Music promotion is the work of getting your release heard by people who do not know your music yet: working with press, radio, playlists, bloggers, social platforms and the other channels through which an audience can discover a release. Which mix you need depends on the release, the audience and the goal.
What music promotion includes
No single channel does everything. Press, playlists, music pages, bloggers, radio and targeted advertising each give something different, and not every release needs all of them.
Press. A review, an interview, a premiere or a feature gives the release context and the trust of readers who rely on that publication's taste. Coverage outlives a post: it is indexed by search engines and can surface when people search for music in your genre. Every article is also a piece of the project's story and a news hook you can repackage for your own socials. On its own, coverage does not guarantee streams or new listeners.
Playlists. A way to put the song in front of people who already listen to your genre. When playlists fit the track, they bring extra plays and listeners, but whether a particular playlist worked is only visible after a test, in the numbers. Playlists are pitched, never bought: a playlist placement is never a product with a guaranteed result.
Music pages. Themed pages on Instagram, TikTok and Telegram show the track to an audience already gathered around a genre, a scene or a content format. The result is views, engagement and new listeners. The size of the page matters less than how closely its audience matches yours.
Bloggers. A review, a video, a post or a reaction from a creator their audience trusts. This includes videos made with your sound: a page or a creator films a video to the official sound of your track on TikTok or Instagram and shows it to their audience. The more videos use the sound, the more often other creators pick it up. It also includes music video promotion through creators whose audience matches the genre or the artist's story.
Radio. Airplay and repeated contact with listeners. But radio, like television, is not for everyone: it works only when your audience actually listens to radio. Before any placement that costs time and money, ask yourself honestly: does my audience listen to radio, does it watch TV? Radio also makes sense as a news hook: a studio visit, a filmed session, a post on the station's socials. What goes on air and when is the station's decision, so promotion creates the chance of rotation but does not guarantee it.
Targeted advertising. Setting up and running ad campaigns for the release on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok: impressions in front of the right audience in the right countries. Ads bring views and clicks and build an audience around the release: people who engage with the campaign may continue to discover and follow your music organically. The result depends on many factors: the creative, the audience, the budget and the track itself.
Each channel plays its own role. A campaign works better when the channels are chosen for the specific release rather than when an artist tries to get in everywhere that will have them.
Free and paid music promotion
Music promotion can be free, paid or donation-based.
Some media support artists for free, some work for a donation, some sell placements as advertising. This applies to press, music pages, bloggers and radio. Free media exist on Muscreators too: they are marked "free, subject to editorial review". There are not many of them and they promise nothing, but they are worth trying.
Paid placements open more doors, but they do not guarantee streams, followers or any other outcome. What can be guaranteed is the work, not the result.
Playlists work differently. They are pitched, not sold. Services offering guaranteed streams or guaranteed playlist placement for money should be avoided. For example, if a service promises "10,000 plays in a week", those plays come from bots. Artificial streams break Spotify's rules and can cost an artist their royalties and the track its place on the platform.
What music promotion costs
There is no single price for music promotion.
Each outlet sets the price of its own placements, and you see it before confirming. Registration on Muscreators is free. You pay for the placements you confirm and the platform's service fee.
A campaign does not have to cover every channel. You name the budget and MUSA builds the campaign around it: with a small budget that means a few of the most relevant items.
That is why music promotion packages differ so much between services. What matters is not how many placements a package contains, but which channels and which audiences each of them will actually put your music in front of.
Promotion for a song, an album, an artist
Song promotion
A single gives you one release to gather all the attention around: the song itself, its story, its genre and the audience it speaks to. For a practical release campaign, see the guide to how to promote a song.
Album promotion
An album gives several entry points. Individual tracks can carry their own stories and news hooks, while the wider campaign introduces listeners to the project as a whole. Album promotion therefore does not end with one track and gives media more reasons to come back to the artist.
Artist or project promotion
This is broader than a campaign for one release: introducing an audience to the sound, story and identity of an artist, a band or a music project, while supporting each new release along the way. Long-term promotion built around the artist rather than a single song is covered on the artist promotion page.
When to start
Think about promotion before the release goes public.
A track, artwork, press release and campaign plan prepared in advance give you more options: media have their own publication and broadcast schedules, and you need to fit into them. There is no universal number of weeks; every release is different.
Promotion does not end on release day either. A catalogue works all year round: an older track can get a new wave of attention thanks to a new video, a new article or new interest from an audience.
How to launch promotion with MUSA
You set the budget, choose the goal you want the promo campaign to achieve, and give the details of your release, and MUSA itself selects relevant opportunities for your release: press, playlists, music pages, bloggers or radio. You see the proposed placements and their terms before confirming. You can approve the proposed campaign or adjust the selection if needed.
Then MUSA handles the communication with the media and keeps the campaign on track. An outlet may accept the release, decline, propose another date or not answer. The payment for a placement stays on the platform until the outlet confirms it has been delivered. If there is no answer or an agreement is not fulfilled, the money stays on your promo balance in your account, and MUSA proposes a relevant replacement.
After 15 and 30 days MUSA shows the placement statuses and the confirmed results of the campaign. It analyses which channels and types of media worked for your release and proposes ever more relevant options for the next one.