How To Release Music With No Money In 2023

yesterday I received a DM in my Instagram which said I'm about to release music and I'm feeling lost there's so much to do there's so many things to think about I don't have that much money to invest in my release and I've got a full-time job so I don't have that much time can you give me a very simple guide on what to do next I feel like I'm drowning which I thought was really powerful and I totally get it everyone's telling you what to do and you're also looking at everyone else doing their thing and thinking that's all the things I'm supposed to be doing and it gets pretty daunting so where do you start with all this so let's start with this now I've broken out the old iPad and pencil now I am aware that the last time I did this I had plenty of comments below and I'm totally aware that my writing is like a child in the back of a car go over a bumpy road whilst having a stroke but just bear with me on this okay this is your goal this is the strategy of how things work so it starts with music obviously now the music is your asset okay and so the music we use to get at tension notice we use the music to get attention we don't try and get attention on the music we use the music to get attention from there what happens is we use the attention to build a fan base okay to get the fans and then we use the fans we use the fan base to listen to the music and everything goes round like that and round and round and then we use that music to get the attention and it goes round and round now if we start with the music the music has to be housed somewhere so let's say for example it's going to be housed on Spotify or maybe on YouTube wherever you want it to be housed that means we're funneling people to that place okay in order to get attention now the attention is going to be from a multitude of different things now this could be anything from your social media it could be from uh it could be from magazines it could be from Radio Etc it could be from tours it could be from all of these different places and that is going to get you attention and whilst you're getting that attention some of those people are gonna like you so much they're going to come with you on that journey and you are going to turn them into fans and fan base now the key to this bit is where you store the fan base and the fan base is stored in social media now at the moment if you listen to everyone in the world on YouTube they will tell you you need to be on Instagram and Tick Tock and YouTube and YouTube shows and Elon musk's just bought Twitter so you need to be on Twitter the reality is it's way way too much and all if we're following this guide which is if we can get the attention and we can get that attention to be stored in one good platform whether that is Tick Tock or YouTube or Instagram this is the basics of it now the reason why this bit's important social media is because of control this means you have control now if you don't have the fan base stored in social media so therefore you are are in magazines you are on playlists you are doing tours people are enjoying the music but they aren't housed anywhere that is more this section here that is more like a label a label will get the music they'll promote the music and it will bounce backwards and forwards the promise is you don't have control and by that means you don't have control of the return on investment so let's say what happens when your next single or your next EP or your next album comes out or that next merch drop or you're going to go on that tour how are you going to tell these people you're just going to hope for the best you can have the power of of just thought and just say everybody by the way I've got a new I've got a new t-shirt coming out and that's what this is about this is about control that you can keep this momentum growing and so that control of the fan base then feeds back into the music so let's go back to that phrase I feel like I'm drowning I thought that was really powerful and really poignant because there's so many things and I went and Googled advice for when you're drowning it came to three points which was number one stay calm don't panic because when you're calm and you're regulating your breathing and you're not panicking you have a clearer mind if you don't and you are panicking you're going to make bad decisions which you can't afford to do when you're drowning the second thing after that is is getting rid of anything that you don't need jackets shoes bags get rid of them because now you're buying yourself time and and once you've done that the third part of that is to concentrate on the basics so this isn't a competition we're not after technique what we're after here is survival that's the most important thing we're buying ourselves time we're getting survival so we can figure out what we're going to do next and then we can start to move forward now that is the advice for when you're drowning but it's very very similar when it comes to you you're releasing music especially for the first time there's so many things to do what we have to do is stay calm not panic have a clear head then we have to buy ourselves time so that we can concentrate on the basics so I want to give you a step-by-step guide but first let's look at the strategy so the first thing you've got is you've got your music which is an asset now this bit's really important your music is an asset as long as you manage that asset in the same way as if you buy a property and you say oh it's an asset well it's only an asset if you manage it if you have that property and nobody is in it and all you've got is a bunch of bills because you've got to pay your gas you've got to pay your electricity you've got to pay your mortgage but no one's paying you any money for that property well that's not an asset that is a liability same thing with your music if you manage it it's an asset if you don't and you just let it sit there it's just a liability so we've got to think of the music as an asset which means we have to manage your music now let's think of it in terms of this let's say your music is a bucket and so we are trying to put water into the