So, I've pretty much tried everything I can think of in terms of promoting my music.

Posting of forums, social media, groups? Check.
Paying for Facebook ads etc? Check.
Building a website, using other services like Soundcloud Pro etc? Check.

And yet, over several years, pretty much nothing.

Is there any reason to keep wasting my time like this?

Labels - the ones who are able to provide promotion, networking etc - seem to need a solid fan base.

The audience doesn't really care about you, unless you're already (even a relatively small) somebody.

So why bother with all that? I'm not saying stop making music - the need for that is deeper than having an audience, sure, and I've spent more or less 20 years before getting to a point where I feel comfortable to share my music anyway - I'm used to it.

But we are, after all, social beings. It's not about craving attention, but sharing something and *connecting* with others. If you can't, what's the point? Even money isn't much of an issue - I work as a classical musician, so I have at least a small income. I'm giving away my music for free now, and would gladly do some gigs just for the fun of it.

Would I be in any different position if I just put the music out there and close all Facebook, Instagram etc which I hate? I guess that's my question.

Sure, you can say "Go out and socialise, go to gigs, talk to promoters, artists" etc - but the truth is, after 10 years of a financial crisis that decimated my country, and the next one right around the corner, I simply can't afford that, and that's been my reality for some time now.

Anyway, just venting...

/rant

As you didnt post any link, it's hard to tell if you're doing something wrong but...

Just "posting" to social medias doesnt work (anymore). You need to interact, post content that the is relevant and do all this on a regular basis (daily, bi-weekly, several time a day, depending on the platform). And you need a plan, a story to tell. Just posting random music doesnt work because there is TONS of stuff posted every single second so you need to catch your audience attention with something that talk to them.

And yes, it's slow. It's a marathon (dont tell me about the over night superstar, that's like winning the lottery and it's not valid plan).

Thanks for the reply...

I suppose I am out of touch with things. In my mind, it is all about the music, and honestly, I think mine is decent (you can check my signature for links) - not mind-blowing, but I grew up with and loved several small-time artists (TV Personalities, Deep Freeze Mice, Paul Roland, The Residents and all sorts of things) - not looking for mainstream stardom. Music nowadays is almost like white noise; we are constantly bombarded by it, and it has moved to the background, something that you have to focus on to notice.

Probably this is where your comment comes in, how not to just make music but interact in a way that is relevant and captures the audience - that's probably where I'm failing. To be honest, I don't know how to do this...

For instance, I had to sell the few pieces of gear I had for food and paying the bills. It's hard to imagine anyone wanting to watch a live performance where the artist is just in front of the computer toying with the mouse. I also don't feel confident (or knowledgeable) enough to make tutorials etc that some people are doing. I'm an introvert, and I don't have the charisma a lot of youtubers seemingly have with talking and being in front of the camera.

Tough luck, I suppose. Meh, I took it out of my system, I'm better now

I can definitely relate about the introvert part. I'm definitely the kind of person who enjoy showing off on social medias. That being said, I dont think as an artist it's that much different from the old days where you had to play in ****ty clubs or bars in front drunks indiots until some label dude notice you. At least on social medias you are in control of what you want to tell.

But what most people fail to understand is that "making it" on social medias actually requires a lot of work. You cant just post a couple time a week and forget. That was maybe possible 15 years ago but not today.

I feel your pain.

One's own friends are not always one's natural audience. They may love you, but it's probably for your personal qualities, not your music.

That's not to say there's not an audience somewhere for one's own music, just that one probably needs to move beyond his own social boundaries to have a better chance of connecting.

In the 90s, I despaired of the less-than-entirely-adulatory responses many of my vocal tracks were getting from my (very diverse) set of real world friends and associates (most of whom were musicians or fervent music fans). But many of them really liked the ambient electronica echo loop project I fielded in local coffee houses and clubs in the era, particularly some collaborative work I did with a fellow echo looper.

So I decided, toward the end of the decade, to do a 1000 copy CD pressing (as was the basic approach in that era) of the ambient eletronica improv album my pal and I had done a little earlier.

But before I could do that, just about then the mp3 thing took off, in part boosted by the early music/social media site, mp3.com.

I put both the ambient electronica album popular with my 3D world friends as well as a bunch of my own, mostly vocal, 'mutant pop' tracks up.

I was kinda shocked when the vocal stuff proved much more popular in that venue than the ambient stuff my pals had liked -- and that I had drifted into thinking was my 'best route' to being heard.


With regard to NO PROMOTION... sadly, unless you are the kind of person who can with the lottery without buying a ticket, I'm afraid that's a tactic unlikely to go far.

Back a few years ago (2014, I think), when Spotify was finally starting to transform music distribution and streaming was becoming the turnaround factor in the music biz's revenue rebuild, a peculiarly fascinating website/service was developed called Forgotify -- a web service designed to find and play songs on Spotify that had NEVER been played on that platform...

