A Guide To

Self-Promotion
For Independent
Artists
Our guide to self-promotion is a
comprehensive bible that’s packed with
tips and tricks to help get your music heard.
 While our DIY distribution
service provides independ-
ent artists with everything
they need to get their music
selling and streaming in all
the right places, it’s not
likely to get heard much
if you don’t know how to
promote your music.
The downside of it being
easier than ever to get
your music out there is that
-there’s never been more
Don’t be competition for people’s
under the ears.

illusion that That means you need to

work every angle to make
other artists sure they hear the music
are getting you’ve worked so hard on.

everything
handed to
them on a
silver platter.

2
Table of contents
Two golden rules p. 4

The Pre Game

- How to approach self promotion p. 5

- Positioning and tone of voice p. 5-6
- Research p. 7

Getting started with self promotion

- Press Kit p. 8
- Picking up nad registering your channels p. 9
- Tools p. 10

Promoting yourself on your own social media channels

- Getting on top of social media p. 11

- Post types p. 12
- Interacting with others p. 13
- Building an email list p. 13
- Social adversting p. 14

Promote yourself on other people’s channels

- Making first contact p. 15

- Getting your music on Spotify Playlists, YouTube Channels and SoundCloud
premieres p. 16
- Getting your music featured by the press p. 17
- Getting your music on the radio p. 17

Planning a release strategy

- The big announcement p. 19

- Press, radio and premieres p. 19
- The video p. 20
- Counting down p. 20
- Release day p. 21
- Keep pushing p. 21
- Final thoughts p. 22
3
 Two Golden Rules

1. Never been afraid to ask. It’s surprising

how much you can get if you just ask
for it, and don’t be under the illusion that
other artists are getting everything
handed to them on a silver platter.
Whether you’re asking forconsideration
as a support act for a gig, or asking for
someone’s email address, the worst that
can happen is that they say ‘no.’

2. Never underestimate the power of a

personal, face-to-face meeting.
Just meeting someone once is much
likely to make them more up for work-
ing with your or helping with you than if
you’ve only had an email relationship.
So get out there in the real world and
network until you can’t network no
more!
4
 How to approach self-promotion
You need to give promotion the same who sign artists too. With rare
graft and attention that you do to all the exceptions, it’s not enough to sim-
other elements of your musical career. ply be talented and have some great
There’s no shame in pushing yourself. tracks. Decision makers want to see
All of the greats had to do it at that you have a following or some hype
some point, to some degree. already. Labels want to see that
you have a growing fanbase.
What’s more, the days of simply
submitting demos and getting signed Radio playlisters want to see you are
or getting discovered at a gig are generating noise with online tastemakers.
largely gone. As we said already, with
so much more music being released Until you can afford your own press team,
these days, ears are in high demand —  you need to be the one making this
and that goes for the label A&Rs happen.

Positioning and tone of voice

It’s all about finding the ways in which you are comfortable promoting yourself.
For example, not everyone wants to share every moment of their lives on social
media, and that’s fine. It’s about figuring out how to have a presence and how
to promote your music without feeling crass.

Write down your answers to the following:

1. Which other artists do you want to be viewed like or on the same line-ups as?

2. Which festivals do you want to play at?

3. Which press titles, websites and blogs do you want to appear on?

4. Which label do you want to get signed to?

The clearer picture you have of all of this, the more cohesive your promotional
The Pre Game

activities will be.

5
 “It’s best just to be yourself,
be natural and let your
personality shine through.”

Once you’ve sussed that, the next element You don’t have to talk about your
to figure out is your tone of voice for your own innermost feelings and post photos of
channels — i.e. in your social media, email everything you’re doing.
newsletters and website.
There are other ways to connect with your
It’s best just to be yourself, be natural and audience and let them into your world, like
let your personality shine through as people posting about your musical influences or the
tend to connect best with something that music that’s currently inspiring you.
feels genuine and personal.
Whatever you do, the most important thing is
But if you are more of a shy type who likes to to always promote your new music and gigs
let the music do the talking, then that’s fine and find a way to build a regular connection
The Pre Game

too. with your audience.

6
 Research
You should be constantly learning about the scene you want to be in and the wider
music industry. You need to know how things got to where they are, where they’re at
and where they’re going.

There are thousands of books and free articles and podcasts out there that can help
you understand more about how to promote yourself and how you can make inroads
into the industry. The more you know and the sooner you know it, the better. It’s also
important to keep on top of the ever-changing world of social media and online
marketing.

Some of our favourite resources to help you with all of this are:

‘How Music Works’ - an industry-standard book for

any aspiring musician, written by Talking Heads
legend, David Byrne.

