Music Marketing: How To Build A Music Career

1. Intro (My story): Hello and welcome to the course. I'm jake. And for over ten years, I filmed and edited music videos that went on to reach more than 300 million viewers on YouTube alone during that time, I notice that although some of those artists were going viral, there were a lot more that we're struggling to reach that wider audience. I also noticed that while some artists were making a lot of money for music, there were a few artists who had a massive following, but they weren't able to turn those views into an income. I'm going to explain the reasons behind this and what DO successful artists did differently. I've also worked with many artists who didn't have a big following, but there were still able to make a career out of Music, proving that you don't need to be at the top to make a living from your passion. If you can spend every day doing what you enjoy and getting paid for it, then I'd still consider that successful throughout this course. What we're talking about, the techniques that you can use to build your fanbase. Get more views and plays on your songs, different hacks for your social media pages, and even formulas that you can use when Marketing your music to help it appeal to more people without losing your authenticity. Oh, go through all the different ways you can make money from your music, including ways you might not have even considered before, and money that you are entitled to, which you may be missing out on, will work out what your goals are in music and how you build a step-by-step guide on how to reach them and reach your full potential. If you have any questions, you can contact me using the details provided in the wild context and make sure that you join the Facebook group where you can ask for help from other members that are course and get feedback on your work. So On that note, let's begin 2. Why You Make Music?: Before we begin this course, I want to talk about why you are making music. I believe that you should make music because you enjoy doing it and because you're passionate about it. For many people, music is also a release and it's a way to express their emotions and deal with their problems. Although this course is about how to make money for music, I think if the only reason that you make music is purely to get rich and famous, then you will struggle. Also, your audience will pick up on it. Some of the biggest stars make it seem effortless because they enjoy what they do and they're having fun. It's also a lot easier to work hard at something you love because it doesn't feel like work, you're more likely to put in those hours and it becomes an obsession. So it is important to think about why you want to do this as a career. If there was a job available as a zookeeper, for example, people applied and both were asked, why do you want this job? If one of them talks about how much they love animals and live one said, because they want to make money, which one of those two do you think will get the job? Your funds are like your employers and there are thousands of overall is trying to get that job. So why would they choose you? What inspires you to do this, not just other music we're in life and your relationships and your experiences personally unfettered Bavarian lyrics about how good you are at writing lyrics. We all have a story to tell. So why not tell it? If you are just trying to make money and you don't actually love music, that maybe this isn't the right career path for you. Maybe try and do drop shipping instead? 3. Making A Plan: Today we're gonna be talking about how to plan your music career before you begin on your path to success, we need to define what success means to you, since we all have very different ideas of what it means to succeed, not everybody wants to go global or win awards. You might prefer to stay behind the scenes in a production role or as a songwriter, maybe you just want to do what you love every single day and get paid for it being something like a wedding singer performing cover songs or a music teacher, both require very different plans. It's important to have a rough idea of what you want. A saved rough as you goals can and probably will change over time. You could discover that you're hate performing, but you no longer wants toward a world and you'd rather settled down with a family and live a more peaceful life. We've done in mind, we're going to start by listing your goals. This is just about finding the right direction. So don't worry if you're not sure exactly what to include just yet, you can update this list. As your vision becomes clearer, you can write this list on paper, on your phone, whatever works best for you personally, I use Google documents because it's really easy to update and it's synchronized between my devices. It's okay if your goals are massive and they seem unachievable right now, if your goal is to set out the O2 Arena, for example, it might feel like that's too much, but the trick, write that larger goal down into smaller steps, such as release new Music where your social media presence and then performance smaller shows. These smaller goals can then be broken down into a series of small, achievable daily tasks. For instance, swearing your social media presence can become post the story on Instagram once a week, seek out and follow funds of other similar artists and spend 10 min a day replying to final comments. Social media and marketing can seem impossible to keep on top of the different platforms that are forever changing. But if every Monday you add in an hour of scheduling, go your posts for the week until your to-do list. And it becomes quite simple. If you'd like me, you probably waste an hour of a day scrolling or watching Netflix anyway. And after a few months of doing this consistently, you could have significantly grown your fanbase. I probably this thought process to all areas of my life, from buying my first house, to even building this course to get that future that you desire, you have to act now in the present, the law of attraction is all about visualizing what you desire. But I believe that you should take this one step further, visualize your goal, write down a plan to get there, and then most importantly, you have to act upon it and actually putting the work 4. Knowing Your Audience: If you want to do music as your career, it's important to establish a brand, will be going more in depth on branding later on in this course. But one of the first things you'll need to know is, who do you want to listen to your music? For starters, you should create music that you'd want to listen to yourself. You should be a part of your own audience. After all, if you're not passionate about your sound, than why should anyone else? It's important to stay true to yourself first, but most people enjoy several different genres of music. So it might be best just to choose one style at first and Focus on that. It's also key to understand that no matter what you make, not everyone is going to like it. Every artist, no matter how successful they are, will always receive criticism. Some of it which could be misleading. When I ran JD Z Media, I'd often get requests for drill music, but the channel I'd built was known for grime when I tried to cater to these new listeners instead, some of my core following one into that new style and many of those same drill funds who'd requested the Genre, they were saying the tracks with good. I'd rather see it on a different channel. Instead, the truth is, when you're trying to build an audience, there is such thing as being too versatile. You need to learn to differentiate between the kind of constructive criticism that is useful to you and feedback from people who just aren't meant to be a part of your target audience. So how can we figure out who your target audience is? It often helps the picture, the type of people that you think will listen to you create a persona for your ideal listener. Make a note of who they are, how they dress over is that there might be into and what they do in their day-to-day lives. You could do this as a mood board or you can even draw them if you like. When you have an idea of who your listener is, you'll be able to have more direction when it comes to what You Make. You might want to make certain references in your music that relate to a subculture. Or you can cover topics that you know, people like you will connect with. For example, are you planning on making lyrical battle rap for middle-class university students, or beanbag hip up for people who were bucket hats to festivals? Or is it new metal music for skaters and baggy jeans? All of these people will want to hear something different. So you're not likely to be able to make one thing that will appeal to all of them, don't flop. The battle rap channel has a very different target audience to mix that madness, which is focused mainly on drill music. They're both technically styles of UK wrap to an outsider. But in reality, those who listened to one, then after listening to the other, Of course not all funds will fit neatly into a box. There will always be some crossover, but it does help to have a general idea of who you're trying to reach as you discover who your audiences and who you are. As an artist, you'll be able to refine your sound and evolve over time. You might be thinking that you know, of artists who have changed their style dramatically and have continued success when doing so. Of course, there are always a few exceptions to the rule, but typically, these is I've had to re-brand later on in their career in order to reach a new audience. Stamen Melbourne, for example, was the vocalist for the indie rock band Blur. But now he is better known for being one of the people behind guerrillas who have had a completely different sound and aesthetic. As long as you don't stray too far from the brand that you initially established, you'll continue to grow without alienating your most loyal fans. It's all about finding a middle ground between your own creative freedom and satisfying the ones that are most dedicated to your work. Music is all about your artistic expression, but the music industry is about entertainment. So you'll need to find the balance between the two 5. Working With Your Budget: When it comes to Your Budget, everyone's is going to be different. And Your Budget can also be distributed differently depending on your priorities and your goals. First off, you need to work out how much you prepared to invest and then where the investment will go the furthest. For example, a 500 pound marketing budget could be spent on flyers, but it might be better off spending it on Facebook ads instead, or a combination of both of these. Don't worry if it doesn't feel like you have much budget to work in the beginning, or even if you don't have any Budget at all, Your Budget will hopefully grow over time and there's always ways to get things done for less. You can always ask for favors from people you know, too. Although I would suggest keeping this to a minimum. Otherwise, you can burn bridges as People can start to get resentful. If you're always asking for freebies and your friends deserve to get paid to at some point, you can also use Crowdfunding to get help from funds to fund your projects. Or even better, you can learn how to do things yourself, such as home recording, making music, and content creation, which will save you having to pay people. Although it's not ideal as this does take up a lot of your time. It can really help you out early on, but I still say it's beneficial to have knowledge in all areas anyway, as you understand the process involved when hiring of us to do these jobs, you'll also be able to make up for the lower funds through creativity. Because interesting idea executed cheaply is always worth more of an, a bad idea, but it's had loads of money thrown at it. A good example of this in effect, is the band okay go, we managed to go viral more than once thanks to their unique video ideas, I'd recommend setting your budget per single or per album, and then split that into different sections such as making a Song, which can include studio time, Instrumental costs, mastering, etc. and then the marketing side, which could include music Videos behind the scenes, sponsored posts, and all those kinds of things. When figuring out how to approach your budget, you will need to decide what's important to you, what will be the most beneficial to the project? What do you want to prioritize? Is it sound quality or video quality? Do you want to use expensive locations and professional actors but film with a less expensive DSLR camera? Or would you prefer professional grade cameras and drones? But without the practice, do you want to have an amazing music video and hope that it does well organically or a cheaper video and push it through paid ads. There's always going to be sacrifices made, but it's up to you to figure out where to make them. This is also a Business at the end of the day. So just because you have a budget available, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's always wise to spend all of it. If you're working with a weaker sung, consider skipping the video altogether. Make that trap part of a free API that are how you grow your profile and put that cash that you save towards a video for your strongest song. Instead, maybe post a few seconds, a different tracks on social media to see which ones get the best reactions before choosing, no matter what you're spending, you will also want to consider the returns you expect to make. And if those costs will make sense from a business perspective, we'll 100 K music video really make you more than a ten K1. The more you spend on this sort of thing, the greater your risks are. And this applies to labels. To have a career in music where you actually make a profit, you have to make smart decisions. And the formulaic approach of the mainstream Music Industry leaves a big gap for you to do something even more creative to help you stand out. Big labels don't want to take as many risks and there's more money at stake. So many of them will usually stick to what already works. So you can use that to your advantage. A high budget doesn't necessarily mean high-quality, while the business side of things is important, this is still Art. And Art is all about working within your constraints and limitations to utilize your creativity and your unique story to stand out against all that manufactured music that is out there. 6. Music Is Subjective: Music itself is Subjective, which means that we all like different things. And it's difficult to define whether a song is good or not because we are biased by our own preferences. So while I can talk about the theory of how to make your music better, and I can provide you with techniques that you can apply. It is up to you to choose which ones you want to use and whether they're right for you. I often see music that does well, and I think this is awful as I'm sure many of you do too. And while someone that may just be down to really good marketing, it can't be denied. The personal tastes might not be the same as the mainstream audiences. There are many reasons why we like so Music and not averse, including where we're from, our upbringing class, what are friends like, Or even within our favorite genres, we might like one song but not ANOVA. We can also disliked Music subconsciously because it doesn't align with the is brand or we dislike the artists. How many times have you thought that our wrapper sounded good, but you didn't really believe what they were saying. One of the biggest factors in our music tastes change in is our age as we tend to connect certain songs to memories about childhood and early adulthood, where we had a lot more freedom and we were experiencing new things all the time, which leads us to feel nostalgia when we hear them. There are many psychological reasons as to why we become less open to new music as we get older. And it has been suggested around 30 years old, we tend to stop developing our musical tastes altogether, which explains why you often hear parents saying that music is not the same as it used to be. And it's also why most popular music tends to be aimed at teenagers. I can't tell you exactly what type of music you should make Or even what good music Is. This section will be aimed more on the theory, how to get ideas on what To Make Music about and how you can package it better. Maybe the best MC or singular in the world with amazing Lyrics, which you can still benefit from adjusting the way that you structure your songs without losing your artistic integrity. At the end of the day, there isn't really a right way to make music. There was only certain opinions 7. What Genre Should You Make?: When deciding what Genre you should make, you should think about your overall brand and your target audience. But there is no correct answer here. And you could make whatever Genre you feel like today, it does make sense to stick to one Genre and build up a loyal fanbase within that Genre, you might reach bigger numbers temporarily if you just jump on whatever's popular right now. But you'll be unlikely to make many loyal returning fans, as they won't be able to understand what type of artist you are. You can't stand for anything. If you try and stand for everything and you'll never be able to please everyone. So you're better off making music for your existing funds rather than alienating them while trying to get new ones. That being said, the lines can be blurred as some genres do crossover, but to have similar audiences. So as long as you stick to it, brand image, you can experiment a bit and it might pay off. A good example of this is brucei, who was making grow music and hip up when I first started filming him, he also did battle rap on don't flop. And he was even in a rock band called After Dark movement, which may have been straying a bit too far from his target audience in my opinion. But eventually he started to try baseline and drum and bass music, which still has a very underground following and a similar audience to grind, but maybe with an even wider spread appeal. This worked for brucei and he's now getting very successful and getting millions of streams on each Release. Interesting to note though, that once he finally found his lane and what was working for him, he had stuck to it. So technically he is now still only making one Genre for the time being, it's easier to experiment early on in your career while you find out what works best for you. And once you've built up a large audience, you don't want to lose that following by trying new things, numbers and streams on everything though. So don't let that dictate what You Make. You can still make a living with a niche following, and it will always be a set of loyal fans outside of the mainstream. So it's best to make what you enjoy the most and what is true to yourself. And with every Genre, the popularity comes in circles, so it's better to try and become a leader in your field. And when that Genre comes back around, you'll already be at the top. 8. What Is Your Song About?: When people ask the question, what is this Song About? You should be able to give a simple answer explaining it. This sounds obvious, but a lot of people just write a song with absolutely no concept. That doesn't mean that it's wrong. It just makes it a lot more difficult to write with no direction. And it also makes it harder for the audience to connect. If we look at the top five most viewed music videos on YouTube, they all have a meaning behind them. D'esposito is a song about wanting to have sex with a girl and to take it slowly. Shape of view is about meeting a girl in a bar and it progressing into a relationship. Whiskey leaf and see you again, is about losing someone close and anticipating when they will get reunited. Uptown Funk is a bit harder to describe what it's mostly about living in an expensive part of the city and having lots of style and class. Gangnam Style is about the lifestyle in the Gangnam district in Seoul in Korea. And Maroon Five, sugar is about being in love and craving it like sugar when choosing a concept, think about stories in your own life. When you felt a strong emotion, what made you feel that way? Think outside the box too. Not every song has to be about typical, everyday stuff. What does the fox say is literally a funny song about different animal noises, but not knowing what I **** sounds like. Little DIC is Earth is about impersonating different animals with the underlying theme of how humans are destroying the planet. Dance monkey by the tones. And I Is about how the crowds reacted when the singer was buckskin and how she felt like a circus performer to an ungrateful root audience. The possibilities are endless when you combine a good concept with a lot of emotion and add your own Personality and Character and use relatable lyrics with a catchy melody and rhythm, then that's how you make a great song in my opinion. 