Things are rapidly changing in the way music is consumed so here are some top tips from New Age Music Planet Promotions. Mostly, artists waste their money on expensive things that don't cut the cheese. Here are some brief tips.
Don't - Paid for Music reviews - If you are on a budget these are an expensive waste of time and money. We stopped doing them. Nobody reads them, most of the DJ's we send music to are too busy to read them. They are not objective and just tell you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear, a bit like blowing smoke up your own arse. People post them on facebook but nobody reads them, maybe one or two but they have minimal to no impact as a return on Investment and you are better spending your money elsewhere unless you have too much of it and don't care. They are just ornaments that nobody pays any attention to. New Age sites post a lot of them but not a lot of them are read.
Don't - Pay Radio Stations Directly to be on their meaningless charts or playlists
Some new age radio stations do not publish their daily listening figures and a lot of listeners will be just other musicians listening to the music they paid for to be on. It is called payola and I have never heard a single story of return of investment for paying stations directly (it is not supposed to be legal) for plays and being on a chart that only other musicians read and again is highly unlikely to lead to increased sales or streams. Buy some cake or Afghan goat hair underwear instead. Better Value for money. We never charge for adding music to our mixcloud playlists or radio shows. Don't do it. Use our affordable service instead to send to real stations with real music listeners.
Don't - Pay over $2000 for radio promotion that offers ZMR reporting as that is dead in the water and only around 20, less I think report to it. - One good method to waste a large wad of cash is to get 200 CD's printed and on top of that spend over $2000 on radio promo with reporting to ZMR. They are pretty much dead in the water, hardly anybody reports to them and their charts are three months behind. Boasting about being on them is meaningles as they are not a real reflection of what is being played out there and I have spoken to numerous musicians who have done this, charted high and either lost money or almost broke even. Only buy CD's if you know they will sell, and non plastic so they don't end up as fish food. Send digital files to radio. Charts and awards without prizes are useful for a showing off but not for turning your music into $$ for your music career
Think very carefuly about paying radio promoters $2000 00r $3000 for radio including reporting as there is very little reporting they can report. As mentioned, hardly any stations report back to ZMR, we know because we were Sponsers, so there are charts are pretty much meaningless and always three months late. Times have changed. Software promoters use to report airplay generally does not include the new age stations so your tracks dont or rarely show up on the reporting reports. It isnt worth the money. use pur service instead that does not include this expensive and fairly useless addition and save hundreds of dollars.
Awards are also useless unless you win something of cash value or something that directly assists your music revenue.
Don't - Buy Spotify or SoundCloud streams or playlist spots - They come from bots, even the ones who promise super dooper playlist places. They can damage and penalise your account. I can see on our own distribution service who is paying for these scams with sophisticated stream detection software. The will come from countries that are the kind of places you would like to send your mother in law to and will not make you money but may get your artist account closed. Don't by YouTube streams either, however some labels buy good high retention views to qualify for YPP and video ranking and only don that if you know what you are doing.
Do - Focus on Streaming, SoundCloud and Radio - The money you save by not doing doing any of the above you can spend on opening a monetisable SoundCloud account (that company pays me up to four times more per stream than Spotify) it is an underused and misunderstood platform that will help you reach new listeners whilst earning revenue. We Suggest our SoundCloud and SoundCloud management promotions. If you enjoy filling out the Spotify pitching form, do that and spend the money you save on the Dont's on hiring a SEO company to rank your music and videos on Google for genre specific keywords.
DO - SEO - Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most important methods of getting streams, hence cash. I have generated over 50 million views and streams using ranking high for musical keyword on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Getting on Spotify and Apple Editorials etc is great but SEO is underused by almost everyone and can make you more money than millions of streams on Spotify if you know what you are doing.
Do - Wear Your underpants on Your head
Paul Landry, Oxford, England, March 2023