Music Marketing

Any musician or band out there  has one thing in common. They are all constantly being asked the question, who you are, what does your music sound like? As an artist, if you don’t know how to answer these simple question in a understandable way, you are on a road to nowhere. For this reason and this reason alone, musicians and artist all around the world have a dedicated bio page written. This document is your professional sales and marketing tool. It is there to communicate with all the interested and involved parties when you simply can’t find the words, or the time to do it.

What Separates The Men From The Boys!

Most artists that already made a name for themselves hired a professional to write their musician  bio page for them. In a lot of cases hiring a professional is out of the question due to their high cost. But the fact still remains that you need a professionally written bio page. The next reasonable course of action is of course for you to sit down and write your own bio for further use in the field of self-promotion. Needless to say that if you want to be taken seriously, as a person and as an artist, you need to have your own promotional material. In this article we will give you pointers on how a musician should go about making his or hers own bio page.

Define Who You Are!

This is the perfect opening to any bio, make it clear what your purpose is and what exactly you are doing in the music industry. This paragraph of your bio page shouldn’t be longer than a 2 or three sentences, so make sure you stick to the point when writing it. Talk about how you would describe your band or your music. Tell the world what kind of impact you wish to have on the music world, as well as telling the world where you get your inspiration from. All of the above mentioned information will be clear insight in to your mind, and with just a couple of sentences, people who read your bio page will know what to expect from you in terms of dedication and music, as well as how serious you are about the whole “music” thing.

Skip The Early Days.

Unless you were a kid superstar lol at the age of 8 you should leave this part out. While there aren’t any specific reasons why this simply is, your first days as a musician rarely interest people who are looking for somebody of your caliber. Your bio needs to be about you, and not about who you were! One of many clear indicators of a poorly written bio page is a bio page that consists of many smaller bios. The story you tell needs to be consistent, flowing and engaging. So feel free to leave something out for the sake of the overall project.

Personal Stories!

This is where people actually come to know you as a person and as a musician! What you need to do at this point is simply not fall into the same category as everybody else. If you put some effort and research some of the online available bio pages, you will shortly see that they are dull, follow a formula and contains sentences like “he loved to perform since when he was little”. These kind of sentences are a strict indicator of unprofessionalism. Under no circumstances should you follow this formula, make your bio stand out, tell an interesting and a compelling story, make people like what they read, and make them want to know more about you as a person.

Use Your Bio Sparingly!

Once you actually have something that looks like a bio, don’t go around spamming the inboxes of every major music producer, promoter or local radio station. Like the title of the segment states, use your bio sparingly. Do the required research in order to find  music promoters,music websites , and  music blogger in you niche of music and submit your bio to them.This is exactly what music pr companies charge an arm and a leg for and you can actually do it yourself. and save lot of money.Another good way to use your bio is to  get it printed off and make sure it has all your contact info so they can find your music,videos etc and  connect with you online you so you can build fans which in return will increase your profits down the road.Below is an example of a bio created we created for a musician to give an idea of what I’m talking about.

Update Your Bio Accordingly!

Needless to say that your bio should stay the same until the end of time, your bio should stay in line with your career and it should change correspondingly. So whenever you get a big show,or doing a big event you should  add that to your bio, or for example you dropped a mixtape that’s doing good numbers post that and also add pics of the mixtape cover art design also to give readers more visuals to reel them in.

It’s a fact that you will grow as a person in that time, so the general tone of your bio needs to reflect on that. And with the right amount of effort and with the right words, you will have a professionally written bio in no time.

Stay positive!

It goes without saying that when your bio is read, its needs to connect  with readers on an emotional level once you do that you can turn them into a life long fan.. Like we stated in this article before, the bio needs to reflect on what kind of person you are and your story  and stay true to that, If you would like to have a professional music journalist write your bio for you click this link https://www.mixtapecoverking.com/music-artist-bio-writing/

Learn How To Get Your Money’s Worth Out Of Your Paid Music Feature

Do you have a mixtape dropping or a single wit a major feature on or someone with a buzz in the music industry? Well if you do don’t let your money go to waste just by getting the feature from them and releasing it on your social media sites like Facebook,Soundcloud etc.I mean that might help you  look like your doing something to all the local music fans in your city, but the reality is that you just helped the artist out and paid them for a verse nothing is wrong with that but you have to figure out how to make your feature go to work for you.

