The actual "promotion" bit.

[James Perrett]

That's why we have record labels, pluggers and PR people to handle the promotion and let the artist get on with creating and performing. Unfortunately you need a bit of initial self promotion and luck to gain their attention.

[RichardT]

You’re right Will, you could easily spend more time on promotion than creation.

There’s no easy answer, but I think it can be helpful to specialise in one area. You can get to know how to do things, and who’s who, in that arena.

I’ve chosen to focus on Spotify playlisters because it doesn’t involve gigging and dealing with folks face to face, which I find exhausting.

Choose something that suits your personality!

[awjoe]

That's why we have record labels, pluggers and PR people to handle the promotion and let the artist get on with creating and performing. Unfortunately you need a bit of initial self promotion and luck to gain their attention.

James, the whole DIY homerecording experiment has been a ton of fun that demonstrated the truth that you can't wear all the hats. Not well, anyway. Not happily, anyway.

[Drew Stephenson]

That's why we have record labels, pluggers and PR people to handle the promotion and let the artist get on with creating and performing. Unfortunately you need a bit of initial self promotion and luck to gain their attention.

James, the whole DIY homerecording experiment has been a ton of fun that demonstrated the truth that you can't wear all the hats. Not well, anyway. Not happily, anyway.

Well, I think that depends on your definition of success and what makes you happy.

[awjoe]

I guess so. But for most people most of the time? Of all the people who home record, what percentage have the talent and the hours in the day (and the interest!) to do all the roles of:

Writer

Performer

Recordist

Mixer

Mastering Engineer

Promoter

Possibly booking manager

Pizza fetcher and coffee maker

Hey! I've stumbled on an article for Sound on Sound! "The Man With Eight Hats (And His Music Isn't Half Bad, Either!)

[Drew Stephenson]

True.

Hey! I've stumbled on an article for Sound on Sound! "The Man With Eight Hats (And His Music Isn't Half Bad, Either!)

But now you have to find such a person!

[awjoe]

Don't be surprised if you get an exploratory offer from the magazine makers at SOS in the next few days...

[Drew Stephenson]

[MOF]

I have a problem in that I don't 'do' social media, so don't get much traffic. There's no way I'll touch facebook, and the others don't seem much better, so can anyone suggest alternatives for getting noticed?

Do you have a website and is it SEO optimised? That’s not too difficult to do, presumably you have some idea of what genre(s) of music you do, so referencing your influences will be the first thing to write about.
If you’re gigging then having a page about that which is regularly updated will push your site up the search rankings.
Regular Facebook posts (just a few lines, not a novel’s worth) and thanking people for their comments (yet again, short and sweet) and photographs on Instagram with cross links to your website and/or distributor will all help raise your profile. Make sure all files are named, not just jpeg12345 as they’re searchable too.
Do you have a Youtube channel? It’s easy to make your own videos these days, make sure you add lyrics, if applicable, there and on your website, they are searchable and could end up getting you a one off contract for a track that is what someone is looking for.

[MOF]

I guess it really comes down to how much time I'm prepared to spend on management rather than creation

Unless you are happy to just create your music and not worry about how many people get to hear your tracks, then you do need to address the publicising side.

A lot of ideas, in all of this - quite daunting actually

Just do one thing at a time.

I'm almost regretting I started this thread now. I can't seem me being able to put a fraction of the effort needed into this. There are far too many parts to promotion that I have no knowledge of at all. Gaining all the necessary skills would take all the enjoyment out of my music

The internet has lots of “how to” videos. Facebook really is easy, set up a separate artist version of yourself and you can promote it from your personal account.
A Youtube channel doesn’t have to have a video, you can just upload the tracks (and lyrics).

[awjoe]

I guess so. But for most people most of the time? Of all the people who home record, what percentage have the talent and the hours in the day (and the interest!) to do all the roles of:

Writer

Performer

Recordist

Mixer

Mastering Engineer

Promoter

Possibly booking manager

Pizza fetcher and coffee maker

Hey! I've stumbled on an article for Sound on Sound! "The Man With Eight Hats (And His Music Isn't Half Bad, Either!)

And after seeing Ben's thread for 'Farthest Shore' I have to add another item to the list:

Artwork

Oh, and website wrangler.

Ten, and counting.

[Arpangel]

Assuming that the talent box has been ticked, and I’ve got something that someone, somewhere actually wants to pay for, and said person also thinks that I’m a meal ticket, and can make money out of me, then anything beyond falling out of bed around lunchtime, taking the cheque, and maybe doing a bit of recording, is strictly not happening.
Big old style record companies were also a filter, they kept all the aspiring nobody’s out of it, mostly, so we didn’t have so much crap to wade through, people got ripped off, but the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages.
YouTube is a big stage, but unfortunately there’s no one on the stage door.

[Folderol]

Artwork is a major problem for me - which is why almost all my Bandcamp albums have photographs. However, I've dipped a toe in the water and dusted off my youtube account with one of the tracks from my latest album, at the same time showing off Yoshimi and Rosegarden - we'll see if it gets any interest on either front!

[Drew Stephenson]

Big old style record companies were also a filter, they kept all the aspiring nobody’s out of it, mostly, so we didn’t have so much crap to wade through, people got ripped off, but the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages.
YouTube is a big stage, but unfortunately there’s no one on the stage door.

