Promotion “plan” for 2025
On my previous post I went through my content plan for year 2025 and on this post I will go through how I plan to promote that content. This brings us to one of the many challenges of an independent musician — resources. By resources, I mean time and money. If you have money to invest in promotion, that’s great, you will save a lot of time. If you don’t have money to invest, you’ll probably need a lot of time, in case you don’t already have a fan base and you’re just starting out. Like in my case.
I’ll go through free and paid promotion strategies (in another post), which I already am using myself, or intend to do so.
Free promotion in a nutshell
Free promotion is a really frustrating task, since you will probably have to use insane amounts of time, without any guarantee of results. But I know, there are a lot of free things I can do to promote my music and brand as a musician, and I believe that I should take full advantage of those free things, before throwing money in. A good question to ask is, am I really doing everything I can? There are alot of things that most DIY musicians does not take advantage of, like submitting to internet radios and blogs/websites, contacting podcasters/interviewers, stock music libraries, sync libraries etc. When I’m reading about music marketing on places like Reddit, most people seem to just pitch their new track to few playlists, and when they don’t get a placement, they get frustrated and give up. But there’s so much to do and I’m willing to put the effort in 💪
Social Media
For me, social media is more of creating connections, finding likely-minded musicians, collaboration partners and friends. I refuse to become an influencer or un-authentic artist that creates cringy content just to promote music.
I have already have some success with this! For example, Dreadsunshine reached me out on Instagram to start a collaboration, which has led to two songs already, me on vocals 😉Also I have made some friends in Brazil and Netherlands which have also led in to small collaboration projects.
I don’t have blueprint promotion strategy for social media, my plan is to be social, release good quality content and be friendly and genuine. But I need to be more active. I’m mostly just doomscrolling and posting one reel (acoustic short covers) per week and occasionally some selfies. That’s not enough. I need post more and actively look for new opportunities, partners and likely-minded people.
I’m most active on Instagram. I like the interface and usability. For TikTok, I just post the same reels as in Instagram, and that’s it. In YouTube, I also post shorts, the same ones as in Instagram, but occasionally longer vocal covers and demos of songs. YouTube is also becoming more social platform, so I need to keep that in mind. Also, I recently tested advertising with surprisingly good results which I plan to keep doing. That means, I also need to be more active on YouTube. I have Facebook account and a Facebook Page. In my Facebook account, I automatically post the same posts as in Instagram. Facebook Page is kind of my official artist channel, since I don’t have website yet. I will post there more information of ongoing projects, release dates etc.
Submissions
There are lot of submission types you can do. Most people focus solely on playlist submits, but there are so many possibilities, like blogs, radios, music stocks/libraries, sync licensing. Here is what I’m currently doing or planning to do this year.
Playlists
When I release new music, I always take advantage of Dailyplaylists and Soundplate first. They offer certain amount of free submissions daily/weekly. It is a time consuming task, since you need to find playlists that your song really fits into. Taking a quick glance at the playlist and listening to few songs is important if you want to get a placement on the playlist. I’ve tried few paid submissions platforms (Groover and Submithub), but haven’t have a good success with those. Also, I do understand that my music is not top quality yet, which can be a turn-off for most curators.
There is also this create-your-own-playlist strategy. I will probably make a case study about that in a separate post. But in all simplicity, it is creating your own playlist and promoting that playlist to build your fanbase. There are free ways and paid ways for this.
Blogs and websites
I haven’t sent any blog submissions yet, but I am currently building a list of blogs and websites that my music might fit in. Also, here is important to know your genre and not send a rock song to pop music blog. It is also very time consuming to go through different websites and their content, but I know it’s a crucial task to do.
After I’ve built my list of contacts, I will reach out for them through email, social media or any contact form of their choice, and try to start building a genuine collaborationship with the writers and curators. Also, here is where and Electronic Press Kit comes in, most blogs seem to require one when submitting.
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Here is my latest EPK, which I made all by myself using Canva 😁
I think it turned out great. It took few hours of my time, but I believe this was crucial for me to learn. Next time it will be much easier!
Radios
Internet radios can be a great way to gain more attention. I haven’t utilized this fully, but have some experiences already. For these radios I have already sent my music, with success:
Amazing Radio — Over few months, around 680 plays in UK and US. They have subscription model, which I tried last year. £3,99/month, where you get consideration for more radio stations. With free artist subscription, you get guaranteed plays on two stations.
XRP Radio — Sent them my music and got few plays on their radio. Also followed me on Facebook and introduced me shortly to their audience. They don’t take covers, so I don’t have many songs to submit 😁
I’m currently making list of internet radios, which I intend to reach out. Few to mention, Belter Radio, Radio Paradise, SiriusXM and iHeartRadio.
Most of internet radios take songs for consideration only in WAV or MP3 -format. Mostly MP3. To keep track on amount of plays I get, I downloaded ISRC Editor (by Sonoris Audio Engineering), to insert ISRC-codes to audio file metadata.
Stock music/Sync Licensing
Stock music libraries work in similar way than stock photo libraries. They offer royalty-free music for people to use in variety of media projects.
In my understanding, sync licensing works kind of similar way. Wikipedia says that “a music license granted by the holder of the copyright of a particular composition, allowing the licensee to synchronize (“sync”) their music with various forms of media output”
I haven’t signed up yet for any of stock music or sync licensing companies, I’m currently making a list of all the possible companies and services and will do it in one go. Also, considering my current level of quality, I’m not sure if I should take this step yet. I am planning to record some acoustic instrumental songs and start with those.
Staying organized
As I’m taking promotion more seriously this year, I need to stay organized. So, I started making an excel sheet with all the contacts for different media types. I couldn’t fit the whole sheet here, but you get the idea from this. I will keep track who have I contacted, when, which song I sent, and did I get any answer. If I don’t get any answer in one or two weeks, I can reach them again, and if I still don’t have any answer in one or two weeks, I will remove them to “blacklist”.
Summary
There is so much free ways to promote my music. It is very time consuming, but I want to take all out of it, before spending any real money on paid promotion. I have already made some tests here and there with small amounts of money, which I will write in my next post. But first, it’s time to put the effort in free promotion.
I’m constantly looking for new ways to promote, but these are the things I will first put my focus in to.
