How to promote your music for free
Promoting your songs at no cost
You, like me, invested a lot of time in composing and producing your music and now it’s time to release and promote it. You will probably be surprised that you will spend way more time on this phase than you actually did on creating your production. Working on these two sides of music-making is not an easy task. You will spend countless hours promoting your songs on Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other music communities. And you will probably get frustrated about how slow progress is. This page aims to give you some guidance on how to promote your music for free.
Music promotion is not an easy task. Especially if you’re working with a low or limited budget. There are, however, a few ways to achieve some visibility while being budget-conscious. And even though it may end up being cheap money-wise, it will require a lot of dedication and it will be time-consuming. If you have the money to spend, then you save time by hiring other people to do the hard work of promotion for you. But, if you are reading this, you probably are, like me, on the other side of this story.
Music Submission Systems
The first thing I would recommend is sending your song to playlists through websites that accept free submissions. This website is one of them (just go the playlists page), and there are a few others, as I explain on this page. Daily Playlists, Submithub.com and IndieMono can also help you with that.
Reddit promotion
Second, I would add Reddit to your music promotion toolbelt, but you need to use it wisely. There are many subreddits that allow self-promotion, but it’s important to respect each community’s rules, so make sure you read the posting guidelines for each subreddit. It is very easy to be banned permanently from posting the wrong stuff in the wrong places.
YouTube
Setting a Youtube channel also helps to increase your exposition. It requires, though, that you have your music on yet another format so it can be made publicly available. This should not be a big deal, once most distro platforms currently publish your work on YouTube as per default.
Interested in the Japanese Music Market?
If you’re setting your sight on the Japanese market, create a free page on https://topmusic.jp/. I still could not see any result from that, but the setup is not complicated, so it’s worth a try.
Using Facebook to promote your music
Another channel you can try is Facebook groups, but, as with Reddit, you have to be careful and respect each group’s policies. Talking about Facebook, having your page on the social network is another good step towards visibility.
Hypeddit – Free or paid options
There is also a tool I used for some time which is called https://hypeddit.com/. This platform is free if you’re just looking for SoundCloud promotion, but the real multi-platform benefit comes from a monthly plan that will allow you to exchange likes and follows in several channels. It costs $9/month and you can cancel anytime. I used it myself for 2 non-consecutive months and it provided me with a great initial boost which allowed me to take further steps in my journey.
Other free platforms where you can promote your music for free
At last, consider creating your SoundCloud and Bandcamp pages. Alone, they will not solve your problem of reaching a larger market, but think of it all as an ecosystem. You have to be everywhere.
Conclusion
I hope this page helps you with some ideas on how to promote your music for free or on a low-budget. Feel free to use the contact page to ask me other questions that you may have in mind.
Again, feel free to submit to my playlists.