How To Promote Your Music YOURSELF

“Live gigs are the one thing that can’t be stolen from you.” Unless there’s COVID! Love your content Rick.

Rick, thank you, thank you and thank you for telling others that FB ads are worthless! I started putting my solo music on Spotify and the other streaming platforms in February. I watched many promo tutorials on YT starting back in December primarily from Burstimo and Damien Keyes. I spent about $70 on FB ads which I understand is nothing compared to what these people recommend. I got about 6 new people on my Facebook page but because of the algo rithm that's equal to about one or two people. I started asking my friends if they actually pay attention to ads and it was only about 10% who do. That's terrible! Also, I want to bring something up about social media presence. Again these promo tutorials will tell you to constantly post content on Instagram and so on and people will go to your Spotify page or BRvid page. That is complete bullshit. I have been trying that a lot and as recently as a couple of days ago. I will post something on Instagram with a link and because I am getting such a low number of streams I will know if someone is listening. There is no crossover or at least for me. I have also asked people if they see a link do they go to it and almost 100% said they don't. I hate to use the word lazy but I think that's a lot of it. Lastly, I work full time at a non music job. I don't have time to make more than one or two pieces of content per week. I just can't play the game sadly.

Hi, Rick, About 11 years ago, at age 60 and with no background in music, I began trying to compose music, first on electronic keyboard and then with music software. it keeps me occupied in retirement. Last year, at age 70, I attempted to compose my first symphony, "The Sally Symphony (in G Major)." It is in four movements and has a playing time of about 19 minutes. [A neighbor provided some constructive criticism of it that I will keep in mind, if I ever revise the symphony or attempt to compose another symphony.] This year, I extensively rewrote the musical score [and made the necessary changes to the libretto] of a one-act musical that I wrote several years ago. My one-act musical is titled "Christmas Giving" and is based on the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry (aka, William Sydney Porter}. I have also composed some waltzes, songs, a couple of marches, several pieces of ragtime music, etc. At any rate, some of my compositions can be heard in videos on my BRvid channel. Some videos on my BRvid channel contain public domain music performed by [the music software in] my computer. I do not know whether I will ever arrive at the point where I make any money from my music. I am still learning. ... Teach and instruct away, Rick. Thank you.

Someone needs to develop a Vine like platform for music. Something quick to be visually entertained by, but also with an audio hook.

I work as a session musician, band leader and musical director in all kinds of music productions here in Israel and I have some experience in self promotion with several bands I took a role in promoting while playing with them. I also took a course by one of Israel's best music promoters, Eyal Bason. I'm in no way a professional in the field but I do think I have some insight into the subject and would like to share my ideas. First of all, Rick brought up some real good pointers here, as always. I would like to disagree on a few things though and add some of my own. - First of all, the promotion strategy of a well established band or artist would use is a little different than what a new guy on the scene might consider for himself. Keep in mind that not everything the big artists do would apply to your first steps in the music business. - I think the first big point is - Know your product. This means being an expert in knowing you are competing against, knowing your product's strengths and weaknesses compared to said competition and be and expert in understanding your audience. Are you aiming towards a more international audience or maybe it's more local (city, area, country, continent...)? What bands that are similar to you in style or direction are out there? look for bands about your size and a size or two above you. Who are the really big artists you're similar to? What is your brand? Who is your target demographic? what is their age group? Where are they from? What kind of music do they listen to? Where can you find those people on the internet? (younger people are probably on Instagram, people in their 20s-30s might be on Instagram or Facebook, depending on where they're from, older audiences might not even be on social media, niche audiences like religious audiences for example, might be best promoted to in church and not only on social media...). That way you'll know where to put most of your effort in. - I tend to disagree with Rick's perspective regarding paid promotions on BRvid, Facebook or Instagram. There are people that do this for a living and going this route could yield some really great results, but only if it's coupled with other things like a lot of live shows, media coverage, a good mailing list etc. If you don't know what you're doing when doing paid promotions on Facebook, BRvid or Instagram you're going to have fake views or fake likes on your content. Just clicking the "boost" button on your Facebook content is a waste of your money. But, if you take the time to learn a little bit about it, you learn that all of these platforms have audience targeting features in them that make a huge difference when trying to reach actual audience that would be interested in your material. Using your knowledge from my last point and targeting your audience with pin point precision would prove really valuable as you'll acquire new audience over a period of time. - Connect your social media and be active on all of them to be easily found on Google. This is a really big point I learned the hard way. Being on every platform is almost a must nowadays, but not if you're going to neglect some of them. Besides the bad impression you leave on audience and industry personnel If you leave some of your social media pages out to dry, the more the name of your band, artist name or whatever is seen on different medias, the more easily you will be found on Google. This is incredibly important for everyone, but especially for bands with names that are similar to existing things. If your band's name is "Cheerios", trust me, you're going to be on page 36 of Google if you don't do this. Make sure to connect your social media platforms to each other and have all of them linked on your website. - If you want to go the Indie way of doing everything on your own, make sure you learn the F out of whatever it is that you're doing.The internet is a miraculous place for these things, spend the time and the money if you need to learn about the subject so you could do a good enough of a job to make it on your own. Say no to mediocrity!!! Once you've learned a little bit about promoting, after you went ahead and did some trial and error just to get a little bit of the hang of it, don't be afraid to set a meeting with a professional promoter to see if they have any insight when reviewing your strategy and execution. You'll learn a whole lot. Don't be afraid to write to people - bigger bands, other artists, music collectives, anyone who can give you a shot, and seeing if they have something to do for you. No need to beg, be professional and don't be ashamed that you're asking someone for help. You'd be amazed at what you might set yourself up with. Hope this helps anyone!