I work with artist who purchase features from artist in the music industry and they think maybe by doing a song with an artist they might like it and sign them lol lol  good luck that artist is in the process of building their career they could care less about you building yours. Your just another paycheck, it’s an independent game now so it’s every man for himself,but I’m gonna tell you 3 things you need to do that will allow you to piggyback off of your music features success in the industry  fast as hell and if your song is good you could possibly be the next overnight success story no bs.

1.Mixtape covers or Single Cover Design- Whenever you do a feature with a major artist or artist with a huge buzz you need to have artwork created with both of your pics on it that gives fans,bloggers,etc a visual that you and the artist have a real relationship.and give you more credibility,

but you have to make sure you have a professional mixtape cover designer or single cover designer  with high quality music graphics. Your cover art is also what bloggers, and hip hop websites will use to post on their sites so you have to make sure your graphics grab attention and make you standout so music fans check your music out soon as they see the cover and of course they will because you also have whoever you got the feature on the cover also.

2.Press Coverage Pimpin lol- This is what I call press pimpin lol you get all the music  blogs and sites who support or who have covered stories on  your artist you used for a feature rather past or present and you just get them to show you the same love by contacting them name dropping your new single with that artist.I see so many artist with features who never do this and its like flushing your money down the drain.

So I know your probably wondering how do you find these sites who support this artist well….It’s simple just go to the Google search engine and type in “name of artist you used for a feature”+interviews, then do one with  +press release, and one with +reviews. After you do those 3 separately you will have plenty of results with sites you can contact you can write them down on notepad and we will come back to them shortly.

3.Get a professional journalist to create you a music press release promoting you and your artist feature and  don’t be afraid to use his name first on the press release just to grab the bloggers attention then get thousands of submissions everyday so you want yours to stand out as soon as they see it. After your press release is finished now you can go back to the list of websites that you created earlier who gave your feature artist coverage and submit your press release and watch all the traffic pour in.

Let us create you a press release that will get you coverage from all the music sites and blogs so you can get the full potential out of your investment and get more fans. Contact Us

Street teams And How To Use Them

Since the drastic change the music industry , the forms of artist and band promoting has changed as well  well, nowadays  there are tons of different ways  to promote your music online, but the whole goal is to find a way to promote yourself in a way that makes you standout and using a method your competition isn’t aware of.

One such way is the creation and utilization of street teams. Out of all forms of marketing and music advertising, one of the most potent ways for you to make people listen to your music is by positive feedback that your fans give out, but there lies the problem, while your fans like your music they won’t make it their job to spread the word. This is where the creation of a street team is needed!

What Does A Street Team Do?

In short, they spread the word. Needless to say that this is no easy task, while the fact remains that “mouth-to-mouth” advertising is the option for any band or musician it is quite hard to pull off. This is where the street teams come in to play to helps build a buzz around your brand,and music  on your behalf.

A street team is  a small group of people that are under your direct command and are suited for the job of promoting your band, your music and you on the street. One of the most common tasks that any street team is given is to hand out flyers to a targeted audience (Egg. Age) that promote your band in any way you see fit. So it can be your upcoming show, a new single dropping,  the release of your new mixtape or just a coming soon flyer with just your mixtape cover graphics and your website link.The point behind it all is fairly simple to  get the people talking about your band and to spread the positive impressions they had with your music. Handing out flyers is only one idea, there are countless ways for you to utilize your street team which are for you to discover.

Assembling Your First Street Team!

