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Music Email Marketing: Strategies to Grow Your Fanbase

Guest Author: Daniela C.

You’ve probably done all the hard creative work in the studio and created a great music project that you’re very proud of. Now, it’s time to head into the next phase: marketing your music as an independent artist.

After uploading to streaming platforms and sharing teasers on social media, you might have a little buzz going, but how do you get those eyes and ears to become a fan base? Here’s a little secret weapon you might have been missing: an email list.

Yes, social media is usually the go-to for musicians to promote their music in this day and age and it’s less of a commitment to hit a ‘follow’ button than to give out a personal email address. But, social media algorithms are extremely fickle. One day your song could be trending or just on the verge, and the next day, it could be buried under a sea of cat videos.

But email marketing offers a direct line of communication with your fans, one that platforms (or algorithms) can’t control. And believe it or not, people still use email…a lot.

Here are some reasons that email marketing is a game-changer for a musician:

  • Direct Connection: Emails land straight in your fans’ inboxes, bypassing algorithm filters. You can share updates, exclusive content, and merch drops directly to them.
  • Deeper Engagement: Build relationships with your fans beyond likes and comments. Emails allow you to share personal stories, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and connect with them on a deeper level.
  • Targeted Communication: Segment your list to send personalized emails based on fan interests. Are they super into your acoustic stuff? Send them a link to an exclusive unplugged performance video.
  • Conversions: Drive traffic to your website, sell tickets and merch, or promote your latest release. It all works together!

Now that you know the importance of email marketing, how do you build an email marketing list as a musician?! Here are some ideas that can turn casual listeners into dedicated subscribers:

  1. Giveaways and Incentives: Offer exclusive content like downloadable demos, unreleased tracks, or personalized shoutouts in exchange for email signups.
  2. Website Opt-In: Make signing up for your list easy. Place a prominent signup form on your website with a clear call to action (CTA) like “Get Exclusive Updates.”
  3. Social Media Integration: Add signup forms to your social media profiles and encourage fans to follow you for email updates.
  4. Merch Table: Capture email addresses at gigs by offering discounts or freebies in exchange for signing up. Promote your email list with flyers, QR code, or a simple sign.
  5. Cross-Promotion: Run contests where subscribing to your email list is an entry requirement. You can also collaborate with other musicians and/or influencers to increase your exposure and get their fans on your list!

Great, you’re starting to build your contact list! Here’s how to keep your fans engaged in your email list and coming back for more:

  • Regularly Scheduled Emails: Aim for a consistent schedule. Weekly updates or monthly newsletters keep you top-of-mind.
  • High-Quality Content: Offer valuable content your fans can’t find anywhere else. Share studio updates, upcoming tour dates, personal stories, or music videos. Fans these days love behind-the-scenes insight into the creative process, so share away!
  • Personalized Emails: Use your fan’s name and cater content to their interests. Fans love to feel like you’re speaking directly to them!
  • A/B Testing: Experiment with different email formats and subject lines to see what resonates best with your audience.
  • Track Results: Marketing platforms, like HAULIX, offer valuable email analytics. Track who opens, clicks, and listens to audio files to understand what works and what doesn’t.

Building an email list is an investment in your music career. It allows you to build genuine relationships with your fans, promote your music effectively, and ultimately grow your following.

Take a step beyond the social media shout-out and start building a direct connection with your fans – one email at a time. Remember, it’s not about how many followers you have, but how connected and engaged you can stay with them!

If you’re a musician who wants to take control of your email list, visit here to learn more about how HAULIX can help you track, personalize and build your contact lists all in one platform.

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How Storytelling Separates Music Stars From Complete Unknowns

Your music may tell people your story, but that assumes they will listen.

Artists like to believe their music tells their story.

And it might—as long as someone listens to it. How do you plan to hook everyone else?

How does someone who encounters you on social media via random mention or sound on TikTok learn about you? If they want to support you financially or otherwise, are there clear ways to do that?

Everywhere you exist online provides space for creators to tell their stories. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Resso, and Tidal all have artist profiles. Anyone who finds you on these platforms should be able to learn about you, but a shocking number of independent artists continue to leave these spaces blank.

Maybe the motivation is artistic. Perhaps these artists feel the music should speak for itself, but again—that idea hinges on people hearing the music and paying close attention.

The vast majority of humanity—99.9999%—will judge you and your music before hearing a note if they think of you at all. You need to use every tool at your disposal to convey your music’s core ideas and motivations to your masses.

