5 Music Marketing Tactics Used by Major Labels

5 Music Marketing Tactics Used by Major Labels

1. TIMING
It’s not just how you release your music that counts, but also when. Which artists is your release going up against on release day? Does your release suit the season we’re in? Some music is great for summer festivals and some is better suited to the dark winter nights spent in the clubs.

Make sure you consider the timing of your release when creating your release strategy.

2. GEO-LOCATION
You may not have a marketing team in every corner of the earth like Universal Music do, but you can still use technology and some creativity to target your music to listeners geographically.

Many streaming and social media platforms offer geo-location data insights into your audience. Use this to create country specific remixes, videos, competitions, content and entire marketing campaigns that speak to fans in particular countries in specific ways.

3. USER GENERATED CONTENT
Do not underestimate the power of inspiring your fans to create and share their own content. This content is not only more raw and authentic - and therefore more engaging and shareable - but it’s also mostly, entirely free because your fans are creating it themselves.

Competitions are great ways to inspire fans to create UGC and the cost of the prize will usually be far below what you would have had to invest for the same level of marketing exposure.

4. CULTURE
Creating music and content that reflects current important social issues in modern pop culture, is a great way to get involved in conversations online and give yourself more exposure as a result.

Think about social/political issues in the news, films or series everybody is talking about, sports, even major world events. Creating content that touches on the hot topics of today is a sure fire way to reach new audiences and engage new fans.

5. FLEXIBILITY
Marketing campaigns involve a certain degree of trial and error... Which is why it’s important to have the capacity to react in real-time to the feedback data you’re seeing from your campaign.

If your new release is being streamed a lot in a certain country, run some ads there... if it’s getting a lot of traction on a particular platform, do a big marketing push on that platform. Make sure you haven’t allocated your entire budget pre-launch so that you have the ability and funds to react in real-time.