Tag: music promotions

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How Music’s Biggest Names Reach Influencers And Press

Music Promotion

There are countless ways to contact influential people, but only one affordable platform for music promotion is trusted by labels and artists worldwide.

The music business has undergone countless evolutions over the last century, but one thing that remains the same is the importance of relationships. Success is rarely a matter of who writes the best song or creates the best press kit. The talent that rises through the underground and becomes household names do so because of their ability to network. They put themselves out into the ether, making their talent and personality known, and they connect with like-minded individuals searching for an opportunity to build something that stands out from the competition. 

There are no tricks or cheatsheets that can manufacture the power of honest relationships, and without them, there is no tool or advice we can offer that will make you a star. If you don’t have contacts yourself, hire someone that does, and make sure to check their credentials. 

The biggest names in music understand that music promotion is a crowded field wherever everyone is essentially selling the same thing. They have songs, artwork, press photos, artist bios, and personality. You can package these items in a billion different ways. Still, the core elements are the same, and the influencers who shape culture wake every day to a seemingly endless number of requests for their limited attention.

What separates breakout stars from overlooked talent lies in how they present their material. Soundcloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive may make sharing content easy, but each service severely limits an artist’s ability to express themselves. Most Soundcloud landing pages, for example, include large branding and ads for Soundcloud services. Google Drive and Dropbox offer a more straightforward UI. However, the appearance is so bland that the only reason anyone would click on the links on said pages is because of a pre-existing familiarity with the material. 

The best way to cut through the clutter and make a lasting impression on influencers is Haulix, the industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Haulix makes it easy for professionals at every entertainment level to create eye-catching promotional emails and landing pages that emphasize an artist’s brand and music. BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Metal Blade Records, Pure Noise Records, and many other labels, independent artists, and publicists already trust Haulix. There are multiple affordable plans to choose from, and each comes with a one-month risk-free trial.

Haulix promos are great whether or not users choose to customize the default template. Each promo pages makes it easy to share the artist, album title, label, release date, cover art, record description, promo photos, music videos, and music. Here is one example of a promo with no customization:

If users do choose to customize their promo pages, great designs are just a few clicks away. Here is an album promo put together for You, Me, And Everyone We Know’s recent live album. As you can see, the page is customized to match the artwork’s colors, and a banner is present to emphasize the band’s branding.

Haulix also makes it easy to create engaging promo invitations that provide your contacts with unique links to your music. Each contact has a personal link, which allows you to track each person’s engagement with your music. You can view email opens, song streams, and downloads. 

But the offerings don’t stop there! Haulix also has tools to generate reports, manage teams, and watermark your music. You can learn about all of this and more on the company’s website.

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5 Tips For Marketing Your Music This Halloween [Video]

The spookiest time of year is here, and the opportunities to boost your career with timely marketing efforts are endless.

Halloween and music go together like flesh and bone. Both bring people together, and both have the potential to make everyday people feel special, even if only for a moment. So, why doesn’t the music industry capitalize on the spooky season with timely music marketing? Your guess is as good as ours.

Aside from a select few groups who are synonymous with Halloween (Ice Nine Kills, Rob Zombie, Motionless In White, etc.), the vast majority of artists only mention Halloween when it’s time to share their costume. That effort always creates engagement with fans, but it leaves a lot of potentially incredible community-building opportunities unexplored.

Don’t follow the pack. This Halloween, we want you to make every effort possible to engage your audience, build your community, and raise awareness for the excellent music you work hard to promote, all while having fun. We’ve got five tips to get you started, and we’ll tell you about them all in the latest Music Biz 101. Check it out:

For those without the time or ability to watch our finely crafted video, here are a few quick tips to get you started:

