How are you promoting your Band or Project in 2018

[Kellii]

Recently I have begun a new online music project and will be promoting it soon.

It's very early days yet and as it's just me on my own writing, recording, mixing, making the artwork and promoting, it has become a huge stress trying to figure out where and how to promote music effectively.

I have been researching this topic on google often but I am curious to know from other musicians in a similar situation.

So my questions are:
1.How are you promoting your music in 2018? Especially independent or solo artists.
2. Is performing live your main means of promotion or do you promote mainly online?


It would also be interesting to hear from people doing this a long time how promotion has changed over the years with various avenues opening/closing and social network algorithms such as facebook posts changing.

 

[osum]

I recently did the very same (released my solo instrumental project).

It's very hard these days promoting your stuff even though there are tons of possibilities due to social media etc. The main problem is to be seen in the first place because there are so many bands.

What in my case helped the best so far was asking the guy from the youtube channels "Unknown Melodic Death Metal" and "Unknown Power Metal" to put a track of my music up to his channels. That really made an inpact.

Apart from that I have accounts on the usual social media shit:
* Facebook
* Twitter
* Instagram
* YouTube

But it's not very easy to gain an audience from that alone I noted. I also wrote to many of the metal review sites on the web if they might want to review the album but I only got response from one so far. They also get thousands of messages so the problem is there to stand out from the rest as well.

Posting in some facebook groups might also help although it depends on the audience and most of the time if you just join a group to promote your stuff they will ignore it.

Also I would definitely recommend putting it up via cdbaby of distrokid on the usual streaming platforms like spotify etc. They won't get you any money but it increases the chances of getting seen by people.

 

[Kellii]

Thanks for the reply Osum.

It is definitely a struggle to get noticed with there being so much out there.

I was talking to a friend who is a twitch streamer the other day and he gave me advice that worked suprisingly well.
It seems obvious now but at the time I didn't really think of it. Just posting photos or questions or general posts that are not promotional meterial that people can interact with.

I have been searching for online radiostations etc... but its difficult to find any that accept music from unsigned musicians.

Another problem I found when releasing my first two songs is I would upload them to soundcloud, bandcamp and all the other usual places and all my social media for a week was just another link to the same music.

 

[osum]

I was talking to a friend who is a twitch streamer the other day and he gave me advice that worked suprisingly well.
It seems obvious now but at the time I didn't really think of it. Just posting photos or questions or general posts that are not promotional meterial that people can interact with.

Yes, I'm gonna try that too. Just have to come up with stuff to post I guess this method yould be more effective on instagram than on facebook for example? Because on facebook most likely only the people that already follow you will see it?

Regarding online radio stations: I haven't tried contacting one of them by myself but I got contacted by Ruben Ramos from the Pain Fucktory podcast from Peru. He's gonna stream a song of my project. I don't really know how many people listen to this one but it won't hurt for sure.

I also submited my stuff to metal-archives.com. I don't really like them that much because they always seem like that kind of pseudo elitist metal guys, but at least one already wrote a pretty good review for me
As well I got another review in from an austrian metal site so far, so a few of my mails seem to got noticed.

Another opportunity are those reactor channels on youtube. It's kind of a thing now that people also film them reacting to music and some of them have pretty big follower counts. I got Ruben Bujis for example to listen to a song from me. The negative thing is that 99% of the comments under his reactions are just suggestions for other song reactions and no one seems to be really interested in the actual music ^^

 

[UITA]

I'm trying to promote by doing this!!

Just been dicking about with a 360 camera...thoughts!?


Here's a few more tracks minus the ugly!!
https://soundcloud.com/thelongtenon

 

[Pharaoh's Curse]

This is a pretty good video from Ola,

 

[Novocaine]

I'm just about to begin the process of promoting as well. Anyone care to start a list of current Metal news/reviews sites and blogs? I haven't been browsing those for a long time and all I can recall are MetalSucks, Metal Injection, Metal-Temple and Blabbermouth. Would be nice to know smaller ones and non-English ones.

 

[Terminus]

I'm just about to begin the process of promoting as well. Anyone care to start a list of current Metal news/reviews sites and blogs? I haven't been browsing those for a long time and all I can recall are MetalSucks, Metal Injection, Metal-Temple and Blabbermouth. Would be nice to know smaller ones and non-English ones.

Invisible Oranges, Decibel Magazine, Heavy Blog Is Heavy, Toilet Ov Hell...those blogs would probably be easier to get featured on compared to ones like MS and MI.

 

[Bruticus]

Difficult to come up with concrete solutions to this problem. In this day n age, it's less and less about the quality of the music, and more about all the other stuff (promotion, selling yourself).

I firmly believe being a better businessman than a musician is what makes you a good musician today.