In spite of what you might think , hiring a street team as a  method of promotion is not  expensive at all, Some artist street teams are their  family and closest friends,or you can think about all the cities you would like to promote in and 9 times out o time if it’s a major city they already  have available street teams ready to work.Most  of these companies will  hand out 1,000 flyers for $100 in any location you want.For example they have the BET awards in Atlanta you contact a street team and have them outside the awards pushing your music and brand.

The Psychology Behind It All

The fact is that people love to talk about music, good or bad it doesn’t matter, it’s quite simple and easy to understand. The trick here comes when your street team actually does a good job to, and grab the attention of some people, out of hundreds of people that your street team finds if only a couple take the time to listen to your music they will start spreading the word immediately to their friend and thus creating the “mouth-to-mouth” marketing concept which has been discussed previously.

Expanding Your Street team

Like with many other cases in live, street teams work better if there are a lot more of them to begin with, if you have more than one street team they will be able to cover different areas of the city and high density population areas. But if you have already exhausted the option to use the people that are closest to you, how would you go about expanding your street team? Start with sending a mass E-mail to your fans and announcing it on your website that you are looking for a couple of people to help out with street team promotions on your new project, or you can actually just Google street teams and whatever city your trying to target and you will find a ton of quality companies that can help you with your campaign.

The Reward System

In the previous segment we stated that you can hire fans to be your street team for a reward, what we didn’t say is the fact that it’s absolutely free of charge for you. So what exactly are we talking about? In any case one simple fact remains which can be linked to any fan, and that is the fact that they indeed are a fan of your music, meaning that you can hire them to be on your street team and promote your music for something simple like spending time with the band backstage before and after the show, another good idea is a free T-shirt or VIP passes for the upcoming show. In any case the list goes on, and all the above mentioned fan rewards have one thing in common, they are free for you and mean the world to your fans.

Hit the campus!

College ground are one of the best ways for you to find new fans and people that will work in your street teams, college students are usually broke and love music, so the odds are in your favor when it comes to recruiting them to your street team. Your fans would love to  be a part of your street team for free merchandise, and tickets to your show, in any other case, if they are not a fan of your music they will work for small amounts of money, but we feel that we should ad that you should always choose the people which show the most enthusiasm when it comes to your music as they will work harder because it’s for artist they all love to listen to.

In conclusion

Street teams are a powerful asset, and unlike many other assets of marketing, they have a tendency to grow. Feel free to experiment with your street team and find out what works best for you, as an artist and  ultimately producing the best results for you!

The importance of branding in music
The music business is much like any other, you need to have connections, you need to invest and you need a lot of effort and love in order for you to succeed. And as in any other business, you need quality marketing. So the first thing that we need to ask is, how does a band or a rapper promote himself? The obvious reasons always come to mind, Facebook posting and Twitter tweeting are the most common ways for any musician to promote. While these methods are free and they do work to a certain extent they lack a couple of features that remain reserved to marketing that requires some form of investment.

The art of branding!

Branding is a wide term, and can mean all sorts of things. But when it comes to music, it means one simple thing. Making you and what you are recognizable from your logos, your flyer designs, your mixtape design or anything related to your name is professional and uses the same emblem or logo to give everything the same look . If you still feel unsure about what branding is all about, just think back a couple of years and try to remember how the famous rapper 50 cent branded his own name “50 cent”. And by doing so he immortalized his music in the daily lives we all live. So anybody who has even heard of his name will immediately remember him when they see a coin lying around the house. With this said we feel that we should first explain, what are the most common ways for any musician to brand their name or image into the future?

• Branding your design
• Branding your style
• Branding your image
• Branding your music

All of the previously mentioned methods were done by some musicians in the past and they are guaranteed to work for anybody who is trying to make a name for themselves.

How to make people remember you?

The fact still remains that the best way for any musician to make a name for himself is to put on a show that will be remembered for months. When it comes to this method, it has some drawbacks. The first and foremost is the fact that if the show was an absolute killer, you have to remember that  people are drunk at the show and it might be hard for them to remember anything that happened that night. While the previous statement was harsh, it doesn’t make it any less true. The fact still remains that you need to make people remember you. So how does a musician go about doing such a thing? This is where branding comes in to play.