9. What Emotions Will People Feel?: When Write In a Sung, think about how the listeners will feel, what emotion is the Song trying to convey? When I talk about Emotions, people tend to get confused thinking that every song has to be really deep and sad, but that is just one emotion. A song can make you laugh or make you feel happy. It can make you feel angry or pumped for the gym. It can make you feel inspired, motivated, connected, or In Love. It can make you feel calm and at peace, curious to learn more, or it might even open your eyes up to new ideas. There were so many ways that are sung can make you feel Emotions are at the very core of music is also how we associate songs with certain memories. They are reminders of how we felt at that time. Music can even have the power Changed the way that we're feeling. So when you are making a sung, it is important to be aware of what emotional response the audience will have. The more powerful the response, the more impactful it will be. So if you're trying to make a funny sung, make it very funny. If you're trying to make it sad, make it very sad. Don't just make a song for the sake of it. Tried to think about how you're feeling right now are about a situation that you've experienced in the past and how that made you feel. Often the storytelling is done in reverses and the chorus is about the general field. Instead of saying what you feel close to explain why you feel that way, let the listener put themselves in your shoes and let them Feel it for themselves. Instead of singing about feeling sad, tell a sad story and let the audience decide how they feel about it. 10. Choosing Your Instrumental: When choosing Your Instrumental, there are three main approaches. The first is to make the Instrumental yourself. If you can do this, then this is probably the best approach as you can make it exactly how you want to suit your style. Also, you don't have to worry about any copyright issues or leases and contracts. And the best part of it is you don't have to share any of your profit. Obviously it's not that simple outs everyone will be doing this. It can be quite complicated to make beats. It's time-consuming and it's a whole new skill that you need to learn and practice. And you may not be as good as someone whose focus is solely on producing. I've spent years mastering their craft or will be covering the basics and making beats later on to how you get started. So make sure that you check that out. But even if you don't end up making your own, it can be really useful to understand the process and to be able to communicate with producers to better explain what you're looking for it this way is also the most common for bands who usually play their own instruments. The second way is to collaborate with a producer. This works by either talking to a producer and asking them to create an exclusive beat from scratch based on what you request. Or sitting down in the studio with them where you write the whole song together and collaborate. This is my favorite way of working because you can design a song together and bounce off each other. And while making a beat, Structure it to the vocal and give input to the sung and how produced the vocals to. You can either pay the producer for the Instrumental in their time or you can release a song together and split any earnings. Remember, the producers should always get a split of any publishing royalties anyway, as they are classed as a songwriter. Well, this depends on what you agree on to. The third way is to find a pre-made be online and use that this is very common for wrappers to do. And it is the easiest way because you can literally just go on the internet and find something that's already been made and download instantly. If you have no idea what you want, You might find something you didn't expect that might give you some inspiration. The downsides of using a beat from the Internet. Either it's less unique and they may have been hundreds of other is that I've already used it. You also need to make sure that it is available to purchase and that it is in your budget to do so. Before making the Sung, I've worked with countless artists who have gone to buy the beat last minute, only to discover that had already been sold as an exclusive or that it was way too expensive for them. You also need to check the terms in the lease as beets are usually sold in different packages. Often the cheaper packages have lots of limitations, such as your only allowed 10,000 streams or there was a certain time limit before you have to repurchase the license. That can be inconvenienced. Keep on top of. And if you're sunk does end up going viral, you might discover that the prices suddenly increase when you come to Minuit. There are also other limitations, such as not being able to use Content id on YouTube I watch you might end up clashing and claiming copyright on someone else's Songdo also bought the same. It may also affect sync opportunities as someone needs stems or the Instrumental on its own. Or you may need to get permission from the producer beforehand. So those that are free main ways of getting an instrumental in terms of choosing what style of Instrumental to use, you should always think about your Brand, what mood you want to convey, and what Genre you want to make 11. Will It Fit Your Brand?: Once again, I'm briefly going to mention branding. Although this is part of your overall marketing strategy, you should be thinking about it whenever you make a song because this song fit the image and brand identity that you're trying to portray. This can be based on the Genre, the general mood or field you put a cross, your Brand is a promise to your fans of what to expect from you. So make sure that you keep this in mind before buying any Lyrics, your concept, or even choosing an Instrumental. Remember, you can still cover most concepts if you incorporate your Brand into it. Taylor Swift's love sung and asap Rocky is D and B. Both songs about being in love with the branding couldn't be more different. Asap, Rocky was able to make it loves sung while still making it cool and true to his style, to pack made songs about how much he loved his mom there as long as you get your branding right first and stay true to it, you can make songs about nearly anything 12. Writing Lyrics: When writing Lyrics, it can sometimes be hard to know where to start. I'd suggest thinking of a good concept for the song first, or think about your mood and what you want to express. Use inspiration from your real life events. I think one of the reasons artists can get boring after they've become famous is because once music is becoming a full time career, they have less time to experience life and making Music. About making music isn't the most interesting topic. Usually you want your boss to Ryan, that doesn't mean that every bar has to, and you can choose from different rhyming patterns. For example, it could go AABA, where only the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme, do whatever works best for you as long as it doesn't sound wrong and out of place. A more advanced rhyming technique for wrappers is multiple syllables. Instead of just rhyming the last word or syllable, you will rhyme several. For example, when writing the lyric, the sky's the limit, discourse changed your life when you did it, you learn something new every time that you visit. So you've got writing Lyrics. Sky is the limit, life when you did it, time when you visit. So that is multiple syllables. Music is split into bars. So in for, for timing, a bar is counted as 1234. I've come across a few beginner rappers who would just write Lyrics until they finished right in without writing it in bars. And that would end up with a random number of lines that would just sound out of place when they recorded and they would end at the runtime and a sung for, for, for timing. Your Lyrics should be written in multiples of 4 bar. Typically it will be an eights, 16s, 32s are 64. You might have a 16 biodiverse than an eight-bar chorus back into a 16 bar verse. It helps to follow the structure of the Instrumental, or you can rearrange the Instrumental to follow the structure that u1, if necessary, it usually helps to write your Lyrics while listening to the Instrumental outs, they might not gel correctly. Although if you do get a sudden burst of inspiration and some great limits come to you, write them down on a pad or on your phone and adjust it later on. It all depends on your personal preference and how you work the best. A technique that T on Wayne uses when writing Lyrics is To whom the melody over the Instrumental, which he then freeze those and records once he has worked out what Melody and flowy is going to use what suits the B. Then he writes the lyrics that fit into that. This makes his Lyrics sound perfect for that B, and it helps his flows down even catchier. I think that's a really good idea, especially when writing more melodic songs are singing vocals, although it still works for rap music to the voice is just another instrument. So it can be really helpful to work out the notes before for in the words to them. So I like that. I'm feeling good. Then it should be a gap. So I'm feeling I'm painting in the morning everyday, these papers calling me and I never missed a call when it wrong, the actual content of the Lyrics should also tell some kind of story or conveys some kind of emotion. A lot of rap songs don't actually tell them what story and the Lyrics can seem random, but it can still work as long as it makes you feel an emotion. Like if you use clever wordplay, that might make you feel impressed. Funny Lyrics could make you laugh and aggressive Lyrics might make you feel pumped to go to the gym. Really emotional Lyrics can make you feel sad. So it doesn't necessarily have to be in a story format as long as the Lyrics make you feel something when writing a story and the Lyrics is best if it is quite easy to follow it. It's too complex than people might not be able to take it in. Remember, you're writing a song and not a novel. Again, this is Subjective and I'm sure there are many exceptions to this rule. So just do whatever feels right to you. You can write limits on your phone, on paper, on a laptop, on Google Drive, or you can even just memorize them as long as you can read them clearly whilst recording. It doesn't matter. Do what suits you best. I would recommend having them written down somewhere though, just in case you do forget, will also need to learn them at some point, if you ever want to perform your songs live or to lip-sync them in music Videos. Honestly, there's nothing worse than trying to cut around a music video when the artist didn't know the Lyrics. It also makes it easier to record if you do know the Lyrics and you don't feel like you're just reading them. So make sure that you try and learn them 13. Your Personality & Character: It's important to add your own Personality and Character into your music. Fans can connect with you and your sung. This is part of your branding and marketing, but it is important to add an element of it into your actual music too. I know lots of artists who are really interesting personalities, but when listening to their tracks, they sound almost bought. Sometimes this can be down to confidence or just a lack of awareness. If you have a cheeky Personality, then add that to your Lyrics and your delivery. If you're laid back and carefree, then you might have a lazier flow, almost like you're too cool to be making music if you're a road man, than you might want to sound aggressive and talk about relevant content in your Lyrics. It doesn't always have to match exactly, such as Lewis, who is really funny in real life, but it's songs are usually quite sudden emotional. He does, however, still act himself in some of his music Videos and he lets his personality shine through on his social media content instead. Now, that doesn't mean that it's Music, It's bike. We all have different personalities and that is the style that he chooses to portray in his music. It's best to be true to yourself, but if it is down to a lack of confidence, you can always pretend to be an alter ego on the stage. When Beyonce performs, she pretends to be Sasha Fierce, which she claims his stage persona, helping to separate her from a shy personality and give her courage. I find that we're naturally drawn to artists when we find that Personality interesting, one of the reasons that influences and youtube AS managed to have successful Music Careers, even though they aren't always as good as over musicians, is potentially while Charles Bronson artwork is so popular, it's not just about the arts. It's about is interesting character and his backstory. And it's probably one of the reasons why Boris Johnson got into power in the first place, even though many people will agree that he wasn't capable of the job, a lot of the public felt that he was the type of person they'd like to have a beer with, which apparently is a good basis on choosing who should run the country when making your next song, think about how the listeners will perceive you to properly connected you. They should feel like they already know you and what type of personality you will have. It should feel like if they bumped into you Industry, They should know what to expect when they met you 14. How To Write A Hook: The course of a song is called the hook because this is the part that gets you hooked and keeps you coming back for more. It's the part that we get stuck in our head and they'll be singalong to, it's usually the catchy as part of a song is very important to get this riot. Not all songs have to have a Hook, but in most cases it helps to, and it can make or break sung. The Hook usually contains the title of a song somewhere too. If you're struggling to think of a title for your song, they're listened to what phrase you say most join the chorus. This also makes it a lot easier for the listener to find the song if they're searching for it later on, but they didn't know what it was cold. You can think of diverse like the questions and the chorus like the answer, diverse sets up the tension and the course is the release is usually in contrast to diverse. So if you're versus really fast, you could try a slope Careers to make it stand out more. Or if diversity is low in pitch than the course could be a bit higher, this helps give it more impact and keeps it separate from the other sections. Again, this is more advice than a hard rule. You'll probably find many exceptions to this. Hooks are often simple and repetitive, and this can help them stay catchy. The lyrics are usually simple and it relies on the melody and rhythm to make it catchy. If it is too complex than it won't be memorable. Try not to go to Basic though EVA, as this can get monotonous and boring. So make sure that you find the balance if you can home the chorus and it still sounds catchy without even saying the words, then you probably in the right direction. It's probably best to find the melody first before you write the lyrics. The Hook is usually a of 16 bar lung, depending on the song structure and it is often the same length as the verse. It may be 8 bar repeated to make 16, or an eight bar pre-chorus into an eight by Hook, I wouldn't recommend making longer than 16 bar. The, the Lyrics in the Hook should summarize the main theme of the song. There should be memorable and easy to sing along to 15. Flows & Melodies Explained: When you write a song, your flow is the rhythm and the timing. And your melody consists of the notes and the pitch that you wrap or sing. A lot of beginners default to the standard flow of 1234 or the skippy flow, which is usually the same but double time. You can make your song more interesting and unique by varying the river. You can hold some notes for longer like Or you can leave gaps. One to four. Even better, you can use half beats, which is called syncopation, and it goes like 1.2 and 3.4. So the heartbeat will be on the, and between the 12, there are endless possibilities. And when combined with different Melodies to, you can really make your music stand out and be less monotonous. The melody consists of the notes that we use. Your song should be in a certain key and your vocals should follow the notes in that key. For example, the key of C major, all of the white notes on the keyboard and a minor is the same, but it starts with a. So if you song is in C major, technically you could sing every single note in a C, and it would be correct for that key, what? It would sound really boring. This sounds obvious for singers, but it is relevant for wrappers to, especially the more melodic wrappers you should very denotes within your scale to make your music catchier, It is possible to use some notes outside of the scale, which are called accidentals. So often they just sound wrong. So make sure you use these carefully when writing your melody. Try not to over-complicate things. Too much variation can sound cheesy. Well too little sounds boring. I'd suggest keeping the melody quite simple and using the rhythm to make it even more memorable. For example, this melody uses only three notes. But when we change the rhythm of it, it starts to become a lot catchier. So I'll wait to experiment with using different flows and Melodies and not fall into the trap of using the standard 1234 monotone flow is easily done, especially when using the Skippy or flow, just because it's best, that doesn't necessarily make it better. This also applies to Music Production and playing instruments 16. How To Structure A Song: The structure of a song is the way that is arranged. There are usually six different parts to a song. These are the intro, the verse, pre-chorus, chorus, the bridge, and the outro. Not all songs have to contain every part. For example, some songs skip the pre-chorus and the bridge, and a lot of rap music, you often find that there's not even a chorus at all. I would advise you to keep a course though if possible, as this is usually the most memorable part of a sunk, unless you have really reliable, unquote able Lyrics To make up for it. Or if it's a diss track where a Hook might get in the way of it. So the order of the different sections can be swapped around. And it can vary for different genres. For example, drum and bass music or house music often has very long intros. The DJ's can mix it in with the previous tracks. And then they build up the tension throughout diverse, ready for the big drop in the Hook? Most part Music has a shorter intro and it will