The Biggest Music Marketing Error Artists Can Make In 2023

Most artists will gloss over this article then go right back to their flawed music marketing strategies that didn’t gain them much progress in the past. 

Why do we do that again? 🙄

If your way hasn’t been working, why not try a proven plan?

In fact, we're actually not telling you to spend more money marketing your music. We’re telling you to reallocate your budget so that it starts working for YOU rather than you working for IT.

The biggest marketing error artists can make is spending their music budget in the wrong places.

Most ‘promotion services’ out there today will tell you to spend the bulk of your budget on one platform… Spotify.

This simply would not be good advice, and this is coming from a promotion agency that does offer Spotify promotion services!

Now, we didn’t say don’t spend ANY money trying to grow your Spotify audience. What we’re saying is your marketing budget needs to have a better plan. 

If you spend all your money trying to grow your Spotify, then you ignore other (more important) aspects of your music career.

Your music marketing budget can be limited as an indie artist, so you need to be sure it’s allocated to the things that are going to help you win. Every artist that wants to optimize their music career earnings needs to implement these 5 strategies as soon as possible. 

1. You need QUALITY music. This should go without saying, but your music is the centerpiece of your brand. If your music is off-key, unmixed, unmastered, and unprofessional, then no one will take your website and products seriously. 

2. You need products and services (THAT YOU CONTROL THE PRICING OF) to sell to prospective customers. When you control the price, you tend to not worry as much about what streaming royalties Spotify or Apple Music is paying. They become a smaller focus to your overall music marketing game plan. 

3. You need to own an OPTIMIZED website. This is top priority! Not just any old website either. You need a website with full ecommerce, funnel, sales and email copy, and design. What we found is most artists don’t have a website at all. Some artists have a bad looking website. Some artists have a nice looking website. Virtually no artists have a fully optimized, marketing-based website. 

4. You need WELL-ROUNDED marketing. Never put all your eggs in one basket. Spread out your marketing spend over several platforms and track your earnings like a hawk to know which ads & promotions to spend more on. 

5. You need to have CONSISTENCY. It’s not just enough to spend the money. The money needs to be spent on the RIGHT creatives with the RIGHT headlines going to the RIGHT website pages set at the RIGHT prices. Most of the time, you usually have to repeat this process to get someone to support your music career with their hard earned dollars.

We recommend the following marketing budget breakdown:

• 40% of your marketing budget to IG & Facebook Ads. A good chunk of this should be traffic directed at your website so that you can sell products & services to earn your money back. With our website management service, we even help you come up with these products & services and implement them into your music business.

• 20-30% of your marketing budget to YouTube/Google. Again, a good bit of these ads should be directed towards your website.

• 20% of marketing budget to Spotify Playlisting. When people see your Spotify profile perception can become reality. If it looks like a ghost town there, they may perceive the music differently. Vanity or not, the more buzz something already has the more likely people are to gravitate towards it. This will have indirect return on investment when combined with the two steps above.

• The remaining budget towards testing on Apple Music, TikTok, or other platforms. You ALWAYS want to be innovative in marketing. Businesses that innovate get the reward of not only surviving, but thriving even when their competition starts to fall.

We talked about just how important your website is, but I don’t want to leave artists with the impression that any old website will do. 

A nice looking website does NOT mean that it’s optimized. 

An optimized website will have products and services, SEO, pixel installation, sales copywriting, email service provider integration (with email copywriting), marketing based headlines, and the list goes on and on. 

I don’t want to overwhelm you, but a great website takes work and intentionality. 

EVERY. ARTIST. Reading this needs an optimized, marketing-based website.

If you want to ignore our plan and keep trying your own, you’re welcome to do that.

But here’s our credentials in the music business:

• $3,000,000+ in revenue

• Promoted for over 12,000 artists

• Run over 20,000 music marketing campaigns

• Spent over $1,000,000 advertising in the music business

• Taken $0 in venture capital (self-funded)

If you’ve got better credentials than that, by all means don’t take our advice.

If you don’t, you might as well give our plan a shot.