Gaining Visibility: Good & Bad Practices to Promote Your Music

par Théodore de Newtone
Gaining Visibility: Good & Bad Practices to Promote Your Music

If you’re an artist, you’re probably familiar with the term “visibility“. To gain visibility is probably one of your goals to make sure your music is heard. In fact, it’s probably the reason you’re on Groover‘s blog in the first place. I have good and bad news. The good news is that you’re on the right track to successfully promote your single or your music project! The bad news is that gaining visibility is only a small part of your real goal. And, spoiler alert: there is a lot of work to do.

Don’t worry, none of this is insurmountable if you understand the different steps and their stakes. I’m Theodore, editor-in-chief of NewTone media, which also offers pre-label services for emerging artists (coaching, press relations, administration…). When working on the promotion of a musical project, “visibility” is a recurrent topic, and for good reason. Without it, there is no chance that the music, no matter how good it is, will reach the ears of the public, since there is none. To gain visibility, it will be necessary, even before thinking about releasing real albums, to build a base of people interested in your music, also called fanbase, and your identity as an artist.

Notoriety: quality + quantity

The first thing to understand to promote your musical project is that what you are looking for is “notoriety“, more than just gaining visibility. Indeed, the notoriety of an artist is composed of 2 elements. On the one hand, the famous visibility. It is the quantity of people who follow you in a more or less active way. This one assures you that your announcements of musical releases will be converted (at a very low rate) into listenings. On the other hand, the credibility that people give to your musical project. It depends on the media and the pros who talk about you and the way they do it. It reinforces the confidence that is placed in you, in your music, and multiplies your chances to convert your visibility into streams.

One cannot go without the other: if you have succeeded in gaining visibility and you now have thousands of subscribers but no media is talking about you, your credibility is limited because people may question the quality of your music or the causes of your popularity. Sometimes, an artist followed by 50K people on Instagram but without media coverage has less chances to be spotted by a solid label than an artist followed by 3000 people but supported by relevant media. On the other hand, if you have media coverage but a small community, you will have no real control over the effectiveness of your successive promos.

You understood it: in this article, I’m going to present you some good and bad practices to promote your music, gain visibility and credibility. Allied to a quality music (and yes, otherwise it doesn’t work…), they will allow you to get media coverage and to generate growth on your social networks.

| Check out: How to gain new followers on Instagram?

1. Contact the media

Looking to gain visibility? You want to get your music talked about? A logical (and efficient) reflex would be to contact the media who usually relay artists whose music is similar to yours. Why? Because their activity has gathered a community of people sensitive to this music. A part of the audience of these media can become yours if they relay your musical news! Moreover, the most curious people are often subscribed to several similar media. You got it: if they read your name, hear your tracks or see clips of your videos on media they trust, they will be even more intrigued by your music and your project!

And that’s what good communication is all about: creating enough interest in your music to generate action from a group of people.

Don’t just contact any media!

At this point, when I work with artists on their development and strategies to gain visibility, they are often already discouraged. I hear a lot of comments like: “But I already tried to contact Booska-P, they never answered” or “Such media answered me by telling me that the articles were paying and I didn’t have the budget”. Yes, some media charge for their relays (articles, posts, stories, playlists…) and the biggest ones relay mainly artists already visible or well connected. It’s a reality that may seem harsh but that’s how our whole society works: with money and contacts… but also with merit!

And the principle of meritocracy is to start at the bottom and work your way up. If you want to gain visibility to promote your music, you’ll have to be lucid and look for media that really correspond to your music. In fact, the common mistake is to restrict yourself to the most known media: either because you are not aware of the existence of others, or because you are unrealistic.

Groover will be an excellent friend to help you gain visibility and discover new media adapted to your music (and to contact them). But don’t let that stop you from being vigilant and getting information about them. Then, refine your research through social networks to discover other media. Instagram and Twitter are full of influential accounts that relay emerging artists to larger or smaller communities. There are no small benefits: even a relay by an account with 1,000 followers can be enough to make you famous! Think about the snowball effect: it’s enough for a subscriber of this media to spot you so that he/she listens to your music regularly, talks about you to his/her friends and family, or even better: allows you to make a good meeting.

Don’t contact the media in any generic way!

Many developing artists have a reflex that makes journalists and community managers smile in reverse: promo DMs. Private messages, to media and journalists, can be a good way to get an email address or to finely establish a first contact. But for the heart of your promo, i.e. to send the link to your project, your pitch, your bio and all those important infos, it’s rather by email that it happens. And again, it’s quite logical! For a media company, Instagram and Twitter are tools for spreading information: not for receiving it. Whereas in any business, the mailbox is well used to receive them.

