How to put yourself out there as a new artist

As we know, there’s more people than ever making music out there, and lots of them have some sort of artistic aspirations. By that, I mean actually putting the music out there (and possibly even charging money for it): after all, is art even art unless it’s being experienced by some?

It’s a bit of a jungle out there, with so many options, and it sure can feel overwhelming even thinking of all the options out there.

So here’s my thoughts on the topic: this is definitely more of a “You should consider these” instead of “Do these and you will succeed” post.
I’ll try to keep it ”relatively short” instead of creating a megaguide, heh.

This is not an exhaustive guide. If I set out to do that, it’d become a 50-page strategy guide, and that is not my goal at all.

These points are based on my own experience,so I won’t try and give advice relating to something I have no experience of. Those who know me know that I make my living with several things relating to my expertise: audio engineering, music tuition, Patreon, Ableton expertise, music sales, etc., so they all contribute to my business.
And also, this is not a guide on how to reach stardom…sorry. Just some helpful pointers to get you started, and maybe these will raise some thoughts and ideas.

(By the way, unlike many other posts on my Patreon, this is a public one, so if you feel there’s useful stuff in here, feel free to share this post with your friends. Even I can use a bit of sharing sometimes. I talk about that in this post, too. One thing you can do to help to any artist is share their content)

That music should be kind of tight

This is kind of obvious, but…when you start to put the music out, make sure it’s good. This applies to releasing music and also sending it to labels.

If it’s poor, people may easily put you into a “won’t check this guy out in the future” bracket, and you don’t want there.

Obviously, early on, you’re going to be critical, as you have heard tons of great music for a big part of your life, and it takes you time to get where the music sounds so good to you that you want to put it out there and have others hear it too, but I just want to emphasize strongly that this is a very important consideration in the beginning, because it can be hard to fix this later on, as not everyone gives you a second chance.

What is good enough? Something that you’re genuinely happy with.

Record labels?

Unless you want to release it yourself, you usually want to get on a label. I won’t actually say much about this in post, as I’ll focus more on what you can do on your own. All I’ll say is, have the music tight, and don’t send out those lazy emails/msgs that sound like they’re going out to tons of people and where even you yourself don’t believe in it (this’d be something along the lines “yo here’s my songs, check them out”).

If you’ve never spoken to the label before, you might want to say, when approaching them with your music, why it is that you’re contacting that exact label and why your music might be a good fit. You know, make it personal somehow, as that works so much better than that lazy generic message that’s just thrown out.
Target the labels that represent your sound – otherwise why even send it out…you’d be wasting your time.

The "cons" of working with a record label may be that they may own your music and get a part of its sales, but then again, they should help you in terms of putting the music and you out there. An ideal label would work with you an in a way for you, developing you as an artist, discussing and planning your releases etc., but sadly, there are many labels that won't do this.

So, there are reasons to consider releasing your music out there.

Release it yourself

Now this is more the thing I want to talk about: releasing things yourself and developing YOU.
Labels are definitely good when/if they can offer you something you cannot achieve yourself (good promotional reach, status, etc.) but we all can use some decent tools to get stuff out there and develop ourselves in the field of releasing music / being an artist.

Where to release – a paying option: Bandcamp

One thing I want to suggest highly: Bandcamp. And here come the reasons.

• It promotes a healthy way of consuming music: buying it. I’ll actually largely skip everything related to how kind of f**ked and difficult the not-paying-you-directly music industry has become in some ways (while it seems to attract some young artists like flypaper, still), as you’re probably aware of some of that, and I want to leave all negativity out.

A thing to consider when you’re putting yourself out there is what options you’ll offer for getting your music, and I’d say if you start to promote a platform where your music has a price, this vibe will stick to your followers, especially those who really want to support you (e.g, imho a fiver for a decent EP is something any working adult can do). At least I can say this to be true, and I’ve always promoted Bandcamp first / over other services, and I’m happy to say that a lot of those who follow my music seem to be fine paying for it (another reason for this may be that many of my followers are adults with jobs and they also grew up in a similar music-consuming culture where I did: paying for music was/is the "standard" way to get the music and also support the artist you like).

• When someone buys your music, they’ll automatically get release notifications when you release on BC in the future. Handy!

• If you give out music for free via BC, you can ask the customer to pay with their email address if they enter zero price. This means they’ll willingly give you their email for direct marketing. You can then use Mailchimp, for example, to inform those people about your future releases (Mailchimp is free as long as your list has less than 2 thousand names, so it’ll be free for long, and even when it goes over 2K, it's easy to cull out inactive members).