often start with the chorus to catch your attention straight away. And this gets it stuck in your head from the beginning. Most music these days is written in four-four time signature, which goes 1234. So and I've multiples of 4 bar, usually an eight, 16s, 32s, 64. That's why it will probably sound wrong if you only wrote 7 bar, for example, you might have an eight bar intro, a 16 bar verse, and eight-bar pre-chorus into an eight-bar chorus, then back into 16 bar verse and so on. Some songs are also in free for timing, which is counted as 123. Some examples of days or when the party is over by Billie Eilish and falling by Alicia Keys, there are over time signatures to, but these are usually less common. Another thing to keep in mind is the songs are very similar to stories in books and films. Music often has an Arc which helps take the listener on a journey. It starts off relatively calm. The action then keeps on rising until it reaches the climax of the sung, and then the action falls off again before returning to that calm state. That is a very basic explanation. And in practice it's not just a straight line up and down like that. Think of it more like a roller coaster with the climax being the biggest drop just before the ends of the riot. So first off, we have the intro. This is quite straightforward. It should grab the listener's attention and it sets the tone for the sung. It shouldn't be too intense though. It is there to introduce the highest and prepare the listener for what's to come. It should build up into the next section. Personally, I prefer a shorter intro as this stops the listener from getting bored before the song is properly started, is easy for listeners to skip through the next song. So ideally you want to grab their attention fast, next door, diverse, although it doesn't have to come straight after the intro, diverse is usually the storytelling part of the Sung, whereas the course is usually more about the general mood. Averse is like the chapters in the book. Diverse helps move to Song Forward and leads into the chorus or the pre-chorus. The pre-chorus is like a transition between the verse and the chorus. Not all songs have this and it is optional. Pre-chorus is often quite catchy too, and they let the audience note that the main chorus is coming. They are almost like a second Hook. Sometimes you don't even realize that it's a pre-chorus and you might afford it was part of the actual hawk. A good example of this is the Hello section in Novartis Team Spirit or the go, you know, I want Your love part in Ed Sheeran, shape of view. Next up is the chorus, which is also known as the Hook. I'd say that this is the most important part of the Sung. If you choose to have one, this is the part where everyone should singalong to. It needs to be catchy and memorable. They often come after the verse, but some songs bring the course in straight away to pull the listener in immediately. A Hook is usually more about the mood of the Sung than the actual story. This should also be the climax part of the Sung one technique to make sure that the climax towards the end of the song is bigger and more intense than the rest, is to add extra harmonies and layers under the final chorus. This gives you something to build up to and gives the audience something to look forward to. Next up we have the, which is a break in the sung as we come towards the climax, this can come to Song down and release some tension, or it can even be quite intense and a big focal point of the song, such as a guitar solo, a bridge is usually quite short, typically four to 8 bar, and it is also known as the middle eight. But how long does section is depends on your artistic intentions. Not all songs have to have a bridge. So again, this is optional. Finally, we have the outro, this Let's listeners know that is the end of the sung. And we would turn full circle to the cam from the beginning. Well, the intro is building up, the outro is easing, goes back down. They usually quite simple, just fading out, maybe with some instruments dropping out too. I'd suggest keeping out Your quite sure as they've reached a climax and then know that the song is ending. They don't want to be around for ages. So those are the different sections of a Sung, I would suggest experimenting with arranging your song in different orders just to learn what affects that it can have. Maybe try starting with the course first to grab the attention and try using precursors and bridges to add more interests. There isn't really a right or wrong here. It depends on your creative intent, but it is good to know the different options. The only parts that you can't really move on to intro and outro 17. Should You Focus On Quality Or Quantity?: Some people think that it's better to focus completely on quality. If you can make the perfect sunk, then surely you'll get really famous and everyone will love you because your music is just so much better than all that mediocre stuff that's out there in the mainstream over People think that if you focus on Quantity and China as much music as possible, then surely one of your songs will become successful. It's like buying lottery tickets. The more that you buy, the more chance you'll have at winning. I'm gonna go over the pros and cons to both approaches and how you decide what's best for your career. In an ideal world, you'd be able to do both. If you can Release high-quality content at high Quantity, then you should definitely just do that. But good work takes time and can often cost a lot of money. So it's usually not possible to do both the pros of high-quality. I don't. You're going to stand out from the crowd. You might also get a reputation for being talented and for putting in so much thought in detail into your music. Everyone will know just how much hard work went into creating your masterpiece and your work will be more memorable. Do you want to make loads of small waves there'll be forgotten. Or one big tidal wave that people remember forever. Obviously having high-quality work can never be a bad thing. So what are the cons? First off, there's no such thing as perfect and perfectionism can actually end up holding you back. We're always learning and improving. So at some point, you actually have to say that our projects is finished. Even knowing that a few months later, it could've been even better. There has to be a cut-off point. It's so easy to wait until you've got some new equipment or you've read that new book, learning how to better, or you've learned some new chords. But the fact is there will always be something else to learn. It's good to keep on learning, but don't let it hold you back. I know so many people that have year's worth of unfinished tracks that are really talented musicians. And they never end up putting anything out there to the public, even though most of their work is more than good enough. Another con, is that we learn by doing the more that we do something, the better we get at it. So the chances are that someone who's made 100 songs will actually be better at making songs than someone who is only ever made one, but tried to make it perfect. You have to make mistakes to be able to grow. And there's so many areas of music that you need to know, you might get amazing at making songs behind the scenes. Instead, it feels like the perfect time. But then you've never learned about how to market your music because you haven't put anything out there. You haven't built a fanbase to market it to yet, and you haven't had any feedback to work from your funds, might point out things that you would have never thought up. And obviously the other kind of focusing on high-quality is that it takes a lot of time and effort. If you've ever heard of the 80 20 rule, it states that 80 per cent of our results come from 20% of the effort is a fan really going to notice every minute detail that you put so much time into. Focus on what's actually important. First, I'd rather watch a low-quality film with an amazing story than a really high-quality cinematic looking movie where nothing happens. That doesn't mean you should abandon Quality altogether. It's just about prioritizing. Also, you may have put loads of hard work and effort in behind the scenes, but your fans don't always see that. And they may actually think that you're lazy for not putting out enough music. You might see some of your favorite artists only releasing every few years, but they have most likely already built off a big fan base. And the chances are that when I'm music isn't being made, but they're in the spotlight for some other way, whether it's on social media, in the news or unreality TV shows, even though they're not releasing, they keep on saying relevant, ready for the next release or so that they're all music isn't forgotten. Next up, I'm going to talk about Quantity. In this generation. There is so much music being released and so much to compete with that you need to constantly remind people what you're doing is you're just gonna get forgotten in all that noise. In 2021, there was an average of 60,000 songs a day being added to spotify. And in 2022, this number rose to 100,000. To put that into perspective, if you want you to listen to every single song that was released in just one day from start to finish, without factoring in anytime that you'd need to sleep or work or whatever, it will take you over to 208 days just to listen to one day's worth of releases. So if you and your release to song every six months, that means that 18 million over songs will have been dropped in-between that time. And they will also be competing for the attention of your fans. If you combine that with how that algorithms currently work on social media. If you're not constantly putting stuff out there, it's so easy to become invisible. I know that it's a depressing for it, but on a positive note, if one of your songs just take off and go viral and you already have a massive catalog of music out there, then your new funds could end up going back to it and listening to all of it. And you might find out that Your older Music suddenly takes off and gets attention to bringing in even more money. Your friends who wants to find out more about, You said it will scroll through your social media accounts and check out your older music. And if there isn't anything there, there may lose interests instead of getting to know you more and becoming a long-term support that. So even if the numbers aren't there for now, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a waste of time releasing lots of music. Another perfect and on Quantity is like I said earlier, you are more likely to get better quicker. Story about a pottery class that was divided into two groups. The first group was told that they needed to make a perfect part. The second group was told that there it'd be judged on the amount of parts that I made. By the end of the class, they discovered that the highest quality parts were actually made by the group who had made the most, even though their first parts had been bad, then improved far quicker than the quality group. Another pro of Quantity is you don't actually know what is going to be good or bad. Some of my most viewed videos probably weren't the best songs or videos. That's not up to us to decide what fans who like, I often speak to artists as well who hate them most viewed songs. So if they've decided not to release it because they weren't so keen on it, they would have never got as big as they are. The Quantity approach also has some flaws when it comes to music. So I'm going to talk about some of the cons to, It's easy to get a bad reputation if most of your music is terrible and you're constantly putting out bad music, then eventually no one is going to keep on checking out your newest stuff, even if you do become good. Also, you don't want to overwhelm your audience. You need to give them some chance to miss you. If they expect a song every single day, it will get to a point where they'll get bored and they might stop check-in. They need to have time to learn the Lyrics and all the dances. And it's really hard to love a song if you're always moving onto the next one straight away, you can also overwhelm yourself and get burned out. It's hard work to force yourself to create constantly making a Music. Is there any part of it? If you made a song every single day, you wouldn't have time to properly promote it and do music Videos and one your socials and perform it. And you wouldn't be able to learn every single song properly EVA and practice before performing them, it might be better to aim for one song a month instead, and in that time focused on properly releasing it, a Marketing. Yet another kind of Quantity is that you need to actually experience life to be able to make good music with soul. If you're stuck in the studio 2047 and on social media or the time you won't have as much to write about. I think that's one of the reasons that most is best work is when they first come up. Once they get successful, they often stopped doing the things that they once wrote about, and then they lose that hunger and passion. So make sure that you give yourself time to live, to, also, to do Music at high quantity, you will most likely need to outsource some work, which means that it will cost you more money. As with everything, it's all a balancing act. And I'd suggest finding out what works for you and what is most sustainable for you. I'd recommend focusing more on Quantity in the beginning, but don't let that be an excuse for poor quality work. Make Music that is good enough without being perfect. And then work out at what scale you can produce the app, including releasing it, maybe even set yourself a challenge. For example, you might have one day to make a song and then you have to release it at the end of the month. Name is a good challenge that I started was the 1 h beat Challenge. So you only got 1 h to make a whole Instrumental. It seems like you might rush to work, but in actual fact, you end up focusing on just what's important and getting the song done. Instead of spending that whole hour scrolling through kick drum samples when most of them actually sound the same. Putting constraints into place helps us focus on what is important and get the job done. And it could change your approach to making music in the future. Let go of to fear. There will always be some negative reactions and there will always be people who say You should have done something different. Also, you will always notice things that you wish you would have changed later on, making the perfect song won't stop that from happening. So get into the habit of finishing Music and just putting it out there and make sure that you stay consistent with it too. 18. Music Career VS Being A Superstar: When we think of making money for music, we tend to think of getting rich and famous, which I'm sure most of us desire. But if you can Make Music your full time career and do what you love every single day. Then To me, that is still a success when I was willing JDs, he Media are used to get a lot of comments such as, what's your real job or are you still did not music stuff. I think that unless you in the spotlight and all over the TV and radio, than people don't realize the potential of Music income. When in reality, I was learning around four to five times the amount that I was in my previous warehouse job, purely from music and filming. Even if you can match the income of a nine to five, then that is amazing. And you'll always have the potential to grow on like being on a fixed salary, you may only earn a small amount, but if you can compound those small amounts over several different Music income streams. And if you do this each time you released, then that can add up quite quickly and become a full-time wage. And the best thing about it is a lot of this Music income is passive, meaning that you can keep on earning even after the song is released, it's hard to become a Superstar and it's easy to see this is unachievable and give up. But remember, you don't have to be at the top to be making money. I know people that are relatively unknown who are living on royalties from sync placements in films or people that you might think are no longer relevant, that is still making money from old songs being streamed and performing it for a buck events. How often do you see clubs putting, unlike old school garage nights, where is who never had massive mainstream success? I still being booked every single weekend or your song, they get used in a TV program years later and become successful again. I know there were already successful in the beginning, but good examples of this recently or Kate Bush's running up that hill, which retired 37 years after it's released due to appear in getting an episode of strange things or Nevada is something about the way which was using the latest Batman film, giving it a new life 31 years later, every song that you release is like another asset which can continue to make money for you for a long time, even if it isn't a hit. Singles in the past, which consistently around 20 pounds a month for my share. And they do this every single month, even years later. It doesn't sound like a lot. But if you can do 100 a dose, that's too grand a month if you put into work now making music and Marketing it years down the line, that passive income could give you financial freedom. So that means you don't have to be at the top to make a good career out of music. You can still make money and change your life. 19. What Is Crowdfunding?: Crowdfunding is where you asked your friends to donate money to support your project. This isn't directly a form of income, but it can be a great way for artists without a budget to get help on getting them music out there. For example, if you want to record your next album, but you can't afford the studio time. Or if you need help finding your music video, Kickstarter and GoFundMe, or well-known Crowdfunding sites, which are really good for individual projects. And patreon is another site which is better for more general long-term funding and Sponsorships. Patreon works by giving your support as benefits, such as early access, behind-the-scenes content or other rewards like three Merchandise or keep tickets in return, you'll funds pay a small monthly fee, which you can set in order for them to gain access, you'll get best results updated with new content. So if you want this to be successful, it can take a bit of work to maintain is a really good way to build up a direct relationship with your fans and make them feel more included. And other similar form of this is YouTube channel memberships where fans can pay to see exclusive content. Most famous example of Crowdfunding at the moment is only fans. And even though this is associated with adult content, it can be used for music too, although it probably wouldn't be my first choice. Artists such as Cardi B, and Iggy as Alia, have recently joined any funds, but I'm not sure their subscribers are there purely for their Music personally, I'd suggest using Crowdfunding early on in your music career when you Budget some more of an issue, although it does help to have built up a bit of an audience first, so that you actually have some people to donate to it. We often find that a lack of Money is one of the reasons for not getting started. So this is a great way to overcome that obstacle and ensure that your music is able to get made 20. Physical & Digital Sales: Music sales are when people actually buy your sung either physically or digitally, physical forms of music sales or CDs, tapes and vinyl. And although not as popular as they once were due to the move to digital and eventually streaming, they are still relevant today. A lot of older people will still buy CDs and vinyl is quite desirable for collectors and people to claim that the audio quality is higher due to the analog sound. In 2019, Jamie released his album grown MMC, and at first it was only available physically despite their, the album was still very successful, proving that they're worse than a market for CDS and vinyl. It was later released digitally to, and it is now available on streaming Platforms, Digital Sales, or when you buy the song to download from a site such as iTunes, Amazon People, or Bandcamp, Digital Sales that easier to set up as you just select it inside your distributor at the same time as putting your song and streaming sites, it is best if you set up a pre-release to, as all pre-released Sales get added to your Release Day sales, which helps you if charting and gives you time to build up hype and promote it, fans are also less likely to buy the song once it is actually out as they can listen to it for free on streaming services, but there may still preorder if you give them the option to, fans are more likely to bite, to help support you, to help their favorite artists to get charting. So make sure that you make them aware of this when promoting in the USA, it takes a single 150 streams to be counted as one sail towards the charts. So if people actually buy at a song instead of just streaming it, you will reach the charts much faster. Another pro of sales compared to streams is the higher payments. It takes a lot of streams to earn the same amount as one sale. However, physical sales have manufacturing costs to factor in and with the reduced demand, it may no longer be worth it personally orgiastic into Digital Sales as it takes no extra work if you put in your song on streaming Platforms anyway, if you're confident that you can sell physical copies and your target audience has a demand for it, then go for it. But in general, with the additional costs and the risks that it might not sell, I don't think that it's worth it for most artists. 