Digital Marketing Tips For Musicians And Video Promotion

Digital Marketing Tips For Musicians And Video Promotion
12 min read

In this article, we will talk about digital marketing tips for musicians and the promotion of music videos on some digital platforms.

Digital Marketing and the Music Industry

Digital marketing and the music industry have undergone great changes in recent times.

What happened before is over, where musicians to reach fame had to go through a record company and then launch large marketing campaigns in different traditional media, TV, radio, magazines, etc., to reach their audience both to become known as to promote a tour or a recital.

Today there are several digital marketing tools that help music bands to be known and their music to be distributed to the target audience in a much cheaper and faster way, especially if you are an independent artist. 

With a good music digital marketing strategy, you can make music songs and videos reach the right target through different channels.

Of course, for the promotion of music videos, they have to be done very well, with good image and sound quality, and, where possible, adapted to different digital advertising formats. 

Musical Digital Marketing to achieve Success

So if you are a musician or you have a musical band or you are a producer, digital marketing for musicians is a great resource to achieve success. Through it, you can start spreading and marketing your art.

And if your mind thinks big, music digital marketing will help you go for those mega opportunities.

In addition to starting to upload your music on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and other streaming platforms, with digital marketing strategies for music, you are going to reach a large number of people, who you will then direct to those music platforms so that they continue watching or listening to your material.

Digital Marketing Strategies for Musicians

Before we start talking about advertising platforms, a few things need to be cleared up.

These advertising platforms are only part of all the strategies that you should use to promote your music.

There are many other tools you should be aware of:

Promote yourself on Social Networks and interact with your followers

You must have your website updated

Try to have a good position in Google, that they find you easily

Use streaming music platforms, there are free ones ( SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube Music, etc.)

You can advertise online on related websites

You should always use attractive and good quality graphics, images, videos, and animations

If you have a fan database, use Email marketing

Have an online merchandising store for your musical group

And finally, make paid advertising on platforms to spread your material, we will talk about this in this article.

 How to use Digital Marketing to Promote your Music Videos?

Here we review some digital marketing platforms where music videos can be promoted, with high segmentation and a great reach with acceptable investments:

Music digital marketing on YouTube

Music digital marketing on Spotify

Music digital marketing on Instagram

Music digital marketing on TikTok

Promote your music videos on YouTube Ads

YouTube generates 35% of all global mobile traffic and is the second most used search engine in the world. Without a doubt, the opportunity to create awareness of your brand or existence on YouTube is huge.

By advertising your music video, you can redirect users to your website, in case you are selling merchandise or another product, or you can also redirect them to continue watching your videos on your channel.

The platform offers the possibility of making a good audience segmentation based on the location where your target audience is, based on demographic data and also interests, this is very good because it can be segmented by musical tastes, managing to reach the public who likes your same musical style.

 YouTube has several advertising formats, among which are:

Bumper Ads

Reach TrueView

Seamless 15/20 sec *

YouTube Masthead

TrueView Discovery

TrueView in-stream

TrueView for Action

Video App Campaigns (beta)

For music video advertising, we'll focus on two of those formats, TrueView in Stream and TrueView Discovery.

 Promote music videos in TrueView in Stream format

trueview ads in stream

The in-stream skippable ad appears before, during, or after other videos on YouTube and/or on websites and apps.

The user has the option to skip the ad after 5 seconds.

With CPV (cost per view) bidding, the advertiser will only be charged when users choose to watch 30 seconds of the ad (or until it ends if the ad is less than 30 seconds) or when viewers take an action after the video, such as clicking to visit the advertiser's site.

The advertiser can also choose to pay based on impressions, which is the number of times their ad is shown.

These types of ads can be served on YouTube and the Google Display Network (made up of third-party games, apps, and websites). And you pay each time your ad is played in full (cost per view, CPV).

Promote music videos in TrueView Discovery format

Within the Discovery ads, there are two types:

Video ads in YouTube search results

The video ad appears on the YouTube search results page when users search for related topics. The advertiser will only be charged when someone clicks on the ad to view the video.

Video discovery ads on YouTube-related videos

The video ad is shown next to another YouTube video on the YouTube watch page or on the Google Display Network. The advertiser will only be charged when a user chooses to view the ad.

In this case, the “pay per click” (CPC) is applied. That is, you pay each time a user clicks on your video regardless of the viewing time.

