The main thing every artist wants for their music, is for other people to hear it. Even if your music is the best of the best, you can’t always guarantee the audience. If you’re new on the scene, it can be even harder to gain a following. We’ve put together some tips on how you can easily increase your streams.
Pre-save
A Pre-save is a feature which allows anyone to save your music ahead of the release day. This is great for your fans because they can follow your link and be certain that when your track goes live, they’ll have access to it. It will be placed automatically into their library on their preferred platform. They’ll be able to head straight to your song rather than having to search for it. It’s also a big positive for you as you’re guaranteed streams on release day. You don’t have to focus on pushing it to your fans once it’s live because they’ll already have it saved. Instead, you can work on promoting your music further afield, to broaden your audience.
Fan Link
Also known as a smart link, this is something that is again useful for you and your fans. It stores all of your links in one place. If you’re releasing music across several stores, how are you going to send everyone each link? You can’t place more than one link within your Instagram bio, and this is a really important platform for promoting yourself. It’s also likely that if you have fans in different corners of the world, their streaming service of choice will be different. Your fans will have a preference, but you may not promote that specific link. It’s possible you’ll focus on the largely popular stores like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. What about your fans that turn to Tencent or Bugs?
With a Fan Link, everything is stored in one place. You can list all the stores where your release can be found when setting up your Fan Link. These can be customised to suit you as an artist. You may decide to keep the store logos as your buttons, or you may want to switch it up to match your own colour scheme. Whatever you decide, it is up to you, and that’s the great thing about these links. Your fans will go to the one URL you provide, and there they will see a list of all stores.
Content Unlock
You win and so do your fans. Content Unlocks offer your fans exclusive digital content that they can’t find elsewhere. You can decide what this content is. It could be an unreleased single, behind the scene’s footage from a gig, a new piece of artwork, or maybe a code for discount on merchandise. The choice is yours, but whatever you decide, your fans can gain by following rules set out by you.
You set the tasks they must complete to be rewarded. As many or as little as you like. It might be you want your fans to follow one of your social media accounts and also follow your Spotify artist page. Or perhaps you want them to share your release on Twitter and subscribe to your YouTube channel. You may decide to add more than two requests, and you could even give them the option of deciding between a few different choices. After all, you can’t guarantee all of your fans will use Spotify. It seems a little unfair that they miss out because they can’t follow you on there, when instead they could hype you elsewhere.
Send your content to music blogs
Don’t wait for them to find you. Chances are, they might not. Music blogs are always on the hunt to feature new artists, however they can’t discover everyone. It just isn’t possible. So offer your music directly to them. Find out their email address and send over your work. If you don’t hear back from them within a week, send them another email to politely prompt them. It’s possible that you won’t ever hear back, depending on where you try to submit your music. Don’t let this dishearten you, they just have a lot of artists to get through. Try again with another company. I guarantee there is one out there that would love to feature you on their platform.
If they don’t have an email accessible, find them on social media. Send them a DM and ask them to consider your latest track. This way they get a great idea of who you are and what you’re about because they can see it through the way you express yourself. First impressions always count, so make sure your social media presence is something they’ll want to work with.
Perform live
This isn’t me suggesting you need to plan a really extravagant tour. Tours cost money. Of course, if you’re able to tour, good for you, go smash it! However, don’t think that’s the only way you can perform live. You could do it digitally by doing a livestream. Your fans could comment along, and you can read back what they’ve said. It would be a fun interaction and your followers will feel more involved. Since the world has gone digital, it makes sense to do something online. That way, everyone across the world can join in.
Another way you could perform live, is by doing a gig. Again, this doesn’t have to be with flashy lights and massive arenas. You could get together with a few other artists and plan something local. That way you mix fanbases. If you’re all a similar genre, their fans are likely to be into your music too. Have you been to a gig before and ended up downloading the supporting artist’s songs on your way out? That could be a great starting point for you.
Create a music video
A lot of artists will release their song and then later, to create further hype, release their music video. It’s a great way of refuelling the fire that comes with your new song. It is a chance to show your personality or more behind the artist. If you decide to create an animated video, this could fit in with your artist branding. Or, you may decide you want to be in the video yourself. Many fans would rather watch the music video to understand the story behind the lyrics.
This doesn’t have to be a major budget. You could contact some other creatives who are just starting out and see if they’ll collaborate with you. This way you all gain experience and exposure together. It is also a great way of overlapping followers. You’ll all be sharing the work, so no matter which one of you they follow, they’ll notice all of you.
Submit your music to playlists
If you claim your artist profile on Spotify for artists, you can pitch your content to their playlists. This is a great way for independent artists to get their music heard. No matter what your genre, there is something for everyone. It isn’t just Spotify that allow music submissions. You could submit your track to any playlist or any service you think fits you best. Again, as with other avenues, it doesn’t mean your work will automatically be added, but it has a better chance than if you just wait to be discovered.
Pitch to as many playlists as you can. The more playlists you make it on, the more people that will hear your music. It’s also a lot more likely people will start following your work from there, and you’ll gain future fans for your next release.
Don’t go down the route of fraud streaming to increase your listeners. It won’t work out in the long run. Sure, it might seem like a long road ahead, but it doesn’t have to be a challenge. It can be fun. It’s all about how you make it interesting. After all, if you don’t love what you do, then why are you doing it? It’s easy when you’re starting out to look at others and think they’re unreachable, but you just have to remember they started out just like you. These are just a few ways you can ensure you reach a wider audience. It’s all about keeping on top of your game and watching those numbers grow!