bucket I.E we are trying to get people to listen to your streams we are trying to funnel listens or people across to your music in this instance it's water into a bucket now every time you do something and manage that asset it that is potentially water into the bucket so let's start with a bunch of ideas right this is a little cup of water okay and we're going to pour that in now this is friends and family okay now if you talk to your friends and family and say hey do me a favor go and listen to my track go and add it to a playlist Go and tell your friends about it Go and add it to your social media what you are doing is you are managing the asset you are managing your friends and family and you are telling them to go and do something of which they are pouring a tiny bit of water into the bucket now bear with me with this now you can do the same thing with so many other bits so for example this could be radio every time you get a radio play even if it's just local radio College radio Hospital radio people are listening to it that is a a cup of water might be a thimble but it's a cup of water you're pouring it into the bucket and you can do the same thing with lots of other bits this could be magazines you could also have gigs and tours okay so gigs and tours you can have have playlists you can have another one here which is coming up here which is playlists now every single time you're doing this what's actually happening is you're just pouring a little bit of water into the bucket and you're you're growing or managing that asset now from there what's happening is you are basically getting people to listen to the music and from there lots of those people will have questions they'll say things like who's this I like this song or Who's the artist that sings this song now where are they going to go to find that out they're going to go to social media they're going to go to tick tock they're going to go to Instagram they're going to go to YouTube because they want the visuals they want to see they want to see what is attached to what they can hear now at this point as we were talking about housing the fan base what it means is we're getting people to hear stuff go across the social media and at which point if we're providing value that's when not only are they going to enjoy your value Enjoy your music enjoy your content they're more likely to hit that follow button so it's really really important that the social media as we had before it we aren't thinking of it as a label just go and listen to the music leave me alone we're using the music to funnel them into social media whichever platform and then we're providing value in social media so that when they're there they hit the follow button they get more the algorithm showing them more stuff the more they're seeing the more they want to see the more they want to see the more they hit the follow button and they grow into that fan base and from there that's monetizable so that's the basic strategy and I know there's lots of questions like how do I get radio how do I get into magazines how do I get on playlists what is the capital of Peru I know lots of questions but let's look at basic strategy of the things that you need to do because what we're trying to do is buy ourselves time again this is not a competition this is about survival to start with and then we can find our feet then we can start to grow so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to buy ourselves time now what that means is when it comes to your release you are going to leave three to four weeks before you release anything after you have the Final Mix and the final master of your track once you have it and you say this is mine I have the actual finish thing I'm going to upload it via the DSP via whichever aggregator into Spotify Etc you are going to give yourself at least three if not four weeks now the reason for this is because again don't forget buying ourselves time you say I've Got the Music I'll just whack it on Spotify now pressures on straight away what are you going to do how are you going to promote this I haven't really thought about it I haven't set anything up we need to buy time apart from the fact that other people like playlists and radio and magazines they're expecting to say Well when is this coming out and if you say it's already out get cracking it's just too much pressure so and also things go wrong things go wrong when you're trying to upload stuff so from this point of view first thing is you buy yourself time you buy yourself three to four weeks and that gives us the time to start to piece everything everything together imagine jumping out of a plane and someone goes as you're about to jump out if you've fixed all your parachute you've done all your checks and you go nah I'll just figure out on the way down it's not smart same thing with this we want to make sure that everything's in place and that will take away that anxiety for your releasing music now number two is the setup is key before we start jumping out of the plane before we put music out is everything set up now what I mean by that is on Instagram Tick Tock YouTube is your hero picture looking good is your bio making sense do you have a link tree sending everyone to all the places especially to Spotify or YouTube or where you want to send them do you have banners app on YouTube all of this stuff is the party and if you don't have the party set up what means is it means you're getting the attention but then people are coming in and saying that's not really what I wanted and they're leaving so we're missing that opportunity so the setup is really important and also when I say have you got a hero picture and a bio I don't mean is it there I mean are you proud of it does it represent you do you look at your hero picture and just say oh that's really good do you look at your bio and it says that is everything that sums me up if not go and have a look at lots of other artists that you like look at their buyer look at their hero picture and start to come up with ideas so that you can invest the time and effort into making your party look good number three decide on your routine notice we haven't