Original Article Found In Landr
5. How to share new music: Release it right
Sharing your music is one of the most basic parts of music promotion. But there are more ways to share than ever before.
Sharing your music in a meaningful way that increases your following is hard. But you have to do it—if you didn’t there would be nothing to listen to!
Getting ready to share
Sharing music online has never been easier. You might be closer than you think to being ready to go live with your tracks.
Find out how to share with confidence — and why it’s worth it.
Don’t get thrown off by metrics
It’s tempting to get too focused on measuring the success of your tracks or posts by a single number.
But the fact is that social media stats tell a complicated story that can get glossed over when you’re only looking at likes.
Find out why you might be getting social media metrics all wrong.
6. Promote your music on social media
You can’t fill an engaging social media feed with just your releases themselves.
Music promotion is about way more than just music today.
It’s videos, images, interviews, articles, playlists, sample packs, studio tours, live shows and anything else that can help build the story around your sound.
Making memes, TikToks and quippy Tweets are useful to create your narrative and build your following.
Whether you like it or not, your fans want you to have some sort of presence on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and wherever else they consume content.
Remember that as an artist you have a voice that people are listening to—you’re fortunate to have a platform to share your ideas and thoughts about the cultural moment.
Approach your promotion with the question ‘what does this say about my music?’ to help guide your efforts. The answer will help you decide what to say yes to, and what to pass on.
Just be careful to start with your sound and vision as a launchpad when planning your social content.
Each social media platform has its quirks and rules of engagement, so let’s take a closer look at the unique considerations you should take when promoting your music on today’s most popular platforms.
How to promote your music on TikTok
TikTok is a relatively new social media platform that grew popular with the Gen Z generation and is now widely accepted as the hottest new social media platform.
TikTok’s original premise revolved around music—most early TikToks were about sharing duets to music, whether that be duets with other artists on the platform or top 40’s pop tunes.
On top of that, TikTok changed the game by offering creators the ability to caption their short 15-60 second videos with music from its extensive library of tracks.
Because of that, many viral TikTok songs have taken the world by storm, spawning new pop-star careers and reviving 70s classics.
TikTok is one of the main ways young people discover music today, so having a presence there and at least making sure you get your music on TikTok to make it available on the platform's music library is critical.
Many artists have built a major following on TikTok by documenting their studio workflow, making funny memes and sharing content regularly.
Making daily videos is a lot of work, so you need to be prepared to make the commitment to engage with this platform—but if you find a niche and learn how to make content that resonates, the reward can be huge.
How to promote your music on YouTube
If there’s any social media channel where music is massively consumed, it’s definitely YouTube.
It’s a streaming platform in its own right, especially since YouTube Music is a competitor with Spotify, but even the video platform features tons and tons of music, playlists, videos and live performances.
If you want to be a successful artist you need to produce a music video for each of your tracks and have live video performances and interviews on YouTube.
That means both posting on your own channel, but also finding opportunities to get on live performance channels like KEXP or Tiny Desk, to name a few of the bigger channels.
Of course, you may also be compensated for your music if it's used by other creators in their videos with the help of YouTube Content ID—an invention by Google that identifies and monetizes your music whenever someone else uses it on YouTube.
Making videos isn’t easy, it takes a big team and a lot of time to create good video content—but the rewards can be game-changing.
Many artists, like Vulf Peck, for example, have built their careers around putting music performance videos on YouTube.
How to promote your music on Twitter
Twitter is a great platform if you want to engage with a community—especially if you’re outspoken and like to share thoughts, opinions and jokes.
The platform naturally lends itself to written content, but there’s plenty of support for sharing music and links to your music on streaming platforms.
Think of Twitter like a giant cocktail party—all you have to do is go and find a corner of like-minded people and start chatting with others in your niche.
Start commenting, dropping your (hopefully reasonable) takes and get the conversation going about your life and career as an artist.
Twitter is a great space for networking and finding people you identify with—just be careful about what you say online, it’s a public forum and you’ll be definitely be held accountable for your words and actions.
7. How to copyright your music
Music copyrights are as simple as they are complicated—that’s because determining who exactly owns what and how much of a song is never easy.
The good news is that your music is automatically copyrighted the second you write it. By law, you own any lyrics, melodies and recordings you create the second they’re written down.
Of course, you may want to register your music with the copyright office and keep up to date with the music-specific copyright laws that have changed since the enactment of the music modernization act of 2020.
But, in general, if you work with a partner or with a group of artists and producers the most complicated part of working out copyright is determining who exactly owns the copyright of a song.
If you’re not sure, it may help to consult a music lawyer or a copyright lawyer to ensure the right credits are given to the right people.
8. How to license your music
When it comes to monetizing and promoting your music, music licensing is where the rubber hits the road.
One video game, television or movie licensing deal can change the trajectory of your music career in an instant.
But getting that kind of deal takes years of hard, hard work.
You need to be writing AAA music, have a following and excellent representation in terms of management to realistically have a chance of landing a significant licensing deal.
That’s because sync licensing deals are usually worked out between a publisher who represents you, and sells your music to the media company looking to use your content in their production.
So, if you’re just getting started, don’t worry about finding a major licensing deal—just focus on creating your music and let the big deals come when you have a larger following and some form of management.
If you are ready to take the next step, you need to start working on finding professional representation in the form of a manager and publisher.
Chances are, if you’ve signed with a record label, you’ll eventually have representation from these key personnel.
But, if you’re going the independent route, you’ll have to perform at industry shows and network to find a publisher who believes in your art and is ready to take you on as representation.
Prepare to make an investment in hiring the publisher too, this kind of representation rarely comes for free and usually can be quite expensive.