... the REALLY stunning thing was that, at the time, about 20% (one fifth) of the tracks on Spotify -- most of them studio recordings/label releases, many from major labels -- some obviously very big budget -- had NEVER been played on the platform. Not even by the artists themselves or their reps. Never. NOT ONCE. ONE FIFTH...

I became (briefly) obsessed and started up a project blog that pulled one unheard track/album after another and then I wrote thumbnail reviews of them... some of them were VERY cool.

But they'd NEVER been played before on Spot. Not once.

Here's that blog: https://tkmajor.com/mbo/category/the-forgotify-files/


As a 'classical' music fan, myself, I say with some sadness: there were a LOT of fine classical recordings represented among the formerly unheard. =(

Here's the last mini-review of the blog: https://tkmajor.com/mbo/2015/02/02/1027/ (Haydn: Piano Sonata in C, H.XVI No.35)


One way or another, people have to find your music. Don't wait for Forgotify to give you a single, mercy play...

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out!

Obviously you are right that you can't get anywhere without promotion; my rant was more about how, even with the promotion I actually do, I might as well be simply putting things online and wait for someone to discover them by accident.

You have to pay your dues, I suppose, like they say...

As for what Ran_ks said, I'm fine with performing - been doing it in classical music for some 20 years - but it's one thing to put an instrument to your mouth and play, and another when dealing with social media.

Reluctantly, I decided to soon borrow a camera and start making some videos, as well as doing some tutorials (probably screencasts with me speaking on top).

I am curious though, how do you guys deal with social media, if not by just posting (semi) regularly on the usual platforms, forums and the likes?

Because being frustrated now and then is fine, but I'm more interested in how to improve.

I think it can be tricky promoting oneself (or at least myself ) to friends. In my case, at any rate, they've heard it all before. While I think I've written a few good tunes, my only-a-mother-could-love-it voice (not necessarily MY mother, who leans more to postwar crooners) somewhat limits the breadth of my appeal.

THAT all said... one thing I SEEM to have found is that, at least with regard to FB, videos uploaded TO Facebook itself -- as opposed to, say, videos shared from YouTube -- seem to do much better at getting seen by one's friends. Now, maybe it's just that people are a) bored and b) getting used to folks sitting in front of web and phone cams with a guitar, but where my YT vids were often lucky to get a few up-thumbs, posting straight to FB seems to grease things at least a little. (I have to admit, I'd like to see a few more hearts, but at least I'm getting the thumbs that suggest someone at least glanced at the image preview )


The Forgotify Files blog might be simultaneously 'comforting' (some very big names and big projects never got listened to until the Forgotify site fed them to me to check out and review) and, of course, daunting (because... some very big names and big projects never got listened to until the Forgotify site fed them to me to check out and review ).

But I think that it does underline one important reality: just because (almost) no one has heard one's music, does NOT in any way mean it is necessarily lacking in artistic merit.

My thinking is that if I make music I find enjoyable in some way, there will likely be at least a few other hardy souls who might also find something to enjoy. Could happen...


BTW, kudos on making even a little money playing classical!

One of my friends is very experienced in online promotion and online fundraising.

Some things he has mentioned that I can pass along:

- think about user demographics. Facebook for instance now has a majority of their regular audience who are FEMALE and over 35 years old. Does that align with your target market? Do you know your target market, and if so, where to find those people?

-targeted advertising can be very effective, but there are many considerations including how compelling your content is, the timing and the nature of what you're asking for (just a listen? a sale?). It takes practice to be good at this.

-fans who will subscribe and/or share your stuff is gold. This is why everybody is always asking for you to subscribe, share, blah blah blah. It's essential.

-the amount of maintenance required if you really want to be successful at online promotion is HOURS per day, every day. If you can't dedicate that kind of time to it (or have someone else do that for you), then don't set your expectations very high.

-is your material really competitive, and something that there is a market for? You can have all of the other stuff, but if the product isn't somehow offering something compelling or new that can resonate with people, you're swimming upstream.

Hope that helps,
Cheers

I can certainly relate to this post, all I can say is just try and stay positive, I find instagram is the most useful one for me, but that's because I am a very visual person and prefer taking a photo to writing an essay, I used to get 650 plays per DAY on soundcloud and now will be lucky to even get 3 plays per week.

@ denstrow If you are not making videos of you doing music, you do not matter.

People need to see your face and what you are doing to gain interest. I don't care what you look like. You need to be on camera and have some personality quirk to connect with people. That is what will matter than paying money for ads and making good music.

Let people see you and force your personality and image onto people. Force and pressure get more results than planning and observation. This is an age where people are forgotten quickly. If you are not visible, you cannot be forgotten, which means you are not even competing.