  • Brand Refresh. Go through your online presence and find simple ways to leverage Halloween aesthetics to temporary update your presence. Some easy examples include changing your profile picture, changing the theme of your Twitter page, and change your social handles to include ‘spooky’ content such as skulls or pumpkins.
  • Exclusive merch. Fans love feeling like they are part of something special. Create limited edition merch that is only available until Halloween utilizing seasonal trends. Fans most likely won’t receive the items in time for Halloween this year, but they will be ready for 2021 and beyond.
  • New music. Every listener wants something new. Artists trying to deliver something special could choose to record a Halloween-themed original or cover a holiday classic. The Nightmare Before Christmas has many songs to choose from, but the “Monster Mash” never goes out of style.
  • Livestream Event. COVID-19 will (hopefully) prevent any mass gatherings this October, so give your fans something to do with a special one-night-only online event. You don’t have to perform, per se, but do make yourself available. Fans will appreciate having a place to go to be around people with similar interests (which, in this case, means your music).
  • Costume Contest. You can add this idea to your livestream event or leave it as a standalone competition. Challenge your fans to make costumes inspired by your music. Share their creativity online to engage the community further and give a prize (or multiple prizes) to the ones who blow you away.

We’ve added an extra suggestion to the video, but you’ll haver to watch it for the reveal. Good luck!

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Artist Advice Editorials Industry News News

Two Big Mistakes Musicians Make When Contacting Tastemakers

Overcoming the biggest hurdle in DIY music promotion requires a little thing called human decency. 

Music tastemakers are some of the busiest people in the entertainment industry. Even the smallest publications receive dozens of requests per day for coverage. Bigger outlets, as well as widely-recognized writers, may receive more than one-thousand emails any given week. The majority of the time, outlets and writers are busy dealing with established talent and music that is quickly gaining momentum online. Those able and willing to cover lesser-known acts only have a finite amount of time for discovery, which is why making a positive and immediate impact on anyone you pitch is essential for your success.

We write a lot of blogs offering advice for reaching tastemakers. We have even gone so far as to create contact lists to help people reach playlist curators. However, no matter how much we write and discuss music promotion, industry influencers continue to complain about up and coming artists’ lack of preparation and respect. People at all level of the industry often contact us with concerns that people are nowhere near as passionate about professionalism as they are becoming successful, and that — for most — is a huge red flag. 

With that in mind, here are the two complaints we receive most often, as well as advice on how to avoid further frustrating music writers, podcasters, and YouTubers in the future.

Know your audience.

Very few tastemakers have influence over every area of music. There are exceptions, such as The Needle Drop, but most critics and influences earn their positions in the industry by specializing in certain areas of music. 

The same goes for publications. Pitchfork may cover more music than anyone has time to listen to, but there isn’t one person doing all the work behind the scenes. Pitchforks, as well as most music publications, rely on teams of people — each with their own specialties — to curate content people should experience. 

Few things will get your pitch for coverage denied or overlooked faster than failing to understand what the person you’re contacting covers. This is especially with playlists, which can be extremely specific in terms of the music they’re looking to features. When artists begin flooding tastemakers with material outside their coverage area it only serves to frustrate influencers and lower their interest in music discovery altogether. 

It’s hard enough for up and coming artists to get attention today without having to compete with people who spam critics because they were too lazy to research the people they were contacting. Don’t contribute to the problem of over-saturation. Research every person and publication before reaching out. Be sure your email is going to someone or someplace that values the type of music you create. Otherwise, you’re just wasting everyone’s time, including your own.

Make it personal.

There is no Mr. Pitchfork or Ms. Rolling Stone. However, without fail, artists constantly spam inboxes of publications and writers without addressing the people on the receiving end. 

Worse still is the large number of artists who write a single draft of a pitch letter that they then copy and paste to all press contacts with zero personalization. 

A good rule of thumb for promoting your music is to make every piece of outreach as personal as the music you’re trying to share. Your songs mean everything to you. They are a representation of who you are what you wish to share with the world. Your promotional materials are an extension of that representation. 

It’s perfectly acceptable to create a pitch template for promoting your music that shares the same basic information with everyone you contact. However, that template should be a starting point for messages and not the entire message. Your outreach should aspire to make everyone feel as if you want them to hear your music more than anyone else in the world. Let them know you admire their work and that you understand what they are passionate about in music. Talk to them as if you’re trying to make a new best friend. 

