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How to Get People to Care About Your Music

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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 โ€œpromote your music on social media.โ€

But all your @ mentions and DMโ€™s just end up annoying people.

Whatโ€™s a rapper or singer to do? In this article weโ€™ll try to help you find a way to get people to actually care about you and your music.

The Saturation Problem

So.. itโ€™s 2018. Everyoneโ€™s a rapper and everyoneโ€™s online.

Whatโ€™s that mean? It means thereโ€™s 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. Whatโ€™s 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 โ€œquality signalsโ€ โ€“ sound, arrangement, production, lyrics, style, etc).



So letโ€™s agree โ€“ thereโ€™s 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 โ€œhey check out my music.โ€

So first things first โ€“ stop it. Donโ€™t 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.

Don't Spam Your Music

How to Get People to Listen

Itโ€™s tricky. But to get people to actually listen to your music you have to make sure your music is available for them when theyโ€™re ready.

Whatโ€™s 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 theyโ€™re in new music discovery mode โ€“ thatโ€™s not what I mean.


Sweetwater

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). Itโ€™s great if you can get your music on a popular playlist, but thatโ€™s a topic for another article.

Next, make sure your music is on different music forums. If you go to Google and type in โ€œnew music forum + [genre]โ€ where [genre] is the type of music you make, youโ€™ll get a list of forums where music is shared.

Join these forums, interact with other peopleโ€™s posts and check out other new music. Be genuine and give some love to the stuff you actually like.

Then post your own stuff.

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It can be great to get your music on new music blogs (both big and small ones), but theyโ€™re bombarded with music every day so itโ€™s 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 doesnโ€™t give a damn.

Music Streaming Apps

Itโ€™s a slow process, and thereโ€™s not a great way to measure how effective it is because of how slow it can be.

Ideally hereโ€™s 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 youโ€™re awesome has much less of an impact.


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Unlimited Distribution

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 youโ€™re dope, theyโ€™ll probably end up liking you and your music too.

That means NEW FANS.

These same people wouldnโ€™t give you the time of day if you just started advertising your music directly to them on the internet.

Collaborate to Get New Fans

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 nightโ€™s 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 theyโ€™re 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.


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Itโ€™s 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 youโ€™ve been sending all day today.

The Big Takeaway

The main idea here is this โ€“ donโ€™t try and force your music down someoneโ€™s throat who doesnโ€™t give a f&$k. And unfortunately, thatโ€™s 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 youโ€™re doing is annoying them and losing a fan for life.

Even if your music is great, they no longer care because you didnโ€™t approach them in the right way.

Marketing Your Music

And in all honesty, there is no right way.

Thatโ€™s why itโ€™s 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 (letโ€™s 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, theyโ€™ll 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!

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    About The Author:

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    Omar Zulfi

    Omar Zulfi is a music producer, rapper, singer, songwriter and digital entrepreneur. He is the founder and head writer at Deviant Noise. Learn more about what he's doing by clicking here.