Advice for new artists from Def Jam’s VP of Digital Marketing JD Tuminski

J.D. Tuminski is the VP Commerce and Digital Marketing at Def Jam. In his 12 years in entertainment he’s also worked at Columbia Records and led award-winning campaigns 2 Chainz, Alessia Cara, Big Sean, Jhene Aiko, Justin Bieber, and more.

Tuminski recently sat down with music marketer extraoridinaire Amber Horsburgh and shared his strategies to help emerging artists grow their fanbase and break through the clutter.

[Video of the full interview is below]

Here are the highlights of J.D. Tuminski’s advice for emerging artists:

1. Be careful when promoting a single if you’re not putting equal amounts of emphasis on the artist as a person.

Show us who you are, tell us your story, and don’t let the music become bigger than you. There needs to be an investment, or your fans won’t put in the hard yards when the time comes with concerts and merch.

Show us who you are, tell us your story, and don’t let the music become bigger than you. There needs to be an investment, or your fans won’t put in the hard yards when the time comes with concerts and merch.

2. Pick your space where you feel you can thrive the most and own it.

If you like throwing out witty commentary on life and pop culture, then Twitter is probably your best option. As an emerging artist, who might not have a large support team behind you, only focus on a couple of different social media platforms until you do have that bigger team

3. Acknowledge your fans.

If you’re an emerging artist, this is the time to really focus on developing that genuine connection with your early fans. Reply to them, like their posts, if they’re sharing your music then repost that. This is when you’ll find that core group who will stay by your side through whatever the future brings.

3. Be open to new technologies.

Artists who are willing to put themselves out there on these new and growing platforms, like Discord, will find their efforts paid back tenfold by their fans. Even engaging in things like selling NFTs of unreleased music, there are so many different opportunities and unique collaborations for artists to interact with nowadays.

Watch Amber and JD to learn more.

Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.