Music Marketing & Promotions

Preparing to show your talents to the world is not the easiest task. Certain steps must be taken to ensure maximum exposure. Here are a few things to consider as recommended by Rick Goetz.


Research – it’s amazing to me that people don’t spend more time looking into where they want to be, who they want to write about them and what other groups, brands or niches they should be in contact with. This process includes making a methodical list of your existing relationships and how they can be leveraged to make new ones as well as just making lists of different types of people you need to contact. What other bands in neighboring markets do you need to know who are on your level or slightly above? What club owners do you need to meet? What blogs write about artists of your genre and stature that really need to be writing about you? What message boards, festivals, meetup.com groups or other gatherings do you need to be a part of to make this work? If you don’t know – that’s step one – go find out by doing your homework and seeing what people who are just slightly ahead of you are doing that is working for them.

Marketing Materials- In addition to having all of your content together and a sketch or your next several months of activity I think many artists forget about getting their pitch materials tight. Sure – you can approximate many of the sales functions that used to be handled by the sales departments at record labels (at least digitally) by getting your new music distributed through tunecore or reverbnation or partnering with one of the aggregators and of course – making sure that the positioning of your products is front and center on your homepage and social network pages but that doesn’t mean the “selling” is over. To make this work you are going to pitch yourself over and over again and you had better get a form letter, a one sheet and / or bio about your project together ASAP to make you sound as good as possible. You will be pitching yourself to journalists, club promoters and other bands over and over again – Sharpen your pitch and have marketing materials ready to go long before your release date.

A Reasonably Paced Rollout plan – I see people trip over this one all the time. An artist or band has a new record coming out so they quit their jobs, max their credit cards on several weeks or months worth of promotional efforts and throw all of their resources behind one of their early releases. This is a surefire way to land yourself in trouble. Don’t quit the day job just yet, don’t plan a US tour when you’ve never left your home market and don’t spend all of your money around a six week push of an album. Your career has to be sustainable – sure hiring the philharmonic to back you on your CD release show could help you move the needle with local press but you had better make sure that you are not breaking the bank because at the end of the day you have to figure out a way that you can continue to make live and recorded music on a regular basis – invest in that first. Regional touring, home recording gear and cultivating relationships with studio owners and producers are great spends of your money and time. It is about building a house one brick at a time not about going to get a gold plated roof when the foundation isn’t built. Pick a few markets you need to start with, find a touring schedule (or webcast schedule for that matter) that has you maintaining contact with your home market on a regular basis and slowly expanding in concentric circles outwards. You have to figure out a way to make music, video and content related to your art on a regular basis and for most of us this means finding a way to be consistent with a slow and steady approach.

For more info on articles like Music Marketing & Promotion visit Rick Goetz website.

What's your take... leave your comments below.

How To Write A Great Song For Someone Else

By Jordan Galland
Performer Magazine June 2010

THE TRUTH IS, when it comes to making art of any kind, there are no rules. But when it comes to music, by recognizing patterns, charting your strengths and weaknesses and navigating the diverse expanse of aesthetic styles, you'll be able to create unique, well-written songs, whether they're for you or for someone else.

1. Break It Down And Decide On A Genre I write mostly pop music and collaborate with people who are looking for my particular take on the genre. But if you're the one seeking out a recording artist in hopes that they'll want to perform a song you've written, start from the very beginning. Break down their particular genre as thoroughly as you can. Identify what makes the drum fill sound like a perfect fit, the guitar riff shine a little brighter or the bass line carry the melody. A comprehensive breakdown of modern pop music begins with dividing songs up into categories according to shared audible characteristics - dance, rock, folk and so on. It's not unlike a biological classification (animal, vegetable, or mineral); you've got to know which entity you're dealing with and then of course you can mix and match.

2. Find Your Audience Not unlike trying to write a song for yourself, determine who your audience is. When David [Muller, formerly of Fiery Furnaces] and I started out, ten years ago, we were making this mellow, spooky-tinted music, but out of necessity for getting audiences into it live, we ended up going for a more energetic, dance-rock kind of sound. In this case, you're appealing directly to an artist, so absorb as much as you can about them. Listen to their records, read their bio, research other collaborators they've worked with. If you recognize a pattern, decide if it would be best to stick to that pattern (read: give them what they want) or completely surprise them with something they may have never thought they were capable of.

3. Anticipate What They'll Love Think about writing this particular song the same way you would write a script, hoping that a specific actor will get attached. Write the part for that actor, not for yourself. Sean Lennon and I have been friends for years - he's played in my band and I've written songs with him - so we have a shared vocabulary for music. We've both always been into soundtracks and have spent a lot of time talking about film music, and allowing it to influence our music together. In other cases, I'll completely separate myself from the project. What would showcase my vocals, or guitar playing and so on, might not be the same for someone else. Separate yourself from the project in that way.

4. Write It Down This seems like an obvious one. Yes, write down the song itself, but also keep notes. For me, lyrically speaking, being a songwriter is like being a scientific researcher. You've got to keep extensive notes about the things you notice in any given environment. Anywhere you go, everything surrounding you is information you can make sense (or nonsense) of later. Treat this notebook like Darwin's Journal. Fill it with inspiration and just plain observation. A sentence from a National Geographic article you're reading in the waiting room at the dentist. A misheard song lyric on the radio. A fragmented memory of a nightmare - it all goes in.

I got the idea for a song called "Softcore" from a sentence in James Joyce's Ulysses, "Soft Soft Hand," and on a totally different note got the idea for my song "Airbrush" not from a book but from remembering something my brother used to say: "the preview is always better than the movie."

5. Be willing to share, but have enough to go around Having a signature sound or songwriting style is an asset, but make sure you have a diverse enough catalog that it gives other performers something to choose from, but leaves you with some ideas too. You've got your own career as a performer to think about - don't hold back, but every once in a while it might just be worth it to keep that top secret bridge you wrote for your next album.

Courtesy of performermag.com

What's your take... leave your comments below.