Red Bull Music Academy: Couch Wisdom podcast

- a superb collection of in-depth interviews with
some of the biggest stars in music about how they
got to where they are, from Drake producer
Boi-1da to Björk.

Complete Music Update - a daily music industry

email newsletter (which also has a jobs section in
case you are looking for other paid work in the
industry while you build your musical career).

Music Ally - similar topics to Complete Music

Update but a bit more nitty-gritty on the
inner workings of the industry.

TechCrunch - their social media section is good

for keeping up-to-date with feature updates and
upcoming changes on all the key platforms
The Pre Game

7
 Press Kit
Good promotion starts with a solid press kit. This is a link that you can send to
press, blogs,

- a biography
- high-resolution photos of you or your band and logos if you have any
- links to your social channels, music and videos
- key press cuttings.

It should be a one-stop shop that gives someone a complete overview of what you’re
about and why they should care. Also don’t forget to put your contact details in your
bio!

If you’re a good writer, there’s no shame in writing your own biography. It can feel a
bit weird writing about yourself, but at least you know you’re going to say all the right
things. Otherwise, think about whether you have any writer friends who you could call
in a favour from, do a skill swap with or pay a little money to write it for you.

The same goes for photos. Ultimately all of this is a good investment, so if you need to
pay for these assets, it’s worth doing. Just make sure you shop around and find
someone whose style you are into. Make sure you get 5-10 good photos in a variety
of styles and dimensions(landscape, portrait, square). It’s better to get simple, clear
photos rather than stressing yourself out over anything too conceptual — or if you do
have a creative idea, make sure you get some straight-up ones too.

Your press kit should be easily accessible as a link you can quickly share or reel off to
Getting started with promotion

someone as easily as you would give them a business card (too old school!).
Create a clearly labelled press kit folder on your computer, put your (also clearly
labelled) bits in it, and upload the folder as it is or as a compressed .zip file to
Dropbox, Google Drive or similar. Then use a link shortening service like bit.ly to
create a customised link that’s easy to remember - e.g. bit.ly/mybandnamepresskit

8
 Picking up and registering your channels
Even if you’re not sure you’re going to have the time to post on every major channel,
it’s worth at least trying to reserve your preferred username on each channel and
filling out the profile details, uploading your pic and so on. It’s best not to spread
yourself too thinly and just stick to the main channels, and maybe decide which is
going to be your ‘hero’ channel where you focus most of your energies. The way to
figure this out is by asking yourself: if I could only havefollowers on one channel, which
would it be?

“There are countless

success stories of artists who
have built a career through
Getting started with promotion

amassing their own fan

base without external help.” 9
 Tools

There are lots of useful platforms, websites and apps that can help make
managing your online presence much easier and more efficient.

Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are great for scheduling content on Instagram

and Twitter respectively.

Canva is the go to web app for designing slick looking artwork of any kind, with loads
of great templates and fonts (the mobile version isn’t very easy to use, though).

Sounds lets you quickly create 15-second clips of YouTube, Spotify and SoundCloud
uploads for free to save to your camera roll for uploading.

Hypeddit lets you create ‘fan gates’ where people have to take certain actions to
download one of your tracks for free — such as following you or reposting your track.
Bandcamp also allows you to offer free tracks in exchange for emailaddresses.

Bit.ly is a free link shortening service that lets you create unique URLs so you can see
which of your activities and channels are getting the most people clicking.

Linkfire lets you create a landing page link that contains multiple links to your
music on several different platforms. This means you can just share one link on your
social media on release day and people can then pick their preferred listening
platform on the page it directs them too.

SoundCloud is still the most user-friendly way of sending people private links to your
tracks for listening and downloading.

Songkick and Bandsintown are the leading gig listing services which put the shows
you add to them in dozens of places across the web. Songkick’s placements include
integration with your Spotify and SoundCloud artist pages (you have to connect the
latter manually). They also offer widgets to install on your website and social media
channels, saving you from having to update several places
at once.
Getting started with promotion

Squarespace is the go-to service for building your own slick-looking website.
You can find cheaper options, but you won’t find one that’s easier or more intuitive
to use.

Mailchimp has become the industry leader for sending out professional looking email
newsletters, and has lots of powerful options for optimizing your mailouts.
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 This is where you have control over how and when you promote yourself.
Make sure you use your own channels to their fullest advantage instead of relying on
getting discovered by a blog or tastemaker. There are countless successstories of artist
who have built a career through amassing their own fan base without external help.

