Top 10 Ways to Market Yourself as a Musician

Once you’ve developed your musical skills and performed great songs, you may feel like you should sit back and rest. 

But if you want to make it in the music industry, you have to keep up the momentum and market yourself as a musician. 

This self-marketing should continue alongside and between album releases to keep the attention of your fans. 

We’ve assembled a list of 10 great ways to promote yourself and your music. 

Create Great Music

No matter how hard you work at marketing, you’ll go nowhere unless you make music that people want to hear. 

Never stop learning, developing your craft, or trying new ideas. 

Never stop pushing yourself to compose new tunes or write new lyrics, or put a twist on your latest cover. 

You don’t need to be the next Beethoven, but you do need to hone your talents until you shine. 

Build a Mailing List

Start gathering email addresses as soon as possible, if not sooner. 

Invite people to join your mailing list and send out a newsletter at least every month to keep your fans up-to-date and involved. 

At all of your events, put out a clipboard where people can sign up to get the news when your next album drops. 

Offer a discount on your merchandise for signing up, or have a random drawing every month that people need a valid email address to enter. 

Once you have those addresses, they become a priceless marketing tool that you can use for years to come. 

Keep Getting Gigs 

Target your genre and play in shows alongside musicians with a similar sound. 

The only way to gain new fans is to get yourself in front of people who have never heard of you. 

Playing shows with other bands before or after you will expose their audiences to your music. 

GigFaster has provided a great how-to guide for getting gigs. 

Of course, if you don’t make sure they can see and remember your band name, they won’t be able to find you online, even if they do love your act. 

You want to send them to your website, because the next marketing strategy is:

Have Your Own Professional Website

Post content regularly to attract site visitors that otherwise wouldn’t know you exist. 

Content is the best long-term marketing strategy for any business. 

You should post more than your songs and music video on your site, though that’s definitely a great start. 

Highlight the best of your recent social media posts and give behind-the-scenes info. 

You can also blog about anything you love that is related to music. 

That’s how you keep people coming back. 

Don’t Be Self-Focused

Only your most loyal fans want to hear about you all the time. 

You’ll attract more fans to your website and social media feeds if you also talk about other things. 

Join online communities and cross-post with others for the benefit of you both. 

Do blog swaps with other artists or do a YouTube video together. 

It’s all about networking, not just blowing your own horn. 

As a Business to a Business 

Don’t get so focused on gaining fans one by one that you forget about gaining whole new audiences. 

If you market yourself as a business and communicate that way with other businesses, you can reach larger numbers of people at a time. 

Contact local radio and TV stations, and explain to them (professionally) why they might be interested in telling your story. 

Start Your Own Podcast

To draw in followers who don’t already follow your music, try expanding the topics that you cover and start your own podcast! 

By discussing anything related to your music genre, or making a music reviewing show, you can get yourself out there in ways that you can’t as a musician. 

Keep it exciting, and post news episodes regularly. 

Twice a month is a good start, but the best podcasts release new episodes about once a week. 

Music Videos! 

We’ve talked before about the marketing potential of music videos, but it’s worth repeating. 

People love them! Making a great music video every so often is the perfect way to maintain and grow your fanbase. 

For more information on how to make great music videos on a budget, read this article on the GigFaster blog. 

Specialize and Delegate

As your music career continues to grow, you’ll have more and more that you need to do. 

You can’t take it on all by yourself, so you’ll have to start building a team. 

If you’re a member of a band, sit down and ask everybody how they think the workload should be divided. 

If you’ve got someone who is great at social media, see if they’d be willing to manage your band accounts. 

Who does the best at calling venues and scheduling shows? And so on. 

If you’re a solo artist, you may have to reach out to friends and family for help. 

Make sure to offer something meaningful in return, though, so that no one feels taken advantage of. 

Which brings us to the final point:

Consider Getting a Publicist

A music publicist specializes in, well, publicity. 

They’ll help you draft press releases that get attention and send content to blogs and music reviewers. 

Once you’ve grown to the point that you can’t handle publicity AND your music, it’s time to get some help. 

The more you get talked about online, the better your search ranking results. 

That’s how you grow a real online presence and become a serious contender. 

Bonus Tip: Get GigFaster! 

GigFaster helps you put together an electronic press kit, compose a pitch, and pitch to venues. 

We also help you upload and organize your demo tracks for easy sampling when you pitch to record labels. 

Get gigs, get signed, and get going in the industry with GigFaster! Sign up today for your one-week free trial.