I dare you to take action. A year from now, you should either have success, or get a day job and fade into the background.

So...in order to be successful at the thing, one must spend so much time doing things that aren't the thing that there is then no time with which to actually do the thing.

For now, at least, the only thing I can see myself doing is streaming DAW writing sessions and saving some money to organise a private party where I perform live, so that at least there's a proper video of me out there.

I may sound like an old fart, but I suppose this new landscape is not really for me - I'll keep my day job, keep on writing music, and doing what little I can, and whatever happens, happens...I wasn't aiming for stardom anyway.

Unfortunately, my first festival gig which was booked for this year is unlikely to happen, due to the coronavirus, so I'll have to see what else I can do. An agency found me a couple of months back, so that might be something, but still, with everything that's going on nowadays, it'll be difficult to book gigs.

That is how the world works. Why do you think McDonalds and Coca-Cola are so big? They don’t make the best hamburgers or sodas. But they spend a great deal of money on distribution and advertisement.

How else would these brands be known all over the world? Word of mouth? Please. People don’t talk that much about anything except for sex and drugs.

So if you want to have a successful career, work on your business model before you reflect your product. Or make the perfect product and pay someone else to distribute and promote it.

It doesn't work at all if your entire organization is one guy doing a thing, now does it?...either you dont have time to do the thing, or it is so compromised, what's the point?
(I realize you fall into the latter category, and am well aware that you are fine with that. I am not.)

Edit: I'll accept that in your (DI)case making money might be the thing...in which case I suggest you chose the wrong methodology, as there are more efficient paths to that thing.
I just want to make records I'd want to listen to.

I feel like making it in music nowadays in general is so much harder than say 10 years ago, because everything has just become way more acceseble the the big crowd. Maybe post some of your music? I mean, nowadays there are so much more sidefactors next to the music I dont pay attention to myself, but I still feel like the music is the most important as its the biggest factor in presenting who you really are as an artist. And also very easy to get into a mentality of 'I make music for x years, so it must be good'...

Not every songwriter or musician is comfortable writing prose, of course, but giving people some kind of little 'human interest' or 'story hook' sort of introduction to a given song can help draw people in. Could be a paragraph or two of personal memory, or a bit about how the song was written or why, but it could be anything from a poem to a vid to a photo...

Back in 2005, I set out to create a blog/podcast that would document all of my (150 or so) publicly released songs (and a few others). I used a bit of all the suggestions above to create 'flat content' in the form of blog entries, some of them semi- or completely fictional, some of them memoires, some of them confessional rants, also a few poems, some unrelated asides, and even the occasional tech blabber. (I don't have the greatest internal editor. )

At any rate, when I was producing a blog entry every day or two, I had a pretty fair readership -- and the (generally highly informal/sloppy) acoustic/folkie versions of my songs that accompanied the entries have managed to log around 3/4 of a million DLs since then. Of course, that means many folks have heard me at my sloppiest, but, hey, nowhere to go but up from there.

So none of this should even matter to you. You only need yourself to do that. Thanks for stopping by.

If you’re serious, hiring a PR company to promote your latest release isn’t that expensive. Having someone inside who can pitch you to playlists, blogs etc where you’re likely to pick up new fans can make a massive difference.

Could you define "not expensive"? We live in different parts of the world, for me spending even a couple thousand would be out of the question...

If you know some small PR companies, please mention them here. Thanks.

I know plenty of small PR companies but not in your part of the world..the closest I can get is Love by Mistake who are based in Berlin.

“A couple of thousand” is very dependent on what currency you’re talking about. Put a thousand dollars (which is more like 5-700eu) into promo and you’ll see a decent enough return - if the music is good.

No...that requires GROUPS of TALENTED MUSICIANS working TOGETHER in CONCERT.

I havent seen that in over a decade.

That’s not how it works anymore.

So doing the thing is no longer a thing then, is it?

Suppose that explains why I can't find anything I'd wanna listen to...

I'm sorry, GOOD music isn't made by one person alone in a room using a pc to take up the slack. I honestly dont even understand how or why anyone would want to do that, it is mind numbingly boring and tedious...how could the result be anything else?

I dont care how much time you spend promoting it, it will pretty much always be a snoozefest. Kravitz can't even pull it off.

That’s a shame for you! Happens quite regularly over here (or at least did before the whole lockdown thing).

You seem to be out of touch with modern music, so I can understand your frustration. The world changes and the things we love become relics of a bygone era. It happens to us all.

The best thing to do is to step aside and let the younger generation have their turn at the wheel. The best thing to do is to show the younger people that you are humble enough to pass the torch without being jealous.

I agree with "passing the torch".

But I disagree with "stepping aside".

