How to Promote Your Music in 2024: Tips and Strategies

I constantly hear from musicians that they don’t have any money to make a music video. I always say much to their pissed off grid that that really doesn’t matter. The idea is what matters the most. And this right here, Caroline Polachek on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, really, really shows. The idea and the execution of a good idea is what matters because this video is being shared everywhere because this is possibly one of the greatest late night performances of all time.

If you haven’t watched it yet, you should really look it up because it shows the damn good idea can be done for almost no money. Here’s one of the secrets behind how your favorite artists blow up. One of the things musicians forget is their bio is a chance to inception into their audience and press how they should think about you.

The Power of a Good Bio

Here’s what I mean. Numerous times I’ve gotten an artist album to get called record of the year contender by simply putting that in the press release and bio for them. And then I watch it repeated verbatim all the time. Other times I’ve seen an artist as one of the most respected voices in their genre. And sure enough, the record reviews on YouTube and TikTok are repeating the exact same thing I wrote, which then makes those reviewers audiences feel like they need to understand who the artist is.

And it keeps getting repeated over and over again. And the results are a fan base is built. New songs are the best way to promote old songs. So many of you write me or comment on my YouTube videos that you really want to promote songs you released that you really don’t think got their due. And I get it. You pour your heart out and believe in these songs and you want to see those numbers go up.

Promoting Old Songs with New Releases

Well, aside from re-releasing them and hoping the algorithm and playlist placements along with a new splash of attention will help you get those old songs. The thing I tell everyone is the best way to promote your old songs is releasing more songs. Since I see it constantly that an artist gets attention for one song, but then the fans find the old song that didn’t take off and all of a sudden that song starts to get its due.

Tons of artists and probably some of your favorites got a new push to an old song when audiences found it, but they find them because you draw attention to yourself with the best marketing tool possible. A new song. We all know Spotify determines if you can get into the algorithm by if you can get a high enough popularity score. What if I told you, you can monitor that score each day and hack it.

Monitoring Your Spotify Popularity Score

The free website Music Stacks allows you to look up your score and click on the popularity score and then you can see how it moves each day. So you can see how your marketing is affecting whether it’s going up or not. And if you’re getting into the algorithm and if you want to learn how to affect it, do the Google search on the screen now and you can see how I do it.

Music Stacks is a great tool for this purpose.

How to Get Your First Fans

TikTok is not actually the most popular way people discover songs they love. Now I know most people’s first guess may be Spotify or even YouTube, but that’s wrong too. According to Mark Mulligan on Media, we’re literally some of the only reliable people on music business analysis. TV is nearly 1.5 times bigger for music discovery and whether that’s people Shazaming to find out what song is playing or reading credits, it makes a lot of sense when you think of how Kate Bush’s nearly 40 year old song or Metallica’s 30 some odd year song did insane streaming numbers this year.

It’s literally not that shocking after all. I’m going to tell you how to get your first fans as fast as I can so you can build your fan base in a way that fans and the algorithm loves.

Building a Fan Base

First, we need to make a list of 20 to 100 artists whose fans would also like your music that have around 10,000 to 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Then it’s time to grab a spreadsheet like the free one I give away on my Kofi page. The way we’re going to find all those artists is by searching on everynoise.com which harvests Spotify data. On this site when you type the artist’s name, genres come up that they fall under that Spotify has given them.

Write these genre names down as these are often great hashtags to use on TikTok and Instagram for your videos. Then as you hear artists similar to you, head to their Spotify. Then hit the fans also like section on their page. Now we want to explore that and see if we find more similar artists that meet these qualifications and add them to your spreadsheet. As well, look at the playlist these artists are on and make sure to notate any that have an email for submissions and any that sound like you’d belong on them that are curated by Spotify so you can name drop them in your Spotify editorial pitch.

The rest you should try to find the curator using sites like Playlist Supply and submit to them. Now we want to find commonalities between these artists and make playlists you can put yourself on. Let’s say a bunch of them come up in the Spotify genre NPC music. What? You don’t know that one? Anyway, make a playlist of the artists and put three of your songs in the first 20 or so songs in the playlist. Add a description and title it something like “Best NPC Music” or “Intro to NPC Music”.

New finds NPC music, this is NPC music or New England NPC music. Add or swap out 2-4 songs every week or two and tag the artists on Instagram, Twitter, and Threads that you add to it making posts about the playlist as you add them. This will get the algorithm of all the platforms to start to see you as connected to small and upcoming artists and get suggested to the fans into those artists and when they listen to this playlist it will train Spotify to see you as similar to them for Discover Weekly Radio and other algorithmic playlists.

