Last May I said I’d pick Spotify Marquee over Facebook Ads. Now I’m not so sure. With 28 Marquee campaigns under my belt, I’ve got a lot more data to draw conclusions from. I’ll share all the important metrics and compare them to my current Facebook Ads campaign below. For a detailed explanation of what…
Unless you’ve been avoiding social media (good for you), you’ve likely heard of ChatGPT, a conversational AI that’s currently free to test. It does a lot of things really well, and some things quite poorly. It’s a consummate bullshitter who will readily and unapologetically admit to being wrong. Can it write lyrics? You betcha. For…
Last weekend, I had some time on my hands. My wife was in Vegas for a soccer tournament, my daughter was at UCLA for a Model United Nations conference, and my son was at UCI where he always is. So I went out drinking. Haha, no I didn’t. I stayed home and worked on expanding…
When it comes to Spotify promotion, I’ve tried just about everything short of billboard ads. Here’s a quick and dirty list of ways to promote your music on Spotify, with links to my posts on each topic: You can use Spotify’s own tools, like Marquee and Spotify Ad Studio. You can direct potential fans to…
I’ve been running a Spotify growth campaign through Rise since May of 2021, to the tune of $225 per month. Yessirree, that’s a lot of money! Nearly $4K to date. I first mentioned Rise in this post from September 2021, and have been promising a review ever since. Why the delay? They’ve revamped things significantly…
No doubt you seen AI-produced images popping up all over social media. One such AI is DALL-E, credited with creating the world’s first AI magazine cover. The one I’ve heard the most about is Midjourney, and the beta is now open to all! Over the past couple of days, I’ve had a ton of fun…
A How I’m Promoting My Music This Month email subscriber recently asked: I would personally be really interested in an overview post of where you are at and what you are trying to achieve with your promotion. Both in terms of fans, reach, impact and financial side – I’d love to understand the big picture…
I last wrote about Spotify playlist pitching back in January, when I detailed my campaign with Playlist Blaster. I’m still getting thousands of streams per month from those placements! As much as I’d love to hire them again, I’m not made of money. So I decided to pitch my single “Crystal” the old-fashioned way: reaching…
This changes everything. Over the course of many posts, we’ve established that I can get potential fans from Facebook and Instagram to my latest release on Spotify for about $0.20. Today I’m going to make a case for paying $0.50 to do the same thing from within the Spotify app instead. Let me back up……
How do I promote my music to streaming? You’d be forgiven if you thought it was 100% Facebook and Instagram ads to Spotify. I’ve written about Facebook Ads many times, and they’ve become my most popular posts. The biggest challenge is getting potential listeners off Facebook and Instagram and over to Spotify. Wouldn’t it be…
I recently explained my strategy for choosing the 22 Spotify countries I typically promote to Now minus one evil empire, it’s 21. Those countries were chosen with the express goal of growing my audience on Spotify. If I were planning a tour (I don’t perform, but hypothetically) I’d make different selections. Similarly, if I wanted…
Did you know that each time your song is streamed, it generates a mechanical royalty that is not paid through your distributor? You need a publishing administrator like Songtrust to collect it. For a $100 setup fee and 15% commission, Songtrust will help you sign up with a PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SOCAN, IMRO, etc) if you’re…
In our last installment, I detailed a process to evenly distribute your Facebook and Instagram advertising budget across Spotify countries by splitting them into tiers. But what if you’d rather focus on only the countries most receptive to your music? I had an idea to do just that, and so far it’s worked out pretty…
You’ve got a new song and you want people to hear it. Despite all the iOS tracking changes, I still think Facebook and Instagram ads to Spotify are your best bet. For an overview, check out my post on Facebook Ads for Spotify Best Practices. I’m going to tackle a very specific problem here. Are…
A little over a year ago, I released an updated version of my Depeche Mode tribute album with three new tracks. I detailed my attempts to sell the CD to strangers on Facebook here. When the dust settled, I still had over 700 of them in my garage. The tribute has always been the best…
I don’t talk about YouTube much, but it’s my top priority right behind Spotify. Most of my videos consist of music over static cover art, yet I’ve managed to accrue 15.2K subscribers, and I add another 250 or so every month. Still, I’m no expert. Over years of tinkering, I’ve landed on an ad campaign…
I’ve been releasing a new track every 4-6 weeks for some time now, and I daresay I’ve got it down to a science. I upload the track to DistroKid a month or so before release, then work my way through the checklist below. Many of the items won’t apply to you, but they’re sure to…
I gave up on Spotify playlist pitching services. They just aren’t worth it. First off, there’s the risk of bots, which could get you booted off Spotify. Every service denies using them, but what human would choose to listen to unthemed collections of random songs by unknown artists? And yet there they are, sometimes with…
Tunespeak is a loyalty platform for musicians where fans earn points by performing various actions like streaming tracks, watching videos, and referring friends. Those points serve as entries in a raffle. The more points a fan accumulates, the better their chances of winning a prize. I reached out to Chris Rhein, the Head of Artist…
I’m exhausted. My 12th full-length album Mages was released on December 3, and I’ve been going nonstop since October. The album promotion was a series of five distinct campaigns, not counting two singles releases over the same time period. I’m going to break it down into bite-sized chunks and perhaps draw a conclusion or two….
I’ve got an album launch coming up, and I’m determined to make it my best yet. That means putting together bundles of merch that my fans will actually want, and not just what I think is cool. I would’ve been happy taking a chance on cassette or MiniDisc, but vinyl is too big a proposition…
I haven’t had much luck with influencer marketing, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying! Since writing about Breakr earlier this year, I’ve done some cheap influencer campaigns on SubmitHub. None of them moved the needle in any measureable way, but my experiences have all been positive. When the SpaceLoud team reached out and offered…
Matt Mancid and I just released an album of 80s covers that we’ve worked on since 2013. As much as we would’ve loved pressing CDs or even vinyl, paying the rights for 1000 CDs doubles the cost. We would’ve absolutely, positively lost money. So we released it digitally in two flavors: a 12-track standard edition…
It’s been four months since my last post. Sorry about that! My new album of 80s covers with Matt Mancid has been keeping me busy, among other things. On the promotional front, I’ve got plenty of irons on the fire, including three big reviews in progress. I share all the details in my How I’m…
That's all, folks!
That's all, folks!