Your music is—at best—the start of your storytelling journey. As Music Biz host James Shotwell explains in the following video, storytelling serves a very important role in the outcome of any artist’s career. Knowing who you are is not enough. It might have been at one point, but everyone can reach anyone at a moment’s notice. Succinctly conveying your journey to others will help separate you from your peers and create a clearly defined, unique path for you through music.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

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5 Simple, Effective Approaches To Artist Branding

Branding is an important part of any career, but it doesn’t have to be intimidating or time-consuming.

Let’s be clear: You have a brand whether or not you embrace the idea of branding as an essential part of existing as an artist in the modern age. Your brand exists and evolves whether regardless of your participation in its progression. People will think what they will or worse—not think of you at all.

Brand marketing is the process of establishing and growing a relationship between a brand (that’s you) and consumers (your current and future audience).

Every aspect of your career, both online and in the real world, impacts your brand. Some artists spend their careers meticulously crafting personas and fictitious worlds that they use to establish a brand that audiences can lose themselves in. Others prefer a more natural approach, presenting and behaving as everyday people in incredible jobs. Both ideas can work, and both can backfire. Authenticity reigns supreme.

When learning about branding, many artists shy away from the idea because they feel it will become too time-consuming to maintain. Musicians are trying to make music, and that creative pursuit rarely adheres to a traditional business model, despite being a business nonetheless.

In our latest Music Biz video, host James Shotwell presents five unique ways artist develop their brands and explains easy ways to apply similar thinking to any career. The purpose of this discussion is not to finalize your brand but to generate new ways of thinking about your art and how you tell your story through the many elements of your career.

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The Best Argument For Making More Short-Form Video Content

Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have given every artist a big reason to make more looping videos.

Have you noticed how every platform is becoming TikTok lately?

Instagram? Reels. And old TikToks.

YouTube? Shorts. And old TikToks. And old Reels.

Facebook? Repurposed Reels. Twitter? Old Reels, Shorts, and TikToks.

Twitter? All of the above, with the occasional original thought thrown in for fun.

Even Spotify has tested a TikTok-like discovery feature.

The copycat nature of social media may seem strange right now, but it’s happening for a good reason.

TikTok understands the value of individual experiences. Rather than treat people as part of a community based on their connection like most apps, TikTok treats people as unique individuals. No two recommendation feeds are the same, and that approach is turning heads throughout the tech world.

By offering more personalized user experiences, apps are learning more about us. That information is fueling a new era in marketing and advertising, which Music Biz host James Shotwell explains at length in this update. Click below to learn why there has never been a better time—or reason—to start making video content.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

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What Is Recommendation Media, And Why Does It Matter?

Believe it or not, social media is dying.

Social media was flawed from the start. At the dawn of digital connections, nobody anticipated how our real-world relationships and mutual interests would be weaponized for advertising campaigns. We probably should have considered it—maybe some even thought about it—but this was when smartphones were still a new idea.

After nearly two decades of making connections across various platforms, social media users often complain their most important relationships are nowhere to be found. “I never see ____ anymore,” people will tell you, often as a justification for missing an important event or detail. “The algorithm must not like them.”

But the problem with social media is far more complicated than simply showing you different posts. Algorithms learn from behaviors, and our behaviors have told algorithms that we don’t want to see our friends or parents in our timeline. We may like their posts from time to time, but we like memes, news, and viral content far more often. Those actions make it clear that the best way to keep you engaged is to give you more of what you already like, which creates a loop of relevant content.

Breaking these loops can be difficult, even when you no longer care about the content. In this Music Biz update, host James Shotwell explains how the infrastructure behind an entire generation of social media apps was not built to adapt to modern times and which leading service is closest to getting it right. He also explains the rise of so-called “recommendation media” and how its popularity speaks to a positive future for creators everywhere.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

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How To Grow Your TikTok Following In 30 Days Or Less [Video]

Most people enjoy watching TikTok content, but far less like making it. If you relate to that sentiment—this post is for you.

TikTok changed everything. If you still think of TikTok as “the dancing app,” you should know every time you share that thought, people begin perceiving you as the old man from the mid-2000s Six Flags ads.

More than 60% of Gen-Z uses TikTok for more than an hour each day. Millennials may not use it as heavily, but the more than 40% of them that log on monthly watch, on average, more than 12 hours of content.

If you’re anything like the Haulix team, then two things are true:

1. You love TikTok.

Not a day passes without you opening Bytedance’s hit video-sharing app and scrolling for minutes on end in search of the next video that captures your imagination. You probably share the best videos with your friends, and they do the same in return.

2. You cannot commit to making TikTok content.

As much as we love consuming TikToks, we shy away from publishing content ourselves. We’ve made dozens of videos on TikTok and TikTok strategy, but our personal channels on the platform are underutilized.

