services like EARMIX, which means no vocal or band recording for a while. Even though this is a bummer, take advantage of building your own vocal booth, or recording setup to get those demos down. Trying to manage a band rehearsal over long distance? Try an online video chat service or video recording so other members can play along with your demos. Building a short term and less expensive setup today is very achievable. If you already have a computer, look into the necessities: microphone, interface, pop filter, cables.
7. Using online mixing and mastering services
Like I mentioned before, EARMIX just released not too long ago. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s no problem. Instead of paying tons of money for mixing and mastering session, we decided to break it down to a fair price so any musician can afford quality post production on their music. Whether you make hip hop or metal, electronic or folk music, EARMIX is designed for quality. EAR pairs your project with the best suited engineer for optimal output quality and efficiency. That means no more waiting around for weeks!
8. Communicating with the world
Ever felt that your social media fan base doesn’t transfer well to your music streaming platforms? Maybe they need to connect with you a little more. Reach out to your fans either by messaging or calling them. Make sure your fans are okay, and listen to what they want/need. If you can make one person smile, that’s all you need. Selfless acts do promote positivity!
In all, the music industry took a hit for the worse. This will pass! But in the meantime, keep working on your music, promotions, and your mental health. Stay safe.
