How About That Demo...

When your a DIY or Independent artist, it's very likely that a lot of what gets done with regard to your music is done by you. In other words, you may be wearing all the hats. When it's time to promote your music you have to do it. Or when it time to go to social media in order to spread the word, you're the one whose tweeting, posting, or blogging.

You may be good at making music, but know absolutely nothing about marketing. And, selling your self may not be what you think of as the best way to sell your music. But, it's not enough to record your music and get it into iTunes. Once it's there, it could just sit, receiving little if any attention, until someone finds out about it.

The same is true if you've just made a CD. If you're fortunate enough to get it into a brick & mortar store, you've really got to let the people know or lose your spot on the self.

If you were signed to a label, most likely, a certain amount of resource would have been allocated for promoting your release. Depending on the size of your contract, you're promotion money would be part of a marketing plan or campaign.

This marketing plan, if you're lucky, might include some live appearances by you on local radio or television. May be a few print ads or some Radio or TV commercial. And, if you're really lucky you may get a shot at national radio or TV. At any rate, the formula used my most labels involves knowing who your audience is and getting your name and/or face in front of them as often as possible, or what your promotion budget will allow.

Most record companies use the age group of 14 to 24yrs as their marketing demographic, or audience to which they want to sell most of their releases. The idea is, that people in that age group tend to have a lot of what is know as disposable cash. I mentioned this before in another post, but  it something that DIY artists should consider, even if it isn't important for the music that you make. I say this because, and this is just my opinion, you should always know who it is that likes your music enough to buy it. If your music skews older than the 14 to 24 demographic, it's likely that you will be doing a lot more live performances, possible at smaller venues, and your record sales will come partly from these performances, and tend to bring less income than said performances.

If you're not an artist who performs live, use YouTube, Vevo, or GrooveShark as a means of sharing your music visually. There's also video chat and webinars.

I realize that there's no revelation here. But, when you consider how Facebook tends to place most of it's attention on those whose followings are at least 10,000 and up, you have to look for and find as many other outlets for exposure of your music as possible. And while the idea of having and/or using a demographic may seem silly or even useless as an independent or DIY artist, it might not hurt to consider having broad appeal and then giving the people what they want.