Engaging with the Community

Make sure to also follow all these artists on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Threads. And when you see the directors, photographers, playlisters, mixers, and mastering engineers they work with, follow them too. Make sure to comment, even video reply, duet, and stitch and repost from your artist account regularly so the algorithm starts to connect you to them too. Become a hub of your genre and strike up conversations with them. Do remixes, features, and collaborations with them to strengthen your algorithmic bond as it teaches these platforms to suggest you to their fans and vice versa.

When you make your own videos, experiment with all those genre names that we wrote down before as hashtags as the more niche the hashtag the more you will often grow. Concentrate on small hashtags with small followings not big ones like #musician. Whenever the musicians you’re friendly with release new music or do something big support them and hopefully they’ll do the same for you. In time you’ll all grow together as a scene.

Release Frequency

Putting on a song every two weeks only works for the exceptions not the rule. So there’s a funny thing there’s a lot of grifters out here selling some chorus with obvious information and even lies telling you to drop songs every two weeks but the fact is this only works for the exceptions to the rule. So often when artists release every two weeks when their song starts to catch on and get some momentum they’re on to the next one and it kills that momentum they had making TikToks each day and now that song is forgotten since they’re on to another one.

Never deny releasing a lot of high quality music after you have hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners locked in can really help build a fan base but this isn’t the way when you’re building a fan base trying to get those hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners. So when you’re thinking about how often you release music the first consideration should be do you have enough good material worth putting the effort into promoting since the most important thing is consistently sustaining your promotion.

Promotion is Key

If you do have a handful of songs ready to go in advance then we have to remember the instinct could be to just drop one every week but the problem is that doesn’t make people feel any of those songs are important. I mean they don’t seem important to you when you barely spend any time promoting them since you just keep dropping them without making a big deal. You’re not making a music video you’re not going on and on about the story of the song and you’re not making lots of short form content which is how songs get attention in 2024.

My data as well as experience as well as what I see with artists blowing up is releasing a song every two months is most commonly how they blow up. By making a music video a lyric video and continually telling stories it makes people feel like they should be paying attention since you’re making a big deal out of your song. Putting out a song every two weeks well that feels like you’re just throwing shit at the wall and desperate sorry.

Promoting Your Single

This is why putting out a song every four weeks is too often so in my comments there’s constantly people telling me putting out a song every six to eight weeks is way too long little clip to wait and four weeks has to happen for them but what they don’t see is when you look at the momentum of artists promoting on TikTok week four is often when things are starting to pop off and when you drop that next song and stop making TikToks around the first song you put out well it’s gonna drop off before it reached its full potential.

If you know me you know I recommend you promote each single for 60 days and then put out another one since consistent sustained promotion is the most important part of how you grow your music through promotion but so many people wonder what to post. Well I just made a thorough video on everything you should be doing on social media to promote your song if you head to my channel page you can watch right now.

Finding Your Unique Voice

So many musicians feel like they don’t fit in a specific genre so they can’t market themselves but in my experience that’s a good thing as it makes you unique but really you’re asking the wrong question instead of looking at who are the artists who are similar to you look at the fans of other artists you would appeal to. I think a lot of playlists like Misfits 2.0 or Aurora and they’re exactly just that artists with their own personality but there’s emotion in the music that as a thread fans connect to so when you’re marketing your music target the artist whose fans would most like to enjoy you not the artist who you think you’re similar to you get free promotion that continues to spread for months and months on end if it catches on.

Leveraging Memes and Trends

Let’s say your song has a lyric and music vibe that’s perfect for let’s say a video where a young lady describes how annoyed she is by male youtubers with deep voices talking confidently then others hear that song and then they talk about their gripe with that song in the back of it. This meme evolution snowball effect happens and as those videos get thousands and millions of impressions many users of TikTok jump the curiosity gap of seeing the artist’s name down at the bottom of the video and listen to the full song and become a fan. You don’t have to pay those imitators.

Best Link in Bio Apps for Musicians in 2024

These are the best Linkin Bio apps for musicians in 2024. Now that Koji is disappearing musicians need a new Linkin Bio tool and I got you. Beacons is the one I found that has the best looking profile with a free tier. If you want really good looking profiles and aren’t afraid to pay out for it Homey makes really amazing ones that can push merch as well as tons of other things but the app later which is an amazing tool for content scheduling has one that comes with its service that looks great and has a lot of powerful features.

Beacons, Homey, and Later are excellent choices.