21. Streaming Platforms: When streaming first came about, many artists weren't happy due to the much lower pay than they were usually from sales. But the reality is that streaming because opened the door for up-and-coming is to finally earn a living from there Music. Yeah, you might need a lot of streams to make a decent amount of money. But we've social media, online Marketing algorithms and Playlists reaching those large numbers is now quite possible. Or most of my labor releases, streaming has been the number one source of revenue for artists themselves. Performances are probably pay more altogether, but it is harder to work out person. What that makes as you usually get booked to perform several different sung streaming is when you sign up for a service such as spotify. And instead of paying for and downloading a song and then owning it, you pay for a subscription fee to the platform and you choose for millions of songs and play them as many times as you like for families, this is amazing as you get to listen to an unlimited amount of music for around the same price as it would cost you to buy one album a month. Some Platforms also have free options if you're willing to put over the ads for musicians, this means that you can reach a much larger audience who will get your music push through them. Each pay different amounts per stream, but they have different amounts of users. Example, tidal pays a lot more per stream than spotify. But because spotify has a lot more users, you're more likely to get more streams, which outweighs that lower pay. You can get your music on streaming platforms by using a distributed Act which allows you to submit your music and then it distributes it out to all the different digital download and streaming sites. And then it collects all your earnings for you. I'll use a company called stem because it offers automatic royalty splits, which is really useful for a label. But there were lots of other options out there that are available to everyone. Some popular options or ditto, TuneCore, CD Baby and destroy kid. There are even more out there and they all offer slightly different services with pros and cons. So compare them all first and see which one is right for you. Some of them are free to use, but take a percentage of your earnings, obviously can pay to use, but then you can keep hundred percent of your income. Most sites also give you access to analytics. So you can see how many streams you are getting and where they're coming from. Which can be really helpful if you know that most your streams are coming from a certain city or country than it could be worth putting on a show there. Or if you know that lots of your streams that come from a certain playlist, then you could try and make more of that style of music and push your next release to the same Playlists. I'll cover more about how to get more streams and how the different platforms work in the Marketing sections, streaming is one of the best ways to currently learn from your music, regardless of what you hear about is low payments, I would always recommend that you submit your song streaming Platforms. Just make sure that you own order copyrights first and you have permission to use any instrumentals. And remember that word Of Mouth permission isn't enough if to produce the changes their mind a later day and you don't have any contracts that could get you into trouble. 22. Live Performances: Performances are one of the biggest forms of income for artists Beyonce and Jay-Z joint TO made an average of $5.28 million each night. It will take roughly 1.5 billion streams on Spotify to make the same amount that they made in a single day from performing. Now, obviously not everyone is as big as Beyonce and Jay-Z, but Performances in general pay a lot more than that can be made from streams. And it's one of the reasons that COVID impacted the music industry. So much. Artists can charge a set fee which promoters will pay for them to perform, or they can take a percentage of the ticket sales. On top of that, you can even get paid royalties from your performing rights organization, from your song being performed in a public place. It's been said, on average, around 28 per cent of an artist income comes from Performances alone. And this is the highest percentage from all the different income streams. So you definitely don't want to be ignoring this. You can be booked to perform initially by contacting venues, going to open mic nights are asking to open for bigger artists. Smaller gigs might not sound as appealing, but they're still very important for getting that practice Being in front of a crowd. And you will also benefit from building more intimate relationships with your most loyal fans. Once you build up your fanbase, promoters will start getting in touch. Review clubs will want to book you to bring your fans through the door so that they can keep their venue busy and sell more drinks and make more money. It helps to have a contact e-mail for bookings in your bios, on social media and on your website to make it easier for people to get in touch. And as you progress through your career, you can start putting on your own shows and hopefully even tore during the pandemic, older venues closed, which meant that artists couldn't perform. And even before that, some types of music, we're getting banned from clubs as they thought that there might attract the wrong kind of crowds. But so musicians were able to overcome this by thinking outside of the box. Guai my Assaf one put on a live stream pay-per-view event. Afterwards, original headline show was canceled. He performed a secret location. And so Digital tickets, It's fans could tune in and watch. And we've live streaming becoming more readily available now, we've platforms such as twitch. This is becoming even more popular. Travis Scott even did a live performance via an avatar in the game Fortnite, which reportedly earn Team around $20 million. With the Internet and online Performances, it's possible to sell to larger audiences than venues can even hold. And I can only imagine this will get even bigger with virtual reality and the Met averse coming up in the near future. Once again, performing is also another way of marketing your music and building new fans, especially when supporting other artists or at events such as festivals where there'll be thousands of people attending that may have never heard of you before, but their funds have other similar artists who are also there 23. Getting Your Music On TV: When you get song played on a TV show, film, or even a video game, you will usually get paid an upfront fee to allow the use of the sunk. The price can vary depending on how big the TV show is, how long does song is used for, and how big the artist is. You then receive royalties every time the song is add on top of that initial fee. Again, the royalty payments will vary depending on lots of different factors, including how popular the show is, which channel it is on, and even what time of day is Ed. And for streaming services like Netflix, it can depend on how many people watched it and how many subscriptions they have. Overall, TV placements can be an excellent source of revenue for artists as the initial fee can be quite high at times and the ongoing royalties can also add up. I've smoked two artists who are otherwise unknown, but the majority of their income is from TB wrote is one of them had 3 s of their song used as a ringtone in a major Hollywood film. And he's still receives a substantial payment from it every few months, even years later after the film was released. You don't have to be the biggest is to get your song played Eva, a lot of programs look for music that's based on mood. If you're song matches what they're looking for, then you could get chosen regardless of how successful you are, the easiest ways to be considered is to use a synchronization company to submit your music. One example of this is a company called thinker, where you play a small monthly fee to become a member. And when a film or TV program is looking for music, they'll put out a brief, explains exactly what they're looking for, along with some references to similar music and how much it might pay, then all you have to do is submit your songs to it and they will get in touch with you if you are selected. Sometimes there might only need the instrumental version or just specific parts. So be prepared to have them at hand ready. Most of the times the deadlines are quite short and you have to act quickly out you could miss out, usually helps Have you song released ready. And some sync companies require you to have the song already registered with your performing rights organization. If you are a more popular artist and you already have some big songs out there than Productions might get in touch with you directly asking for permission to use Your sons. They may offer you a price or you might have to decide on a figure yourself. Another way to do this is by networking with TV producers. If you know people inside the business, then there could ask you for music before they even put out any briefs, or you could suggest songs to them. This really worked well for an artist I know who had a lot of connections with people working on projects for Netflix. Once again, as well as being a really good source of income. This is also a really good marketing tool. Not only will you be getting paid for your music, will be getting put in front of a large new audience who could then go on to stream the song and become long-term funds? 24. Brand Sponsorships: A lot of artists make money by selling advertising deals with brands. Storms. He was famously sponsored by Adidas, Travis Scott with Fortnite and McDonald's. And another example is J Cole with puma. The way that this works is the business usually pays that is to use their brand, even in music videos, on social media or in their live shows. They might even have the is in their commercials. Most often it's free product placement. The audience sees their favorite is using the product and hopefully they will purchase it to you. Maybe thinking that this is only for really big artists, but a great example of this on a smaller scale is with YouTubers. How often do we see this video is sponsored by Squarespace or some other website or app. It doesn't necessarily have to be a big company. You may be able to get sponsored by an independent clothing label or a local business. Just like how kids football teams get sponsored to help pay for their Kits. You can wait for companies to approach you once you have a good following, Or you could approach companies directly. But I'd advice to approach companies have a similar target audience, your listeners. It probably isn't wise to get sponsored by a building company if you're audience is mainly teenage girls, they want homeowners. When approaching companies, you should act professional and make sure to outline what benefits you can provide them. As most businesses weren't just sponsor you purely out of kindness. Explain to them who your audiences and what your typical reaches. You can find out detailed reports to this for your social media and streaming platform analytics, also explain when and how you'll be able to advertise their products. For example, abandonment your gig, wearing that T-shirt on your next music video. It might even help to go into more details such as which Platforms your video will be released on, and your marketing plans. Also, sponsors don't have to be monetary. You may be able to promote a nightclub immaterial for them allowing you free use of the venue and your music video or a clothing label might provide free clothes so that you don't have to buy new outfits for the video shoe. As you get bigger and grow a larger audience, you'll be able to ask for more as you have more to offer, companies are interested in reaching your funds. So the more that you have, the more they'll be willing to pay 25. Radio Play: When you get your song played on radio, you will get paid royalties. This works because radio stations pay two different royalty collection organizations in the UK. These are called PRS, which stands for performing rights society, and PPO, which stands for phonographic performance limited. These organizations then pay you each time that your song is paid on a radio station. The amount that's paid varies depending on which station, what time it is Ed, and how long it is played for. Each player will get a different payment from both PRS and PPO. So it's important to register yourself with both of these. You also need to register each song you Release. And it's ISRC close, which is the type of barcode that is assigned to your song. When you submit it for distributed, you should be able to find this code from your distributor if you're lucky enough to get radio Play than this amount can add up very quickly, especially if you get playlist ID across several stations. Just make sure that you've registered them with your performing rights organizations because lots of people miss out Andes, there is a one-off fee to join PRS and PPO along with the mechanical copyright protection society called MCP S, which covers the second royalty from your streams and downloads that most artists forget about as it is a different payments or the one that you get from your distribution. Currently the fee for artists to join PRS and PPO in the UK is 100 pound for a lifetime membership and another hundred pound for MCP is this. V does put off many artists where if you aren't ready to pay it just yet. There are some distribution companies that offer to collect your publishing royalties for you for a small percentage of your earnings, which may be worth it if you want to keep all your payments in one place and it will save you the headache of registering eat song individually. You can also use some separate websites such as Centric, which can claim your royalties for fee or a percentage share. And I can also offer sync opportunities that you can apply for inside there. One of the easiest ways to get your songs on radio is to submit it to smaller local radio stations or for BBC introducing, which is for up-and-coming artists. Please be aware that BBC introducing has talked about closing down. So this might not be an option in the future. You can also try and send your song to radio DJs are presented as directly. You can usually find that Email addresses in their social media bios. Just remember to be respectful and don't be rude. If you don't get a response is probably not personal. They are very busy people with thousands of other is also asking. So you don't want to burn any bridges in future by getting impatient. Once again, radio Play is also great for marketing. As you can get new listeners, we can then go on to stream your music and become long-term funds 26. Creating Merchandise: When we talk about Merchandise, the first thing that comes into mind is those cheap band t-shirts, we've logos printed on them, usually sold in a small corner at the back of a gig. And although that can help support the bands finances, it is possible to do it on a much bigger scale. Kanye West makes more money from clothing than he does from his Music. Justin Bieber has his own perfume range and $0.50 as his own brand of vitamin water. Well, some of these may seem more like side businesses, the Merchandise, they're still using their name and fame to sell those products. And it doesn't have to be just clothing. You have a specific target audience, we have specific interests. So instead of helping other brands make money via Sponsorships, why not create your own products? Your audience that will stone us, then you could make a grinder or Islam with your logo on it. Or you can even try and make your own audio plugin if you're a producer and you're known for a specific sound, there were so many possibilities. Obviously, this can take time and an upfront investment, so it might be worth thinking about it later on in your career. Or you can try the other approach where the product comes first and the music is just used. An extra promo, like my friend diver, who has his diverted root clothing brand and he now just as Music On the side for Fun and to help push his clothing. If you don't want to think that big just yet, and you prefer to focus more on the music than a good option is to use print on demand services. This way you don't have to order and stole out of stock, which might not even sell. And then you have to keep on spending time posting got your orders. You might take a cut in profits, but it is worth it just for the ease of use your products at your logos in your artwork, and then add the links to your websites and social media. They offer a range of different products such as t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and even notepads is when a fan orders it, it will then get printed and delivered straight to them and you get paid for your share without ever having to see the product. It might not be as high-quality as creating your own or building your own business. Or if you want an extra bit of income on the side with minimal effort, then that's what I'd recommend doing. You can also outsource any graphic design to freelancers or use sites such as Fiverr to find the is to help you with the designs 27. YouTube Content ID Explained: Content id is where YouTube can find out when your song has been used by over creators or if it has been ripped and re-upload it, allowing you to still get paid from it. Instead of removing the content, it happens automatically by recognizing the waveforms of the audio. You can choose to let them keep the revenue if they request, it, would only recommend doing this if it has been agreed to beforehand and a promotional use of them using it is more beneficial to you than the income. Another way it helps is when