5 Simple Methods To Get Exposure For Your Music
Let’s face it, nowadays with all the content that is flooded on to the internet, it is very difficult to stand out and cut through the pack. Not to say that it can’t be done, it absolutely can. But it takes hard work, persistence, and a little bit of planning and knowledge. Just posting your soundcloud link everywhere is not going to cut it. So how do you put your best foot forward and give your track a chance of being heard? Try these five methods below. If these don’t help at all, maybe it’s the music…
Before I jump into these methods, first thing is first. Make sure your track is ready to be heard. Is it mastered properly, does it have nice artwork, is your preview right? If you’re not sure you should check out our post, “5 Seconds To Success – How To Maximize The Hit Potential of Your New Track.”
If everything is right, lets start promoting that track.
Method 1: Go Where the People Are
Since the dawn of the internet people have been congregating in forums to talk about everything from car parts to cats. So taking advantage of this would probably be a smart thing to do. Simply do a google search for some producer and musician forums, or forums based on your music genre. We promise you there are a ton of them and many of them are extremely active.
A couple that we like are KVR and the Ableton forum. We also love reddit. Reddit can be an amazing place to share your track and get exposure. Be careful though every sub reddit has different rules for posting. The sub reddit we like for EDM is r/edmproduction. Make sure you are following the rules though. They don’t take to kindly to rule breakers. Besides these, there are plenty more for you to share your music and interact with fellow producers and musicians.
Method 2: Attack on All Fronts
If you’re taking your music career seriously and you are ambitious, I hope it goes without saying that you are actively trying to grow your social media following. If you are just starting off that is fine, but do whatever you can to grow those numbers. Get active on soundcloud, twitter, instagram, youtube etc. Research tips on how to grow your audience and keep in mind, with most social networks, you get out what you put in. So make comments, like pictures, retweet whatever you have to do to get noticed.
Once you do this for a bit, hopefully you start growing your numbers. And once you do, attack on all fronts. Get in front of your audience on multiple touch points. So everywhere they go, they see you and can’t ignore you. You should even be making a video to post on YouTube. You can do this with iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. They are both extremely easy to use. You can simply use your cover art and put the music to it, or take your iPhone, go video some cool shit, and edit it together.
BUT, make sure your message and promotional assets are uniform and they fit the specifications of the site. The image below always makes me laugh but really helps convey how you should be communicating on each social network.
For instance the post you make on Facebook should be much different than what you post on twitter. Always think, would this headline or tweet make me click on it? Which leads me to method number three.
Method 3: Get Creative
To refer back to the very beginning of this post, with all the crap out there and everyone fighting for the same people’s attention, you really need to stand out and cut through the noise. So GET CREATIVE! We can’t stress that enough. You need to create promotional assets that really work well and stand out. From your tracks artwork, to the headline on your promotional post. To ger started check out our recent post, “How to Easily Create Amazing Covert Art for Your Music.”
You should even be creating a funny 15 second video to go on instagram, even 6 seconds to go on vine. Once again you can very simply do this with iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. Rip a funny video off of youtube and put your music to it. But don’t stop there, let your imagination run wild.
Two of the best examples we can think of are, Baauer’s Harlem Shake, which literally defines the word Viral and Shelco Garcia and Teenwolf’s video for Thats My Jam. This video was everywhere and to date has over 626K likes and 717K shares on Facebook, and is everywhere on youtube and instagram. These videos are what viral looks like.
Method 4: DJ Pools
For an artist there isn’t a much better feeling then hearing your music played live in a club or festival atmosphere. On top of that, having your music validated by your peers is great, but it is tough to get it in their hands. That is why you must utilize DJ pools. Not only can you get some constructive criticism, you can potentially reach thousands of people by having them hear it live when a DJ plays it.
One of the DJ Pools that we like is ZIPDJ. It is very active and the DJ’s are very responsive. They rate your track and also say if they will play it in their sets or not. If you don’t like that one though, there are tons of them and you should be using a few anyway. Just do a google search.
Method 5: Put Your Money Where Your Beats Are
Last but not least we have the dreaded paid advertising. Now before you get all upset and think – “I don’t have money to be spending to promote my track,” relax. We are not suggesting thousands of dollars in promotion, you can make $25 useful. Although we suggest a little more than that.
For example, you can find a very popular instagram handle with the same demogprahic as yours and give them $25 to post your track. If the first one says no, find one that will. Remember persistence, and once again get creative.
Also if you plan on making a career at music, eventually you are going to have to spend some money. So might as well start figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Also, if the four previous methods were done correctly, throwing some money behind it will only accelerate the exposure.
We highly suggest a promoted Facebook post to your demogrpahic. $50 on a promoted post on Facebook goes pretty far.
Now to really put the icing on the cake, and turn all of this hard work into a loyal community of fans and followers, that is where Hypeddit comes in. What is the point of doing all this work if you’re not growing your audience? You can accomplish this with Hypeddit by becoming a Hypeddit Pro. This will allow you to maximize the potential of all your tracks with unlimited fan gates as well as really allowing you to brand your Hypeddit content.
In addition to becoming a Hypeddit Pro, we are constantly adding new features and services to help our amazing community of artists to reach a larger audience.
We recently began “Hypeddit Exclusives,” and recruited top DJ’s from around the world to create DJ sets made up strictly of Hypeddit artists. And launched our Spotlight promo service which will get your track dedicated promo placement on the top of our Top 100 and New Releases pages. For more information and how to submit your track check out the post here.
So we highly suggest before you put out your next track, sign up for a Hypeddit account, follow these methods, and before you know it, you will be at the main stage at Ultra.
Good luck!
