10 Strategies for Better Music Marketing

The advent of P2P file-sharing and streaming services changed music forever. If you only read the headlines, you might think the industry is on shaky ground. Google the phrase “Napster killed the music industry,” and you’ll see 242,000 results. Does that mean music marketing is dead?

Actually, the reality is very different. In fact, the music industry is growing at a healthy rate and has been every year since 2013. By the end of 2023, global revenue is projected to surpass $65 billion.

Not bad for an industry on its knees!

music marketing - music industry revenue by year

Despite this, music is a notoriously uneven playing field. Huge names like Paul McCartney, Jay-Z, and Madonna have become multi-millionaires, or even billionaires, off the back of their success. For every superstar, there are tens of thousands of unknowns.

Roughly 50 percent of artists tracked by online music analytics and insights provider Next Big Sound are considered “undiscovered.” These acts have small (and often shrinking) social followings, minimal views on Vevo and YouTube, and few (or no) radio plays.

Next Big Sound tracks hundreds of thousands of artists worldwide, but consider how many more artists it doesn’t know about. That proportion of “undiscovered” artists is likely much, much higher.

How do you make the leap from unknown to established?

For starters, you need to make amazing music. Beyond that, you need to get your music marketing spot on.

What Is Music Marketing?

Confusingly, the phrase “music marketing” can refer to a couple of different things:

It can be about using music in a marketing campaign.
It can be about artists marketing the music they create.

In this article, I’ll be talking about the second of those two categories.

10 Tips to Improve Your Music Marketing

I might not be a global music star (don’t worry; that’ll change when my mixtape drops), but I definitely know a lot about digital marketing. With that in mind, here are my top tips on how to improve your music marketing.

1. Have a Website

If you’re going to market yourself online, having a website is non-negotiable. It’s the one-stop-shop for everything about your act. If I want to check out your tour dates, book you for a show, read your backstory, or buy your merch, your website is going to be my first port of call.

There’s another big reason you should create your website: It’s a space you have total control over.

Sure, you’ll want to build a following on social media too, but third parties own those platforms. Those third parties can (and do) make frequent algorithmic changes that might dramatically reduce your reach overnight.

You don’t want your music marketing to be completely reliant on them.