How Do I Self Publish My Music? (Part Two)

Now that we have the basics out-of-the-way let’s get down to some specifics. What you want to do is to give your audience a reason to keep visiting your social media pages. Posting regularly helps this happen, but sometimes you need to include special offers. You can offer a free download to the one hundredth person that purchases your music. Be creative when it comes to this. It can be a little difficult to track these kinds of things, so let’s back up a little bit. You are going to want to set up your own website where you can sell your own music directly. Some of these will provide you with the necessary analytics to properly monitor your success.They will also provide you a much more lucrative income, if that’s what you’re looking for from your music.

Many of you have family, friends, relatives, fans, and just people that already like your music. They would be more than willing to go to your site to purchase your album or your single directly from you, than to purchase it from places like Spotify, iTunes, Amazon or any of those other streaming sites. Now don’t get me wrong streaming sites are great and they do a great service for the independent musician. They allow you to be independent. You can work your own music, and you don’t need a major record label. But you do need some sort of promotional budget in order to get out there and get everyone that wants to hear your music the ability to hear it. Some of you young cats are actually in a great position in your life as far as music goes. You already have a huge social media fan base. Because of this you’ve got friends that have friends that have friends on social media. This is what you grew up in. It's almost second nature for you to post what you’re doing online.

Once you get started with your music now you’ve got something to post. Do it every day! Even multiple times a day. Make a new video using your music every day. It doesn’t have to be anything super exciting, it could be something super silly as long as you have your music attached to it. What you want to do is attach your Music to it and find a video that kind of relates to something that you’re doing. Show yourself living in the world having fun doing the things that you do every day you don’t have to go out and do something special, because like I said most of you are already doing these things. If you shoot a video of your cat jumping off the countertop, slow it down, put it in slow motion, take that video and put one of your songs to it.

Once you have your music published through a distribution site, they’ll put it on all of the social media sites Facebook and Instagram and Twitter will have your music to where all you have to do is search for it and attach it to a real or video. If you do this every day people will eventually start recognizing you for your music and once that happens watch out, the fans will start pouring in. Watch out for solicitors selling followers. Usually, all you'll get are bots that won;t interact with your music. Now there are some other things that you can do, you can advertise on social media. That doesn’t get you a lot of return as far as bang for your buck, but what it does get you, it gets your name and your music out there in front of a lot of people. And that’s kind of the name of the game. The more people you can get your music in front of the better.

Don’t be discouraged at the initial payouts you receive from the streaming services, this is a numbers game. The more your music is heard, the better the chances that it may be heard by an executive that wants to include it in their television or radio show. Better still, build your fan base where you are in demand, and start getting shows. This is another revenue stream where the artist can make their money.