How to Avoid Paying for Music Exposure

A music city like Austin, Texas has numerous opportunities for musicians to be putting out their music.

There are so many venues, media and ways to advertise your music, it can be tricky to not get swept up into this simple trap:

Paying for music exposure.

In a music city like Austin, TX, you are swimming in a sea of competition.

The competition for people’s attention.

Nobody has enough time to search for your obscure new single if it’s not easy to access.

And no one is going to go to the trouble of seeing your band play without having heard you or talking to someone who’s heard you first.

Here’s where the real sharks come in.

Paid advertisements, search engine optimization, radio mentions and ad space.

None of them free.

It’s easy to think of these venues for exposure as investments.

Any ad rep is going to tell you how many hits their website gets a day, who their average client is and how rich and easily persuaded they are.

But that doesn’t necessarily bring you customers. It doesn’t even bring you fans.

The only real way to build buzz around your music is to get people talking about it.

And BUZZ, my dear friends, is FREE.

So how do you get people talking about your music?

It requires two important elements.

First, you must have a product worth talking about.

A CD, a new single, a video. Something that people can find and listen to, and most importantly LIKE.

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Second, these people need to be able to listen to your music in a risk-free environment.

This is something that the advertisers of the world can never provide.

The potential fan always knows they’re being sold, so they won’t bite.

When you provide them with your music risk-free, the potential fan knows they’re safe to listen and really feel your music out.

This is why it is so important that you have a product worth talking about.

The biggest free album giveaway in the world won’t bring you exposure if the songs aren’t worth talking about.

Once you have your two elements together, you can put them into action:

1. Find a way to expose people to your music without paying for it (this doesn’t mean that you aren’t incurring opportunity cost, it just means you’re not paying to reach people)—sites like reverbnation.com and bandcamp.com are great for this

2. After some time, your great product will find a small group of fans who love you and want to tell everyone about you.

3. Reward those people by staying in contact and asking for their help in telling others

4. Repeat this process with your larger group of fans

In Conclusion:

Standing out in today’s music scene demands that you make music worth talking about.

While that may sound easy or overly simple, it’s not.

Great music is the prerequisite.

But if your music is truly worthy, people will love your music.

Then, you just have to make it easy for them to tell their friends about you.

That’s where great sites like reverbnation and bandcamp come in.

Finally, once you’ve built up some momentum, it’s time to repeat this process.

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