Getting on top of social media

Frequency and consistency are key with social media. If you’re the forgetful type,
set yourself a daily reminder to post on your chosen channels. Better yet, if you have
the time, use some of the scheduling services mentioned in the previous Tools section
to plan out your week of content ahead as much as possible. Don’t forget to leave
some gaps or flexibility for real-time, spontaneous content. If you’ve got a release
coming up, write down a rough week-by-week plan of what you’ll be posting to make
sure you’ve got all bases covered (more on that later).

Social media experts talk about ‘hygiene’ and ‘hero’ content. ‘Hygiene’ means your
day-to-day, ticking over posts — stuff to keep people engaged with your world. ‘Hero’
content means your releases, videos, tour dates — anything big that people are really
going to get excited about. It’s important to have this steady stream of ‘hygiene’
content along with regular ‘hero’ spikes.
Promoting yourself on your own channels

11
 Post types
More specifically, you should think about what your content ‘pillars’ or ‘buckets’ are
on social. These are the different themes you have to play with that fit in with what you
do and can help you come up with posts ideas when you’re feeling stuck.
Some examples:

-Behind-the-scenes / backstage photos

-Rehearsal / studio work-in-progress videos
-Inspiring music from others
-Articles or podcasts you find interesting about music and other musicians
-Ticket / guestlist giveaways for your shows
-Questions / polls for your audience to answer e.g. what track would you like me
to cover / remix?
-Reviews of your tracks or gigs
-Playlists that include your tracks
-A live stream Q&A with your fans

Another nice way to build some consistent engagement is to have weekly post types,
much like #ThrowbackThursdays. You can play with these existing social media trends
or create your own. It could be that you post a track that’s inspired you every
Wednesday, or create a new playlist of your favourite music of the week on a
Saturday, or post a new video blog every Monday letting people know about your
weekend gigs or rehearsals. If you can think of areally unique type of regular post that
no-one else is doing and will stand out visually in people’s social feeds, you’re on to
a winner.
Promoting yourself on your own channels

12
 Interacting with others
The more you interact with your fans and other artists you like, the more visibility you
will have. Until you’re so big you can’t keep up with the amount of messages you
get, reply to your fans comments and questions and show your appreciation for their
appreciation.

Comment and like other artists’ posts. Interact with posts from your favourite
promoters,festivals, labels, blogs and websites. Make connections with other artists
online and in the flesh at gigs and ask them for repost / retweet swaps so you
cross-promote each others’ music to your respective audiences.
Building relationships like these can be really crucial and could even lead to
support slots.

Building an email list

It’s important not to solely rely on building up your social media presence to
promote yourself. Although it is overwhelmingly the most important area, it’s also
wise to build up your own email list so that you are not only at the mercy of
algorithms and having to always pay to promote your posts.

All good build-your-own-website and mailing list providers give you ways to capture
email addresses through sign-up forms that you can embed on your website or host
on a unique link.
Bandcamp and fan-gate services like Hypeddit allow you to offer free downloads in
exchange for email addresses.

However you capture your emails, make sure the method you are using complies
with the recently introduced GDPR changes. As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to
use a service which uses ‘double opt-in’ where the user will be sent a confirmation
Promoting yourseld on your own channels

link to click after they or you have added them to your mailing list.

Try not to email your list more than once a month, and only email them when you
have something important to say or promote. As it’s a more ‘invasive’ form of
communication, you want to keep it for those special occasions.

13
 Social Advertising

It’s not secret that if you want to reach significant numbers of fans on Facebook these
days, you’re usually going to have to pay to use their advertising service.
Used in the right way, social media advertising can be incredibly effective and give
you a good return on your investment. It’s worth getting to know
Facebook / Instagram’s Ad Manager and experimenting with a small budget when
you have important things to announce like a new tour or gig.

“Used in the right way,

social media advertising
can be incredibly effective
and give you a good
return on your investment.”
The first step is to figure out what your priority is.
Is it driving streams and followers on Spotify?
Is it selling tickets for your gig? Have a clear objective in mind.
Then think about who you want to target.
What age range are they?
Where do they live?
Promoting yourself on your own channels

Are they fans of yours already or do you want to target fans of similar
sounding bigger bands?

Ad Manager lets your target very specific groups of people.

You could, for example, target 18-21 year olds who live within a two-mile radius of
the venue you’re playing at who are fans of Radiohead and don’t already like your
page. It’s very powerful stuff, and you can use it for everything from selling a product
to building an email list.
14
 Getting exposure on blogs, websites and radio can be hard work — and
sometimes disheartening when you’re not getting any results or replies to your
messages. But it’s crucial to persevere and to put the hours in. If you believe in your
music and you keep striving to improve it, there will be others out there who are into
what you do.

Step one is figuring out who they are.