In both cases, the video content of the ad must be hosted on YouTube, so it is essential to have a channel already created where you can upload your video material.

Once the advertising has been launched, optimized, and collected data, remarketing campaigns can be created. This allows you to show your music videos to people who have already visited your YouTube channel, your website, and also to your list of followers.

Remarketing is very good for reinforcing your image and that of your music project by showing your ads on various Internet media, "chasing" the user.

Such campaigns are very effective for promoting concert dates and ticket sales as well as music releases.

 Promote your music videos or music on Spotify Ads

Neither good nor bad, but nowadays the success or not of an artist is measured in a number: the monthly listeners of Spotify and to be at the top, you will have to invest a little money to promote your musical material on this platform.

Spotify is a streaming platform that has continued to grow steadily since its inception, reaching 365 million monthly active users and 165 million premium subscribers as of June 2021.

On Spotify you can promote both audio and video, here we are going to focus on the promotion of music videos.

On this platform, it gives you the possibility of promoting the music of an artist or group, or even a concert or merchandising of the artist.

 It has a segmentation tool both geographically and by demographic data and the most interesting thing is the segmentation by fans, musical genres, and user interests.

Music videos can be promoted in both vertical and horizontal formats if they are both better.

As for video formats, there are 7 types:

Wedge/Cover

banner display

Video

Sponsored Playlists

video takeover

homepage billboard

For video advertising, we focus on these four:

 Video on Spotify

Audiovisual spot of fifteen to 30 seconds with a complementary display ad. Also, broadcast during commercial breaks between songs in a session. Spotify bills this format for full views only.

Sponsored Playlists

Sponsored Playlists of a minimum of 40 songs, including brand logo, promotional text, and weblink.

Video TakeOver

Video Takeover ads are delivered during a listening session when the user is actively browsing the catalog to discover music and podcasts.

They have a maximum duration of 30 seconds. Here is a demonstration of the takeover videos.

Video Sponsored Session

Sponsored Session ads start a 30-minute ad-free listening session, offered only when the screen is in view in a 100% voice and sound-enabled environment. The videos are also 30 seconds maximum. Here's a demo of Sponsored Session advertising.

About the costs… It is important to mention that Spotify establishes its rates based on the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and the CPM costs are much higher than, for example, YouTube.

Promote your music videos or your music on Instagram

Although Instagram is not a specific platform for music, it has certain characteristics that make it ideal for promotions, depending on the audience you are targeting.

Here you will find the young, millennial audience (unlike Facebook where the audience is already more adult and can also be a channel to promote your music).

If you're a musician or have a band, it's ideal for interacting with your audience, promoting concerts, merchandising, and also music videos, redirecting your audience to your website or YouTube channel through a traffic campaign.

Targeting is done in the same way as on Facebook, geographically, demographically, and based on user interests and behavior. This is good for segmenting by types of artists or music genres that your target audience likes.

The ads will be shown both in the Instagram feed and in the stories, depending on the location you want.

 It is important that the video to be promoted has the appropriate format, in the case of Instagram the ideal is a 9:16 or vertical ratio.

The costs are much lower than on Spotify and perhaps similar to what it can cost to promote a video on YouTube.

 Promote your music videos or music on TikTok

TikTok is a continuously growing network that brings together many young people, today more than anything centennials. She is known for the great virtualization of her short videos, which last between 10 and 15 seconds.

As in Instagram, this platform can be very useful when promoting a music video, driving traffic to your YouTube channel or your website so that they continue watching or listening.

As a musical artist, you cannot lose sight of this platform to attract fans.

The platform is still under development, and the targeting capabilities are not as effective as previous platforms. It only allows geographic (not very precise) and demographic segmentation by age and gender, but segmentation by interests and behaviors is still pending.

 TikTok has several types of advertising formats:

In-Feed Video

Takeover Ads

Topview Ads

In-Feed Video

Branded Effect

Hashtag Challenge

In the case of videos, we will focus on:

In Feed Video

These ads have a video format and are 15 seconds long. They are only displayed for 24 hours and are placed as one more post within the user's feed.

Topview Ads

A format that is displayed when opening the app. These are 60-second videos with sound. Advertisers can convert a Takeover to Topview if they pay the difference.

In any case, TikTok currently has very high costs, which makes it not an ideal tool for new, independent artists, but for bands that may already have a long history and a good advertising budget.

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