What is music marketing?

Music marketing covers the work around a release: positioning, preparing materials, planning, choosing channels, advertising and analysing the results.

How do I make a music marketing plan?

Start with the release itself: define its positioning, prepare the materials, plan the activity before, on and after release day, choose the relevant channels and decide which metrics you will use to judge the result.

What is the difference between music marketing and music promotion?

Music promotion focuses mainly on the channels through which a release gets attention and placements. Music marketing covers the wider process: positioning, materials, the release plan, choice of channels, advertising and measuring the results.

Music marketing: strategy, plan and channels for artists

Releasing a song today is technically easy. Making something happen around it after the release is much harder.

That is what music marketing is for: working on the whole release, from positioning and materials to dates, channels and the results after it comes out.

If these parts are not connected, even a good track can get far less attention than it deserves.

Where to start with release marketing

Before looking for media or launching ads, you need to understand the release itself.

What is the song about? Who might it appeal to? What could catch a listener? In what context should it be shown?

These questions shape everything that follows. They decide which materials you need, what content to make and where to send the release.

Positioning

Positioning helps you decide how to present the song to an audience.

Even if an artist already has an audience, every new release needs its own context: how it differs from the previous ones and who should hear it first.

Materials

To work properly on a release you need a cover, a press release, snippets, photos and a multilink.

It is better to prepare them before the active promotion starts. When materials are missing, part of the communication simply stops or gets postponed.

Release dates

A release does not start on the day the song appears on streaming services.

A music marketing plan works best in three stages: before the release, release day and the period after it.

Before the release, the materials and the communication are prepared. On release day the focus moves to the track itself. After the release the work goes on: content, communication with the audience and work with the channels continue.

Channels

A release can get attention through press, playlists, music pages, bloggers, radio, the artist's own social media and targeted ads.

There is no point in using every channel at once. The choice should fit the song, the audience and the goals of the release.

How to choose channels for a release

A channel on its own is not a strategy.

You can get a few write-ups, run ads and send the track to curators, and still not know what actually worked.

That is why channels are best treated as parts of one music marketing strategy. For one release the main channel may be media coverage; for another, the artist's own social media, playlists or ads will matter more.

The artist's own social media

Social media should not be saved for release day only.

Content around the song keeps attention on it and continues the conversation after the release. It is also a way to work with your audience directly instead of relying only on outside channels.

That is why the artist's own channels belong in the overall launch plan and in the 30-day Action Plan.

Paid music marketing

The paid part of a music marketing campaign can include targeted ads on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, as well as paid placements in media.

Targeted ads show the release to a chosen audience through the platforms' ad tools. A paid placement in media means a publication or a mention of the release in exchange for payment.

Playlists are a separate matter. Tracks are pitched to curators according to their requirements, and a playlist is never a paid placement. Artificially inflating streams breaks Spotify's rules.

How to tell whether music marketing has worked

After the release, look at more than one number.

Metrics you can track include:

placements and their status;
views;
streams from playlists;
listeners and followers;
multilink clicks.

The numbers alone do not explain the result. You need to see where the attention came from, which channels worked and what happened to the release after it came out.

The first review can be done on day 15, the next on day 30.

It is also important not to expect guarantees from music marketing on streams, followers, placements or chart positions. Marketing creates the conditions for a release to travel, but it cannot guarantee a specific result.

Music marketing for independent artists

An independent artist does not need a label to do music marketing. But most of the processes then have to be organised by the artist.

The difficulty is rarely in individual actions. It is that they do not add up to one system. The budget is spread across unrelated activities, media are chosen without a clear logic, and after the release it is unclear what to do next.

That is why a music marketing plan should put everything into one sequence: positioning, materials, dates, channels and reviewing the results.

For an artist who releases music regularly this matters even more. Each new release should not just get its own campaign, but become part of the ongoing work with the audience.

How MUSA does it

MUSA plans the launch, finds the media herself, keeps the campaign under control and shows what worked.

Registration is free: the artist pays only for confirmed placements and the platform's service fee.

Music marketing for artists: how to build a release plan