people do challenges are lip-sync Videos to your sung, you can get paid while all your fans promote a song for free Content id is also useful if you decide to put your music video on another platform. For example, when I run JDBC, I'd often get paid to host a music video, but then all the ad revenue went back to the artist. I just keep the initial hosting fee instead of the ad money. So when people saw certain Videos getting millions of views, that often assumed that the channel is making loads from it when in actual fact, it went back to the artist or even a producer, if it was them who registered the song through Content id, you can register overlays with Content id for your distributor on mine, I just select it along with all the other platforms such as spotify and Apple Music. And it's done automatically. Any Money made just goes back to your distribution account, the same as any other streaming services. The one thing to be aware of is when using least Instrumental. So if you register your song with Content id, it will clash with everyone else who has also purchased that be including the producer. It should be stated in your lease that you can't use Content id, but often they still happens. Even if you don't select it, you may find the other is, I've already done this by mistake, meaning that you could get flagged for it. So you might have to dispute any copyright claims that you get on your own songs, even though you've paid for the beat, I've lost count of the times that I've released a video on YouTube for a well-known artist, one to get correct came from an unknown artist who's had like ten views and they were taken all of my ad revenue by mistake. This is something that you have to keep on top up as someone may purchase the same beat and future and register it with Content id and start taking your money even years after the Release. This is just one of the problems that comes with using least instrumentals that you bought online, as long as you own exclusive rights to be Instrumental or you made yourself, I would always suggest enabling Content id, even if you don't plan on beliefs and your songs to youtube, let other people rip your song and share it. It's free promotion and you won't be losing any money by doing so, you never know one of those fund Videos might get more views than your own video does, and it ends up making you more money than you expected. It could also bring your music to a whole new audience and the process 28. Youtube Adsense Money: Youtube Music is another streaming platform, but you can also get paid from the video side of YouTube to this can be from your music videos, lyric videos, behind the scenes, or any other form of content that you upload there. They've also started to monetize short-form content to, in form of youtube shorts. Youtube makes money by placing adverts on your videos or people purchasing a subscription to YouTube Premium and they give credit is a cut of those earnings. You can currently only applies to get paid from YouTube if you have over 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 h of watch time per year. But we've Content id enabled on your songs. You can get paid for your distributor instead of Google AdSense. So you can technically still earn money without meeting those requirements. Although if it is under those requirements, it's probably not enough to worry about. Youtube is where I personally made most of my money due to my video background, but it doesn't pay as well as most people expect when I did any record label releases, spotify was always the biggest source of income due to a higher payment per stream and a large user base, YouTube pays very low in comparison. And as many factors that can impact the amount that you weren't. On average, I used to earn roughly one pound for 1,000 plays. Obviously, I didn't get paid for any copyright content or anything. We've Content id. So it's not as much as it looks like on the outside, because not every video was making revenue. There are a few things that can affect how much you earn on youtube, such as the time of year, the location that is viewed in the type and Genre of the content, Your Audience demographics, or even if you're audience is using ad blockers, the time of year effects payments because advertisers tend to have higher budgets at different times. For example, I always found that December was the highest paid money for due to Christmas coming up, and January to April was always the lowest as Christmas was over, and it was coming up to the end of the tax year. The location of your viewers can also affect payments because different countries have different products and budgets and spending habits. I once had a video, they've got most of its views in Australia. And I was surprised to find out that it paid five times the amount of all of my UK Videos. The Genre of your content can also affect your earnings as advertisers don't want that Brand placed next to any videos that might make them look bad. So if you have loads of swearing or violence in your Lyrics and you Videos, then expect that it may and less on YouTube. The Genre of the content matters to finance and property Videos tend to earn more than music or gaming as they are aimed at a welfare audience who are willing to spend more money. For example, somebody watching a property video might be about to buy a house. Mortgage ads might show up. Obviously, you will only be doing music, but the different genres do affect the payments to based on the different target audiences. The video length is another factor in how much you can earn as Videos over 8 min lung are allowed to have multiple ads which further multiplies your income. Although most music Videos around three to 4 min long, this will still be relevant to any longer-form content such as behind the scenes, blogs or tutorials that you may do. Can't let these different factors dictate what you make too much. But it is good to be aware of why it happens and it can help you with your release plan. I used to work a lot harder and try and put any bigger Vue.js Videos out around November and December so I could multiply those earnings when they were high. And then I'd slowdown in January when I knew that it'd be low anyway, this is more relevant for youtube as though, as far as I'm aware, it doesn't affect any other streaming service payments as much, but I wouldn't worry about this too much unless your main audience and income is coming from YouTube. 29. Charging For Features: You can get paid by featuring on other artists. Sung's, a lot of rappers that I know do this by charging less than ONE is a fee to appear on their sung. This helps the unknown is get more recognition and it helps the wrapper or more income. Often the feature doesn't take a share in the revenue if they are paid up front, but it all depends what is agreed upon. However, the feature should be entitled to some songwriting royalties for the publishing. Things such as radio Play, which are collected for your performing rights organization. It doesn't always have to be less known artist. Sometimes you might get paid up front for a feature instead of having to sort out recurring split payments, especially on albums where there might be multiple features. Another way that Features are used are in return for a feature back. For example, I'll do averse, I'm your album. If you do averse on mine, again, this saves sorting out the splits, but instead of payment, you offer each Uber averse, which actually both gain access to the other artist's fan base. It doesn't always have to be other artists. You could get asked to feature on a radio jingle or for a DJ. This is where you change your Lyrics to include the DJ or stations name, or you write something exclusive for them. Sometimes it can be as short as just a vocal introduction. For example, you are now listening to the sounds of DJ target. I've often been approached by DJs to ask to put them in touch with an artist, to ask them to record an intro. You'd be surprised to see just how much an up-and-coming BJ would pay to have a big named artist introduce their tracks. You'll probably need to have a substantial following two charge good money For Features, but it is worth being aware of this. And as you start out, you could be the smaller is that is paying for the feature instead and use this as a marketing tool instead of a form of income 30. Selling Your Songwriting Skills: When you are a skilled songwriter yourself, why not write songs for other artists? Too? Many famous artists will write songs for other artists, even though they are talented and they could just performed on themselves. Ed Sheeran is written songs for Justin Bieber. Jessie J has written songs for Miley Cyrus and for our Williams is behind loads of hit songs. Paul McCartney makes millions each year from his songwriting credit. Songwriters get paid an upfront payment for their services. And then they can also claim a share of mechanical and performance royalties to price that you can charge can vary depending on how successful you are and who you know. I can imagine it's very difficult for an up-and-coming songwriter to get in contact with Justin Bieber. But for a celebrity like Ed Sheeran, that is probably just a phone call. Also, some hit songs have several writers, such as Cardi B's, I like it, which has 14 writers and for different producers credited. So if you want to go down this route, you might have to share your earnings a lot. You can start off by selling Your Songwriting services on sites such as fiber. Or there are lots of other websites that you can submit your Lyrics To for potential is defined 31. Remixes & Samples: Remixes can bring new life to an existing projects. You could get one of your old songs remixed and re-release it An urn again and bring more fans back to the original project, although I don't think it had permission beforehand. A recent example of this is 66 remixes of Madonna's frozen. The remixed went viral and bought a whole new audience to the track generations later, the remixes now been officially released by Madonna herself, and it has its own official video on her YouTube channel. I recently released a singular I produced called fly away, in which I had a 50, 50 split with the vocalist. A few months later, a producer contacted me about a remix which we then rereleased with a three-way split between myself, the vocalist, and a producer. This meant that we got additional income from the new sung, and it didn't really involve any extra work, as you can see, becomes a form of income for the original artists and the remixes. So it's also a good option for producers, can also be a good way to gain new funds. If you remixes popular sunk order, you weren't able to sell it without getting permission first, Samples are also a form of remixing. This is where a section of an old song is used to create a completely new piece of music. So many new songs have had Section sampled from older songs. The original is, has been paid again for the rights and is learning new royalties from the new version. For example, Drake's one dance sample, the UK garage song. Do you mind sometimes songs are remixed, are sampled without any permission. So make sure you're aware of any copyright issues. If song does get bigger than the original is, my embrace it and re-release it like Madonna dead, or they may try and sue you, stink apparently did with juice world, even though he denies it, it has been claimed that he receives 85% of older songs royalties. So make sure that you get permission first. If you actually plan on distributing agreements. You can also choose to sell your own sample packs, whether it's vocal samples, drum loops, or simpleminded, is this difference. Getting Your Song sampled as sample pack's usually contain individual hits, such as the kick drum instead of a whole section of a sung. Sometimes this can even be sound presets for symptoms such as massive or serum. So buyers can just use your settings and re-create the sound of your instrument and then play the notes themselves. So it's still unique. Producers often do this as many other beat makers want to replicate their style. It doesn't even have to be Music. You can sample any sounds and seldom filmmakers, often by ambient sounds and sound effects. You can even record birds singing in your garden if you want and sell it 32. Teaching Your Skills: Teaching Your Skills to others is a great way to make money for musicians. I don't just mean being an actual music teacher or teaching how to play an instrument, although those are excellent career choices, as mentioned in the section about other Music Industry Careers. In this section I'm talking about making additional money from your own music. If you're a successful musician with lots of fans than the will be people out there who wants to learn your style and techniques. So you could put out an online course like this one. You can write a book or do tutorials that are specific. Your sound. Timberland has released a masterclass on how he produces beats, and Alicia Keys also has a class on Songwriting, just to name a few, there are lots of sites that you can use to sell your courses on, such as teachable, think if you Demi, could JB and Skillshare research for each one offers to see which one suits you best, takes a lot of work to put together a course or write a book, but you can charge a lot for your knowledge. And if you're an expert in your field than a lot of people want to buy it personally, I'd much rather learn from someone who am a fan off than some random college music teacher who has never had any experience outside of the classroom. 100 pound course only needs 10,000 Sales to make 1 million pounds. Compare that to 10,000 spotify streams, which is around 34 pounds. So you can see why it makes sense from a business perspective. You can even do tutorials on YouTube or you can get paid to talk for your processes live in front of an audience. This could be for universities, music conventions, or even for software companies. For example, the Audio Plug-in company called waves, often as sound engineers talking about how they use their products to make songs or distributors like ditto Music. I've artists such as vital from Wolverhampton who talks about the best practices when releasing music. Don't worry about other people stealing your style or knowing Your Secrets. No one has your unique story or Personality and people will respect you more of a helping them learn and grow the best and the most famous chefs in the world are the ones who share their recipes 33. Is A Record Deal Worth It?: A Record Deal is the dream for most artists, but there might not always be the best option. A lot of artists will say that being independent is better. And that is true in terms of how much percentage of income you keep. You have full control over your Brand, what style of music You Make, and you get to keep most of the money. The negatives of this though, are that you have to do everything yourself, which can take a lot of time and also knowledge that you may not have. You also have to put all the money in yourself and join studio time Videos and the Marketing. This isn't always a bad thing though. If you have a home studio and you're really good at mixing your own music, you have creative ideas for videos and a good social media following. Then while at big labeled, take a cut from all your hard work in reality, Record Labels have large teams who have expertise in different areas. They have lots of contacts in the industry that can provide you with budgets. And they can help you take career to a level that you may not have been able to reach yourself. This is more the case with major labels and small independent labels. I know a lot of electronic music producers who have had song sign to their favorite house music labels. And honestly it's done absolutely nothing for their career and I didn't even own a penny from it. What the benefits of a major label sound amazing. It seems to becoming more common that labels are only signing artists that already have a huge following and they're already hit in big numbers. And at that stage is questionable whether the label is still needed as the artist. I've already done all the hard work themselves. If you do get approached by a label, It's important to get any contracts looked up professionally before signing anything. Sometimes artists can end up earning very little even from a hit song, once all the costs have been deducted. And in some cases that can even end up owing the label Money. Million pound music video might be enticing, but that costs can be taken away from the profits before you get your share and any advantage you get paid up front, you should ensure a non returnable free 60 deals have a bad press, but they aren't always a bad thing. A free 60 Deal is where the label looks after every part of the ice career, including the management, live shows and Merchandise. This can be very comfortable as it takes a lot of stress away from the artist. However, the labor will take a bigger car. I usually wouldn't get a share in those areas, but they may make better Merchandise and market it better than you cut up anyway. So there are pros and cons to both. We often hear of major is wanting to get out of their labor contracts and buyback device to their masters, such as Taylor Swift did recently, at the end of the day, it's up to you to decide whether a Record Deal is worth it. It may be a good option just to get your name out there and then you could go independent later on. Or you may want to avoid enables altogether, with the rise of the Internet and social Media, labels are no longer than necessity that they once were. And you shouldn't look at getting signed as the biggest goal that you have. It is possible to do everything on your own these days. And in some cases, you might even be better off staying independent 34. Other Music Industry Careers: When it comes to making money from music, there were lots of other Careers in the industry besides being the main artist in the spotlight, you may not end up being famous, but you can still make a career doing what you love surrounded by amazing people with similar interests. In this video, I'm gonna go through some of the options that are available. Many of these jobs involve skills that you may already know or will learn during the course of your own Music Career said it can be applied in other areas or even a later day if you decide to retire from the spotlight. First off, there's a career in radio, not only Being the DJ, but to show needs producers and assistance who makes sure all the equipment is working properly. They ensure that audio quality is high and that the content of the show is up to scratch. They also need editors and people to discover new artists, managed submissions, run the social media pages, cameramen and video editors, along with other jobs. Next, there are journalists and interviewers who will write about artists and projects for news articles on blogs, sometimes getting to interview really famous musicians. Then there were events organizers and promoters who book is to perform and sell tickets to venues. You'll be hearing, load music all the time and helping choose which is you get to see. Another option is recording studio jobs. Recording your own songs are producing, then why not charge overall is to record them and work in a studio, or even set up your own. If you just want to do the mixing of songs, you can even do this online, gets stem sent to you and mixed them from the comfort of your own home. You could also be a music teacher if you know a lot about the theory or you can play an instrument, then why not teach others how to play and get paid for it? You don't even have to write any of your own songs and you'll get to practice