How to Self-Promote Your New Single on $500
- Michelle Kirk
- Nov 9, 2021
- 5 min read
(Hint: You don't need PR.)
I see you, you're a broke musician.
This is indie music, baby, and you're probably still working a crappy side job to self-fund your starving artist life. Or maybe you're doing some crowd-funding, very nice, or maybe you've got awesomely supportive parents. But at the end of the month, your music budget is still tight. You know you need to invest in promoting your new single (already ahead of the game), but you need every penny to STRETCH. Fear not!
Here's the best way to promote your new single on a $500 budget.
I'll give you the breakdown first and then go into detail:
$15 Monthly Email service
+$30 DIY Email List Guide
+$30 Press Submissions
+$25 Playlist donation
+$300 Ads
---------------
= $500
One Important Note (OIN):
This is all assuming that you already have a mastered track, an eye-grabbing cover art image, some type of video asset, and at least two high-res photos of your band ready to go. In an oversaturated indie music age, the art itself just has to be excellent, no way around it. Even the best publicists and marketers can’t make magic happen if the art they’re trying to promote isn’t stellar. So before you spend any money on PR, playlisting, or any other promo services, invest in professional quality masters, photographs, and music videos so those top-tier publications will know you belong there. Here are some free tools for creating these DIY-style.
OK first, the free stuff you can do:
Start teasing your upcoming single on social media a month in advance, mentioning it once or twice per week. Don't feel bad about overdoing it; the digital marketing experts agree that users need to see the same thing 7-9 times before it really sinks in. Just be sure to drop lots of fun, personal, non-promotional stuff in between. Here are some free ideas for social content.
Most DSPs (i.e. CD Baby, DistroKid, TuneCore, etc.) offer free pre-save campaigns. Take advantage of these! Ask your social media followers to pre-save your single and EXPLAIN WHY: that pre-saving your single will help your chances of getting placed on an editorial Spotify playlist and collect email addresses. Leave this link in your bio or Linktree for a few weeks.
Make a Spotify playlist with your existing songs and add artists similar to you. Don't wait for someone else to add you to a playlist, make your own! Add other artists similar to you, and tag them in a social post about your playlist. Keep it updated regularly, and the next time you pitch an upcoming release to Spotify's editorial playlists, the algorithm will see you and know where you belong.
At the beginning of the month, set up your email service and start building your list.
If you don't know about the crucial importance of building an email (or text) list, START HERE. You can use ConvertKit, Mailchimp, or something similar, doesn't matter. These services usually run about $15/month, as mentioned above.
Think of something free you can offer people for subscribing to your list - a Bandcamp download code, a piece of merch, a show ticket, whatever you got; it's about the gesture. This is your lead magnet. In your social bios or Linktree, prominently feature a link going directly to a landing page where the only thing a user can do is enter their name and email.
Start nurturing your audience way before you ask them for anything. I have broken down this process, step by step, for you in my DIY Email Guide. It's a way cheaper alternative to having me write all the emails for you (1/20 of the price, to be exact). And once you set up your email series to trigger automatically, it will become a source of passive income for you! Yes, you read that right. Start ASAP.
Next, pitch your music to the press!
At least two weeks before release day, go to SubmitHub.com and buy yourself 30 credits for $27 (or more, if you've got a few extra bucks). Upload your song, along with a short bio and quote about the song's meaning or why it's timely or something about the creative process, etc. This is your chance to sell it! Tell them why you stand out from the crowd. Re-submit a couple times, playing with genres. Genre is a subjective (and, frankly, dying) concept, so you can try going a bit outside of how you'd classify your music (not too far, though).
Don't get frustrated by rejections! Now you know how we publicists feel; we sometimes get hundreds of rejections a day! This industry is a fickle beast, and it in no way means your music is or isn't good. It's all about finding the right audience.
Right before and after release day, pitch to 3rd party playlists.
You can either find these yourself by going down a Spotify rabbit hole or by using a database like PlaylistMap.com or Profimusic.com or Soundplate.com. I recommend grabbing the playlisters' email addresses and saving them so you can refer back in the future. Email them something simple, like:
"Hi X! I'm ____, and I think my new single _____ might be a perfect fit for your ____ playlist. Would you mind giving it a quick listen please? If you'll kindly add it when it comes out on ___, I'd be happy to share your playlist to all my socials. Email me if you'd like more info about my music. Here are my social and website links: ____ Thanks for listening! - X"
Playlisters will often ask for a small donation, hence the $25 listed above. If they ask for more, tell them what you can afford and try to negotiate. The most important thing is to make sure the playlist genre matches your music. I don't care if it has 40K listeners; if the rest of the playlist doesn't match your music, it will hurt you in the long run by confusing the Spotify algorithm. Do not fall for this.
Finally, plan to spend the majority of your budget running ads.
If you're an indie artist trying to grow your fan base, the best way to get in front of a lot of new eyes quickly is by running ads. There a few types you can choose from, depending on your goals and what you're promoting. Some examples are:
Engagement: Increasing views/likes on a social media post
Traffic: Directing new people from IG Reels or Stories to YouTube or Spotify
YouTube: Bumping your music video to the top of similar recommendations
You can run an effective IG/FB ad in Business Manager at just $5/day for 30 days. You can play around with the daily budget and length, but I wouldn't go lower than $3 per day or shorter than 8 days. The algorithm needs time to work its magic! Running ads strategically is a real art, so shoot me an email if want any help with this. $5/day on IG + $5/day on YouTube = $300/month. Start these ON release day!
Ultimately, you can modify these ideas to meet your own goals.
But I hope you find this helpful as an outline to start with, at least. So much of music marketing can be done DIY-style these days, it's all about balancing what you can do yourself with what you can afford to get help with. I help artists with these exact strategies all day every day, in addition to using my secret database of music press contacts, so shoot me an email if there's any way I can make your life easier. And once you have an album finished, that's when the fun really begins. :-)
What strategies have helped YOU in the past? Let us know in the comments!
Good luck.
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