Last year I spent a lot of time selling my music online. I truly believe that the internet has changed the game for musicians and I want to be one of those musicians who knows how to use the internet to help promote my music. I have been reading articles, watching videos, taking notes and buying different programs to try. These are just a few points I’ve learned along the way. We hope these tips will help you with your album promotion, for those who want to promote a band or for those who just want to get their songs heard.

1. Focus on digital

Ever since Napster started in the mid-’90s, people have fallen in love with digital and never looked back. Physical CDs, while still good for selling at shows, are slowly becoming the least profitable way to sell your music. Think about it. You have to ship the artwork, print it, ship it (which is usually a lot more than you expect), and then upload it to shows trying to get people to buy it. Selling CDs is a traditional way to make some money from live shows, but to be a successful independent musician, you have to follow the trends. Everything is going digital these days.

Think about it. You can go to YouTube and find someone’s video from Japan. They may have a link in their description where you can download the song for $1. In an instant you can have downloaded a song from all over the world. It’s really amazing. People want it now and they want it fast. People are also getting used to shopping online now. I remember people being a little picky about buying online and how confident they felt about it. Now everyone is getting in on the action of shopping online.

2. Use social networks

If you haven’t already guessed, the way music is promoted is completely different a few years ago. The social media boom changed everything. It first started with sites like livejournal and then MySpace came along. You remember MySpace, right? The massive amount of spam and also the profiles that were so busy that they took 3 minutes to load?

Now the world has found a new handful of social networking sites to dive into… Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, etc… The options available are endless. The best part about social media is that it’s all free and if you have a large following, your post about your latest single can be shared all over the world with just a few mouse clicks.

How to use social networks

However, social networks are more than just creating a profile and start sending messages and tweets and showing your music in front of everyone. You have to know how to use social media so you don’t become a pushy salesperson. You have seen such people on a social networking site. Sending a post every hour…

• “Buy My Record”
• “I have a show this weekend”
• “I like my Facebook page”

But those people who send those posts never asked themselves the simple question… why should they?

Really think about that for a second…

Why would someone who doesn’t know you from Tom want to share your information or support your music? You will just be considered another spammer because you have a lot of followers who don’t know who you are. You failed to establish a relationship with your social media fans. I’m not saying you shouldn’t let people know what’s going on with your music, but you also need to reach out to other people and have a conversation with people online before you sell your music to them.

So how do they get to know more about you?

That’s the true power of social media that some musicians don’t understand. Social networks give you the opportunity to really say who you are, what you believe in, what kind of music you play, why you love music, why you do anything. It’s pretty easy for people to know who you are. Simply join a conversation or reply to a tweet. Or share the music of other musicians. Start collaborating with people online. The options are endless.

3. Collect emails

Many people think that collecting emails is an outdated practice. People think it doesn’t make much sense nowadays because people are on Facebook and Twitter so much that they just think it’s better to market on those sites. That is true, but there is an even greater truth.

Social networks are in fashion. They come and go.

What happened to all your contacts when they all left MySpace? Did you have to try to reconnect with a lot of them or did you just lose them completely? Think how easy it would have been to send an email to all your fans and say “I have a new Facebook page, check it out”. How many times do people change their email addresses? Another thing is that people still check their email every day. Your email list is one of the most valuable marketing tools you have.

4. Get your own domain

What is a domain you ask? It is your own real estate in the world of web pages. Anytime you see a .com, .net, .biz, or .gov… those are all domains. This means that you must have a website that you can direct people to at all times.

Why not use a Facebook page as a website? Many people have asked me that and I think if you do it you will be fine, but you might also face some problems in the future.

• What if something happens to FB?
• What happens if your server goes down?
• What if they don’t like what you said in a post and decide to deactivate your account?

When you own your own domain, you are in complete control of your own site. It doesn’t matter if FB disappears. You still have your own server with your own domain. Plus it looks cleaner.

How was my YouTube account terminated?

I’ll tell you a little story about me and why I believe in the concept of “get your own domain” and “get your fans’ emails” so much. I had my YouTube account for about 5 years. Last year, I recently started using YouTube more to make videos and share them with people. I would go and send messages to people who I thought would like my music. While some people didn’t like the message, thousands of people supported me and shared my music. Some even signed up for my email list. I love YouTube and it is one of my favorite social platforms.

The sad thing is that YouTube closed my account last month. I had to start all over again. Why was I closed? Because enough people said I was spamming them for them to close my account. I was not given a warning. They just closed it. It was my fault for not backing up my videos but I lost most of my videos. I had to re-upload all my videos, which means I had to enter the description again, enter the keywords, and do all the annotations again. It took me a whole weekend to bury myself in my apartment to do it.

The worst part of all? I lost 95% of all my contacts. People from all over the world who really liked my music and commented on my channel are now gone and I may never get them back.

Master how to market your music online

I hope you have found this article useful. As musicians we have to move with the trends. The Internet and the digital age have changed everything for all businesses and music is no different. As musicians, we should be leading the charge on how to be creative using the internet. After all, most of us don’t have big budgets behind us, so we have to carry most of the load ourselves.