every single day becoming an even better musician yourself. Starting your own independent record label is another music career, or even working at an existing label as an A&R, discovering new artists to sign or in the marketing department. This could be a good idea for you as an artist to, as you will learn the inside processes and you can apply them to your own music whilst also networking with a lot of people in the industry. You could also managing other artists and help grow their career and keep on top of all the jobs that the artist doesn't get time to do themselves and stop them from doing anything stupid. And although there are many more jobs in the industry out there, the last one I'm going to mention is Music Video Producer, because that was my job. You'd be surprised just how many people can be involved in the process of filming a music video. On smaller Budget Videos, most things are covered by a single camera man. But as the cost increase, that can be lots of different roles available. These are technically clusters filmmaking jobs, but there are directors, camera operators, stylists, location scouts, and producers who decided whether Budget suspend gaffers who are in charge of the light in Editors and colorists, just to name a few. If you don't manage to make it as an artist or you don't want to be in the spotlight. Or if you just want to get a foot-in-the-door and more about the industry. There were loads of options out there and they are all still very important jobs that are necessary to keep the business going personally, I'd much rather be behind the scenes than be an artist. And over this course is about how to make money from your own music. It's important to note that there are other options that are out there 35. Why Is Marketing Important?: I often hear musicians site that they're just want to focus on making the music and they don't care about marketing. But what is the point of having a great product if nobody gets to see it, Marketing is how you make people aware that you music exists. We always hear people saying that is music isn't that good, they're just good at marketing it. And over music Is Subjective. I think that just proves how important the Marketing is if it can be used to make bad songs. So just imagine how much impact it could make for a great sung. You might have the best song in the world and every single income streams that are ready to make money from it. But without the marketing side, you won't be able to get anyone to actually listen to it and make the most of those different income streams. And even if you do get lucky and you managed to get your song notes without any marketing at all, you should still do some even more fuel to those flames and boost those Sales. All your listeners have very busy lives and with audio for music that is released every day, let alone all the other forms of entertainment that you'll be competing with. It is more important than ever to make people aware that your music exists and to stand out above that noise. Marketing can be the difference between a Song been a hit or a flop. And you've put all of that effort and money into writing the lyrics, recording studio and film and music videos, then you might as well promote as much as you can make all of your hard work worthwhile. Big brands such as Coca-Cola and Nike spend ridiculous amounts on their advertising budgets. And those are all household names. So if they still need to market their products every single day, then what makes your song any different? 36. Your Brand Identity: Your Brand is your unique identity. It is your audience's perception of you, and it is a promise of what they should expect. Branding is crucial for building a loyal fan base. And it isn't just about the music you create or a fancy logo is your image, your Personality, and the message that you portray to develop your Brand. Think about what unique selling points you have and what makes you stand out from the other artists. You should keep this image and the message consistent across all your songs, marketing materials, and social media platforms. This includes any posts that you type and the way that you apply to your fans. It also includes the clothes you wear, the aesthetic of your website, and they album artwork, the fonts you use. And it can even include the color schemes that you use. Remaining consistent really helps fans connect with artists whose brand aligns with their own values and beliefs and build a loyal following. If your message doesn't remain the same across different avenues, then you could lose your audience by confusing that. This doesn't mean that you can evolve and mature over time. Nobody expects a 40-year-old wrapper to talk about the same things as they did when there were 16. But your audience will have also grown up as well. And then new values will hopefully still align with your new ones. But for now, having a unique brand that stands out from the crowd and remaining consistent will hopefully allow you to build a loyal core following and then turn them into your own community. 37. Making A Release Plan: When you want to make a new sung, it helps to write a day by day release plan. I'd suggest wearing a checklist so that you know what to do and having a release calendar so you know when to do it. You can use Google Drives for your lists so you can access them on all your devices and edit them easily. Or you can write it out on paper. You can use calendar apps or a diary to organize what you need to do each day. Ideally, you should start thinking about your plan before the studio session starts so you can Record content of the process and use it as extra Marketing clips for social media and for me behind the scenes footage layer around the release plan should also lasted until a few weeks after the launch date. Marketing isn't just for the lead up to the Release. It should go on long after, with some successful songs still being marketed years later, you should have your song submitted the distribution way in advance of your release date to ensure that you can get all parts of your plan into action and give you time to pitch your song for playlist. In first-off, you should write out a list of all the essentials that you need to do when releasing a sung. This could include things such as get the song mastered, artwork made, submit to distribution, registered with song, with PRS, etcetera. These are all important to make sure that you get all of your income streams from the beginning. And some of the marketing tools will require these steps first, such as submitting your songs for radio and TV syncs often requires your PRS codes or your songs ISRC codes, which is another reason why you should submit the distribution way in advance of your release date. Secondly, write a list of audio other ways that you plan to promote your Sung. I find that it helps to split this into sections and to tick off each one once it's done. For example, Section one could be radio Play, which are then pull it point. Each radio related thing that I need to do, such as submitted to BBC introducing, Email the song to radio DJs, tried to get an interview on a local radio station. I usually write each social media platform separately to, as it's best to treat each one individually. But typical release plan sections would be radio, spotify, apple Music, TikTok, Instagram, facebook, Twitter, reddit, whatsapp, youtube, Email, TV, news, blogs, interviews, Merchandise, competition, and word of mouth. Then I'll break that down into what I plan to do for each section. If you really organized, write down the dates that you plan to do each thing and when it will be shared. Once you've got your plan together by a checklist of order, different pieces of content you will need, such as clips in this radio, photos behind the scenes of the music video, trailers for the music Videos, TikTok challenges clips of you lip-sync in the song, and much more. This can be a mixed between high-quality content and user-generated content filmed on your phone for stories, you can also share any fund may clips that you received two, once you've got each piece of content, it helps to make a content calendar for social media. And then you can use a service such as HootSuite or Sprout Social to schedule and all your posts beforehand. You don't have to post each piece on the day that it happens. It might help to hold back some of the content until closer to the Release Day. Song isn't going to come out until much later on. If you post it too early, your funds might forget about it. It sounds overwhelming doing all this by yourself. But if you break it down day by day, It only takes a small step each day. I'm planning in advance and being prepared with all your content beforehand will help you a lot. Even if you don't manage to get every single thing ticked off, you'll still be better off than if you had no plan at all and just released a song and hope for the best. You can always look back after and review which things were most effective, and then you can refine your future release plans to cater for you. For example, if posting on red, they're only got one Play. Maybe you could just skip that step and double down on something that was more effective. I've added a release plan template in the download section, so Feel free to use that or you can create your own 38. Press Kits: I press kit is a digital pack that journalists and media companies can use to find out more information about you and access photos or marketing materials to make it easier for them to write any articles about you. It's important to have because it is free Marketing. And if it is easy to access, for example, on your website, then articles can be written about you without even contacting you first, which means that they are much more likely to do it. You can use a Website to create an electronic press kit from the template such as ReverbNation, Adobe Spark, and width. You want to make a good first impression. So keep it concise and only include your best work. You should have a short bio about yourself including any interesting information, including big achievements and up-and-coming events and releases. Also add quotes and any testimonials from previous press coverage that you might have had. You should also have links to your music, putting your best songs at the top, if you like. You can even add unreleased songs, especially if the media coverage is around a certain released. Just don't add this to your website if you don't want any funds leaking your unreleased music early. Next, you should include some high resolution photos, album artwork, and any branding or logos that you may have. Also add links to any music videos that you've done. You'll want to add any contact details and links to your social media pages and your website. Finally, you can add a calendar of any upcoming tour dates or any bookings that you have. Remember, this is just older things that you can include. It doesn't mean that you should include everything. Remember to keep quite short and concise. Now that you have your media kit ready, you can add a download link to your website or send it via e-mail to any blogs or journalists that you want to get in touch with or anyone who asks for it. 39. Networking: Networking with other people in the music industry and surrounding areas can be very useful. I know is you don't have the biggest following the death bringing many streams. And To be honest there music isn't even that amazing in my opinion. But I repeatedly get given opportunities just from the people that they know. Some of these opportunities are getting booked, support and bigger artists playing at local festivals listed in Magazines is the next is to watch out for some of them have even been painted on murals in their hometowns. Obviously, it does help if the music is good too, you can get older chances in the world. But if the funds don't connect, then you still won't get famous. Some of these artists still don't become successful, even with all of those chances given to them. But it can help you a lot. And some of these opportunities will allow you to make a living from music. So it's still worth doing. You don't have to go around sucking up to everyone and being fake, just attending different events and speaking to people in different areas and collaborating with people should be enough. I once got asked to talk on a panel in front of some local up-and-coming artists. And while I was there, I met someone who worked at a sink company. I promoted for nightclubs in Birmingham and somebody who worked for PRS for music. And this event was free for artists to just turn up and listen and ask questions. You also never know who somebody else knows and how the dots will connect. But the more people that you get to know and you work with, the more chances that your name will get recommended somewhere. For example, I've worked with some of them coming artists and then manage that was also running the TOR for a really famous American hip hop group that I'd grown up listening to. And I ended up filming them a freestyle and going on there toolbars just for me in their manager owed also film lesser-known artists without realizing that there were related to or friends with so much bigger artists, offered to film for free at festivals. And some of the headlines later got in touch with me to see if I had any footage of them. It really helps to get out in the real-world, do as much as you can to get involved in your industry or even other places that you might not think of. If you knew someone who worked at your local newspaper, maybe that might write an article about you. If you knew somebody who runs a nightclub, you can ask to perform their Or you can use it as a location in your music video. It doesn't just have to be Music contexts. You might even be a fan, and they could then tell you that someone in their family works with someone who may be able to help you. There is an idea called the six degrees of separation that states that we are only six social connections away from anyone in the whole world. So you might know someone and they know someone else and then that someone else knows someone else. And if you do that six times, you should be able to reach in the whole world that just shows the power of networking. You can even network with people online, joining conversations on social media, find groups within your niche searches on Facebook or Reddit or two spaces. Don't just spam people replies to subjects that you have interest in having real conversations. Help share people's music or Content and help give them advice when they asked for it. There are so many ways to network and you can also burn bridges if not done correctly. I've forgotten to reply to people in the past or upset No, to Videos. And then there's been a time where I may have been a bit rude when I've been stressed out or when I didn't know how to run a business properly. And I'm sure that I lost them support or big opportunities because of that. So make sure that you're always on your best behavior. Be nice to people and treat them how you'd want it to be treated 40. Social Media Strategy: Social Media is a very important tool for marketing your music. Your social media strategy should be a long-term plan and not just when you have a release. There are several different networks that you can use, but it suggests that you're focused on just a few of them at first to keep them manageable until you have a team find out which Platforms your target audience uses the most and which are most popular. Experiment with them to see which Platforms give you the best results, the most popular platforms are always changing. You need to keep up-to-date. What worked only a couple of years ago is no longer relevant now, so it's important to keep on adapting. Each platform has a slightly different format. I find that you get the best results when you use each one as a separate app instead of cross-promote in-between them. For example, don't just use your Twitter account to share links to your Facebook page and youtube videos. Use twitter as Twitter. If people go on your profile, they should be able to have the full experience inside of the app. Look at other celebrities and successful artists that are in your industry and see which platforms they use and how they run each one. When you have a new release out, you can hype it off on each platform separately. Use your marketing plan to organize what and when to post in-between releases. You can share your story and share behind the scenes of what is happening so that fans don't think that you've disappeared. It's important to stay active on socials even when you have no new Music comment, there were so many artists out there. Now, if you go quiet for a year, than the chances are that everyone will forget about you by the time of your next Release. Also, staying active helps keep people going back to your old music. Too many artists get overwhelmed by the idea of Content Creation, and I do understand why. But to make it easier, you can just document the process as you go along. For example, when you in the studio, you could take some pictures and film some footage on your phone when you making a music video, you could film some behind the scenes clips. I find that most artists tend to do this naturally when they're excited about something. So when you're doing something interesting, are you proud of your work? You should naturally want to share that if running already social media accounts is too difficult, you can use scheduling apps such as HootSuite or buffer to control them all from one place and prescheduled book Content. Or you could hire a social media manager to run them all, although it will be a cost and there's a risk of losing your own personal voice. You can also book create content, and you could fill a long-form video and chop it up into multiple short videos to give you even more to post. Or if you've done an interview somewhere, you could cut that opens clips to social media engagement can be both organic and paid. I know it's boring, but to maximize organic reach, you should be aware of any big changes in algorithms as this will affect how much reach your posts will get. Most social media platforms vapor content with high clicks, engagement and watch time. So try to create interesting content that stands out. A lot of sites are pushing towards paid traffic, seeming to limit the reach for normal users to try and get them to spend more. This is unfair, but it's no different to traditional ads in the past. And that can be very powerful when used correctly, use your analytics to choose who to target and try to create posts which actually convert into streams and Sales when posting online, Always keep your overall brand in mind. Every single thing that you say or share is a reflection of your image and how your funds will perceive you 41. Paid Advertising: Paid social media ads are a form of advertising on social media platforms where businesses or individuals can pay to promote their content or products to a targeted audience. These ads can take various forms, such as sponsored posts, promoted tweets, sponsored stories, and more depending on the different social media platforms, paid advertising on social media can be a powerful tool for reaching new audiences and promoting your music, but it can also be quite complicated. Different platforms have different advertising options, so it's important to understand what's available to you. Many people focus mainly on the reach, but it's also important to make sure that the advert itself entices people to want to find out more. One of the key things to remember when creating your ad is to make sure that it is visually appealing. People's attention. Use high-quality images or videos of your music