It is a scientifically proven fact that people have a much easier time connecting to pictures and unified objects than they do to actual people and the things they do. Let’s look at the famous band “guns n roses”. The symbol they branded for their custom logo design, is two revolvers and the rose in between them makes it instantly recognizable by people all round the world. So needless to say that people from the United States will recognize the symbol just as fine as the people from Japan. This just goes to show how powerful image and design branding really is. So in accordance with this we suggest the following for any band.

Make an emblem that will generalize and show what your music is all about, also make it reflect your own personalities, people will have much easier time connecting to thing they find closer to themselves and easier to understand. After you have achieved this, the next step is simple. Make your image recognizable by all the people that are on your show, so how would you do this when you have a drunk crowd? Flyers and business cards with links to your facebook to connect with you and links to your music and videos. The whole purpose to build your fanbase and, these methods of promotion only need a small investment, but the results they bring are well worth it.Even after a night of heavy drinking once they see your business card in the morning they will be able to connect with you.,. Whatever the case is, the fact remains that your symbol will be looked at for days to come. Even after an extensive period people will still tend to find your flyers and business cards  around, branding your image into their mind for years to come, and making your band recognizable almost anywhere.

The psychology aspect

People, like you and me, are simple creatures, and we tend to emotionally relate to our memories. This fact can be used to your advantage, and is one more step in making your band that much more famous. Let’s say that your band made an awesome show last night, and you gave out autographed business cards to the crowd and were throwing flyers everywhere for people to find and pick up. The fact is that your show was a positive experience for the entire crowd, and some of them maybe experienced shivers when you started playing. So imagine their mental reaction when they find your autographed business card in their pocket three days later . All those positive emotions would came back in an instant reminding them how good of a time they had at your show. This will ultimately work to your advantage because of course they will share their experience and  your music with all their facebook friends which will get you even more exposure.

Branding Music!

So, music being tricky as it is, how does one artist go around branding their own sound? While this sounds complicated in reality it really is quite simple. Like many times before let’s take a look at an example, the artist  “Young Jeezy”. For everybody that doesn’t know Young Jeezy,he is a down south rapper from Atlanta and calls himself  Jeezy The Snowman  and used a Snowman for his emblem we all know what he was talking about and when you seen the Snowman anywhere you see a snowman you would  relate it to Young Jeezy he did a good job branding himself, same thing for Trina Da Baddest Bitch when you here baddest bitch its related to Trina due to her branding that with her name all over the place.

So with all this said, what can we get out of the entire ordeal. Branding music simply means that you need to understand what kind of emotions and what kind of tone your songs have, do you express anger or love through your songs, and is the general tone of your music dark or mild? Understanding your own music is the most challenging part of the entire process, and will ultimately lead to the understanding of it. Your ultimate goal should be to make the music your fans recognize and love. And when they hear one of your new songs they immediately say, “Is this a song from such and such ….”

This method of promoting your music can be implemented into the marketing campaigns you already have in motion. We previously mentioned that business cards and flyers were a good way for you to promote your music. What we didn’t mention is the fact that you can put some of the more catchy lyrics on to the flyers and business cards, making the words spin inside the persons head the whole day, while this can be psychological warfare to some degree, all is fair in love and war. If your ready to brand yourself and start really building your fanbase everywhere we got you covered at www.MixtapeCoverKing.com we can get you your branding package deal today for a affordable price you can checkout an example below of a fan generating business card. These are a great marketing tool. Hell you can be at the Mall and see some teenagers who look like they listen to your type of music and hand them a card. they will be excited that they get to meet a musician  two They won’t have no choice but to look at you  like a  a professional because you will have a professional designed card and that will bait them to check you out on the links you provide on your card. The good thing is that if they like your music they will post and share it on facebook , tell their friends and more.So start building your fanbase and branding yourself today  Use the contact link above and we will contact you within a hr.