Nobody wants to feel like they’re being asked for a favor by a stranger who has no interest in who they are, how they’re feeling, or what they’re trying to do with their own career. Make people feel special. 

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Artist Advice Editorials Haulix Industry News

How To Reach Music Critics and Influencers [VIDEO]

Sharing music has never been easier, but reaching people in positions of influence is harder than ever before.

Despite reports that claim otherwise, music criticism is alive and well. There are more musicians than ever making and releasing more music than ever at a rate never anticipated, which is why people continue to turn to influencers and people they view as having authority for help with new music discovery. Most people do not have the time to constantly listen to artists they don’t know, but many are willing to listen to those that do. That is why influencers continue to matter, and it is why they will always have a role in music.

But there is a problem. The increased competition for attention has made reaching tastemakers in positions of influence difficult. For every new artist that receive a bit of recognition, there are dozens whose emails and DMs go unanswered. Having a great song doesn’t matter unless you can make people care about it, and sadly, most artists are incapable of accomplishing that task.

In the latest episode of Music Biz 101, our ongoing web series, host James Shotwell breaks down four tricks for engaging with tastemakers every artist needs to know. These tips are easy to follow, and they can be applied in every genre of music, but you will still need great music as well. Success in the music business today requires both business and creative skills. One without the other may get you far, but it won’t build a lasting career.

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Artist Advice Business Advice Editorials Haulix News

What promotional platforms offer artists that Soundcloud, Dropbox, etc. do not

Crowd at concert

Just because a service is free does not mean it’s right for your promotional needs.

Promotion is the name of the game in music today. As consumers spend less and less on physical media with each passing year, the need to promote music in a way that resonates with influencers and industry gatekeepers enough to produce coverage is greater than ever. The challenge of accomplishing this has never been harder either, as the competition for coverage has grown as quickly as consumers’ attention spans have diminished. 

The good news is, there have never been more avenues for music promotion and conversation. From traditional publications and music blogs to YouTube critics, playlist curators, Twitter feeds dedicated to music discussion, Instagram pages curating beautiful scenes from concerts, and countless other digital avenues, the paths to exposure in the modern age are limitless.

Getting the attention of influencers, radio, and journalists is where the battle for exposure begins. Fan support can go a long way, and it can certainly make an impact on the decision of these so-called gatekeepers to cover your music, but there remains a great value in getting exposure from people and companies that lie outside your already established circle of supporters.

Companies like Soundcloud and Dropbox are among the numerous platforms offering free or low-cost streaming and sharing of music. These services also offer private streams, which are usually protected by secret access links, as well as the ability to share that same material with the public if the artist desires to do so. The ease of access and friendly price point has made both, as well as their competitor Box, popular, but for artists and the people who represent them the benefits of using such services very minimal.

That is why most artists who succeed today, as well as labels who continue to thrive, rely on promotional distribution platforms such as Haulix to share new and upcoming releases. Haulix and its competitors match the offerings of Soundcloud or Dropbox, but they also give (much) more power and insight to artists and their teams.

Using Haulix as an example, here are just a few tools the service offers that free and low-cost streaming platforms do not:

  • Customizable landing pages complete with numerous branding opportunities.
  • Customizable messaging with branding opportunities.
  • Contact upload and contact list management.
  • In-depth analytics that reveals who is engaging with your music, how often they listen, and what songs are getting the most attention.
  • Sub-administrator accounts that allow for team interaction and company organization.

The two biggest advantages Haulix users have over those who choose to use Soundcloud or Dropbox is their ability to brand and to track individual user engagement. Soundcloud may tell you how many plays a song has, but how do you know who on your massive mailing list has been listening? Dropbox may make downloading material a breeze, but how can you showcase your brand and build name recognition when every download screen looks exactly the same?

Here’s a Haulix promo, which as you can see reinforces the artist’s name and the title of their record while conveying the aesthetic of the material.

Haulix is trusted by artists at every level of the music business to do everything from attracting press coverage to securing management, enticing promoters, developing material while members are recording in different locations, and more. You can find a list of clients currently relying on the system, including Chance The Rapper and Metallica, by visiting their official website.

