Marketing music online can sometimes seem like a fruitless process.
What platform is the best? How can I get more listeners? What platform will make it easier to go viral?
Music marketing is tough, but marketing in the music industry is very much a necessary process. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be so daunting.
If you want to promote your music on social media and don’t know where to start, we’ve got you covered. We put together a list of the best social networking sites for digital music marketing, as well as some record label marketing strategies you can use to get the most out of those platforms.
6 Top Social Media Channels to Popularize Your Music
1. Soundcloud
Soundcloud is the world’s largest open audio platform that serves as both a hosting site for music and as a social media community for fans and artists. Soundcloud is free to use, which makes it a great choice for up-and-coming artists or musicians on a budget.
Soundcloud repost is the fastest way to get songs onto someone’s profile page. All a user needs to do is find a track, click the repost button, and add that track to any playlist of their choice or to the top of their profile.
Because of the nature of Soundcloud repost, you can easy spread your music pretty far with the help of fans.
2. Tiktok
Tiktok is a video-sharing social community network. It has grown substantially in popularity in 2019, particularly among children and teens, and is typically used to create short lip-sync videos to music, as well as comedy videos.
Tiktok influencer marketing is definitely going to explode in the next year, and musicians can jump on this bandwagon by utilizing Tiktok at its most basic value as a lip-syncing app.
One way to do this is to pay influencers and popular users on the site to lip-sync to one’s new music releases. This would provide significant exposure on the site that could lead back to your artist page. While Tiktok music marketing strategies, as well as music influencer marketing, are still relatively new concepts, it would be wise to adapt to this app now.
3. Facebook
Easily that largest social networking site on the planet, Facebook can be an excellent place to market your music. In addition to marketing, it can also be a fantastic hub for building a community around your art.
Facebook is best for sharing articles as well as promoting events so fans can keep track of where you’re being covered and when you’re performing shows. Building an artist page is free and very easy to do. It’s also very easy to join music communities that are local to your area to further improve your reach. Record labels promotion is often centered around Facebook as well.
As a general rule, every musical artist out there should have at least a Facebook page set up with contact information, tracks, and directions to where users can listen to their music. This is very useful for press as well.
4. Instagram
Instagram may seem like a strange place to promote music. After all, it’s a hub that is very photo and video-centric, isn’t it?
That is true, and musicians can absolutely use the medium for promotion. Instagram Stories are an extremely popular way to market just about anything, including live performances, work-in-progress videos of artists practicing or mixing, and album art. The best way to promote music is by giving fans an in-depth look at different aspects of the band and the music-creating process.
Make sure that you switch to a Business account when you sign up so you can connect your account to your Facebook artist page.
5. YouTube
YouTube is a very community-driven platform, which could be excellent for musicians that are promoting their music.
At a base level, YouTube is perfect for hosting music videos, live performances, and behind-the-scenes videos. It is also a useful platform in that its analytics and metrics are very easy to track. At an absolute minimum, you can easily see on any one video how many views you are pulling in after uploading. Whether it’s for hip hop promotion or indie promotion, all genres can pull in an audience on YouTube.
6. Reddit
Reddit music promotion is an old trick that many indie musicians use to spread their new releases and reach communities of other artists.
When music marketing on Reddit, it’s important to know where to post. The following subreddits are good spots to start:
- /r/promoteyourmusic
- /r/music
- /r/wearethemusicmakers
- /r/thisisourmusic
- /r/musicinthemaking
- /r/listentothis
What do you think about these awesome social media channels for popularizing music? Do you have experience with any of these platforms and your own music promotion? We want to hear what you think in the comments below!