Constantly many artists ask to get their music featured on ours, as well as numberous other blogs. Or occassionally you’ll see an artist ranting about his art not getting into a blog or magazine or something although he submitted. You may have submitted your music but did you SUBMIT your music.
Here are a couple of tips to help get your music on blogs and online magazines:
Know your blog history.
- Know the kind of blog joy want your music on. It makes no sense to be an alternative musician sending your mails to a Hip Hop Blog or website. Know what content which website or blog curates or posts. Know how they spell their name and certain things that relate to them.
- Know the type of audience it caters to. Know who you want to be reaching out to. This requires a knowledge of who you want you target to be. If you want to be reaching out to the older folk who dig hi life, then an alternative music blog is the wrong space that caters to a young audience is the wrong platform to reach out to.
Pick a writer you may be comfortable with
- Pick a writer who writes the same content as yours from your target magazine: Once you’ve identified the perfect platform, you have to locate the perfect writer for your music. Look for a writer who writes about the kind of music you do, and see if you like their work, and if you’d like them writing about you and your music.
- Look for their twitter, or email: Once you’ve found someone/people you like, you should find ways to communicate with them. Twitter is a great way to engage and create conversation. So is Instagram sometimes. Build a rapport first before you start talking about business
- It’s creepy and quite annoying to receive emails off the bat about promoting music so you can start by trying to build a relationship: Comment, engage and discuss to create a familiarity of sorts. Once they get to know you, there’s a sure chance they’ll know your music
- It’s easier on Twitter to start a conversation. Don’t spam. Nobody likes spammers. Try to build a conversation over time and if they follow, they’ll automatically see your music on their timeline.
Sending emails
- Make your emails brief but interesting: Your emails should be brief, straight to the point and as informative as possible.
- Put In as much information as you can: Information can be something on production. Some feats you have achieved eg Sarkodie put your song in his snap story, you’re pretty big in your area, you got featured on a song by a popular artist, etc. It can also be information on the song: where it was sampled from, the lyrics and it’s root or innuedos or connotations etc.
Photos and images
- All images should be clear and hi-Res. But not too large. A 1000 pixels can be a great cap.
- Include pictures of yourself and of your cover art.
- Include gifs or short videos will be great too, but make sure they’re also hi-Res and clear and not large files.
- Images can be sent in square format as well in case they will go on Instagram feed.
Feel good about what you’re sending
- Make sure your music is well mastered and mixed.
- Songs should be sent in links and not in files or downloadable folders.
- Your artwork should be on point. Reason : We’re in an age where people see more than read more or listen more because our attention spans are short. Your artwork will be a thumbnail that will call people to your music. It should be a great first call.
Nothing is Promised
- Send your request within 7-10 days to the time you would want it posted. This will you give adequate time to check in and then to look for other alternatives in case your request is declines.
- You can send follow up mails to check after a full day and don’t send too many. It’ll be quite annoying.
- Your request CAN get requested, but just chin up and repute with a much better and polished email next time.
*Doing Exclusives
- Exclusives are a great way to improve your cred. and increase your reach.
- An exclusive/ premiere on a blog or website includes: An embedded secret link available to only the blog for a particular period (perhaps half a day or a few hours before release). It should also include information not available to any other blog blog or website.
- You can go about an exclusive deal the same way as securing a feature on the blog or website.
These steps are great ways to present your art in a way that will make it acceptable and more likely to be put up on platforms. Not only your music should be fresh but it’s marketing should be as well.
All the best and stay gold.