and make sure that your ad is targeting the right audience. Ads can be a great way for you to reach new funds and build up your community. For example, you can use Facebook's Audience Network to show your ads to people who have similar interests to your target audience, who might also like your music, it's important to always track your results and adjust your advertising campaigns accordingly. You want to make sure that you're getting the best return on your investment possible. First, you should set a clear goal for your campaign. Is it to generate more streams, get more brand awareness, or to drive Marketing Deal website. You should then identify your target audience and then use the targeting options available and the social media platforms to reach them. This will increase the chances of your ad being seen by people who are actually interested in your music. You can find out more information about who your audiences. For your social media analytics, you should include a clear call to action in your ad, such as listen now on spotify or stream I Music, which will encourage people to click through to stream your son. You can also use re-marketing campaigns to target users who have already interacted with your AD. This will help you reach your audience again and remind them of your music as social media sites now hide your reach. You might have to pay just for your own existing funds to see your post, such as on Facebook, where you have the option of just targeting people who already like your page. Next up, you can set your advertising budget. Usually you will set the total amount that you'd like to spend and then choose how many days you want the campaign to last for. Sometimes you will set the daily budget instead of the total. It might be a good idea to run multiple ads on a smaller budget. And then a and B test them to see which ones are more effective before you put on a higher budget. Another Advertising option is to use a sponsored pay List inside a spotify, which is a way to get your music in front of more listeners by working with spotify to place your music on a playlist, you can reach a larger audience and increase the chances of your songs being streamed. However, at the moment, there is a minimum budget of 250 pound for this. And it does require you to put your BAT numbering, which does limit their service to larger businesses who weren't over that threshold. If you're an employee for a company or a sole trader, then you won't be able to do this at the moment. Spotify does came to be working on this to provide the option to all customers in the future though. So hopefully this will Have Changed By the time that you've watched this video. Paid social media ads differ from other forms of advertising, such as TV adverts or billboards in several different ways. First off is the targeting. Paid social media ads allow for highly targeted advertising, allowing businesses or individuals to reach a specific audience based on the demographics, interests, behaviors are more TV ads and billboards, on the other hand, reach a broad audience with limited targeting options, social media ads can be more cost-effective than traditional forms of advertising. This also allows for direct interaction with the audience. It allows the artist to engage with their fans through comments, direct messages and more. Whereas traditional advertising was typically a one-way communication with social media ads, you also offered more detailed analytics and tracking options, allowing guys to see the performance of the rats in real-time and make adjustments accordingly. You can also choose what format they ADSR. For example, youtube offers in-video ads, which can be both skippable or non skippable. And you also get sidebar ads or discovery ads. So you will have multiple options inside each day from platform. Well, organic promotion is more ideal as it doesn't cost money, and it means People naturally wants to share your music. Paid Advertising can offer you a fast solution to reach more people. Ideally, you should use a combination of both organic and paid promotion. And if you do see a post starting to go by will organically, then you can always pay for that post to reach even further, as you know that it's already effective, it's better to double down on what is already working than to try and get a few extra clicks on a post that nobody cares about. 42. Word Of Mouth Marketing: Word Of Mouth Marketing is probably the most effective form of Marketing, in my opinion. If you can get people talking about you or your music, than it will spread very quickly. One of the reasons that word Of Mouth Marketing is so effective is that it is even more targeted than social Media, as we only usually tell people about the things that we think there may be interested in. If you share a video on my Facebook, I can't guarantee that my friends will even see it. It may get hidden in the algorithms. They might not be online at that time. There might be too busy doing something else to check or just mindlessly scroll past it amongst all that noise is to say to my friend, Have you heard this new sung? There'll be a lot more likely to go back and search it, or I might just show it to them there. And then also, we only usually talk about songs that stand out in some way. We noted it must be good or interesting if someone is telling us about it. Now, I'm not suggesting that you go around telling people face-to-face about your sung. The best way to get word Of Mouth Marketing on your side is to do things that stand out or get people talking about it organically. This can be through your music or through interesting music Videos. Miley Cyrus is released to song called Flowers about her ex cheating on her. And she filmed a video at a house where it happened and released it on our X's birthday. This was enough to get everybody talking about it. And the fact that it wasn't obvious from watching the video, may People talk about it even more as it was discovered, the secret word Of Mouth Marketing can even be through your other actions in general, outside of music, for example, Kanye West, although controversial, it has managed to remain relevant for a long time and he's always in the news or trending on Twitter for something not that I'd recommend going through that extreme are always doing it in a negative way. And personally, I think he may have gone too far, To be honest, I'm not even sure anymore if his is actually Marketing or if he is just going insane. But anyway, all of the biggest stars utilize talking points before their songs are released, such as age, pretending he was in a relationship with a Media from chicken Chuck dates or central say, saying that he's no longer releasing a Song because his girlfriend letting all of this gets the gossip go in and builds up more excitement for the Release. And it's also extends to social media. If people are talking about it, then blogs are writing about it, or the news pages are sharing stories about it, which then gets people talking even more. It's an amazing way to organically boost your sales without trying to graph the way up paid ads or pleasing the algorithms. This may seem more difficult for smaller, as the general public probably won't care what you say. Oh, who you tight and just yet. But there are ways to get people talking still, even if it is just about how amazing your song is. Again, you can do this on a smaller scale, such as local band helps out a homeless shelter. Now I'm not suggesting that you only do good deeds for marketing purposes, but that's just an example of the kinds of things that you can do. 43. Music Videos: A music video is a visual representation of a Sung aside from any artistic purposes, the main point of a music video is to be used as a promotional tool. It's basically an advert for your Sung. I'll be covering the whole process of making music videos and how you can film and edit them yourself in another section of the course, which I'll be adding later on. But for now, I'll just be going over the basics and why they're important. I've heard songs that I wasn't too keen on and then saw an amazing video for them. And I grew to love those songs. And it also works the other way to a bad, low-quality video can cheapen a sung and almost make it sound worse. So music videos can be very important for marketing your sung. However, they're not always necessary, especially if the cost of making one outweighs the potential returns. And some songs may become very successful, even without any visuals, even more so since the spotify and TikTok generation, a music video is a great way to really add your Personality and Character to your song and show off your brand's identity. It should also be interesting, engaging, and get people talking. Remember, is a marketing tool. So you want to make it as sharable as possible to get its full effect, think about why people would want to show it to their friends when planning your music video, I'd suggest getting your ideas first and then thinking about Your Budget. A lot of ideas can still be carried out on a lower budget, but you might just have to plan them in different ways and make sacrifices in other places. A good example of this is if you want it to film a clip of somebody getting shot in a high Budget video, you'd probably have lots of special effect. A really good actor prompts by blood. But for a low budget video, you could just share that act as getting into a car. And then you can cut away to a shot of the tree with lots of birds in it. And then you put a sound effect of a gunshot and then show all the birds flying away. This way you let the audience come up with their own conclusion about what happened. And in some ways this can be even more effected and it tells exactly the same story. You may also have to make some sacrifices. For example, if your heart set on a location, but it is expensive, you could use a cheaper camera man and camera package and sacrifice the video quality. The video quality is most important to you. You could scrap the location and film for free in the street with a more expensive Director, Your Budget is how much you're willing to spend overall. You then have to allocate it to different areas. This is the job of the producer in filmmaking, but in smaller productions, you'll most likely be doing this yourself or with the camera man. There are three main types of Music Video. These are performance-based, story-based, or abstract videos, which are more artistic. Most videos fall into one or more of these categories. Typically, they tend to be a combination of performance and story-based video. When thinking of ideas for your videos, listen to the song number P and think about how it makes you feel and what story is talent? What is the mood of the Sung? What images can you picture when you hear certain instruments and sounds? Think about your Brand. You can make it sharable and keep people watching until the end. Also try not to just act out every single limit that you've written as this can look quite cheesy. For example, a sad song could show that is singing the lyrics, sitting by a lake deep in four, instead of acting out that sad story, sometimes this can be more effective to let the audience create their own pictures in their heads. You can write down a list of any ideas and locations and anything specific that you want at certain times in the Sung. Having this all panned out beforehand makes the shoot go a lot smoother and ensures that nothing is forgotten. I've done lots of video shoots where I've just turned up and hope for the best as the artist didn't want to plan anything. Occasionally it has worked and we've ended up with a documentary style video that happened organically. But a majority of the time, we wasted half of the day driving around, thinking about what to do, and we'd end up having to come back another day to film everything that we've missed. It's a lot harder to have ideas on the spot, although you should still leave some room for this as spontaneous ideas can be better, just don't try and win the whole thing. There are several stages of pre-production that you can do. Not all of them unnecessarily for every video. But the more prepared you are, the better. The first stage is the treatment. This is usually sent to the artist by a director and then the artist chooses which treatments they like and picks one. A treatment is where you write down the general idea for the video and you include visual references such as stills from movies and other Videos. Write down each scene with a few sentences alongside to describe them. They should be quite brief, and these are normally used just to pitch an idea. The next stage is storyboards. This is where you draw are each shot so you can visualize how each sequence will look, highlighting what angles to use, shot sizes such as Wired or close-up and any camera movements. Think about comic books are written. These aren't always needed in music videos, but I have found them useful at times. And they are important for action scenes are special effects. So you know which shuts will cut well together. They can also save a lot of time in editing. If you already have an idea of the order that you want everything, You don't have to be good at drawing for storyboarding, stick man will do. Next up we have the shot list. This is where you write down each individual shut that you need, usually an order of the location in the day. You can tick off each one to make sure that you don't miss anything. It also helps to split the day into different times to help it run smoothly and make sure that you didn't have people waiting around for no reason. For example, you might feel more beach scenes, 10:00 A.M. to 01:00 P.M. then have a lunch break, Feel my hotel seen two to four, and then do all the clubs scenes at five to 09:00 P.M. this way you can tell your actors went to turn up and you'll have time to change locations and eat between scenes. This hardly ever goes to plan, but having a rough guide and paste is useful. Remember, you do need to turn upon a time too. If you turn up for hours late and everyone has been waiting around, the locations may no longer be available. The mood on the set is not likely to be as positive and things might have to be rearranged for another day. It's a massive waste of time and money. And trust me, what happens a lot more than you'd expect. In fact, I can't remember the last time An artist was actually on time for a video shoot, but that doesn't mean that you should make a habit of it. One piece of advice that I'd give for performing a music videos is to sink or rap out loud, not just mind the Lyrics. It looks a lot more natural and it will sync up there. It'll be muted in the Edit anyway, so don't worry about how your sound live. Editing a music video can take anywhere from a data weeks to make sure that you have a realistic expectation on when it will be finished, to try to agree on the deadline with the editor beforehand so you can Plan it's release properly and don't expect it to the next day. Try to give a bit of time the best final products and allow for revisions. Once your video is finished, you can upload it online or even submit TV channels. Youtube tends to be the most common option these days, and it has the potential to get an emotion reach and anyone can upload there. So this is what I'd recommend for now, TikTok is also a good option, although it is currently focused on short-term vertical Videos, you can actually now upload a whole music video there since the time limit has been updated to 10 min lung. Another option is to film a series of short vertical mini music videos, specifically for social media, as this could be more budget friendly and may even be more effective for promotion. And it seems like this could be where the future is heading. These can even be filmed yourself on your phone. So a small amount of time learning how to create them yourself could be what puts you ahead of artists even better if you have the time and resources, you could do both a traditional music video and the social Media video. So that is why a music video is really important for marketing your music. And I would definitely suggest doing one if your budget allows for it. 44. Interviews: Interviews are a great way to build a hype around your release, even if you aren't actively talking about the release. Just getting on lots of different platforms in front of different audiences helps build awareness or remind funds that you exist, even though it's as big as Ed Sheeran still need to do this, try to get on as many different platforms as possible, ideally, ones that are relevant for your genre. This could be on radio stations, talk shows on TV, or even YouTube channels and podcasts. And although not technically interviews over TV appearances such as quiz shows and reality TV will also help boost your profile. Obviously, it's not as easy to get an interview on a big TV channel, but you can start off with small platforms or even film an interview yourself on social media to build up some interests and to show the platforms that you do actually have something interesting to talk about. Local radio stations, newspapers, and up-and-coming blogs are a good place to start. Try not to talk solely about your music because that could be boring. We see enough ads out there and funds don't want to feel like they're just being sold to. Interviews usually do better when you tell an interesting story or you have good chemistry with the interviewer, that being said, your funds will be interested in the processes behind your music or any unique events that may have happened during the process of building the project? 45. Blogs & Magazines: Music blogs or online websites that may share your music and write an article about it. Think about them as a digital version of a magazine. If you're lucky enough to be a big artists, this can happen organically, but for the rest of us, you will have to contact them first. Look for blogs that are relevant in your Genre. Ones that I've posted about similar is to yourselves. You can contact them through social media or via e-mail if they're provided one, when approaching blogs, make sure that you include some links to your music and a short bio about yourself. You could also give them something unique to offer, such as early access to your music. So there can be the first to post about it or give them an interview or interesting story to go with it. So they've got more incentive to write an article on you. Sending them your press release can also help to give them extra information and will help sell yourself to them. It also means that there were half to chase you up for any high-quality images and it will make it look more professional. Make sure that you are polite when you reach out to blogs. Be patient and don't get offended if you don't get any responses straight away. Or even if you didn't get chosen, they probably have lots of other artists that are also submitting Music. It also helps to be consistent with your releases and build up some fanbase blogs are much more likely to post about you if they think that you can bring them new view as to from your audience. So remember, it's about providing value for each other. So don't just expect them to post it out of the kindness of their own heart. 