If you want to know how to promote your music and get music contracts, you might feel like you’ve hit a dead end. Maybe you’ve been playing with your band for awhile. Maybe you even have a local following and everyone seems to love your music and has a good time at your shows. But if you want to make it big in the music industry, it can feel like an elusive dream. You want it to happen, and you have a burning desire to make music your full time passion . . . but how do you get there?
Does it seem like your demos never get heard? Or like you need to know someone in order to catch a break? It’s true, sometimes you hear about bands getting “discovered” by chance. Or you hear about a musician who just wouldn’t give up and eventually caught a big break. But is that ever going to happen for your band? Will you ever get signed and get a recording contract?
If you’re slogging away, playing show after show and hoping to get signed, it can feel hopeless. Can you realistically keep going and still feel passionate about it? Can you play venue after venue and still think “tonight could be the night”? Even if you love playing and love music, eventually this kind of promotion gets old.
If it feels like you can’t keep promoting your music on your own forever, you need a plan of attack. This means it’s time to get serious and treat your band as a business. Obviously, you don’t want to take the fun out of playing music and performing. But you need to have the balance there and only make decisions if they’re for the good of the business. This means keeping your goal of getting signed in mind and only doing things if they move you toward that goal.
Here are a few things that can help you get music contracts without constantly beating your head against the wall. Want to promote your music and get yourself a recording contract? You need to get these things straight. It will make your life easier.
1. Is your band marketable? If your band plays death metal, but three of your band members look like concert pianists, you have a problem. It is easier to market your band to a record label if everything about you has a consistant image. Look at your band through business eyes. Will you be easy to promote? Can people look at you and instantly know what you’re about?
2. Make sure you treat your music as a product to promote. Get together your own business plan. Get a marketing plan. Having these things in place will make it easier to show the record label how they can make money with your music. Treat your music as you would if you owned your own business and you had to present a business plan to the bank. That is essentially what you are doing when you meet with a record label.
3. Get started on your marketing yourself. Once you have a marketing plan in place, use it! Get people listening to your music. Use social media and the internet to get fans all over the world. Use free accounts on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter to get fans. Put your music on your own website and on Itunes. How great will it look to a record label if you have thousands of fans online? They will see dollar signs, which means they will be dying to give you music contracts!
Did you know there are only 12 things you need to know to get a music contract? Take a look at: http://musiccontract.org