Step two is figuring out how to contact them.
And step three is to keep on contacting them until they show some interest!

Making first contact

As we said before, do you research and figure out which platforms you want
exposure on. Build a spreadsheet of contact details to build up as you go along, and
build groups in your email provider to easily mass mail different people like promoters,
journalists etc. Don’t forget, though, that the personal touch is always optimal and is
likely to get better results — even if it does take longer.

Next, it’s all about finding that crucial email address for someone. Hunter.io is an
excellent place to start, allowing you to search email addresses on a specific
domain e.g. yourfavouritelabel.com. It scours the web to find all instances of
name@yourfavouritelabel.com. At the very least, this usually lets you see what the
format of email address in that company are e.g.
firstname.lastname@yourfavouritelabel.com or firstname@yourfavouritelabel.com.
Promote yourself on other people’s channels

So if you know the person’s name, you can usually figure out their email in this way.

Twitter and LinkedIn are also goldmines for contact building and reaching out to
people, as are Instagram DMs.

Facebook Fan Pages often have email addresses listed in their About sections and
often have private messaging functions turned on.

You might be surprised how often people will reply to unsolicited, personally addressed
emails if you write a polite and professional request to them.
15
 Getting your music on Spotify Playlists,
YouTube Channels and SoundCloud
premieres
Where press and radio once held all the power — and more recently blogs — it’s these
three platforms that really hold the key for the emergence and rise of new music these
days. Again, it’s about first identifying the channels you want your music featured on.
Then it’s a case of trying to find contact details for each. Check profile sections,
playlist descriptions, About sections — or in the case of SoundCloud, use the direct
messaging function.

If and when you manage to get these contact details, make sure you regularly
update your favourite channels with news of your music when you post it or
release it. For Spotify, you could send them a preview of your track before it comes out
Promote yourself on other people’s channels

and then remind them when it drops on release day. On YouTube and SoundCloud,
you can offer premieres of your new tracks in advance of their release.

There’s some useful information about how playlists work on Spotify and how to
promote yourself on SoundCloud which make for essential reading.
On all three platforms, the more plays your tracks get and the more user playlists they
are in, the more likely they are to get recommended to other listeners through the
platform’s own algorithms. So it pays to get as much engagement on your tracks as
possible to try and drive this knock-on effect.
16
 Getting your music featured by the press
When courting the press — online and print journalists and bloggers — it’s important to
choose your targets carefully. Try to be selective and only send your music to people
and platforms that it’s relevant to. Do some research to establish which writers cover
the sort of artists you like, and send them new music whenever you release something.
If you’re playing a gig near them, hit them up and offer to put them on the guestlist for
the show without them needing to do a review of it. They may not be able to offer you
immediate column inches, but if you can get them at your show to check out what
you do, it could reap benefits in the long term.

Submithub is a useful resource for contacting bloggers, allowing you to submit your
music to blogs which cover music similar to yours. It even includes a field when
submitting music where you have to mention other artists that your music sounds like
so that bloggers can easily find stuff they might be into in their crowded inbox.
Again, be specific here and don’t dupe people.Beware though: you have to buy
credits to submit music to most blogs worth their salt on here.But some blogs only
accept submissions through it, so it’s worth looking into.

Getting your music on the radio

You’re looking for two things when it comes to radio: contact details for the presenter
themself, and for their show producer. Their producer is often the person who sources,
sorts and curates a lot of the music that features in the show, and as they are often
more accessible, they may be your best route in.

When it comes to a publicly-funded organisation like the BBC in the UK, much of their
content is produced by external production companies, so do your research on them
to see if you can find out which company makes your favouriteshow and then try and
Promote yourself on other people’s channels

find the show producer through their general email address or by searching for
“company name” “producer” “LinkedIn”. Pay particular attention to new music shows
on your favourite radio station, and consider local radio as a good route in if you can’t
make any headwayat national stations.

Some people like to make a ‘fake’ email address on their own domain to use to
contact press, radio and promoters so it looks like they have a manager or someone
helping them with press. It’s up to you whether you want to go down this route, but it
can give an air of professionality.

17
 Spinnup can take care of getting your music into all the best stores and streaming
services. But to squeeze the most out of your music, you need to have a solid release
strategy that takes you from the announcement of the release through to the release
day itself through to pushing it in the weeks that follow. wIf you can create a checklist
to go through for every release, you’ll ensure that no stone is left unturned.

“To squeeze the most out

of your music, you need
to have a solid release
strategy.”
Planning a release strategy

18
 The big announcement

Once you’ve decided on your release date, you should start teasing details out to
your fans. If you’ve scheduled your release through a distribution service like Spinnup,
you should already have your artwork — which is usually what people use to
announce an upcoming release. You could also share a short teaser clip / video with
a snippet of the track, but some people like to save that for aseparate follow-up post.

