How to promote your band in the digital age
- By Music Live UK -
- Jan 02, 2012
How can your music stand out from the crowd in the digital age? Here's a guest blog on how to promote your band in 2012...
Whether you are a recording artist or live band the digital age has changed music promotion forever. The internet is a great tool to spread the word about your latest album or an upcoming gig but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s easy. Success in the music industry is all about engaging your audience.
You should without doubt set up social networking on Facebook and Twitter. Google+ is the new kid on the block in the social networking sphere and is set to be huge. You should populate your profiles with audio clips; video and regular updates to your followers and fans and for live gigs create events and invite people to attend at least two weeks in advance. Invite all your friends and word will quickly spread.
Your own website needs to be well designed and engaging. You want people to stay on the site once they find it so lots of interesting content is needed. A blog on your site that you can update regularly will help your visibility in search engines as they love fresh content. Be sure to film your gigs and take pictures to upload on your site as often as you can. If you can’t afford a professionally designed website there are plenty of websites out there where you can build your own site for free. They key to a websites success is promotion and keeping it fresh.
You could pay for ads that appear on the first page of Google or ads on Facebook but you really only want to take that route if you have a product to sell as it can e expensive. A much better way is to sign up to high traffic band directories and gig guide websites and create a band profile with video and audio clips. Post a link in your profile so that interested music lovers are directed to your main website.
YouTube is a great way to share your music. With millions of visitors daily you should set up an account and post your videos on there too. Try to come up with interesting content such as a diary of your day in the studio or at a gig. If you can afford it why not make a music video? The cost of video production is now affordable so for a few hundred pounds you can get a quality music video produced.
If you are a recording artist you can use websites like Tunecore to distribute your music online for a small one off fee. It is without doubt the easiest and cheapest way to get your music on the websites of major retailers. You keep 100% of your rights and 100% of the royalties generated.
If use these tips along with more traditional methods such as flyers, posters, CD’s, merchandise then you can make an impact in the music industry. Success doesn’t happen overnight so be patient and eventually you will reap the rewards.
Image from Virgin Media
By Music Live UK. Blogs at Music Live UK and tweets at @Music_LiveUK
This guest blog complies to Virgin.com terms & conditions.
