I am a working singer-songwriter and I have worked for years to get my music out there. And now I have released 8 solo albums, have 42K followers on Facebook, earned over $50K in crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, sold over $30K in merch on Bandcamp, and currently earn over $2K per month on Patreon. And here's my story..
I struggled. I used to travel up and down the east coast doing any type of gig that you could possibly imagine. I remember waking up in the back of my van with my back aching while trying to find a discrete way to change my clothes as early morning customers at the Walmart parking lot were arriving where I had slept for a couple hours after the gig...
But I kept the faith. And I knew I was doing this for the right reasons. But I did wonder how long I could continue to "get the music out there" in this way and still live a somewhat healthy lifestyle...
And then social media came along! And basically it saved my artistic life...
Cut to 2017. Now I've got a HUGE on-line fanbase. And I'm so appreciative for each one of my fans. My relationship with them is the most important thing in my life...
How to Market Original Music On-line in 2017 comes down to 3 Vital Steps:
1. Content 2. Monetize 3. Reinvest
Step 1. Content - The first thing to do for marketing original music and/or songs is to build up a huge library of content that supports those specific original songs, like... Official Videos, Lyric Videos, Story Videos, Behind-The-Scenes Videos, Blog Entries, The Making-Of Videos, and anything else you can possibly think of to highlight the many different shades of your work.
Step 2. Monetize - Now I'm skipping a few steps here (especially getting followers). But at some point once you have gotten enough exposure and valuable followers you will need to figure out a way to monetize that on-line audience. For musicians , there are a ton of crowdfunding options now that you can use:
1. Kickstarter
2. Pledgemusic
3. Indiegogo
and my current favorite...
4. Patreon. (Check out my Patreon page here)
Patreon is my favorite crowdfunding platform at the moment because it is recurring income. Right now I'm earning over $2,000 per month on Patreon...
Also on-line merch sales through your on-line stores is key too. For this mainly I use my Bandcamp store... And then of course you've got iTunes and Amazon as well.
Step 3 - Reinvestment. Now this is the least popular step, but perhaps the most important step for SCALING UP. And it basically relies on hardcore Facebook advertising and Google Adwords. Now I know it may sound disappointing that this is how you get your music out there. But let's remember we're talking about ORIGINAL music here, not covers. So there's little to no hacks out there that will get you exposure for truly original music. You must reinvest.
And then your career can truly grow to new heights!
Sincerely,
Kev Rowe
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