• You can do free releases where the price is zero but you’ll still let the customer pay if they can (you’d be surprised how many actually do).

• This is a very solid place for your discography (e.g., if you don't have a website), and it’s easy to use. Fans will easily see a good overview of what you have released, and the interface for playing music and buying it is effortless. You can also stream the music you’ve bought with an app.

• Via Bandcamp, you can also contact your fans with their dedicated messaging system, so you can do a heads-up about forthcoming stuff etc.

• Bandcamp offers whole discography purchases as well as monthly/yearly subscriptions (you can only offer either, but not both).

Doesn’t that sound pretty good? In all honesty, even buying a few beers with the money that your art earned you is a good feeling!

Where to release – stores and streaming

I won’t have a ton to say about this, but there are several services (such as CDbaby) that offer services for getting your music out there to digital stores and streaming services (Spotify etc). They usually take a cut/fee, and the stores you’ll use will take a cut, too. I'm lucky to work with a good, long-time UK distro for getting my music to stores (while I run my Bandcamp myself), who of course take their cut – and this is fine.
There are services, too, that will pitch your music to Spotify playlists, but the few times I’ve done a quick math on the ratio of what it costs/earns you, I'd say there isn’t much to be earned with those figures, so those plays alone won’t necessarily leave you with much profit, if any. 

One thing I’d strongly underline: do NOT become an artist that ONLY releases on Spotify. Big or small, it makes zero sense. You’d basically not offer a direct support channel for your fans, and you’d potentially leave a lot of money on the table.
Every now and then, I even get some mixing/mastering clients that say they will only release via Spotify, and let me tell you, I’d love to get my friendly lecture on…but in my role as an engineer there, that is not my job.
(BTW, I'm definitely not anti-Spotify per se, but especially for new and small artists, I wouldn't recommend it as their primary platform IF getting some beer money is in their plans)

Promote it!

Yeah, it’ll take promotion – unless you get lucky and some big player/artist/DJ/media takes a liking on you and does you a favor and posts your stuff. However, this is not super likely, so don’t count too much on that. The fact is you probably won’t be the next Aphex Twin who could only mildly tease about some stuff online, and then everybody’d be sharing it – ain’t gonna happen. Wouldn't we all love to "only make music" though.

Where to promote? Socials. Most people do this. Everybody uses social media, and that is both a pro and a con. Most of us have friends/followers/etc that will react to the content.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. This is where you curate your content. Especially these days I’m seeing more and more artists use their actual personal FB page for posting about their music, as it still seems to reach people, and it’s a nice and direct way for the fans to reach you, too.
Facebook business pages are going badly downhill, and if you’re not paying for the posts, their spread is very minimal, and often even paying doesn’t do the trick, I feel.
Some socials work better for music than others: e.g., Twitter (at least for me) is the worst platform for posting about music…or the interaction for those posts is often super low, while a witty thought or a joke works way better – but there, it's about finding the good middle ground and slipping your promo in.
Don’t be too proud and cool: just put the stuff out there and ask people to share, and you’d be surprised how many will react and help a bit, especially early in your career.
I’d say picture and video posts seem to do well, but I’d advise keeping the content relevant. I’m seeing many artists that, imho, are kind of wasting their chance by posting mundane stuff like their beers, shoes, cats, meals, and all that – and personally, I can’t follow stuff like that, as I lose interest easily and end up thinking why I should know you’re eating a cake right now. Having said that, there is of course a decent ratio of music posts and basic stuff. It’s OK to show you’re a human being, but I feel that a certain “profiling” goes a long way. If you post regularly about studio stuff, for example, at least in my book it emphasizes a vibe that music is your thing.

Then, there’s also the way of posting tons of memes, which will undoubtedly gain attention and “likes” easily, but a good question is whether it’ll underline you being a music-maker that should be kept an eye on – or a person who’s hungry for attention – and whether that'll help you at all when it comes to letting people know your music is out today (obv, the funny cat and dog posts will always gain more attention, and you just gotta accept it).

Send the music out to DJs – if your music is something that DJs usually play and if you know of DJs that play your kind of stuff, that is. Having a DJ play your song in a mix may gain you some exposure, and in a way it gives you some credibility; even some big producers seem to post on their socials about getting their songs played by good DJs for clout.
Just reach out to the DJs; often this works thru socials. Just hit them up and ask for their contact for promos and if they want music. Not everyone displays that on their profile, but some will reply and give you an email.
Also, it sure isn't wrong or uncommon to ask others for DJ/label contacts.