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News

8 Steps to Creating an Effective Sales Promotion Strategy for Your Music

Hello, everyone! Thank you for finding a few minutes in your schedule to spend learning about the industry with us. We did not create the post you’re about to enjoy, but after reading it earlier this month we knew we had to make room in our content schedule to highlight what it has to share. Bobby Borg is an incredibly talented writer, and we’re honored to feature his work on our site.

This blog exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Sales promotions are short-term incentives intended to stimulate a quick buying response in your target customer. Coupons, one-time exclusive offers, customer loyalty programs, two-for-the-price-of-one discounts, and limited-time prizes with purchase are all examples of sales promotions in the consumer world. While it’s true you’ll have to give away your music for free to build awareness and help start a buzz, sales promotions can be applied to everything, including merchandise, studio time, music lessons, concert tickets, and more. From choosing the right type of sales promotion that fits your band, to executing your sales promotions tastefully, these eight tips will help you create a strategy that brings light to your products and services and generates healthy sales.

1. Decide on the type of sales promotion that fits your band

Whether you choose to utilize discount ticket coupons that you allow fans to print out from your website, or you announce a “one-time exclusive offer” to purchase your music at your record release party, remember that you must always stay in sync with the desired image you’d like to project into the marketplace. An anti-capitalistic punk band must obviously use sales promotions very subtly (or not at all), or they might otherwise come across as being phony.

2. Decide on the different media you’ll use to deliver your sales promotion

Remember that sales promotions can be delivered using internet techniques (email and your personal website), guerrilla marketing techniques (postcards and flyers you hand out to people on the street), direct marketing techniques (brochures you mail), and face-to-face selling techniques (pitches you make to music students and recording clients). The idea is to utilize a couple different mediums to ensure you thoroughly reach your intended audience.

3. Decide exactly when the sales promotion will begin and end

Sales promotions must have a clearly defined beginning and an end. Will it be just for the night of a show, for two weeks, or for the entire holiday season? Whatever it is, make it very clear. "Urgency" is a key ingredient in sales promotions and in getting your fans to ultimately respond.  

4. Test the sales promotion on a limited number of people

Before printing a few hundred coupons to send off to your fans, be sure to get some feedback on the words and graphics you use. The idea is to create the most effective promotion that will push your fans’ buttons and get them to take action. Test out your sales promotions on a small sample audience first and make any necessary adjustments. You’ll save time and money.

5. Keep the purpose of your sales promotion clearly in mind

Be clear on why you’re holding a sales promotion and what you’d like to achieve. Is your goal to sell a specific number of units so that you can take your musical act out on the road? Or is it to raise a certain amount of money for your Kickstarter or GoFundMe campaign to produce a live concert that will benefit a charity? Whatever it is, state a very clear objective.    

6. Control the number of promotions you hold

Remember that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Sending out emails every other week telling people that they can record in your studio at a “one-time specially reduced price” just looks bad. Always be tasteful, truthful, and subtle.

7. Stick to the rules of the promotion

Don’t be tempted to make an offer that’s not in line with the rules of the promotion. Doing this can clearly compromise the integrity of the promotion and even your brand. Stick to your own rules! If you say the promotion ends on December 24, the promotion really needs to end on December 24.

8. Remember that “sales” is not a bad word

Some people think of marketing as sleazy or pushy. This reaction is usually due to bad past experiences with deceptive advertisements or pushy marketing tactics. But as media critic Douglas Rushkoff said in a PBS special entitled The Persuaders, "Don’t let your marketing show.“ If you can focus on the creation of products and services that uphold your vision, satisfy fans by giving them what they need, and present your offers in a non-intrusive manner that make fans feel like they’re part the process, people won’t even know you’re marketing to them. 

Unless you’re just a hobbyist, at some point you have to start generating some type of income from your music. Sales promotions cause fans to take action and help increase your sales. So make no mistake: if you want to make it, you have to market.

This post originally appeared on the SonicBids blog.

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