Absolutely Fantastic! I appreciate you expressing your experience and your effort to clarify the differences in media’s and thier purposes. Just learning about this myself. Getting back into music seriously! Very exciting! It’s good to know I can sing and can play pretty much anything you put in front of me, solely for the love of music and challenges. Thank you!

Dear Rick, thanks a lot for such a broad outlook on music promotion 👍🏻 I’ve been waiting for a true voice like yours for a long time 💪 DZIĘKUJĘ

Remember you have to promote yourself, you have to believe in yourself... no one can do that for you.

We push our bandcamp links through other platforms. We also utilize the name your price option. Anyone can download us for free or pay us what ever they would like to. We were surprised that both our downloads and funds increased Many people download for free and some fans choose to pay a wide range of prices (13¢ for an ablum to $20.01 for a single mp3).... thanks Rick

Thanks, Rick, we share your work with our community because you tell it as it is.

Rick beato actually this is the best video I have seen of yours. Very useful very good, I like the fact you say music is free deal with it. I think this is the first time I’ve actually heard a professional musician say this. It really helps me decide wether I want to carry on writing music, or to stop waisting time and money trying to sell and write songs.

Really looking forward to this. With a new single coming in October and a new album in November, I've been blowing through self-promotion videos on BRvid recently. I personally hate self-promotion (it's a pretty soul-sucking exercise for me), but hearing advice from Rick should be fun, insightful, and encouraging.

I think Bill Wurtz is a great example of how to make fun, compelling musical content that stands out without needing Hollywood production values. Having said that, it helps that he's incredibly talented.

Thanks a lot, Rick, my band has done the first EP but we have no idea how to promote ourselves, this live video really helps

The insight about not using Facebook's paid ads is so frustratingly true. Using Facebook to reach my personal page's friends used to be a great source of organic marketing for me, and now it's gone because I've been pushed into the paid-ad algorithm. If Facebook sees me posting about music, the post gets buried. I get no engagement on music posts anymore because Facebook is trying to force me to pay. It's so conniving -- basically ruining an audience pool that I've been building for over a decade.

Hi Rick. Love your work, thanks so much for all you offer. Is there a schedule for your live broadcasts?

Thanks for doing this, like all of your efforts to improve the modern music community.

