In March of 2016, I published what quickly became my most popular post: These 59 Music Blogs Will Listen to Your Song, Guaranteed. Four years later it’s up to 1100+, and also includes radio stations, YouTube and Twitch channels, Spotify playlisters, and Instagram influencers. Jason Grishkoff, the founder of SubmitHub, walked me through the submission…
Your new music video cost $2000 to make. One week after its YouTube premiere, it has 134 views. What to do? You could share the link on your socials for the seventh time, at the risk of annoying your friends and family. But even if they click through, the lack of social proof is unconvincing….
John Gold, founder of Hypeddit, recently published a course called Fans on Demand Formula, promising a thousand new fans in one week. I put it to the test! Well, kinda sorta. I took three weeks, and experimented with different audiences more than any sane person would dare. But hey, I completed the training and am…
Spotify launched their Ad Studio platform early last year. I was giddy with excitement. For the first time, I could make potential fans hear my music. If they liked it enough to click through, my entire catalog was at their fingertips, AND I’d earn royalties on every play. Maybe I’d even earn enough to pay…
You’re probably familiar with song share links that direct fans to the music service of their choice. For example, here’s one for my last single: There are several free and paid options. I can’t say that I’ve tried them all, but I’m partial to Feature.fm Smart Links. It’s comprehensive yet easy to use, and offers several advantages…
Earbits is a personalized streaming radio site focused on independents, with no ads or subscription fees. Like Jango, Last.fm, and Grooveshark, they sell airtime packages to artists. At around a penny a play, it’s a relative bargain, especially since they only charge for songs played past the 30 second mark. Put another way, $50 buys…
Running a Facebook ad campaign is confusing. You bid for ad placement, but the price you pay bears little relation to your bid. What’s the difference between reach and social reach, connections and clicks, CPC and CPM? More importantly, is there any way to tell how many people played, downloaded, and shared your song, or…
I measure my success as a recording artist by the growth of my mailing list. The best way to get someone to subscribe is to offer something in return, and a great song is a powerful incentive. Here are ten techniques to negotiate that delicate exchange: 1. The classic squeeze page. You’ve probably stumbled onto…
When Spotify launched Marquee two years ago, I was positively giddy. My first post on the subject proclaimed that it was even better than Meta ads. Finally I had a way to reconnect with my listeners on Spotify, or at least those deemed part of my “reachable audience.” That reachable audience quickly climbed from 2.1K…
Three months of no posts! I’m sorry. But I’ve got a good excuse… Earlier this month I released my 13th studio album, Underneath These Dying Stars. I’ve got a lot to share with you, but I thought I’d start with something relatively painless and uncontroversial. When’s the last time you sat down and actively listened…
Groover is an online platform that connects artists with playlist curators, blogs, labels, and other music professionals. I mean, you’re not just going to shotgun out cold emails, right? RIGHT? 😅 It’s a lot like SubmitHub, which I last wrote about in 2020, but I’ll save a direct comparison for the end of the post….
I’ve always been skeptical of cryptocurrency. Still am. Early last year when NFTs were at max hype, I sent out an email blast to my fans declaring: I never got around to creating NFTs, and I doubt I ever will. It would by necessity drag you into the crypto space, and I’m convinced that’s not…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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’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…
Email is my #1 promotion tool. Always has been. I’d been using FanBridge since 2012, but it didn’t integrate with the WooCommerce shop I added to my site earlier this year. Mailchimp did. Moving all of my FanBridge subscribers to Mailchimp would’ve cost me $99/month, so I chose to maintain two accounts: FanBridge for “fans”…
Over the past few months, I’ve received a handful of emails asking me the same impossible question: “I love the blog, I’ve read all your articles, you’ve given me so many things to try… but if you had to pick just one, what’s the best way to promote music?” I bet you know the answer….
It’s always a good sign when a Spotify PR company rejects your song. It means they’re selective, a prerequisite to establishing fruitful relationships with influential curators. Virtuoso Music rejected my first submission, so I sent them three more. To my relief, they approved one of them: We really love “In Motion” and we think that has a…
Drooble is a social network for musicians. Like Facebook, it has a news feed with comments and likes. Like SoundCloud, it has artist profiles, radio, charts, and playlists. And like Fiverr, you can pay for things like radio play, news feed exposure (Artist/Tune/Video of the Day), and even professional services like mixing and mastering. The…
In a recent How I’m Promoting My Music This Month email newsletter (subscribe here), I mentioned that I was working through a long to-do list to promote my new album. Several subscribers emailed to ask for a copy of that list. It’s full of abbreviations, acronyms, and other indecipherables, so I figured I’d break it down…
That's all, folks!
That's all, folks!