Where do I post my music? Services for m ...

Where do I post my music? Services for musicians to help them find listeners

May 29, 2022

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Every musician has one question: where to find an audience, a listener? Until recently, the main way was to publish music on CDs, cassettes, and vinyl. But with the advent of streaming services and social networks, musicians at first don't need labels and credits to replicate CDs. It is enough to post material on the Internet to get auditions, feedback, and even monetary rewards for their labors.

But first, you need to make sure everything is ready to be published. A successful release will require:

Good music in a good recording. Sure, it's rare for anyone to have a masterpiece at the beginning of their creative journey, but the material needs to have something to hook you and it needs to be enjoyable to listen to. This means that you need to devote time and money to the production of the track - arranging, recording, mixing, and mastering. Audio requirements in most cases are 16 bit, 44 kHz, but there are also services, which allow you to publish lossless formats.

  • Artwork. A cover art is essential for any single, EP or LP - not only does it set the atmosphere and individuality, but it also allows users of streaming services and social networks to catch it by sight and remember it.

  • Press Release. Brief information about the band, project, artist, or release itself. Needed for filling the corresponding fields on the pages of social networks and streaming services.

Streaming services

iTunes, Apple Music, Yandex Music, Google Play, Spotify, and others.

First and foremost, we need to give audiences the ability to legally listen to and buy finished tracks. In 2020 people listen to music legally mostly via iTunes, Yandex Music and other streaming services, even YouTube offer this opportunity. It is from them that tracks are then distributed to torrents and pirate streaming services.

There are dozens of streaming services and understanding each of them is a living hell. That's why there are aggregator sites, which allow you to download music to a dozen platforms at once. The best known are Tunecore and CDBaby, and Google knows many more foreign and Russian analogues. Hosting itself is inexpensive, but services take a commission on sales, so you need to carefully read the terms and conditions. Nevertheless, it is the easiest way to publish your music and get a presence in the global music market.

Spotify Playlist

How much money can you make? On the same iTunes, the author gets $0.7 per track and $7 per LP. Increase income will help placement in playlists. Many streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify support the creation of playlists, for example, for new releases in a certain genre of music. There are different ways to get on them, from a simple email to a playlist curator to services like Ditto, which offer placements for money on large playlists that guarantee a listening experience.

Social networks.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, Snapchat, TikTok

The next step is a social media presence. They allow you to not only post music, but also communicate with your audience, inform them of news, performances, etc. This is very important for the formation and growth of the future fanbase. Sometimes posting audio recordings is included in the package of the posting aggregator along with iTunes and Play Music, otherwise it is not difficult to do everything yourself.

If the music is more for Western listeners, then you should pay attention to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can't post music there, only attach links to it. But the presence in them is important so that the audience knows about the existence of the project and can subscribe to news. It is worth placing links to all the tracks there, adding to them hashtags with the genre and name of the project. Using these tags, users and administrators of communities devoted to relevant music look for new releases.

Instagram is suitable for music projects centered around an artist's personality. Many hip-hop, rock and metal musicians use it to casually interact with fans and post behind-the-scenes content. Snapchat is sometimes used for the same purpose.

Crucially, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram offer great opportunities for promotion. Reposting on communities will increase visibility, and targeting ads will allow for very fine-tuned PR for an album or concert.

TikTok is a fast-growing social network that allows you to post short videos (about 15 seconds, up to a minute). Thanks to a clever ranking algorithm that brings user-interesting content to the top, it's possible to get sudden popularity on TikTok through a viral effect. For example, if you create a track that's groovy and goes with some kind of video (usually some kind of dancing), chances are that users will rivet thousands of videos to this track. To make that happen, you need to put the track in the TikTok music library (included in the same TuneCore and CDBaby package). That way, any user can choose it for their video. You will get money for every use of the track.

Social networks for musicians and creators

Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Last.Fm, Patreon, Pandora AMP, Stocks

Bandcamp is an online store for indie musicians. Allows you to post your music and merchandise, sell digital copies (including lossless) and discs at your own prices for a small service fee. The artist can create a page on the platform with a short name (a kind of site) and put a link to it on social networks (for example, the Facebook page has an action button that redirects people to Bandcamp). A big advantage of the service is the ability to sell real media and merchandise, so a lot of CD and vinyl collectors have focused around it. Thanks to the large community, you can find a listener in even the most exotic genres.

Soundcloud is a social network for indie musicians, the main feature is the ability to leave comments on the track right on the soundtrack. So you can mark the most catchy moments. Allows you to put up to 5 GB of your music in mp3 and lossless formats, there are paid accounts, expanding the space and functionality. On Facebook and Twitter it is convenient to put links to your tracks on Soundcloud, it is integrated with them. The service does not allow you to sell your music, but recently added an action button for a link, for example, to the same Bandcamp.

Last.fm, though it has lost its former popularity, still has a core of loyal users. If your work was previously posted on social networks and streaming sites, it is likely that it is already available on last.fm. However, it is worth registering your project page to have control over your profile. This platform is great because it associates similar bands and projects with each other quite accurately. It's handy for users to explore entire genres and trends, and it benefits musicians who get free auditions.

Patreon allows fans to subscribe to the channel for a small fee (a basic subscription is only a dollar) in exchange for exclusive content. This can be early access to works, rare performance recordings, song covers, remixes, demos, dressing room videos, etc. Different subscription levels can be set up with different costs and amounts of content offered, including offline gifts - merchandise, CDs, posters, etc. Patreon is popular not only with musicians, but also artists, photographers, cosplayers, bloggers, and other creative individuals.

There are well-known musicians on Patreon - for example, the vocalist of the band Arch Enemy

Pandora AMP is a kind of social network that allows you to post music and get more feedback than other platforms. A set of tools are responsible for this, such as Artist Audio Messages - short audio messages before the track - prerolls similar to VKontakte ads, but from the artist himself. They can replace usual text posts, while working better. You can also promote singles with Featured Tracks, which gives almost double the attention to one of the tracks from the album, you can add music to playlists, etc.

If tracks by genre are more like small sketches with a certain mood, then it's worth considering copyright free music audio-stocks to realize the material. Many musicians earn by making music in parallel with their main project, and some have abandoned the idea of entering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in favor of a steady income from their craft. In many ways, this is easier than promoting your own music project - the stock market needs the music as a backing for video presentations and trailers, so it already answers why and what it exists for. Unlike your own music project, the significance of which has yet to be proven to the audience.

Your own website

Although few people today visit websites for news about their favorite band, every musical project still has a page on the Internet. Having your own website is not only a matter of prestige, but also an opportunity:

  • sell music and merchandise for your price without commission;

  • to make any design suitable to the project or a new release;

  • organize old photos, videos and everything related to the project, but scattered on different social networks;

  • place a press release, technical rider, and other necessary files for tour managers and concert organizers;

  • If the project comes to fruition, there will be many fan groups, forums and even websites on the Internet. The official website will be the official source of information.

It is possible to make a website on your own. Today, even designers like WIX and Squarespace have enough functionality to implement all of the above. And engines like Wordpress and Tilda have no less user-friendly interface than website builders - enough of a basic knowledge of HTML to create your own page.

Promoting your own music is a long and painstaking process. The good news is that there are bound to be people in the world who like it. The bad news is that you have to find them first. So the promotion is based on simple mathematics: the more people who listen to a certain track, the greater the chance that there will be lovers of such music among them. You should always keep this in mind, and don't be afraid to put your tracks on all available platforms.

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