In this Music Biz update, host James Shotwell issues a 30 days challenge to all musicians and music professionals hoping to adapt to the times and become an active participants on TikTok. With very few rules, James lays out a strategy for growth and community engagement that anyone capable of watching this video can conquer.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

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How TikTok’s #StudioChallenge Is Revolutionizing Fan-Generated Content One Video At A Time

A recent trend on TikTok allows users to showcase their favorite artist’s best song, and fans can’t get enough. 

Let me set the scene: You’re scrolling through TikTok when suddenly, a video featuring a lone human walking through a doorway as an unfamiliar song begins to play. They pass through the room, grabbing headphones or other objects, as their friends, family, or coworkers slowly circle them. As soon as the song kicks into high gear, the room goes dark but is quickly illuminated by flashing lights as the protagonist begins performing the song, backed by everyone else in the room. It’s the kind of rowdy moment that previously would’ve happened during a sleepover or late night with friends, but in the digital age, it’s called content, and people love to see it unfold.

The #StudioChallenge, which has been blowing up on the video-sharing app, is centered around people acting as if they’re about to record a song. It is usually started by someone walking into a room, dapping people up, and grabbing the necessary equipment they need to deliver their act.

What makes the #StudioChallenge unique is its format. Unlike most TikTok trends involving dances or other act-outs, this challenge does not rely on a specific song. Users can pick a song that makes them feel the most alive. The content they create is an extension of themselves and their tastes, which makes their commitment to the bit more convincing for viewers. 

Here are a few examples of the challenge in action.

For fans of Paramore:

@theharbinsisters

In the studio wit it 🎶🎤🎸🖤

♬ Decode – Paramore

For fans of Pierce The Veil:

@ctx.chrissy

My work crew >>> but he hit that😭😭 #WeStickTogether #coworkers #kingforaday

♬ King For A Day – Pierce The Veil

For fans of Rich Homie Quan:

@nurseimon

In the studio likeee, Rich Homie….Quan. #studiochallenge #nursesoftiktok #nurselife #viral #birmingham #alabama #healthcare #fyp #foryoupage

♬ Type of Way – Rich Homie Quan

No marketing rep could have developed a more perfect promotional tool than the #StudioChallenge. Labels and artists want fans to use their songs in content. This challenge presents an opportunity to do so while putting the music front and center. For every viewer, one more person is hearing what is—most likely—one of the best moments in that artist’s catalog. That’s the perfect bait to hook a new listener, and it takes virtually no effort to execute.

As TikTok continues to evolve and music marketers place greater emphasis on navigating its vast community, we will likely see more trends with room for variety emerge. The age of song-specific dances and reenactments is slowly giving way to more personalized user-generated content (UGC). 

Why artists need to pay attention

Your fans are on TikTok. Maybe not all of them, but you have a community of followers, and they are likely making content. You can sit idly by, hoping they use your music, or you can encourage them to take action. There are many ways to accomplish this, starting with competitions for the best video, but the key to your success will be engagement, not from outsiders but from you. Listeners want to know you notice them, and they want to interact with you. By engaging your TikTok audience, you encourage them to include you in future creative efforts. 

But encouragement alone is not enough.

Every artist with the bandwidth to experiment on a new social network owes it to themselves and their audience to explore TikTok. 

I’ve yet to see a rock or metal band participate in the #StudioChallenge, but it seems like an easy win. 

Picture a band using the framework of the challenge to tease a new breakdown or highlight one of their biggest hooks. They can keep things simple and follow the blueprint or use their stage production to take the whole affair to an entirely new level. Either way, people will be hooked.

Take a chance on yourself.

It’s easy to understand why people hesitated to make video content three or four years ago. But it’s 2022, and the entire planet is spending free time scrolling through looping videos made by strangers. Everyone is doing it, and you should too!

I know, I know. This sounds like one of those” “if your friends jumped off a bridge” scenarios, but it’s not.

The cultural focus has shifted from still images and written word to video. The artists making waves of any size right now are doing so—at least in some small part—with the aid of video. 

It’s no longer a question of “if” you need video content. You absolutely need it. The only question is, how creative are you?

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How TikTok Is Changing Music Release Strategies

The popularity of TikTok is leading a revolution in music release strategies that is unlike anything we’ve witnessed in decades. 

Music marketing and release strategies are at the heart of every artist’s career. How and when you release music matters as much as the content itself—sometimes more—and for the better part of twenty years, virtually every album has followed a similar promotional path:

Step One: The artist or group announces the upcoming release of a new song

Step Two: The artist or group teases that release with audio clips, behind-the-scenes footage, and anything else they can develop while sharing Haulix links with journalists and tastemakers.

