Beginners Guide to Indie Music Publishing and Promotion

Getting your music out there

When your music is ready to be released its important to know how to publish it so that it can be uploaded to different streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube etc. Publishing means to register and copyright the song and lyrics and its the first step that you will have to complete before you can promote your music to playlists and music blogs.

The most common way to do this these days is by using a Digital Publisher such as CD Baby, Tunecore, Distrokid, Record Union etc. you can find out more on my personal experience with different publishers in the video below:

Playlist Promotion

Once your music is published you can start focusing on playlist promotion.

There are different sites that allow you to submit your music to playlists and the most common one is probably submithub.

Many of the artists I've worked with have chosen to hire a playlist promotion service . This may seem like the easiest way to get Spotify plays but the playlist promotion business is full of scams.

If you choose to take this route, make sure to research the promoter before you hire them since Spotify has countless fake playlists and many "promotion" companies use these "playlists" to give artists the false impression that their music is doing well on Spotify,

If you get on a playlist, you can use Chartmetric to get a detailed analytics report which will show you if the playlist is legit and has real followers. On the video below I explain how to use Chartmetric and what are the general red flags that can indicate that a curator has purchased fake followers:

Social ads

One of the most common ways to promote your music is via social ads. You can create a campaign that will lead people to your Spotify account on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Google, Tiktok and Reddit but before choosing any of these I highly recommend to research the demographics of each platform so that you don't waste money on advertising to the wrong target audience. TikTok for example is mostly focused on listeners under 20 and Facebook on the other hand works best for listeners over 35. After you chose where to advertise, simply create a short video preview of your song using canva.com for example. Most people use the song's artwork together with 15-30 seconds of audio playing in the background. In order to make your ad more efficient I highly recommend to direct it to a dedicated landing page instead of sending it to spotty directly. Learn more about how to do with a Hyppedit smart link in the video below:

Release Strategy

If you already have a number of songs finished it may seem natural to you to release them as an EP or Album but if you're just starting out, it would actually make more sense to spread your releases over a longer period of time so that you can slowly build an audience. This method is very common on all digital platforms that are based on increasing your number of followers such as Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok etc.

Telling your story

Remember that a big part of promoting your music is also knowing how to market yourself which will make it easier for people to find you. This means having a clear outline of what your music is about, which genres it covers, who you are and anything else that will help you stand out. The interview below which I did a couple of years ago has a lot of tips on this topic so I highly recommend to listen all the way through