Somewhat unsurprisingly I disagree almost entirely with the thrust of this.

[RichardT]

I guess so. But for most people most of the time? Of all the people who home record, what percentage have the talent and the hours in the day (and the interest!) to do all the roles of:

Writer

Performer

Recordist

Mixer

Mastering Engineer

Promoter

Possibly booking manager

Pizza fetcher and coffee maker

Hey! I've stumbled on an article for Sound on Sound! "The Man With Eight Hats (And His Music Isn't Half Bad, Either!)

And after seeing Ben's thread for 'Farthest Shore' I have to add another item to the list:

Artwork

Oh, and website wrangler.

Ten, and counting.

Don't forget

- Arranger

- Accountant

- Acoustician

- Studio manager

[Drew Stephenson]

I guess so. But for most people most of the time? Of all the people who home record, what percentage have the talent and the hours in the day (and the interest!) to do all the roles of:

Writer

Performer

Recordist

Mixer

Mastering Engineer

Promoter

Possibly booking manager

Pizza fetcher and coffee maker

Hey! I've stumbled on an article for Sound on Sound! "The Man With Eight Hats (And His Music Isn't Half Bad, Either!)

And after seeing Ben's thread for 'Farthest Shore' I have to add another item to the list:

Artwork

Oh, and website wrangler.

Ten, and counting.

Don't forget

- Arranger

- Accountant

- Acoustician

- Studio manager

Ha! It turns out we're all polymaths after all.

[zenguitar]

And don't forget Fire Warden if there are banjos involved.

Andy

[Drew Stephenson]

Given there has been some sterling advice given in this thread (by other people) I am wondering if this should be sitting here or in the Music Business forum where it might get more traction?

[James Perrett]

Given there has been some sterling advice given in this thread (by other people) I am wondering if this should be sitting here or in the Music Business forum where it might get more traction?

I was wondering the same thing - so I've moved it so that anyone can now reply.

[awjoe]

Big old style record companies were also a filter, they kept all the aspiring nobody’s out of it, mostly, so we didn’t have so much crap to wade through, people got ripped off, but the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages.
YouTube is a big stage, but unfortunately there’s no one on the stage door.

Somewhat unsurprisingly I disagree almost entirely with the thrust of this.

Each approach (the capitalist 'yes, but will it sell?' filter, and the home recording 'I can do it too') has its upsides and downsides. I think an awful lot of very good music made it through the Music Biz filter, and when it did, it reached a lot of people. With today's music, another hat you have to wear is the Wading Hat' - there's just so much stuff of which you can say 'it's good, but it's not *that* good', or 'it's good, but there are a dozen others I've heard just as good'. That's one of the main reasons I check out 'A Little Something' in the Lounge regularly - people with excellent taste are doing my listening for me - there are more ears on the case. That thread's a third filter - 'The Third Filter - for people who don't have the time or patience to wade through the ocean of sound'.

[Folderol]

Given there has been some sterling advice given in this thread (by other people) I am wondering if this should be sitting here or in the Music Business forum where it might get more traction?

I was wondering the same thing - so I've moved it so that anyone can now reply.

For a moment I thought the entire thread had been eaten by an Internet Grue!

[MOF]

YouTube is a big stage, but unfortunately there’s no one on the stage door.

Yes, but no, the beauty of the internet is that it works like one big filing system (music/pop/synth/vocal/based in your country/town…) you choose which succession of doors you go through, and you can be in a micro niche part of it and still make a good living.
You’ve just got to SEO your descriptions on whichever outlet(s) you’re using.
I miss the good old days of TOTP where you could have a truly eclectic mix of tracks in the charts, now the charts are all separated into increasingly small niches so you have to use that to your advantage.
I can’t personally vouch for this as I’m the world’s worst at finishing tracks, but I have seen a mate build up a landscape photography business in this way.

[Arpangel]

That's why we have record labels, pluggers and PR people to handle the promotion and let the artist get on with creating and performing. Unfortunately you need a bit of initial self promotion and luck to gain their attention.

I had a close friend who was a plugger for CBS/Sony, she was up at 6am in the car, and off to do 2/300 Mike’s a day with a pile of records under her arm, going to radio stations, plugging albums, she got home about 7pm every night. Music? time?

[Sam Spoons]

That's a lot of Mikes

[MOF]

I had a close friend who was a plugger for CBS/Sony, she was up at 6am in the car, and off to do 2/300 Mike’s a day with a pile of records under her arm

That's a lot of Mikes

I think that should be ‘miles’, not quite sure where the apostrophe came from.
I tend to look at the post and then edit it, weirdly I spot mistakes more readily once they’re posted than in the draft window, also predictive text is a friend and a foe when you’re in a hurry.
At least SOS allows you to edit, Facebook doesn’t now and that’s really annoying.
I did spot in one of my recent posts here that I’d put in an unnecessary apostrophe but it was too late by then to edit it.
Arpangel’s post does highlight how lucky we are though, now we can do our own distribution and promotion if we don’t want to go through the large record companies, but we have to accept that we do have to do some work even if we don’t have to do the hundreds of miles a day.