An online music promotion business specializes in using the Internet to attract fans and media attention for artists and bands.
Online music promotion businesses generate media attention and fan support for bands and solo musicians. Successful companies are social media savvy and understand the trends affecting traditional and new media. Finding a niche can help your business stand out from competitors. Marketing music online includes presenting the best the bands, which are your clients, are offering. Additionally, finding the different types of Internet media that promote bands and knowing where to network with your clients' fans online are essential.
Instructions
1. Choose your company's niche. Your niche is the specialty you focus on in order to stand out from your competition. Jazz bands, female fronted metal bands, Celtic bands and bands from central Ohio are examples of niches. One way to choose a niche is to decide on the type of music and bands that you're most passionate about, look around at competing music promotion businesses online and determine what you can do for clients that others aren't doing.
2. Register with your Secretary of State's Department of Corporations, or its equivalent department, as a limited liability company, or acquire a fictitious business name license from your county as a sole proprietorship. Establish a business checking account with your local bank.
3. Develop a professional website. Make your website a promotional hub where fans and media can download your clients' songs, videos, artwork, band photos, show schedules and press releases. Include a blog on your site and keep it updated daily with anything you think would interest fans and media. Choose a site to host your podcasts (Internet broadcasts) where you can interview your clients and introduce their music. Podcasts can be embedded into your website and subscribed to by fans.
4. Connect your website to social networking sites. All purpose social networking sites have code that can be embedded into your site to allow visitors to share the items you post with their friends online with just a couple mouse clicks. Sign up with music promotion sites that allow you to design and embed "widgets" into your site to showcase music or videos, collect email addresses for a mailing list and promote your clients' show dates and media appearances.
5. Create an electronic press kit (EPK) for each client. Print press kits are sent by mail to newspapers, radio stations, magazines or television shows. Around 2006, a trend developed where independent bands began getting more attention from Internet media than from traditional media, according to professional online music promoter, Ariel Hyatt. Since then, EPKs have become an increasingly important tool for music promotion. Design a page on your website for each of your clients that includes music, videos, biographies, show schedules and interview contact information. Include links to these EPK web pages in your promotional pitches to bloggers, podcast hosts and Internet radio stations online.
6. Begin networking online. Reach out to bloggers who review new bands and music releases. Build your friend lists on social networking sites. One way to find interview opportunities for your clients is to join a service where producers and journalists from Internet and traditional media seek guests to interview.