Great Video! thanks rick this is massively helpful, and falls in line with what i've been figuring out doing a little snooping around. hearing your insight and experience is always amazing. i'm fond of thinking that every time i go to a Megadeth show i'm guaranteed to discover my new favorite up and coming metal band (or 3) opening for them. apparently Dave and his son pick the bands THEY like as openers. so stick to your art, taylor swift or Dave mustaine might adore you!

Hey Rick! I learned so much from this video! I was wondering how people can get their music on Spotify and those streaming services if you don't use a label or Distrokid or anything. Thanks!

I know some bands one in particular that has amazing videos, very professional social media presence, they tour even in the uk, everything about this band is professional, they get played a lot on streaming services, have been signed to a few smaller labels, played warped tour, but in 12+ years have never broken out. I was in the music scene for a while, I have a good ear for what music is good and IMO if they paid the money for a good producer they would have made it to the next step years ago. They have made a bunch of albums most all with producers but not a really good producer when I listen to the best songs on their album you can tell the talent is there but your thinking man this verse is too long, the one riff is amazing but if you play it more than once it gets boring, double the vocals here, the second pre verse do a guitar Harmony just little things that make a massive difference in keeping the listener interested and wanting to listen to the song over and over. I’m a nobody and I’ve made the same exact mistakes that I am talking about, when I listen to some of my old bands music I say the same exact things but it’s so hard when u record an album to separate urself from the music and basically remove urself as a person that recorded the music to really be able to listen back as if ur listening to a band u have never heard before to know if the music really is good and that’s where a producer like Rick comes into play. Basically what I’m getting at is you gotta make sure the music ur putting out really is great and worth the fight of putting in soo much time energy and money. For myself listening back to the last album I recorded since it’s been some years now I know some things needed to be changed, couple songs shouldn’t have been on that album they had really good lyrics but the mucus was boring but I wanted them on there because I thought because we played them live they needed to be on there even though we had a handful of songs that weren’t done but they were much better songs because we really were coming together as a band. There’s a song where the guitar is super fast and I should have spent a little more time making the guitar alittle tighter. Some of the songs everything came out great but the lyrics needed more work. A great producer would have made the album amazing. I know this video is about promoting but if the music isn’t up to par it’s not worth promoting.

Very interesting and informative. I would have liked to hear you talk about specifically how to use Instagram and BRvid in tandem with each other - I feel like that point wasn't hit on, but I liked the discussion on how to use each social media platform effectively. Also, your comment about covers at the end...that may be true if you're not bringing anything unique to the table, but if you can find a niche and fill it, it can be effective - like making the covers your own unique vision. There are a bunch of BRvidrs who do it that way, and I'm trying to do the same with my pop-punk covers. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Cool video. My band distributed through onerpm in 2020. Not a bad distro, but i see the benefits of self promotion. We are doing ok on Spotify but will probably focus more on BRvid after covid calms down. How do you consistently provide video content as a band? There are only so many music videos we can create. Thanks Rick for the great videos.

Great and very helpful video Rick, as always!

This is useful for everything you do, not just music or youtube.

We as a younger generation and I'm 37, are so lucky to have the chance to see and hear valuable stories tips skills, gargen, any way a wealth of knowledge that we otherwise didn't used to have. From people like yourself who you seem to know so many people in the industry and knw so much and b willing to share it it's amazing I for one who never could afford it for one am able to take advantage of it at home. There was something in there somewhere thanks a lot Rick.

Thanks for doing this Rick; insightful as always.

Thank you Rick, another great educational video!

Hey Rick! thanks for this highly informative video, I'm really confused if my channel niche is frustrating to people cause sometimes I compose music(not a specific genre), do covers, and sometimes I make music tutorials, So it's all related to music but it's not the same theme cause I see a lot of channels for example lofi 24/7 music just doing lofi stuff and making great success.

Good stuff, Rick. If you create a follow up to this post, maybe you can suggest to everyone to post links to their channels and for everyone to subscribe to each other. May help with growth of us small content creators.