46. Your Email Mailing List: Mailing List is a list of Email addresses that you collect from your fans and you can use it to send a message to. It is an excellent Marketing tone as you can make subscribers aware of any news or new releases you have directly to them. We'll check our emails often and there were no algorithms hiding your e-mails. I can social media, it goes directly to your fans unless it goes into their junk or they unsubscribe to try not to span your fans all the time. You also have the advantage that you know that your Email will go to your audience who have opted into receive them. So the click-through rate for them should be much higher than on social media as you find is actually wanted to be made aware of your new releases. You can use services such as Mailchimp to send out emails and collect your Mailing List. These services would allow you to add a subscribe option to your website. Pop up asking view as if they would like to join. You can also add links to your social media bios and you can share it to get more subscribers. And some sites such as Bandcamp even give buyers an option to join Your less than they purchase your music. You could also collect emails from any other places that funds are about to enter their addresses without their permission. But I wouldn't really recommend doing this as you could lose their trust. So make sure that they have always opted into it first. Don't just go around adding random e-mails just to get more clicks on your music. 47. Influencer Marketing: Influencer Marketing and Music is where the artists connects with an influencer so they can push them music to a large and engaged audience. When looking for influencer, it's important to consider your target audience as you'll be wasting time and money pushing your song to a crowd that doesn't care. I know artists that I've paid a lot of money to get there song shared, unlike street comedy pages with millions of followers. And even though it seems like it's the right audience for the post, got absolutely no engagement because it wasn't me more a comedy sketch resulting in basically no extra views. And they paid more for that post and then they paid me for the whole video. Influences in your industry could be other musicians, celebrities, or social media personalities. It takes one share from these to make your song go viral. For example, some Tompkins songs were shared by Justin Bieber, which helps him get a lot of use. And then the comments section was full of people saying, Justin Bieber brought me here. This doesn't have to be super famous people either. Micro influencers in smaller niches are just as important and they often have an even more engaged and trusting audience. Remember though, that they can't post everything. There's a reason that they have a following. And if they just shed every single thing that was sent to them, their followers would no longer trust them. If you really look at influencer might just find your song organically and share it without being asked, this is the best option, but obviously you have no control over it apart from making good music. But there are a few things that you can do to help improve your chances. First, you can keep networking with people, get to know influencer, and then ask them to share your music. You can also try message people and ask them to share it. Remember to be polite. They don't owe you anything. Don't just spam everyone with the same message. Make sure that it's personal. For example, I'm a big fan of Your Music. I've been following you for years and I love what you do. I've just made a new song myself and I really appreciate it if you could check it out. And if you do like it, would you mind giving a Shapley's that's a lot better than just sending the link or not even showing that you care about their music. The other option is to pay for the post influencer might have An Email for inquiry, so you can ask for a price or you can use certain apps that connect you with influences such as grin off fluent. I've never actually used these apps before personally, so I don't know how much success you will have from them. So be sure that you do any research before using them. 48. Do You Need A Website?: Websites, there's still a useful tool for artists as you have full control over them and they're not hidden by any algorithms. If all social media sites became irrelevant like MySpace did, then where would your fans go to find you? It is good practice to have a central place where your audience can find information such as tour dates and Merch store and any Important news that you want to share with them. They're also a good place to e-mails for your Mailing List. You can pay to get a Website bill or you can build your own from templates from sites such as Squarespace. Having a Website can make you appear more professional. It helps you get taken more seriously by the media and promoters. And it's a good place to find out where to contact you. You can also set up a business e-mail instead of just a typical Hotmail or Gmail account. Not all artists have websites though these days. So while it can be useful, I wouldn't say that they are completely necessary. You can always put all that information on your social media sites. And if the sites do become irrelevant, you can always update it on the next layer side that comes about 49. TikTok: Tiktok has become a massive part of Music Marketing in the last few years. If your song becomes part of a challenge or latest trend, it can go viral overnight. Some marketing teams take advantage of this and even pay influencers to try and get trend started using them music. It doesn't even have to be new Music. Lots of old songs have recently resurfaced due to being rediscovered and TikTok, the best way to get your song trending on TikTok is of course, organically. So you can think about this at the Songwriting sage or during the music video. Is there anything in your music that might make people want to do a challenge to it. People love transitions, lip sinking and dances transitions, or when it starts off as one thing and then ends is another, such as having no makeup on. And then you put your hand over the camera and suddenly you're dressed up, ready to go out? Lip sinking is usually for catchy, funny or relatable lyrics and dances, or for high-energy songs, normally start and at the drop. Sometimes these are done in groups who have synchronized choreography. You can ask your friends and fans through a specific challenge to try and get the ball rolling with. It just makes sure that it actually works well with the Sung, I'll say might not end up catching on. Tiktoks. Algorithm can mean that any user can go viral. So sometimes it's better to spend less and approach micro influencers rather than spending a lot of money on the expensive, bigger influencer, it's best if you can get overused as posting your content, but you should also build up your own following on there and post content to help market your Sung's best results. Post consistently and use hashtags, share behind the scenes content to join him with other challenges. And remember to stay true to your Brand end. Don't worry too much about the video quality. Tiktok is meant to be user-generated. Fans weren't expect that it looks like a Hollywood film. A lot of up-and-coming artists have found success creating mini vertical music videos, specifically for TikTok and other short-form sites. Instead of making one high-quality, expensive music video, they filmed a series of 32nd music videos, maybe just performing the chorus. You only really need to do this from one angle if you like, just take a few changes of clothing with you and film seven different takes and seven different locations or angles. Add subtitles via Lyrics. And you've got a whole week's worth of posts. Instead of keep on sharing the same old music video clips saying full video out. Now, you can even film this on your phone using the TikTok app and lip-sync into your sung. A really good example of a song that went viral on TikTok is the Blackpool grime is milli big, who's sung. Mtb has been used by loads of massive influencers and even resurfaced again recently after Kim Kardashian has done a lip-sync video to it. So TikTok is now one of the most important marketing tools for musicians. You often hear a lot of big is complaining that labels are making them do TikToks, but if all the major labels are making their artists do it, that just proves how important it is. Don't just think that it's for kids and city dance videos. Make sure that you use this to your advantage. 50. Spotify Playlists: Spotify has a few different types of playlist. There were user-generated playlist, which are made by the general public, editorial playlist, which are officially put together by spotify as editors and algorithmic playlists such as Discover Weekly and Release Radar, which are created automatically based on the listeners interests. User-generated playlists are quite simple. If a listener likes your song than the candidate to their own playlist, these can occasionally have lots of followers, and sometimes businesses are influencer have their own playlist. So it can be worth sending the Playlists, donors your music on social media, but only if your music is a good fit, it's probably best to let this happen organically though, but Make sure to ask your fans to add it to their Playlists whenever you share it. Editable Playlists usually have a lot of followers, and they are mostly curated based on Genre or mood. Getting on these Playlists is more difficult, but it can provide a massive boost your streams and put your music alongside other similar is with the same target audience. You can submit your song to editorial playlist by a spotify for artists, you should do this a few weeks before the songs release date. I wish you'd probably miss out on it. That is why it's important to submit your music to distributors weeks in advance. If you do it last minute and submit a few days before the release date, then you're unlikely to get Playlists did well, you can't pitch it after the release date. It is possible to still get Playlists did if your song is picking up a lot of momentum, then the editors should still notice it. Some distribution services offer an option to pitch to Playlists to. I'd recommend using both options just to maximize your chances of success. Songs, you should explain what the song is about, what Genre and what mood it is, and why you think that it will do well, Explained your marketing plan and your previous successes. If your last song got 1 million streams and was paid on radio one, let them know this. The editors wants to keep the Playlists popular and it's less risky for them to Playlists someone that has already done well before. Once you do get on an editorial playlist, your position and how long do you stay there can depend on a few different factors to songs performance impacts this. If people keep on skipping past your song, then it will move down the playlist or get taken off it. If it gets a lot of streams there in comparison to the other tracks and it gets paid on repeat, then you'll move up the playlist and stay there for longer. You didn't have much control over this, apart from making the best Music possible and being on the correct Playlists for its audience. Another factor is how many over releases come out at that time. If loads of big is released songs that overshadow yours, then you're unlikely to stay in that Playlists for lung, the lung you managed to stay there and the how you position than the more streams and money you will make. Thirdly, the algorithmic playlists work by recommending your music based on what is and Genre you've listened to previously. Getting more followers on your Spotify account, releasing Music regularly and getting on over Playlists can help you get onto these algorithmic playlists. If people already like your old songs than spotify is more likely to add your new ones you're tracking appear in a release radar playlist anytime within 28 days at a release is also important to note that you can only have one sung in Release Radar at anytime. So keep that in mind if you plan on releasing more than one song per month. 51. What To Write In An Email: When trying to contact people in the music industry or for marketing opportunities, you will often have to send an email or some form of message. Somebody sounds like common sense, but I would get a ridiculous amount of poor emails that wasted a lot of my time. So hopefully you can avoid doing this. I would even receive emails that literally just said you or oil and then later on that send why are you ignoring me after they didn't get a response to that? When writing an email, it always helps to be polite and say what you want from the beginning To save lots of back-and-forth before getting your point across. It also helps to include links to your music and social media profiles are getting no end of emails asking to feature on my channel and it always have to reply back to here what is sounded like first? Good to include some info of your past achievements, such as my last single got 50,000 streams and it was Play listed on radio. Want don't get too big headed with this though. I'd often get messages from RSA and how they were the next big thing and that they were going to change my life if I gave them the chance to usually say they're better than anyone else I'd ever filmed and worked with to. Self-belief is important, but too much can come across as arrogant. And I'd usually find out that most of the artists that came across like this weren't actually as good as they thought they were trying to keep emails personal. If it feels like spam or you've just sent the same Email to lots of people, then you're less likely to get the response that you wanted, especially when you put the wrong name because the message has been copied and pasted when you send out a promo Email to market your new song to your fans on your Mailing List. I suggest keeping it quite short. Say how you've just released the new sung a sentence describing the song and its meaning. And say that you'd appreciate any feedback and any shares with links to edit can download it or streaming. You can also include a picture of the album artwork or something from behind the scenes. And don't forget to thank them for their support. A professional, well-written Email can go a long way. This doesn't mean that you have to be overly formal and fake. You should still sound like yourself and not a robot, but just make sure that it is professional 52. How Smart Speakers Have Changed The Industry: Smart Speakers such as Amazon, Echo, Google, Nest, and Apple HomePod Have Changed the way that we listened to music. The reason for this is all you have to do is say what you want to listen to, meaning that the listeners no longer see a list of artists and your artwork and thumbnails to choose from. This makes the experience a lot smoother for the audience as they no longer have to open a phone, open an app, search for the song that they want connects the headphones or a Bluetooth speaker and then press Play. They literally just say out loud what they want to here and it plays. But what that means is they can only request a song that they already know, or they can ask to put on a playlist which contains your song. If you're a new artist, that can make it difficult for you to get your music out there. One way to get around that is to make music specifically, we added the Playlists. I'm most Playlists now are curated by either mood or activity. People might say things such as, okay, Google put on a barbecue playlist or a gym playlist, or they might say Play some happy music. So when you make a sunk, think about what mood you want people to feel and what they're most likely to be doing when listening to it. Playlists can also be organized by Genre. So be careful when Being to experimental or blending multiple genres, as you may find that your music doesn't actually fit anywhere. Another problem with Smart Speakers for artists is that it's all good getting those extra streams and the Playlists. But people still won't know your name and be able to search for you again or become long-term funds unless they liked your song so much that they're trying to find out who made it. So one way around that could be to say your name at the beginning of the song, or by having a tag, for example, JSON, the ruler or DJ Khaled. The way that we listened to music is constantly changing and evolving. Just in my lifetime alone, we've gone from cassette tapes to see these. Then there was portable CD players and then MP3 players and iPods. And then you could get songs on your phone, which you would share through infrared or Bluetooth, which then changed to buying songs on iTunes or downloading them from LimeWire along with loads of viruses, right up to streaming on spotify and using voice activated Smart Speakers, it is important to keep up with a times and continue to adapt. What I'm talking about right now might even be completely irrelevant in a few years time, especially with diverse coming along and crypto and NFV ties, which may once again changed the way that music is consumed. I don't think you should let the latest trends dictate euro, but it is good to be aware of what is happening. Also, I do think that the best kind of music usually conveys some kind of mood and emotion. So it is good practice to think about this anyway, whilst in the Songwriting stages, content itself is the most important. So make sure that you just keep on making good music 53. Building Your Team: You can build a team around G by assembling a group of professionals who can assist with various aspects of your career, such as booking shows, promoting your music, managing finances, and providing creative input. This team can include a manager, agent, publicist, lawyer, Business Manager, as well as many other specialized professions such as Turing manager or a graphic designer. Building a strong, reliable team around you helps you focus on creating music while the team handles the day-to-day business aspects of your career, all of this marketing, social media, and keeping up with algorithms can be a bit overwhelming, time-consuming. And it can take because out of the zone of feeling Creative and doing what we love most, which is making the music. There are tools that can help make this easier, such as scheduling apps. I To make Content Creation easier and finding out which areas are most effective for you and focusing mainly on them. However, once you become bigger and more successful, you may want to think about hiring a team to help you run it all. You can't consistently come up with ideas, film and edit content for ten different platforms and reply to all of your funds whilst also writing new music, practicing, performing, and just living your own life to once you feel like it's worth it or you can no longer keep on top of it all. And it is within your budget to do so, you can start building your team. Your team can include cameramen, fulfillment behind the scenes and taking photos, editors for content creation, social media managers for keeping things updated and getting the best reach for you and a manager to help get you organized, keep you on the right track. And so are any bookings. You most likely grow this Team one step at a time depending on what you need help with the most, it can often start off with family or friends or even some of your fans. You may be lucky enough that people around you that want to help you and want to grow together, just remember that eventually people will have to be paid at some point because they do have their own lives too. They've got bills to pay, and not everyone's world revolves around you. At some point, for a bigger artist AT team will be necessary because you're a brand and a business and you can't possibly do every job yourself at the best level, it's better to hire experts, specialize in one area than to just try do everything yourself and the average, everything is still important to be aware of each role though, so you can understand the process and help direct your team. This is one of the pros to sign into a label as they will have a qualified team ready to help you take your career to the next level?