There is no reason to "step aside" just to "pass the torch".

Some folks are even able to do this with exquisite style (even as the end draws near):

[bold added]

I think a lot of us (particularly those of us who do have real world business experience but would prefer to make the music we want to make) readily identify with that last sentiment.

That said, a lot of folks seem to have rosy memories of a time when a talented artist or band could just hook up with a label and start booking time and making records with full support from an artist-nurturing, long-term career building label...

I started paying attention to the music biz in the late 60s in my late teens (though I didn't get directly involved in the business until I started engineering at the end of my 20s). In LA, there were a lot of bands, a lot of labels. (There were a number of clubs but almost none would book a headliner who wasn't signed to a somewhat prominent label.)

Through my own eyes and the experiences and war stories from friends and colleagues in the business, I never saw that halcyon era apparently at the center of many such rosey remembrances of a bygone era -- an era when it wasn't a struggle and a long slag through the trenches to get signed, get a decent budget, get proper distribution, get a promo budget.

Over the years, I saw a lot of bands get signed (and more than a few got signed off demos I worked on) but no one seemed to walk away with the kind of dream deal that some here (not necessarily raggedman!) claim was commonplace 'back in the day.' (I'll note one notable very notable exception where a songwriter friend and his band got signed with a big bonus to a small label [!?!] -- though that 3 album career barely amounted to a ripple in commercial music history, nonetheless.)

Maybe those unfamiliar memories from others simply reflect the situation where they were. But I certainly don't remember it being anything like that in the LA market.

Hey man, fellow Greek here.

Social media promotion is not the problem. What you need to do if you want to make a revenue with music are these steps.

1. Be honest with yourself and your goals. You want to monetize? Check out which spotify playlist is booming when it comes to what people want to listen to right now. You want to make music and think that people will like what you do? That's not a realistic thought, you need to know what's doing well now, and then you make your music fit in that pocket. That's what I did 6 years ago and it worked for me, and I'm a full time artist.

2. Work hard to make music thats relevant now. Make it really really great. If you like that New Order type of music, then go listen to Neon Indian, Washed out, Toro Y moi and see what they do and emulate. If you cant produce like that, find people that can, make music off of instrumentals and beats on soundclick or beatstars. Hire people to mix and master your music.


3. Work on your visuals, make them relevant to right now, check and see what artists are doing visually to appeal to their audiences. Hire people to do visuals.

4. Hire a PR person to find outlets for your song or EP.

5. If you look good and you're young, use it to your advantage.

6. I cannot reiterate further, make fresh music and make it really good. It all starts right there, and then everything follows. Check to see what people in their 20s or under are into culturally.

7. Do not sign a record deal, pub deal or management deal without an attorney. Do not sign a record deal thinking that they will make you a star. Unless you were given a 6 figure advance, labels will not help you.

8. If you disagree with these steps, if you think you know better than other successful artists doing it day in and day out, making money, then please, do it as a hobby. You can start knowing better when you've made 50k to 100k a year with music alone. By that time, you'll have a wheel going and you'll know where you're heading musically.

Final thoughts: I personally dont know you, and I am by no means trying to attack you personally. I am giving you my advice as someone who has a successful career as an artist, and as someone who's struggled for 10 years until I figured out a way to monetize my work. No one gave me a lift up early on, no label put me on the map, I knew no one in the industry, and in 6 years, i know almost everyone at the labels, Satellite radio, I know known artists etc etc. Basically, if you cant figure out what's hot and what isnt, then it's tough to get started.

Right now, there's a lot of power in Rap (Roddy Ricch, Migos, Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott), and there's 2 songs going Viral, one is by Surf Mesa - ily, and the other is Benee - Supalonely, a song written by a friend of mine. Last year's big song was Dance Monkey by Tones and I. I think I'm sending a few pointers here and there. it's important to know what's hot right now (2018 is already old news, it moves fast) and not being pushed by a big label first. New Flume and Toro Y Moi song is pretty good too.

I hope this helps and this clarifies a few things. My own opinion is, as much as you are dear to your band camp releases, none of them are good enough and relevant enough to have a career right now.

I think hellohead has a lot of great points here, but this being the biggest one. On your Bandcamp I hear a lot of tracks in different genres, which make it hard, if not impossible to grow an identity as an artist.

Most of your tracks dont sound bad by any means, but if I have to be very honest, also not like the very very top. I feel like you can still improve on your mixdown, though I do think your compositions are very interesting to listen to. Now, one track that did stood out to me was 'Aluminum Mallard'. That one sounds very close to the Techno I hear getting played a lot, which also has a lot of 90s influences. Maybe focus on that and see how that works out for you?

A few days ago I was told, by a friend @ a Major Label, that TIK TOK is HUGE for A&R guys...particularly in the POP genre.