Live performances will help a music artist reach audiences on a personal level.
For music fans interested in a professional career as a music promoter or artist manager, promoting a local artist is a good way to gain experience. Opportunities abound, both online and on the ground. With a little creativity and a lot of hard work, you can use the Internet, free giveaways, personal appearances and a savvy street team to expand interest in your artist from local to national and beyond.
Instructions
1. Build a website. This online home base is absolutely essential for promoting your music artist. The website should include a biography, performance dates, music samples, videos and at least one photo. This tool is your command central, where you'll inform the public about every step of the artist you are promoting. If you are familiar with website management, you can build the site yourself. Otherwise, you should hire a web designer. Explore the use of Flash and other sophisticated animation techniques to make the website stand out.
2. Send a few of your artist's best songs on MP3s to music blogs that write about your artist's specific genre. Blogs are fan-driven sites that review and post MP3s by emerging artists, to percolate what's new and hip through the music-loving and buying community. These reviews are read and the MP3s downloaded by thousands of fervent music fans looking for the latest and greatest artist. Music blogs offer an unprecedented free opportunity to promote your local artist from the grass-roots level up. With a single review and posting, your artist's music can be heard by thousands of people. Make sure you determine which blog and which writer specializes in similar artists to increase your chances, and contact the blog in advance with an impressive one-sheet and photo to capture their interest.
3. Give away music. Very few people will say no to free music. You don’t have to give away all of the artist’s music-just two or three songs will be enough to garner interest. Create CDs to hand out at shows, but don't limit yourself to shows by your artist alone. Hand out your artist's sample CDs at similar artist's shows to increase access to a simpatico audience. But make sure your genres are in sync: Giving away pop music at a metal show would be a waste of time and money.
4. Hand out intriguing stickers with the band logo and website. Leave them at local shows and events, coffee houses and record stores. Many sticker companies will be able to print the artist's web address on the back side of the sticker if you don’t want to include it on the front design.
5. Schedule performances. Intimate shows can enable an artist to reach an audience on a very personal level. After the performance, the artist can mingle with audience members and get to know them. This direct method is an effective way to create a promotional street team You can either schedule the performance yourself with the venue or hire a booking agent.
6. At every performance, take the opportunity to add to your artist's street team. This core group of your artist's most fervent fans will help you spread the word about future shows, hand out show flyers and talk your artist up on music blogs. To keep motivation high, you'll give them free tickets and merchandise and special performances by the artist. Find the artist’s biggest fan and ask her to be the street team leader. Do this at every performance. These "superfans" will gather other fans and will help you coordinate promoting ideas on a larger, immediate level. This grassroots street-team approach is one of the most effective means of promoting local artists. In exchange for their help, offer special items such as autographs, guitar picks, artist visits, t-shirts or music. When these core fans feel the love, they'll spread it far and wide.
7. Use social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Social networking is an inexpensive and powerful way to promote a local artist. Facebook and MySpace allow you to create a fanpage for the artist. MySpace is the most common social networking resource for musicians, with a prominent music player that enables you to upload your artist's music. You can also make individual tracks available for play on fans' pages to increase your audience. Offering new tunes regularly increases your hits. The more often you post fresh information, photos and music from your artist, the more often your audience will tune in and spread the buzz. So get clicking!