Step Three: The artist or group asks fans to presave and preorder the unreleased material.

Step Four: The song finally comes out.

Step Five: The artist or group continues promoting the song’s release.

Step Six: The artist or group continues teasing the song with audio clips, behind-the-scenes footage, and anything else they can develop.

Traditional industry thinking tells us that you must promote music before its release because it’s the only way to guarantee strong first-week sales, which often determines how much support a record will receive moving forward. History teaches us that if an artist fails to deliver an impressive launch week, the likelihood their label continues to pump money and attention into their career falls drastically. 

That line of thinking is outdated.

As Bob Dylan said, “The times, they are a-changin'” because a new generation of musicians refuses to follow tradition. Between the boom of TikTok and the rise of the “give it to me now or I don’t want it” culture, artists are choosing a more direct path to release and promotion.

Step One: The artist or group releases a new song.

Step Two: Promotion.

That’s it. 

TikTok is an amazing tool for discovery, connecting users with an endless variety of content creators algorithmically-tailored to their interests. When someone hears a song snippet they enjoy, logic dictates they will head to the creator’s profile, hoping to find their music online. If the user then visits the artist’s page and FAILS to find the song they heard on TikTok, the chances they save the artist and return later are virtually non-existent. In other words, you have one chance to grab someone’s attention, and if you blow it, they [most likely] won’t return.

To avoid this problem, artists are now choosing to skip promoting new material until it’s available worldwide. The risk of losing potential fans because you went viral before the release date is too high for most to gamble, but that’s not the only reason.

The so-called “TikTok Approach” is also a cost-effective promotional solution for cash-strapped independent artists whose marketing budgets often equate to whatever they can spare after paying for living expenses. Rather than waste your money teasing a song or record people cannot yet enjoy, spend your pre-release time creating content you can share immediately following the song’s premiere. Any engagement will lead to immediate streams (AKA money).

And it’s not just independent artists shifting their thinking around releases. Everywhere you look, the time between a song or album announcement and the release date is shrinking. Even Post Malone, arguably one of the world’s biggest musicians, announced his recent 2022 album only six weeks before its initial release. The first single? A surprise release.

What about preorders?

We live in a new world where the pipeline delays of recent years have drastically changed consumer expectations. Delays between digital and physical releases are to be expected. Most fans don’t mind because they view your vinyl, CD, or cassette as memorabilia. Its primary purpose is to be a physical manifestation of their fandom, which they can hold, showcase, and enjoy. Using it for consuming music is, for better or worse, becoming secondary. 

Launch preorders on release day. Launch everything on release day. The same people who would preorder the vinyl three months before release day will still place an order because they want the product regardless. 

Making this one adjustment to your next release strategy will ultimately save time and money. More importantly, it will give anyone interested in your music instant access to it. You want as few barriers between strangers and hearing your music as possible, and in our quickly evolving world, that requires making changes as culture dictates it necessary.

Remember the phrase, “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus”? The same applies to release strategies. Stop fooling around and deliver. Your fans will be thrilled to see new music, and anyone new won’t have to wait around to see if you’re as good as your teasers claim. Everybody wins.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Pure Noise Records, and more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

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What’s A View?—on Reels, TikTok, YouTube, and More!

What’s in a video view, and how long does it take to earn one? The answer is more complicated than you might expect.

Everywhere you look online, video content is king. Blame the influence of TikTok on culture, but each social platform is now promoting a video feature that—for the time being—offers more views and higher engagement than traditional content.

But what is a view?

Unfortunately for artists and music marketers, A “view” isn’t a standardized unit of measurement. Each platform has a unique set of rules that define how views are counted, and knowing the differences can help you measure the success of your campaigns. For example, a video receiving 100 views on Youtube could hold as much—if not more—value than a video receiving thousands of views elsewhere. The opposite can also be true.

Why does the math behind view counts matter?

Knowing how views are measured provides a greater understanding of how your content is performing on various platforms. If plays are counted instantaneously, like with TikTok or Instagram Reels, you’re likely to have incredibly high view counts regardless of how much engagement (Likes, Comments) you receive. Anyone who even glimpses at your post will be counted as a “viewer,” but how much did they see? Did they even see your name? What, if anything, will they retain?

Receiving 50,000 views on a clip is a cool talking point that sounds good in conversation and looks good buried three paragraphs into a press release, but how many viewers are engaging with that content? Of them, how many followed you?

Understanding the value of a view helps us better gauge the success of our promotional activity. The more we create and share, the better our understanding of what people like and what moves them to take action.

