Digital Marketing: What you need to know!

As an up and coming artist, getting your music out to the masses is your number one goal. Besides, how can anyone know who you are if they have never heard your music.  Digital marketing is becoming the new way to market compared to the old way of using a street team and hand delivering music by selling CD’s out of the back of your trunk. So in a world where everything is going digital, what do you do to grab the attention of your potential fans?

Erik Koral author of How to manage an effective street team in the new digital decade speaks about the importance of still having a street team. He calls it an online street team. Not only are Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, important they are also supportive in the “going green” movement.  What better way to get your music out to your potential fans than to broadcast it over these sites? Take Beyoncé for example; she used one video on Instagram to promote her self-titled album. Her fans did the rest of the work and all of her digital marketing for her!

Beyoncé’s fans are her street team. She uses the “Bey Hive” to help push her music. Beyoncé also uses the points that Erik lists in his article. She utilizes social media to help her make huge announcements. She sends out missions to her hive and rewards them with early release tickets, special invites, free downloads, and so much more. She allows them to participate in contests that not only benefit them but also the community. In the end, everyone wins and her music is promoted for free!

You can see Bey’s promo here: http://instagram.com/p/h2YFO6Pw1d/ as well as see why she chose to do a visual album here:

So how can one get people to still want to purchase an actual album in a world where everything is going digital? In 7 ways to bring back the physical albumexperience in digital music written by Chris Bracco, he discusses how album artwork, metadata, low costs, and building an experience are ways that help people want to still have that physical experience.  

Album Artwork/Visuals

If we refer back to Beyoncé’s digital release of her album, she used visuals for each song. This gave the fans something to look at while listening to her new music. You work hard on your music, so give the fans something to look at while they listen to it. Design a cover for each song or a slideshow that changes throughout the song. It will keep your fans engaged!

Meta Data

Meta data is also a way to bring the physical to the digital world. I will discuss the use and importance of Meta data in a future post. Meta data is important to your music because it tells the listener the name of the song, who it’s by, and can even give the fans your lyrics right on their iPod. So many artists forget to add this and when someone purchases the music through iTunes, there is no information of who the artist is or what the song is titled. How frustrating can that be?

Low Costs

Having a decent priced album or single can make or break an artist. No one wants to pay $20 for an album that has only 2 really good songs. Price your music based on what’s affordable to your fans and what you are delivering. If your music only has five tracks, you cannot expect your fans to pay $15 for it. Price your music accordingly.

Digital marketing is the quickest way to get your music in the right hands. It still takes hard work and dedication to perfect your masterpiece and to get it out to the masses. If you have the drive and the right team, you can use digital marketing to your advantage and make it just as good, if not better, than the age-old physical marketing.