Network!
If there’s one universal truth out there that applies to the field of music, it’s that networking can bring good results. Get in touch with like-minded people and share stuff and have a chat with them. I don’t mean spamming them with your links, but establishing some actual human connections with relevant like-minded peeps.
Even this will help in the long run, because those who seem to genuinely like you as a human being are more likely to, for example, support your stuff or share it on the web.
Also, many gigs seem to happen on the basis of knowing the right people (as opposed to people you don’t know just getting in touch with you to book you – this does happen, too, of course, especially in the more professional world).

Content to support your musical releases.

Today’s web offers tons of different ways to be out there and gain attention in a good, organic way, to support your musical releases and also reinforce what you do. Here’s a few options.

• Give out song stems for remixing. You’d be surprised how many will want to download the stems when they like the song – just to get free samples. Most of them will not get back to you with a remix, but in the end, they will have downloaded your content, and this helps in you.

• Relevant video content on Youtube. If you’re naturally good at DAW stuff / production / mixing / basslines etc., consider doing something that your followers (and those who don’t know you yet) would find interesting and useful, and this may gain you new followers. Music production and things relating to it are something that music-makers will always be drawn to. Also, detailed videos on how you made a song can be helpful and interesting – here is a recent one I made. Youtube is slow in terms of gaining followers, but whatever helps to support your doings in an organic way is worth doing, imho.

• Tips etc on Instagram. Plenty of producers and even companies are giving out short, easy-to-digest music production tips on IG. I’m often surprised how some mega obvious content (like "boost your snare here") gets a ton of likes – that’s how it often works these days, so make use of it.

• Sample packs. Trust me, producers especially love these. Whether you want to charge for it or just give it out (via Bandcamp or such to build a mailing list), that’s up to you, but packs of good samples are probably more popular than ever right now. Create a pack with samples from your EP, for example – this, once again, would promote your release.

• Engage in conversations on music groups/forums. While this may not be the main way to anything, still, helping people out on music forums/groups/Reddit etc does sometimes drive people your way. I’ve provided tons and tons of help on forums and groups over the years (DOA forum, Ableton forum, FB groups, my own FB wall, Gearslutz, etc.), and I know it’s helped to establish myself as a person that’s generally liked and trusted in the field of music and audio (while I, of course, have some haters, too, that in general do pop out at some point when you’re out there in the public). In general, I feel people are drawn to and appreciate a person who gives out good advice (while, it has to be said, the downside of this is that it will attract many ppl asking for free assistance – that is actually one reason I started my Patreon, to be honest!)

Misc / last thoughts

•Give it time. Obvious, but that’s the way it is. All the bigger artists, too, that you like and who are at least seemingly succeeding have been doing it for a long time – often longer than we realize. They’ve done a lot of the basic groundwork for a long time, keeping it humble, doing it for the love – and that’s a healthy basis for doing it in the first place.

•Humility. The whole game of trying to get somewhere, anywhere, does take some humility and often some blind faith. You have to understand that you’re out there with hundreds or thousands of others, many of whom have been doing it way longer than you. Stay in your lane. To most people, your stuff won’t matter, and that is fine. A lot people will fail to appreciate you, no matter how good or interesting you are. Never compare: people’s paths are different, with way different branches in their tree of development and progress.

• Just be yourself. Just like in life in general, those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. So even in the artist game, I feel it’s best to just be yourself. E.g., I’ve never been able to do the “cool artist” game, no way – just can’t do it. I’m just a dude who’s always been stoked about music, beats, audio stuff, etc., and I don’t find myself “cool” at all, so in the artist game I don’t try to do that. And I’ve found most ppl like it (while it’s ruffled some haters, too, haha, who find what I do cringe-worthy, but hey, those ppl are always there, mostly unhappy with what they do, so just ignore. Nobody who's happy and busy with what they are and do has time or energy to hate on others).

• Faith. There sure are moments when it feels that things are not going anywhere, and that is normal. I, too, have moments when business slows down for a second and I often get a bit worried, but that usually means there’s a lot of stuff dropping, and it’s all just around the corner. And often the good things happen when you’re not exactly expecting them, while it’s often when you really want things and expect good things to come that things are going slow.

• Focus. Where you put your focus, time, and energy is where you’ll see results. So, don’t go necessarily making a truckload of Youtube videos if you want to keep your main focus in music.

Well, that is it for now – hope some of that may help you or give you some ideas.
All thoughts are welcome, so do drop a comment if you feel like it, and feel free to share the post.
If you need help with music production, getting your music mixed and/or mastered, some feedback on your music, help with DAW/plugin stuff – feel free to get in touch.
More info on me and my services here. 

Now ya'll stay safe and productive out there!

-Janne