So, what counts as a view?

On TikTok, a view is essentially an impression—meaning, the very millisecond your video starts to play, it’s counted as a view. In addition, the platform also measures repeated views.

Instagram Reels follow the same logic as TikTok. A view is counted the instant a video is viewed. The amount of time watched beyond that initial split-second interaction does not matter.

Over on Facebook, a view is counted after a video autoplays for 3 seconds consecutively. Unlike TikTok and Reels, replays are not counted, so the same viewer watching a video repeatedly will not increase your view count.

Twitter, meanwhile, claims the ‘total video view’ metric is calculated by the sum of “any views which are at least 50 percent in-view for 2 seconds.” That means that to count as a view, at least half of the video has to be visible and playing on a user’s screen for at least two seconds.

Professional networking site LinkedIn counts video views after 3 seconds as well. According to a post from John Espirian, that short wait time “means a quick thumb-scroll past a video isn’t going to count, but if you pause and give the content even brief attention, that will count.

The grandaddy of them all, YouTube, counts a view after 30-seconds of continuous viewing and only when the viewer elects to play the video. Autoplay does not count toward views. YouTube also manually reviews all videos after passing 301 views to ensure the authenticity of viewership.

We will update these numbers are new information becomes available. Follow Haulix on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

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Why CDs Are Making A Comeback In 2022

Nearly two decades since their peak popularity, CDs are having a moment, but how long will it last?

Compact Discs are back (not that they ever went anywhere). According to data from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), shipments of compact discs rose from 31.6 million in 2020 to 46.6 million in 2021 – a rise of 47%. Revenue also increased from $483.2 million to $584.2 million. The last time sales of CDs were on the up was in 2004.

These figures may seem small compared to CDs’ 2004 peak when nearly a billion discs shipped in the US alone. But it seems possible that compact discs may soon follow vinyl’s footsteps by having a revival moment. In 2021, 39.7 million vinyl records were sold in the US, generating nearly $1 billion, a noticeably higher return than CD revenue.

The true sales figures for compact discs are likely higher than the RIAA report estimates. Many independent artists sell a large portion of CDs to fans at live shows or through online merch stores and never report sales. Its possible tens of thousands, if not millions, of CDs are sold this way annually.

But Why?

The motivations behind our renewed cultural interest in CDs likely differ depending on whether you’re a music fan or professional. 

For fans, physical music is often viewed as a souvenir. Owning a vinyl or CD is tangible proof of fandom, proving to other listeners that someone financially supports the artist(s) they love. 

In the world of K-Pop, which has taken young listeners worldwide by storm in recent years, music as a keepsake is commonplace. Physical media releases in this genre often include exclusive photographs, merch items, and unique packaging. Fans view each release as a collector’s item, increasing demand and sales.

For the industry, CDs offer a cost-effect alternative to vinyl, which is experiencing a production backlog due to increasing demand and ongoing supply chain issues. 

While per-unit costs drop with larger orders of both formats, the savings that CDs offer the artists and labels making them as well as the fan buying them are substantial. As Hypebot points out, at Discmakers, a limited run of 100 CDs in full-color jackets can cost around $2 each. That same run of 100 vinyl records costs $20 – $25 each. 

The turnaround time for CDs is also much quicker than that of vinyl. Discmakers currently list three options for compact disc production times, with the longest taking fourteen business days. By comparison, Gold Rush Vinyl now warns customers that new orders are facing a turnaround time of eight to ten months. Several services offer shorter times for higher prices, but the fastest we’ve found is sixteen weeks.

CDs are also easier to transport than vinyl and take up less space, which is useful when touring in a van, car, or bus.

What does this mean for artists?

Artists from all walks of life should consider utilizing CDs as merchandise items. Not only are they cost-efficient and easy to make, but the options for customization are endless. Physical releases provide a unique opportunity to expand upon your record. You can help fans decipher the stories behind the songs, provide them with lyrics to sing along to, or create an engaging layout that pulls us further into your world of sound. Best of all, the low cost of creating CDs means the risk is equally low. It’s better to spend $200 on a hundred CDs you struggle to sell than $2500 on a similar amount of vinyl. 

What does this mean for streaming?

Absolutely nothing. Streaming is king, and it’s highly unlikely that the resurgence of physical media in any form will dethrone it. Paid subscriptions to streaming services like Spotify, Tidal, and Amazon Music accounted for over 57% of music revenue ($8.6 billion), with ad-supported streams bringing in another $1.8 billion. CD and vinyl album sales combined accounted for less than 11% of revenue.

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