Why Indie Musicians struggle with self-marketing
Have you ever wondered why so many indie musicians struggle with self-marketing and music promotion? Uncover the reasons behind their marketing hesitation and what it takes to break free.
Why Indie Musicians struggle with self-marketing
by Tony van Veen of the Disc Makers Blog
Why is it that independent artists won’t invest any money in marketing their music and themselves? And … why is it that artists complain when they don’t get any streams or make any money?
Here is the irony of today’s music business: Recording great music and getting it out in front of a worldwide audience is actually the easy part! Thanks to high-quality digital tools, project studios, and even online music creation sites like BandLab, it is more affordable than ever to record a great-sounding master.
There are also all sorts of songwriting coaches out there with free content on YouTube that will help you craft a better song. Powerful lyric writing tools like Masterwriter are available for peanuts. Worldwide distribution to streaming platforms can be yours for just 10 bucks!
In other words, the things that were once hard — and expensive – creating and recording, and getting access to distribution, are easy and affordable today. But still, independent artists make many marketing mistakes.
How do you get your music noticed?
What’s hard today is getting noticed and building a buzz. There are 100,000 tracks uploaded to Spotify every single day! That means that your new single gets to compete against 700,000 new weekly tracks — theoretically — to get noticed on Friday’s Release Radar playlist. And when you’re releasing music as a new or unknown artist, it can be challenging to set yourself apart.
Where artists need to spend most of their money (and time) today might just be on marketing and promotion.
This whole concept became really striking to me a couple of years ago we at Disc Makers launched a simple, affordable artists marketing service called Ads for Artists. You may remember it.
For under a hundred bucks, we would create an ad that linked to an artist’s website, Spotify profile, Bandcamp page, or any other destination where they might, for example, sell concert tickets. We would create a target audience, and then the artist could buy online advertising via Facebook, Instagram, and the Google ad network. The price would be set by the artist for as much as they wanted to spend on promotion.
It was — if I say so myself — a great service. Super affordable, and simple — we did all the work. And it flopped.
Artists spend money on equipment. Why not marketing?
In our experience, artists were just not willing to spend money on marketing. So, after trying unsuccessfully for a couple of years to grow the service, we decided to just shut it down and refocus our attention on making top-quality vinyl records and affordable CDs.
So, why will artists spend a few grand on a guitar — in fact, on their THIRD guitar — and 3 or 5 or 10 grand on recording, plus another thousand on audio mastering, album design, some CDs, and digital distribution, but they won’t spend even $500 on promoting the album that just cost them thousands to record?
My theory is this: Artists will spend the money they feel they need to spend, but not the money they need to spend if it doesn’t feel good.
What do I mean by that?
Back in the day (I’m talking the dinosaur days of the ‘90s here, folks) the minimum price to get your music out in the market was about $3000. That’s what 1000 vinyl records cost back then. So artists did what it took. They’d save up, work a second job, borrow the money, or rob a McDonalds (just kidding!) to come up with the cash because they needed to spend that.
Over time, what you needed to spend to get your music out into the market dropped. First to $1000 to make CDs, and it’s just $10 for digital distribution! So artists’ willingness to spend dropped. And spending anything more than $10 to get your music out became something many artists didn’t want to do.
Trust me on this. Our entry price for 100 CDs in jackets is just $149 today. That $149 can let an artist make $1000 by selling them for $10 apiece. And many artists still don’t want to invest the money.
Artists will spend the least amount they feel they need to spend.
And clearly, artists don’t feel the need to spend on promotion and marketing when that is probably the thing they need to spend the most on if they want to see any success from their music.
Reaching your goals as a musician
If we have a goal, we have to do things that are not fun in order to get there. If you want to make it with your music, you’ve got to treat it like a job… even after your day job. And a job is not always fun, but it’s rewarding.
So, how much should you spend on marketing?
I asked my friend Bryan Calhoun about this. He works for a company that manages big artists like Lil Wayne and Nicky Minaj, so he knows a thing or two about helping artists be successful. He told me his guideline is that you should spend the same on promotion and marketing that you spend on creating the album.
So, what did it cost you for recording, mixing, mastering, design, CDs, distribution? Spend that exact amount on your marketing your music and building your artist brand.
Sound like a lot of money? Probably. But trust me: music listeners don’t know you right now, so you need to invest in getting your music in front of unsuspecting listeners.
I realize there are budget realities. There were so many Disc Makers customers who wouldn’t even spend $400 on an Ads for Artists campaign. Heck, how many artists don’t even spend $25 to boost their social posts about their new album?
They just spend zero. And it’s not just about spending. Part of it is money, but there is a lot of marketing and promo work that you can do that is free or almost free. But the operative word there is work. It takes time to learn to use the tools, to set up campaigns, create posts, track results.
Market yourself as an artist
I encourage you to take what I’ve written to heart so that you can be more successful in the future than you are today. And don’t forget that physical media is an important tool for marketing your music. Your friends at Disc Makers are here to help you find success.
Tony van Veen is the CEO of DIY Media Group, the parent company of Disc Makers and BookBaby. As a college student, he played in indie bands, created his own LPs, cassettes, and t-shirts, and sold them at shows. Today, he collects CDs, vinyl LPs, and concert t-shirts to support the artists he loves.