I love Rick man good dude done it all down to earth gives good honest advice

Some good tips, promoting our music and getting it in front of people is so hard to do. We recently got on a very popular BRvid video and that helped us enormously, if you can reach out to a big BRvidr looking to use royalty free music, I highly recommend offering yours.

This idea of using BRvid because it (and Google) actively promotes you has really opened my mind, Rick. Many thanks. I am also a Richard, btw!

This is really an awesome video. your substance is professional! I most certainly will be taking a look at the rest of your videos soon! ✌️

You didn't mention Facebook Groups. Surely the most powerful/effective means of promoting music on FB is via the various groups. So if your promoting a metal song for example you can post it into one of the many heavy metal oriented groups, etc. An instant audience, very often of many thousands, with an interest in your genre. Greats bids BTW, many thanks.

I've used reddit once to promote a song that is in 5/4. It was the most upvoted post that day in music theory sub and it gave me like 600 views in a day, which is not bad considering it's a static image and my first song ever... Using some gimmick your song may have can be useful to subtly promote on reddit i think

A lot of people just want shortcuts to getting more views/streams. Growing an audience takes a lot of hard work, there's no way around it. And even hard work alone is not enough if you're doing it an inefficient way.

This is one of the best videos EVER on youtube! Thank you, Rick!

I was just talking to a friend about learning these things from you last night. I wake up and boom! 😃 Here it is. Thank you Rick!

This is inspiring! Thanks Rick.

Rick every time I turn around you have another great video for us! Constant talks on my own sessions right now is "this or that rick beato video" with my producer. *bows* thanks!

All the gold in this video isn’t JUST for musicians.

rick would love to see a video like this but updated for 2022/2023! :)

Hi Rick, love what you're doing! Most of what you have said I have a firm grip on but certainly took a couple of things away so thank you. I think the most important question musicians should be asking first is not how but when should I promote my music. I feel at this point in time without an exceptional product everything else in regards to promotion is most likely going to be a waste of time and the reason why so many musicians are frustrated and asking the question of how when it should be first when do I promote my music. It's just very difficult for mediocre or just good music to go viral which if you're not spending any money on promotion that is your only real hope of gaining traction. With exceptional music (subjective I know) everything you suggested is 100% relevant! I think even with exceptional music you still will need to spend thousands on promotion if you're releasing singles and albums in the form of the actual filmclips as well as publicity and marketing etc... Even if you're recording at home, musicians also have to realise this is a truly expensive game no matter how talented you are and I don't know any recording artist even locally that hasn't put 10's of thousands of dollars into their career. Not saying that it can't be done a lot cheaper but I would find it surprising. Anyway great video and all your points are worth taking note of when the time is right.

Love your channel. Great video. Very informative

Just bought the Beato Book, Rick you have an awesome system and your information is incredibly helpful!

I noticed the best way to get organic view’s was to have a good video then to have it portaled but make sure the content has a connection to something. Have a huge party and make use your video as part of the promo but leave the video in a way where it can be played separately from the event if desired. A lot of people just post it and go well why no views? and they don’t keep promoting the video.

If you have merch that you're offering for sale then occasionally add some new stuff! I see bands all the time that never add any new merch to their sites and I already own the one shirt they've had for sale for the last 3 years.

You are great. Love your content! Allways intersting. Thanks from Brazil! Cheers!

Great invaluable info for todays world! I am more discouraged than ever! Just kidding.....kind of! Instead of playing. Writing and recording music you now have to be a social media expert and computer expert....glad I am old. But thanks great stuff Rick.

Great video Rick, as always. Thank you so much. Damir

GREAT stuff Rick! 😎

This is the hardest pert of the biz so far for me, thanks for the advice bro

Hope springs eternal - that's a good thing in music!

I hired a publicist for two months at $2500 and they did a great job. Was highly recommended. Thanks for all this info Rick. Very valuable

“Do it yourself. Do it yourself.” That’s all I ever hear. I’m only one guy-not thirty.

