Lisa Occhino

With so many ways to promote your music online — and only so many hours in the day — how do you decide which platforms are worth your time and energy?

With your marketing plan as your north star, you’ll find it much easier to take concrete, meaningful steps toward your music career goals.

Between social distancing requirements, stay-at-home orders, and no real idea of when live performances will become a viable source of income again, it’s never been more important to turn to online solutions for fan engagement and revenue.

As we’re sure you’ve heard countless times over the last several years, the chances of making a living solely off of streaming income are slim to none. But does that mean that making your music available on streaming services is pointless? Far from it.

Stream counts are a big indicator of success on Spotify, but there’s another factor that plays an enormous role: the number of times your tracks have been added to playlists.

If there’s all this streaming money out there, why does it seem like it’s not ending up in artists’ pockets? We’ll get into more specifics below, but the simple answer for now is that everyone — especially the major labels — wants a piece of the pie. By the time it trickles all the way down to the artist, the slice that’s left is usually shockingly small.

There are so many options for musicians and bands to host music online nowadays. You don’t need to upload your music to every website out there, but it’s a good idea to explore your options and pick a couple that make the most sense for your needs as an artist.

With so much information available for musicians and bands online, it can be a serious undertaking to sift through it all and find the most legitimate, valuable sources. Fortunately, we spend a lot of time in this world of music career tips and advice, so we’ve put together this list to point you in the right direction. Here are 10 of the best blogs for musicians.

Being in a band is just like being in any other relationship: the beginning is exciting and full of possibility, but at some point, you might realize that you and your bandmates just aren’t on the same page anymore.

The key is finding jobs that provide some financial stability, but also flexibility so you can still play gigs, rehearse, write, and go out on tour.

Once you’ve decided that you’re getting pretty serious about this whole music career thing, you know that you have to start putting in the effort to come up with effective band marketing ideas.

You’ve probably tried boosting your posts on Facebook, and maybe you’ve even run a few ads on Instagram. But have you ever considered how powerful Google’s search network can be for advertising your music?

Whether you're a new artist or an experienced pro, your artist one sheet can really help anyone reading identify what’s unique about you and your music. Give it some visual love. Use a clean font, make your sections concise, and throw in a cool background or graphic. It doesn’t really matter how you design your one-sheet, so long as it shows your personality in a way that’s easy to digest.

With over one billion active monthly users, today’s independent artists fully understand that YouTube has the potential to be a significant source of revenue. That’s no secret. However, something you may find puzzling is how exactly your YouTube content gets monetized, or in other words — how YouTube makes you money!

As an independent artist, you’ve probably been told countless times that being on social media is important. But after a typical week involving some combination of writing, producing, rehearsing, recording, performing, pitching, booking, networking, and possibly a day job on top of all that, you only have so many hours left to dedicate to growing a strong online presence.
Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a full-time social media manager, it’s impossible to be active and engaging on ever...