Category: Strategies
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I Built a Windows XP Website for My Music
4 comments on I Built a Windows XP Website for My MusicRemember Windows XP? If so, my new website at colortheorymusic.com will feel instantly familiar. Color Theory XP features highlights from the Color Theory catalog…
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I Built a Meta Ads to Spotify Analyzer
I promote my music on Spotify through Meta ads. Money goes out. Streams, saves, and playlist adds come in. But are those things actually…
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What’s Working With YouTube Ads for Music
Last April, I detailed three strategies to get YouTube subscribers with ads. Since then I’ve added 11K subscribers, bringing me to 29K. In the…
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What’s Working with Meta Ads for Music
Meta has the best advertising platform in the world, and has for some time. The most reliable way to grow your audience on Spotify…
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My 5-Year Free CD Offer
Over the course of my career as a recording artist, I’ve released 13 albums on CD. Two of those got second pressings. Five years…
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When Every Country Isn’t Equal: Value Rules in Meta Ads
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for equality! And yet when I target tier 1 and 2 countries, the vast majority of my advertising…
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Image-Only Ads for Music
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but is it worth 15 seconds of audio? Meta Ads Manager seemed to think so:…
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How I Promote My Music
A reader of my How I’m Promoting My Music This Month monthly email recently told me: You always begin your letter by saying that…
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Our Co-Op Spotify Playlist
I’d been kicking the idea of a co-op playlist around in my head for a long time. Around the beginning of the year, a…
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How to Promote Your Music Without Social Media
I just… can’t. I’m not saying you shouldn’t! You really should. I mean, it would probably be better if you did. After all, social…
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How to Get YouTube Subscribers with Ads
YouTube has been pretty good to me. Since 2012 I’ve racked up 18K subscribers, 9.2M views, and 263K watch hours despite not having any…
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Spotify Showcase is Broken Too
Last month I wrote about how Spotify effectively removed audience targeting from Marquee. Worse, my campaign “targeting” all 55.2 million Spotify users in the…
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Spotify Discovery Mode Strategy
Before you ask, yes, that’s Christopher Columbus, who set sail across the Atlantic on a voyage to discover some fresh jams. I previously wrote…
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Are Lyric Videos Worth It?
Over the years I’ve managed to rack up over 17K subscribers to my YouTube channel despite only having a couple of “real” videos. Sure,…
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An AI Wrote My Lyrics (sort of)
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…
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Virtues of a Well-Trained AI
Last weekend, I had some time on my hands. My wife was in Vegas for a soccer tournament, my daughter was at UCLA for…
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Adventures in AI Cover Art
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…
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My US-Only Ads Experiment
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…
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How to Choose Which Spotify Countries to Advertise To
In our last installment, I detailed a process to evenly distribute your Facebook and Instagram advertising budget across Spotify countries by splitting them into…
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How to Evenly Distribute Your Facebook Ads Budget Across Spotify Countries
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…
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My Pay What You Want CD Offer
A little over a year ago, I released an updated version of my Depeche Mode tribute album with three new tracks. I detailed my…
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My Single Release Checklist
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…
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How I Promoted My New Album
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…
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What do your fans want? Ask them!
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…