Thanks Rick for the video. It was both informative and a bit dishearting. Tomorrow I will be 61 yrs old, happy birthday to your son, and I am a DIY muscian/songwriter from your old stomping ground Rochester NY. I have no interest in forming a band, which is if you have not heard Rochester is a muscians desert, besides I have tried to reach out to other muscians but once I tell them my age I never hear back. I know it sounds like I'm whinning. But these are the facts. The only route I see as a way of getting my music out to the public is to create my own website and promote it myself, by whatever means neccesary. I tried the spotify, itunes etc way a nd nothing happened. And I refuse to seek out private playlist owners and beg them to put my music on their playlist, rather die on my feet then live on my knees. Anyways, once the website is up maybe I'll throw the link to it on your latest video at that time. Thanks for all you do, Jim.

My biggest mistake was to release music with no video. It wasn't as much being lazy as it was being ignorant.

On the other hand, Facebook sharing can go viral in ways BRvid videos do not. I know a classical double bass player (Mikyung Sung) who has had a couple of million view videos on Facebook, shared tens of thousands of times. But the same videos on BRvid only got maybe 5% as many views. It usually doesn’t happen like that but something compelling can really explode. (She has about 5000 followers on Facebook) but that was a year or two before you posted this, maybe it’s harder now. But I would never pay except to promote something like a cd. Maybe.

Great info, Rick. Thanks!

DaVinci Resolve from Blackmagic is excellent. Version 15 includes Fusion--compositing software. Best of all there's a free version that includes everything you need for NLE. PS I used Premiere for nearly 10 years and then switched.

Excellent Rick, one of your best

I've got an EP out, three songs, and almost no one has seen/heard it (Três Trovas). I don't have social media (or social skills, to be honest). On the plus side, the music is good. My "plan" is to record another 3 or 4 songs, organize 1 small gig and film it. Then, I'll try to get more gigs. My advantage is the lyrics - I sing famous poems so many people are familiar with them even the first time they hear my music.

good video Rick developping a special sound is no problem to me the problem is getting out there I come back to usa in a few months to find mmusicians as now it s one man band But there should be a way to sell music online maybe the vocals as i sing until i find eal singer thank you for the inspiration

Great video as always Rick

Rick, as BRvid user, I am a really good example of what you said bout the top platform to promote music. I never knew bout your channel or work till today (here), sorry bout that, LOL! Kind mad at myself now why I couldn’t find your channel bf but I am glad I found it. Some how your vids tags etc are working pretty good when we search. Excellent video, tips etc, probably one of the best I watched here bout this subject, very honest and directly forward, I became fan, thank you for sharing knowledge, I will explore!

Another great one. Thank you.

The big sigh before he says “music is free you just have to deal with it” says it all really

For me the most important thing is that I have to be better at my playing instruments........

This is the best self promotion video on youtube.

THANK YOU FOR BLESSING US WITH YOUR LEADERSHIP RICK!

Great information. Thanks, Rick, and Happy Birthday to Dylan!

Thank you for the info.Its great.

I have so much knowledge and skills but I am really starting to become the best artist of my bedroom. I think I got the music part down pretty good but I have nothing in the promotion department. I have like a 100 songs and 5-10 have somewhat decent views 1-20K range but that was a long time ago. Nowadays I get 50 views with 200 subs and I have no idea how to go further. I make my songs in Ableton, sort of trancy/psychedelicy/chill/ambient-ish electronic music. I just have no idea how to tie it all up into a consumable coherent form that is marketable.

Thank you very much Rick.

Great advice!!

Thanks a lot. This video was very helpful. I also found that Instagram is a great choice for getting discovered...

You are quickly becomming my goto mentor channel. Will be joining. Soon i hope.

Some great tips here! Might need to adjust some very strategies :P

Super helpful thank u

Twitch is becoming huge for musicians.

I am a solo instrumental pianist and it's SO DIFFICULT

Thank you for your videos.

So, your son and I have the same January 14th birthday? COOL, I turned 68 today but I feel like I'm 35. RockOn, Rick.

it is so easy to get your music out there today, back in the mid 90's , i was sending cassette tapes to random addresses in the back of music magazines, for all i know someone ripped off one of my crappy songs, :)