1. Promoting Your Music on A Low Budget
A popular question amongst aspiring and emerging artists, is “How do I Market my
music without a budget?”
“How do I start a career with no money?”
“How do I market my music with little to no budget”
“How do I promote my songs if I’m broke?”
Now, don’t get the idea that you can build a sustainable music career by depending on
free or cheap options, because odds are your career will flop quickly. In this blog, I will cover
budget-friendly ways to tackle the different areas of music marketing. It’s important to
understand that marketing encompasses more than just music promotion to reach new potential
fans. It also involves other things like how to maintain relationships with your current fans,
accessing data to make better business decisions and having products to sell them.
Digital Music Distribution Companies
Music Distribution
When you’re just starting out, you can get away with uploading your music on free
platforms like SoundCloud and YouTube in the short term. This is especially true if you’re
starting music out as a hobby and having fun with it. However, if you plan to take your music to
the next level, these platforms usually aren’t the go-to places to listen to music. YouTube might
be the exception, but YouTube is no longer in the top 5 music streaming platforms. (Caddy,
2021) Eventually, you’ll want to place your music on digital service providers like Spotify,
Apple Music, and Amazon. As an independent artist, you’ll have to go through a music
aggregator like CD Baby, DistroKid, or Ditto, but they are relatively inexpensive, as low as $20
2. a year, depending on the service you choose.
Website
I’m a big believer that all artists need to have a website if they want to be a professional. Here
are some main benefits of having your own personal website:
(Kealey, How to make a music website 2021)
You can set up an online shop to sell your music and merch directly to fans without a
middleman taking their cut.
Establish your own personal online space where you can control your story while owning
the property. Remember your social media accounts are on rented land; you don’t own
your followers and your profile.
Create a landing page to drive traffic from your social media ads. This way you have a
place to market new potential fans and further develop your relationships with them.
If you’re new to the music business, you can hold off in the short term on creating a website,
since it can be a bigger expense. There are a bunch of different website platforms to choose
from, but it can range from $100 to $300 a year. On top of that, if you don’t know how to design
your own website, hiring someone to do it for you can be very expensive. If you want to try it
out, you can use free options on Wix and Weebly’s free plans. However, I do not recommend
using them in the long-term solution. While I’ve used websites like WordPress and Adobe
Portfolio, my favorite website building platform would have to be Squarespace.
Spuqarespace offers many templets ready for publication, making it easier for you to design a
website, you can customize these templets to better align with your brand. I have also found it to
be a simplified site to maneuver through.
3. Target Audience
You can’t market effectively without defining your target audience. These are the type of
people most likely to become fans of your music and how do you go about reaching them? This
is all needed to help guide your strategy and build a foundation for your music career. There’s no
tool or service to use to figure this out, to find your target audience, the best way to find your
audience is through research on who other established artists that are like you draw in. Once you
have an audience, the next step is knowing how to reach them. If you have the money, I’m a big
advocate of paying up for Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube Ads.
Email Marketing
(Prasanna et al., Why I choose email marketing for best roi 2018)
You might have heard often, that having an email list is essential for your music business.
4. Emailing fans is a more effective way of maintaining a direct relationship with them compared to
something like social media. (Nguyen, 2016) There are email marketing services, and they can
be rather pricy, but sites like Mailchimp are free with limited features. Another great email
marketing service is ConvertKit. They allow up to 1,000 subscribers for their free plan.
Content
(Gaskin, Advice on writing songs from an amateur lyricist: Be fearless and trust the process 2018)
Content creation is a must. Whether you like it or not, you’ll need content as a tool to
promote yourself and your music. This is often the biggest hurdle for a lot of artists, as you have
to be active and be able to put out new content consistently.
Photos
(Lopez, How to get started in music photography 2020)
5. Having high-quality photos to use in your promotion like social media posts, websites,
EPK (Electronic Press Kit), online profiles, cover art and more. For some things, you may be
able to get away with using a newer smartphone as long as you have the right lighting or editing
tools. Having connections to photographers is a plus when building you presence.
Videos
Lastly, when it comes to marketing yourself and your music, the most important type of
content is video. You don’t need to pour your life savings into one high production video, but
some moving picture with your music in it will do. You can do Lyric videos, Visualizers, Live
performances, the possibilities are endless.
(Cantor, Blackpink's "Kill this love" jumps to #1 on Global YouTube Music Videos Chart 2019)
6. Resources
Social Media vs email: 4 stats show which is a priority for indie artists. D4 Music Marketing.
(2020, March 13). Retrieved December 20, 2021, from
https://d4musicmarketing.com/social-media-vs-email-marketing/
Caddy, B. (2021, October 22). The Best Music Streaming Services 2021: Spotify, Apple Music,
tidal and more. TechRadar. Retrieved December 20, 2021, from
https://www.techradar.com/best/the-best-music-streaming-services-2021
Stream and listen to music online for free with SoundCloud. SoundCloud. (n.d.). Retrieved
December 20, 2021, from https://soundcloud.com/
YouTube. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/
Gaille, B. (2017, January 13). 11 pros and cons of Squarespace. BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved
December 20, 2021, from https://brandongaille.com/11-pros-and-cons-of-squarespace/
How to promote your music on a budget. Spinnup. (2021, January 4). Retrieved December 20,
2021, from https://spinnup.com/blog/music-promotion-on-a-budget/
Kealey, M. (2021, May 10). How to make a music website. Bandzoogle Blog. Retrieved
December 20, 2021, from https://bandzoogle.com/blog/how-to-make-a-website-for-your-
music
(n.d.). photograph. Retrieved from https://image.isu.pub/101116145625-
61c04e5a31814951b52975ce7dc7832e/jpg/page_1.jpg.
Prasanna, R., Marketing, Rohit PrasannaRohit PrasannaRohit is an Internet guru with more than
15+ years experience digital marketing. He writes on many industry websites on digital
marketing related topics., & Rohit is an Internet guru with more than 15+ years experience
digital marketing. He writes on many industry websites on digital marketing related topics.
(2018, June 8). Why I choose email marketing for best roi. ReadWrite. Retrieved
December 20, 2021, from https://readwrite.com/2018/06/13/why-i-choose-email-
marketing-for-best-roi/
Gaskin, B. M. (2018, June 18). Advice on writing songs from an amateur lyricist: Be fearless
and trust the process. Dance Music NW. Retrieved December 20, 2021, from
https://www.dancemusicnw.com/song-writing-advice/
Lopez, S., & Selena Lopez Selena's driven by learning and growing as a creative and as a
professional. This drives her to seek perfection in her photography and to adopt new
techniques. (2020, September 17). How to get started in music photography. SLR Lounge.
Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://www.slrlounge.com/how-to-become-a-music-
photographer/
7. Cantor, B. (2019, April 14). Blackpink's "Kill this love" jumps to #1 on Global YouTube Music
Videos Chart. Headline Planet. Retrieved December 20, 2021, from
https://headlineplanet.com/home/2019/04/13/blackpinks-kill-this-love-1-on-global-
youtube-music-videos-chart/
