5 Key Strategies for Promoting Music

Promoting music requires a fresh approach to stand out in a competitive landscape. Discover five key strategies for promoting music that every artist needs to know.

5 Key Strategies for Promoting Music

by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Promoting your music isn’t easy primarily because it’s a moving target. What worked last year might be wildly outdated this year. The Major Label Artist Club analyzed some of the top performing artists and songs on TikTok and came up with a list of principles for promoting your music on social in 2024. Here are 5 of them.

1. The key to virality is watch time not views

The secret to TikTok content virality is engaged viewers. Check the stats on your views to discover the average post-view time. Make it your mission to increase the time people spend with your content. Connor Price is the master of this, there is always something new to look at and engage you every 2-3 seconds.

2. Capture the emotional response to your live music

Replace your solo live performances with clips of you performing to someone. This could be a parent, girlfriend, music teacher or a stranger. The key is to capture their emotional response to your music. This provides viewers with an immediate emotional shortcut, showing them how to respond to your music.

3. Engage the eyes before the ears

TikTok is one of the few automatic ‘sound-on’ social media platforms. However, 80% of social content is viewed with the sound off. Before you engage the ears, you have to engage the eyes. Try adding a visually engaging thumbnail or headline that allows viewers to understand the relevance. Remember, you have to earn the right to sound!

4. Make content fit for format!

It’s no surprise that the best-performing content was made for the format. Don’t expect horizontal YouTube videos to blow up on TikTok. With Canvaallowing everyone to resize and format social content in a heartbeat, there will be no excuses for badly cropped content in 2024. Fill the space!

5. Entertain or inform

You have two choices with your content. You can either entertain or educate if you do neither in the first two seconds you will be skipped. So choose your route and commit. But remember, if you are an unknown artist performing unknown music, most people won’t be entertained.”

The article actually named 10 principles, but I felt that these 5 were the most important. Regardless, if promoting your music on social is important to you, then they’re well worth observing.

Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author, blogger, podcaster, and coach. He has authored 24 books on music production, music, the music business, music AI, and social media.