“To please everyone is to please anyone,” as the saying goes. The idea behind this adage is not entirely false. As an artist, you need to build a true musical identity to stand out, and thereby to find your target audience.
Identifying your target audience is part of an editorial marketing strategy.
1. Building an original musical identity and aesthetic
On the shelves of your neighborhood supermarket, you choose one product over another based on the taste, the origin, and the packaging (at least a little, admit it). In music, it’s the same: a listener will listen to you on the one hand for your musical aesthetic and on the other hand for the way you present yourself to the public. For example, the artist Rosalía stands out with her mix of genres (from pop to flamenco to reggaeton) but also with the feminine sensuality she projects. It is therefore important to have your own artistic galaxy, composed of elements that differentiate you from other artists. To create the salt of your universe, the first question to ask yourself is: what message do I want to convey?
| Read also : Storytelling: Building a Universe Around Your Musical Project
2. Understanding and identifying your target audience
Once your identity is polished, you can implement a music marketing strategy. This begins with drawing up what marketers call a “persona.” To make a long story short, you have to ask yourself who your “quintessential” fan is. Here are some other questions to ask yourself:
- Age and gender (if relevant)
- Where do they live?
- What music genres do they listen to?
- Do they go to concerts?
- What are their listening habits (mornings in the shower or weekends on the train—or even both)?
- Do they have a particular style of dress?
- What values do they hold (for example, some artists strongly advocate for feminism)?
Once their portrait is drawn, you’ll have a lot of ideas about how you want to communicate with them, but also how you reach them: is it better for you to maximize your live performances to capture your audience or to create a few minute-long reels of your music?
Finally, to reach the people who tick the boxes of your perfect persona, Groover has dug up the 10 Top Music Marketing Strategies.
To understand who likes your music, you can use four great tools that—much like Ipsos—give you a load of data to help you identify your target audience.
2.1 Spotify for Artists
To start, we invite you to join us on the best-known music streaming platform: Spotify. They have created a tool that allows artists—whether signed to a label or not—to understand their fan communities.
You can discover the countries where you’re most listened to and better understand where your listeners are located. This will allow you, for example, to organize your live tours and convince concert halls that you already have an audience nearby who will fill their seats to see you. You can also see the artists also listened to by your listeners through the “Fans Also Like” section. It’s always interesting to know who you’re indirectly linked to. Most importantly, you can see which playlists your songs have been added to, including their names—often revealing the vibe your song gives off—a fascinating piece of data! You can log in and access this data right here. With Spotify for Artists, you can also manage your artist profile.
Looking to get into Spotify playlists? ⬇️
2.2 Apple Music for Artists
You can create your Apple Music for Artists account with this link. With Apple Music for Artists, you can analyze your performance in detail. In the Places tab, you can find out where your fans live, their listening habits etc. Under “Shazam”, you can find out what happens when a listener shazams your music: what do they do after discovering your song? In the “Download Data” section, you can collect all your data to analyze it however you like.
2.3 Deezer Creators
The Deezer for Creators app,
Created by the eponymous streaming platform, gives you the ability to “amplify your voice.” Like Spotify for Artists or Apple Music for Artists, you can check out all the data available to you to understand who your music appeals to and thereby evolve your audience. You can also share your releases with your community and refine your profile to show them the identity you’ve sculpted from scratch.
To connect and find out who in the world is listening to your music, check out https://creators.deezer.com/.
2.4 Social networks and target audience
We didn’t pull this idea out of nowhere—if your target audience is 45, they won’t find your music on an Instagram Reel. There’s no ageism at Groover, but it is important to be aware of this. If your audience is under 24, we’d advise you to look into Snapchat. If your audience is under 34, there’s nothing better than Instagram. Over 34, your best bet is Facebook. TikTok, which gained nearly 7 million users in 2022, seems to have become one of the must-have social networks. Finally, the oft-forgotten YouTube remains the number one platform in France by use.
– Translated by Kole Wright –
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Promote your music with Groover ⬇️