IOTM Blog
Posted: Jan 31, 2023
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post originally featured in the Symphonic Distribution Blog.
"Effective marketing is a fundamental part of being an artist. Without it, you, your music, and your branding can only go so far. This is where spending the money for thoughtful and dependable marketing comes into play. But how do you know how much money is the right amount to help you achieve your goals? In this part of our marketing journey series, we’ll break down everything you need to know about building a successful marketing budget..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Jul 19, 2022
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Haley McCarthy of Bandzoogle.
"A landing page is the perfect combination of creativity and action, allowing you to gain more fans and build a lasting relationship...As a musician, you can cater to this part of the fan experience with well-crafted newsletters...To build your mailing list, you can create a custom landing page on your music website to capture fan emails. But what is a landing page and how do you encourage fans to sign up for your mailing list? Let’s explore how to use the email opt-in landing page to build your email list!"
View Full ArticlePosted: May 17, 2022
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Feature.fm, an all-in-one music marketing solution to get more fans, boost streams, and grow your sales.
"Smart links are shareable URLs that automatically route fans to your music on their preferred streaming service. You can learn more about your fans by using a smart link because it tracks engagement analytics and it allows you to customize the landing page with your own artwork or music video."
View Full ArticlePosted: May 10, 2022
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Cyber PR, originally featured on the Cyber PR Blog.
"As modern technology continues to advance, more and more artists and fans become reliant on the digital realm. Social media becomes the central ground. This triggers a domino effect where one artist starts a trend and the rest follow behind as they fall into the oversaturated crowd. Due to this over-saturation, it’s nearly impossible to generate enough attention to be big. For those who wish to follow a different path, there are other ways to stand out." View Full Article
Posted: Feb 14, 2022
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Anthony Pacheo, founder of ground-breaking marketing analytics platform PromoteKit.
"As a marketing consultant, I get asked the golden question on the daily: what is the best way to market your music? The answer? There is no best way! The best way is the way that works for you. And that is exactly what we will be discovering together in this blog post. Here are 3 music marketing hacks you need to know before you release your next track."
View Full ArticlePosted: Nov 22, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Leonard Patterson of Artist Collective AKA @ac_leonardp.
"Regardless of the true meaning of the holidays, one thing is universal. People will flock to the stores, click on shiny objects, and buy. the. stuff. Whether or not you have “stuff” to sell already, here are a few easy-to-implement marketing, content, and planning ideas to help prepare you for the season."
View Full ArticlePosted: Nov 15, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post by Kate Polishchuk, expert on the Russian and CIS music market, founder and CEO of Wool Music & steezy.
"Every artist at some point of their career meets a need to expand the geography of their listeners. For some it will be a natural development of an already successful career, and for some it will be a necessity caused by small market opportunities in the terms of a particular genre in the country of their residence. Regardless of what your current situation is, I would like to share my overview on international expansion for musical artists, so as its advantages for your career and some things that you will have to keep in mind while “conquering the world” =)."
View Full ArticlePosted: Nov 1, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Cyber PR, originally featured on the Cyber PR Blog.
"We have already outlined building a solid foundation for your music marketing plan in Part 1 – The Nuts & Bolts, and outlined strategies for a successful music release launch in Part 2. Now it is time to kick back and relax for a little while before starting to write material for the next single, album, or EP that you’ll release down the road right? Wrong… couldn’t be further from the truth." View Full Article
Posted: Oct 25, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Cyber PR, originally featured on the Cyber PR Blog.
"Do you have a plan for your next music release? This can be a single, a music video, an EP, or an album. In our most popular series The Musician’s Guide to Marketing Plans, which we call Total Tuneups, we address the overlooked importance of having a marketing plan in place...Here in Part 2, we break down the next five elements for your music release so you don’t miss a single opportunity." View Full Article
Posted: Oct 18, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Cyber PR, originally featured on the Cyber PR Blog.
"In this ever-changing landscape, we see the same issue consistently: A vast majority of musicians don’t create long-term marketing plans. Artists skip this vital part of their music careers. Plans used to be the responsibility of the record label when artist development used to be a thing or a great management team but very few artists are lucky enough to have either (or in many cases, they don’t want a label). This leaves a void in today’s new music business...You work so hard on new music, dedicating hours practicing, writing songs, not to mention spending large sums of money recording, mixing, mastering, creating visuals, and album artwork only to rush the release with no marketing plan in place." View Full Article
Posted: May 17, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post by Christopher Carvalho from Unlock Your Sound.
"Think of a shop. The top of the funnel is the people walking past the shop. The first layer down is the people window browsing. The next layer down is the people who enter. And then the next and final layer is the people who purchase something."
View Full ArticlePosted: Feb 15, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post from #1 YouTube Consultant Derral Eves.
"I understand that a lot of musicians love to share their music in live settings, and why wouldn’t they? In the past year, unfortunately, sometimes the only option for exposure has been online. So...what better time to focus on your YouTube audience than now?...How do you build a bigger audience, foster brand loyalty, and grow revenue?"