released anything yet this is far more important your routine of what you're doing on a kind of daily slash weekly basis will help you to build your music to build your asset so go into your calendar figure out what time you've got and start start to allocate slots so for example we talked about friends and family we talked about radio we talked about playlists well what if you allocated yourself 30 to 60 Minute slots in different parts of the week so you could just focus on that one thing if I said to you you've got 30 minutes I want you to contact all your friends all your family and I want you to say here's the link do me a favor go and listen to this track go and add it to a playlist in Spotify and go and send it to any friends that you've got you could do that it's not scary if I said to you I want you to spend an hour on writing a press release and then sending it to four magazines that you have done the research for you could say I could do that that isn't that hard but we're starting to decompartmentalize everything then when it comes to allocated time in your calendar this isn't about posting it's not about posting five times it's about how much time have you got for creating that is more important posting will take care of itself if you're concentrating on creating number four don't overthink the content we are going to make really good content because we're gonna make it around you the superhero and the asset which is your music so all of the time I hear I have no time for social media you want me to post every day that's ridiculous this is a social media marketing Factory and it should be about the music well let me tell you something last week I went out with an artist and I made a month's worth of content a month every single day A month's worth of content in one hour which is a separate video which I will work on and if you said I bet it wasn't good well I can tell you that in that one hour of content we put out a couple of pieces of content and on day two he had 500 000 views on his what was his third or fourth Tick Tock imagine that half a million views on his third or fourth Tick Tock and we made a month's worth of content in just 60 minutes now in doing that you're batching content you're spending time on making sure you get as much content on that hour two hours as possible so that you don't need to do it on a daily basis and number five understand compound interest I know this is not a financial Channel but it's a very similar thing compound interest is interest upon interest so when you have your money in the bank the interest that it makes a cruise and then what happens is you get interest on top of the interest which means things grow faster and faster kind of like exponential growth if that's another way of putting it now it's the same thing with your content every single time you get that extra view that extra view at that extra follower that extra subscriber that could be one extra little bit of momentum so that the next piece of content might go a little bit further and the one after that might go a little bit further so we're after this compound interest what that means is your first piece of content might get 300 views but some of those 300 views might hit the follow button and because of that the next piece of content might get 320 views but the one after that won't get 340 it'll get 450 and then 700 and then 1500 and then 2 500 and that's the way the algorithm starts to play because the more people who are into your content the more that they will watch and push the view timer the average view time and they'll push your content out so we are after that that compound interest and every single bit goes back into where we started which was you're using the music to get attention and then we're using the attention to build the fan base and then we're using the fan base to listen to the music and so on and so forth so if you're feeling a bit lost and you're stuck let's keep this really really simple have you finished the music if you have finished the music and it's ready to be uploaded somewhere then buy yourself three to four weeks so that you can plan and get your ducks in order and then how do you use the music to get the attention not how do I get the attention on the music that's where everyone falls down you say I have new music and everyone says I don't know who you are I don't care whereas if you say right hang on a minute I know people like music and I know I can find my audience so let me use the music and I can use the music to get a gig I can use the music to get an interview I can use the music to get on a playlist I can use the music to make social media organic content to get organic reach so that people are saying hey I like this song and I like you but I use the music to get the attention now if we're doing that regularly enough the attention will slowly build the fan base and that will build and compound interest that will build the fan base exponentially over a period of time which will then keep on growing your music and around and around that goes in a world where there is so many things that you can do it does not mean that you are supposed to or that you need to do everything all you need to do is make good music that people hear and then you can look after those people time and time again in order to grow your passion and grow your music now if that helps obviously we've got DK music Business Academy which has got a seven day free trial just click the link below but if you want more information then you need to click this video because the this video is where it really goes into depth you know get your popcorn get a pen and paper and click this video otherwise thanks for watching good luck I'll see you again soon

Channel: Damian Keyes

Views: 132,450

Keywords: how to release music, how to release a single, how to release an album, how to promote music, how to release music with no money in 2023, how to build a fanbase, how to grow a fanbase, how to get fans, how to build on Spotify, how to get more spotify streams, how to release my music, how to release music with zero fans

Id: JaqTxw77Uno

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2022