Being a musician is tough โ the struggle is real.
You put your heart and soul into your music and put it out there, but you get little to no reaction. In short โ no one gives a f&*k.
You’ve learned how to get your music on Spotify and now it’s time to get some fans.
So you try to hit people up on Facebook or Instagram cuz all the gurus tell you to โpromote your music on social media.โ
But all your @ mentions and DMโs just end up annoying people.
Whatโs a rapper or singer to do? In this article weโll try to help you find a way to get people to actually care about you and your music.
The Saturation Problem
So.. itโs 2018. Everyoneโs a rapper and everyoneโs online.
Whatโs that mean? It means thereโs SO MUCH music out there that fans have become overwhelmed. To make things worse, the great equalizer that the internet was allowed a lot of sub-par music to get through.
I hear you โ music is subjective. Whatโs good to me is bad to you and vice-versa. (For our purposes here, sub-par music means people that make music that lacks a lot of โquality signalsโ โ sound, arrangement, production, lyrics, style, etc).
So letโs agree โ thereโs a lot of shitty music out there. And people have been hit up so much by random people that they ignore any and everyone who says โhey check out my music.โ
So first things first โ stop it. Donโt ever ever ever ever hit some random person up and ask them to check out your music.
If you do that, I promise you, you will LOSE a potential fan, not gain one.

How to Get People to Listen
Itโs tricky. But to get people to actually listen to your music you have to make sure your music is available for them when theyโre ready.
Whatโs that mean? It means we live in an on-demand culture.
People do things when they want to. And there will come a time when your potential audience wants to find some new music to vibe out to.
And when they do, you need to be ready. Not to DM them like a stalker when theyโre in new music discovery mode โ thatโs not what I mean.
Put Your Music Everywhere
Being ready means having your music available everywhere people find new music.
First and foremost,ย make sure your music is on Spotifyย or Soundcloud (You can use Tunecore [learn more] for this). Itโs great if you can get your music on a popular playlist, but thatโs a topic for another article.
Next, make sure your music is on different music forums. If you go to Google and type in โnew music forum + [genre]โ where [genre] is the type of music you make, youโll get a list of forums where music is shared.
Join these forums, interact with other peopleโs posts and check out other new music. Be genuine and give some love to the stuff you actually like.
Then post your own stuff.
— Related Article: Tunecore and Distrokid Head-to-Head – Read Now —
It can be great to get your music on new music blogs (both big and small ones), but theyโre bombarded with music every day so itโs tough. But you might as well reach out and see if you can get featured.
Why do this: the idea is to have your music accessible when people are actively searching for new stuff. These are the fans you want to cultivate โ not the random person on Instagram who doesnโt give a damn.

Itโs a slow process, and thereโs not a great way to measure how effective it is because of how slow it can be.
Ideally hereโs what happens: someone who loves music decides to look for new music, hits up a blog or Spotify playlist and finds your song. They like it and in turn end up telling their friends about it. Their friends like it and tell their friends about it.
And on and on.
Word of mouth is and always will be the best form of marketing โ regardless of what the product is. When a trusted source (like a friend) recommends something, people are more likely to give it a chance.
You randomly telling someone youโre awesome has much less of an impact.
Collaborate
Collaborating with other artists is one of the best ways to gain new fans. Of course, the people you collaborate with should be serious musicians who also promote their music and take the craft seriously.
When you collaborate, you potentially get your music in front of people who will actually listen to it. Fans of an artist will listen to the song because an artist they like is on the song.
And if youโre dope, theyโll probably end up liking you and your music too.
That means NEW FANS.
These same people wouldnโt give you the time of day if you just started advertising your music directly to them on the internet.

Take Advantage of Every Opportunity Out There
There are tons of fan-building opportunities all around you โ you just have to be on the lookout.
Are there open-mic nightโs around your city you can perform at? Are there famous acts coming to your city you can open up for? Are there radio contests or shows where the DJs feature local/unsigned music?
There are tons of these opportunities around and theyโre a great way to gain new fans.
People that go to open mic nights are usually searching for new music. Lots of local and even satellite radio stations offer up-and-coming artists a chance to showcase their music.
Itโs just a matter of searching out the opportunities and going for them.
This form of marketing/promotion is a million times better than the spam youโve been sending all day today.
The Big Takeaway
The main idea here is this โ donโt try and force your music down someoneโs throat who doesnโt give a f&$k. And unfortunately, thatโs going to be 90% of people you try and push your music on.
Most people are busy and by interrupting them and trying to force your music on them, all youโre doing is annoying them and losing a fan for life.
Even if your music is great, they no longer care because you didnโt approach them in the right way.

And in all honesty, there is no right way.
Thatโs why itโs so important to get your music out there and connect with every fan you make, available for people who areย actively looking for new music.
This may be a small portion of people (letโs face it, most open mic nights are empty rooms), but even 1 new fan from these opportunities is priceless.
Because if you nurture the relationship with these fans, theyโll tell their friends about you. And if you just keep at it, this will eventually snowball into a large enough fan base that you can sustain your music career from.
If you have music that’s ready to be released, I highly recommend you use TuneCore to do it – they’re an affordable way to release unlimited music to Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and more!