View Full ArticlePosted: Aug 3, 2020
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post by David Figueroa of Avoid Cliche, a musical artist branding company.
"You've made your music, but you need to decide how you want to present yourself to the world. Even if you're making music just for fun, it's always good to give people an extra layer of the artistic story, so people remember you. Here I'll explain why visual branding is vital and even get into some fun psychology. Buckle up..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Jul 6, 2020
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Kai Marks & Lyron Haceon of Les Flair, an electro-pop project based in London.
"With not a single track released and a limited budget in tow, we sold out a string of live shows across the UK, led by word of mouth alone. Which we've now come to realise, is the most powerful tool in music marketing. Here’s our top tips for building a strong WOM foundation and translating hype into sales..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Jun 1, 2020
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post by David Figueroa of Avoid Cliche, a musical artist branding company.
"When you've got your music ready, you want to send it out into the world for everyone to listen to it, but the worst thing you could do is to send it out in shoddy clothing. It's important that you get your branding right. You only get one shot. Here are some common mistakes that I see over and over again. And how to avoid them."
View Full ArticlePosted: May 4, 2020
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Vinnie Hines, Co-Owner of Artist Collective AKA @ac_vinnie.
"At Artist Collective, we’ve found that the most effective way to engage with your fans is through meaningful relationship building exchanges. These types of connections are invaluable and the foundation on which any type of notoriety is built...We urge you to use text message marketing for these 5 AMAZING REASONS..."
Posted: Sep 24, 2019
Category: Marketing
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**This post originally appeared on the Disc Makers Blog for indie musicians by Randy Chertkow & Jason Feehan of MakingMoneyWithMusic.com. Reprinted with permission.
"Your best social media strategy is to entertain your fans throughout the year rather than just drop an album and disappear. Create a strategy to make your fans anticipate your every release — music, videos, merch, and more — and attract new fans in the process."
View Full ArticlePosted: Feb 25, 2019
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Nicholas Rubright, founder and editor at Dozmia, and lead guitarist for the band Days Gone By.
"with email marketing, you have direct contact to some of your most passionate fans...While [touring] can be a great way to gain exposure to a new audience, if you want to develop good relationships with the venues you're performing in, it’s also important that you get your existing fans to come out to the show...With these things in mind, how do you leverage your email list to get people to come to your show?"
Posted: Jan 7, 2019
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Cassie Phillips as featured on The Music Entrepreneur HQ.
"No matter how talented you are, or how much effort you put into your music, getting exposure for your art can be a challenge...To effectively promote your music, you will need to develop your marketing skills. Marketing will allow you to raise awareness for your brand and be better connected to your target market."
Posted: Dec 10, 2018
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Joshua Bloomberg, singer-songwriter for The One 800s out of Los Angeles.
"A lot of you must be wondering, Why the hell is Josh trying to get me to call a 1-800 number?...for the curious, I thought I’d explain why I’ve chosen this archaic method of communication to promote my new album – and why one week later it’s already a success."
Posted: Nov 26, 2018
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Alper Tuzcu, a Berklee College of Music and Denison University alumni, a Boston based guitarist, songwriter and producer, and regular contributor to the Adva Mobile Blog.
"A high stream-count on the first day of your song release can be an indicator of success for your newest song or album on various streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Why is this important? Because in order to get placed in large playlists with thousands or millions of followers, you have to boost your first-day stream totals AND also be getting fans to save your song to their queue or library."
Posted: Apr 23, 2018
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Jordan Gates, of Megaphone Agency.
"A huge component of being successful in the music industry has to do with how you market yourself...Creating a powerful brand will help you achieve [lifelong fans]. Your band is the music making machine that will enable your career, and your brand is the face of your music that people will learn to know and love."
Posted: Apr 2, 2018
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Anitra Jay of TheCraftyMusician.com.
"Writing strong email content to engage your fans is not an easy task...The first most important thing about a good email is its subject line. The majority of your fans will use the subject line to decide whether or not to read your content. So if you want to get your fans to open your email newsletter, you have to write appealing headlines."
View Full ArticlePosted: Mar 26, 2018
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Lucie Watson of Platoon.
"If you’re working in the music industry as an artist, manager, label, distributor or any other field you’ve probably had or heard a conversation about the power of Spotify playlists. Some questions I frequently get asked are “how can I get on Spotify’s playlists?” or “how can I get on New Music Friday?” or “when can I start to see playlist additions?”. What I’d love to tell artists and managers is that it’s easy...but more often than not the response I give is this: there’s no way I can guarantee placement on a playlist ahead of a release."
View Full ArticlePosted: Jan 29, 2018
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Scott Aumann, originally featured on The Legit Musician blog.
"Find out what your fans want by asking them. I learned this little tip by following online guru Michael Hyatt. He does a reader survey every year, and he learns how to run his business from the results. Don’t be afraid to ask your fans what they want. Most of the time, they will be excited to share this info with you. It will make them feel more connected to you as well."