As for the content of the message you’ll send to the media, it’s simple but it’s like anything else: you have to know. So here it is: introduce yourself with a bio of 2 lines maximum and a pitch of your piece in 3 sentences. Provide the release date of the project or single as well as the links to listen and/or watch it. Add a public drive folder with a few press photos and at least one video teaser.

Avoid: long speeches that drown out the essential information.
Preferably: a little context explaining why you selected this media.
Examples: it relays artists who look like you, its editorial line corresponds to your vision, it has a playlist that you think you can integrate…

Don’t contact the media at any random time!

Developing a strategy to gain visibility necessarily involves the notion of timing. If your title is already released, then it is probably too late to ask for a relay. The ideal is to send a first email 2 weeks before the release for a project, one week for a single. As much as they can, the media plan their calendars in advance. The earlier you go for your spot, the higher your chances of getting it (same for a James Blake concert). However, don’t hesitate to send a reminder e-mail on the day of the show; it can always be useful! 

| Check out: How to use Groover to Promote your Music with Success

2. Share about your musical project to gain visibility

Normally, you are already better equipped to contact the media and you have chances to win your case! Only, and especially at the beginning of the process, the media will bring you credibility more than visibility! What I mean is that these relays through niche media will improve the trust your community has in you and will bring you qualitative subscribers but at the margin. Unfortunately, you can’t be satisfied with that because you really need to multiply your number of subscribers.

For that, there are not 10 000 solutions: you have to communicate. And by communicate, I mean: post, regularly, on all platforms. Because as you know, social networks are governed by algorithms. They measure how often and how well you use their features. They will reward you if their calculations prove that you are a good user. The reward is that your posts will be better located in the news feeds of your community (thus, more engagement from them) and better referenced in searches (thus, more people discovering your profile and, potentially, subscribing).

Pictures of your lifestyle, studio sessions, sound samples, polls, covers… Create as many as you can and set a goal of at least 3 posts per week on Instagram, 5 on Twitter, 1 on Tik Tok, for example. Obviously, each artist will do according to his lifestyle, his tastes and his goals: some don’t like Tik Tok, others are acidic on Twitter… Stay true to yourself, but manage to seduce the algorithms!

Today, to succeed as an artist, you have to be a good content creator. So immortalize the moments that you feel like and post them. Don’t be afraid to let your community listen to your demos, to get their feedback and show them that you’re working hard! Ask them to help you make some choices, you’ll be surprised at how much interest people have in what you’re doing.

Finally, when you post creative and qualitative video content, don’t hesitate to sponsor it. On Instagram, the process is almost automatic and it can be very effective. On the other hand, the idea is not to simply throw money at the windows of Facebook’s offices: so stay tuned! You can place a small budget over a short period of time (for example, 20 euros over 3 days) and observe the results. If the advertisement is not effective, you can always stop it and conclude that your content was not optimal. If it causes a lot of engagement, you can repeat it with a bigger budget! But don’t get your hopes up too high with a small budget. It’s better to have one big, effective ad than a few small ones.

For optimal advertising, put yourself in the mind of the average user. To keep their attention, you’ll need a dynamic video in which at least one face (ideally yours) can be identified. Select a strong moment (the chorus, for example) of a strong song (validated by your entourage). With a budget of 20 euros, you can reach up to 6000 people. If everything is well set up, you should get a return on your investment and you will convince people to subscribe.

3. Be organized, plan your releases

You understood it: to gain visibility with your music, there is a big work of communication and musical promotion to make, and this work is very far from what you make in studio. You will have to organize yourself a minimum of 3 weeks in advance before releasing a project or even a simple single. This way, you will be able to make a retroplanning indicating when you have to contact the media and post content on your social networks. Don’t neglect this part, because the more it’s planned in advance, the less you leave room for mistakes and oversights. You didn’t give up until the mastering of your sounds, so give your music the promotion it deserves!

Besides, it’s a virtuous circle. By doing these practices, the media you will contact by email or by Groover, to promote your music, will notice that you know how to do it. They will be all the easier to convince. And to give you one last push, Groover & NewTone offer you a discount on your promo with the code NEWTONEBLOG10valid until November 30th!

– Translated by Betty Gonzalez Gray – 

To gain visibility, send your songs through Groover

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