Press, radio and premieres

Once you’ve announced the news to your fans, your next port of call is letting press
and radio know it’s upcoming. You’ll probably want to include a private streaming
and download link of your track, but don’t forget to specify if there’s a certain date
it’s not allowed to be played on radio before. Generally speaking, it’s best to only
send out music when it’s OK for everyone receiving it to start playing it immediately.
Whether or not you want anyone playing the track before it’s released is another
thing, however. It’s not uncommon these days for tracks to only be sent out to press
and radio once they are released.

Now is the time to decide whether you want to give anyone a first play premiere of
your track. Typically you could have two or three different premieres: one on radio and
one or two online (some blogs only use SoundCloud, some only use YouTube, some
use both) one on radio and one or two online (some blogs only use SoundCloud,
some only use YouTube, some use both). The benefit of premieres is that your music
will be pushed to these platforms’ audiences in exchange for the exclusive content.
For online premieres, always ask for a pre-order link to be included in the copy. It’s best
to create this with a link shortening service like bit.ly so you can see how effective it’s
been. You should also ask them to include details of any upcoming gigs you have —
likewise for radio premieres.
Planning a release strategy

19
 The video
Creating some visuals to go with your music is always a good idea, even if it’s
something pretty simple and lo-fi. Maybe you have a friend with a camera who could
help you create something. Maybe you just get creative with your phone and some
free editing apps and make something simple but effective.Or maybe you have a
little money that you want to invest into creatingsomething that really fits with your
vision for the track. Just remember not to break the bank! Whatever it is, it’s crucial to
have a video format of your track, even if it’s as a simple as the track playing
alongside its artwork.

In terms of releasing the video, many artists choose to put it out after the track has
been released — unlike the old days when videos promoted the song ahead of its
release in a similar way to radio. So you can always take your time with it and use the
video to give yourself a second spike in promotion later on. and use the video to give
yourself a second spike in promotion later on.

Counting down
You’ll need to find a variety of interesting ways to keep up engagement about your
upcoming track on your channels in the run-up to release date.

A few ideas include:

- Posting lyrics
- Posting teaser clips
- Posting track premieres (if you have arranged any)
- Giving insights into how the track was made
- Sharing music or playlists that inspired your track’s creation
- Posting pre-order links from different stores
- Posting a live version of the track
- Sharing press feedback about or reviews of the track
Planning a release strategyn

- Creating a competition around the track

(e.g. share the artwork for a chance to win gig tickets)
- Sharing pictures of you holding the physical release (if there is one!)

20
 Release day

On release day, make a Linkfire or similar landing page and plug in your various store
links into it so you can share one link and your fans can choose which service they
want to listen on. Post it with a video clip of the track inviting people to click on to
listen in full.

Make sure you post on all your key social networks, update your biographies / profile
sections with the listen link and update your cover photos with the new artwork if you
didn’t already.

Send out an email newsletter to your fanbase driving them to listen to the new track.

If you’ve found some email addresses for relevant Spotify playlists, send them the link
to the release and ask them to consider it for inclusion.

Ask your friends and family to listen to your track on their preferred streaming
service and to save it to their collection or a playlist. If you’re feeling extra cheeky you
could also ask them to share your post on their social networks.

You could also host a live stream event where you play the track and other music for
your fans.

“Promotion shouldn’t stop

after your release date.”
Keep pushing
Promotion shouldn’t stop after your release date. You have to keep the ball rolling
if you want your new track to do well. Keep your fans updated with any news about
Planning a release strategy

it — more reviews, radio plays, playlist inclusions and so on.If there are remixes to
follow, they will give you another chance to push the track.Don’t overdo it, but
if there’s something new to share, keep the promotional wagon rolling by all means.

21
 Final thoughts
As with anything in life, you get out what you put in with promotion.
If all you’re going to do is post about your new track on release day and you’re
quiet the rest of the time, you’re not going to see the benefit.
Take the time and effort to promote yourself properly and you’ll reap the rewards.

Remember that it’s a long game. No matter what it seems like, almost no-one
actually had the overnight success that they would appear to have done.
There’s usually years of hard graft and pushing behind any successful artist.
Until you get discovered, signed and all the rest, no-one else is going to promote you.
It’s down to you.

There have never been more free tools to help you promote your music.
Take the time to learn about them and to find your place in world of promotion.
It doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but with a little determination and patience,
even the most promo-shy can get to grips with pushing themselves.
Planning a release strategy

22
spinnup.com