by Francesca | Nov 23, 2023 | Music Industry, Music Marketing
After all the blood, sweat and tears it took to finally get your new music out into the world, it’s finally time to get as many people to listen to it as possible! From the technical stuff like registering with PROs to the fun stuff like social media promo, here are some of the most important things every musician should be doing after their release goes live. Let’s dive in…
What To Do After Making Your Music Available Online
Register with a PRO
To make sure you receive the royalties you’re rightfully owed, your songs need to be properly registered with either ASCAP, SESAC or BMI. Sadly, we can’t do this for you. Only you as the writer can affiliate with a PRO.
If your music is being distributed, performed worldwide, and you don’t have a publishing deal, your royalties are sitting in collection societies around the world waiting to be claimed by you. If you don’t register in time to collect your royalties, the collection societies will retain the royalties and you will miss out on that additional revenue. That’s why we created our publishing administration service to help you get through this process as easily as possible.
Register with SoundExchange
SoundExchange has paid out more than $7 BILLION in royalties to date. They are the sole organization designated by the U.S. Congress to collect and distribute digital performance royalties for sound recordings. They’re the ones who collect these digital performance rights from non-interactive music streaming on internet sources like SiriusXM and Pandora.
Sign Up for Lyric Distribution
Some distributors have partnerships for lyrics distribution and submission for example: Apple Music, Musixmatch, and LyricFind. With these partnerships, you’re able to streamline and expedite the submission process for faster turnarounds and less hassle.
Update your ‘Artist Pick’ on Spotify
Artist Pick is a great way to highlight what’s important to you right now, whether it be your latest release, playlist, show announcement, or even a Fan Support link. Check out the video below to learn how to do it…
Promote It On Socials
Social media offers an easy and effective method for promoting your latest track. To do so, start by creating a strategy tailored to your goals and target audience. Next, you can engage with your followers by posting your song in Reels, Stories, TikTok’s, and wherever else your fans frequent. You can also collaborate with fellow artists to expand your reach even further. Remember to utilize relevant hashtags, create visually appealing content, and consider running targeted ads for wider exposure. Lastly, always encourage user-generated content from your fans! Ask them to tag you in their own posts featuring your song, and get permission to re-post it on your own profile.
Pitch for Sync
When we talk about sync licensing in the music business, we’re referring to the act of synchronizing a piece of music with any form of visual media. That means getting your music featured in movies, TV episodes, commercials, video games, etc.
Get Some Press
After releasing new music, it’s always a good idea to send your music to music journalists, bloggers, and magazines for potential reviews and features. You can even share it in Facebook Groups, Reddit threads, or anywhere else where people can see your new song and share it with their communities.
In Conclusion…
You worked hard on your new track. Don’t let it get lost in the shuffle of thousands of songs trying to break through this crazy industry. Practicing things like consistently hyping yourself up on socials, optimizing your Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Music, etc. profiles, and everything else we covered above, can make or break the performance of your work.
In the meantime, be proud of all your hard work! Keep going, be consistent, and believe in your talents as an artist.
Good luck!
by Francesca | Nov 2, 2023 | Music Industry, Music Production
If you’re a singer, instrumentalist or songwriter, learning how to produce your own music can be an absolute game changer for your artist journey! In this post, Xylo Aria, founder of the online music production learning platform, Music Production for Women (MPW), breaks it down and gives you everything you need to know…
How To Get Into Music Production As A Beginner
I started as a singer songwriter who was always reliant on other producers to make music and I remember feeling quite frustrated as my ideas often got lost in translation. Learning to produce opened up a whole new world of possibilities that allowed me to bring my musical vision to life exactly as I heard it. To help you out on this journey, here’s everything you need to know about taking your first steps into the world of music production.
First, start with what you have.
It can be very tempting to go to a music store, ask for recommendations, and spend lots of money on new gear. Unfortunately, I made this mistake starting out, and 10 years later sold a few things that I ended up never using! There are very few things that you actually need to produce music. These include a laptop, headphones and some sort of production software.
Start with the laptop that you have if it’s powerful enough to produce. You can get a decent quality pair of headphones for around $100, and oftentimes production software companies will offer free trials of their software for you to get started with. If you want to build from there, you can add an audio interface and microphone to record audio and then a pair of studio monitors to listen back on something other than your headphones.
Find a teacher.
This is a point that I wish I realized the importance of earlier! Many people decide to learn on their own from YouTube, and although this can be an accessible place to start, it can easily take five times as long to learn. In addition, not knowing what you don’t know makes it difficult to know what to search for. Getting some lessons or finding a short course, even if it’s just to learn the fundamentals, can drastically cut down the learning curve.
📚 Pro Tip: MPW runs a free Intro to Music Production class you can register for which is an excellent place to start for someone taking their first steps.
Allow yourself to make bad music.
I often see students who are very new to production feel discouraged, because they listen to pop music on the radio and feel their creations don’t sound as good. This is like comparing a toddler taking their first steps to Usain Bolt in a 100 meter sprint. They are two completely incomparable things!
So as you’re learning, set your main goal to enjoy the process rather than to create high quality music. Understand that what you make when you start will likely not sound good, and that’s all part of the process. As you spend more time with it, you will get better!
Be consistent in your learning.
Setting aside an hour twice a week is much better than setting aside a whole day once a month. Producing music involves muscle memory and understanding your tools. Building consistency in your learning will slowly bring you the familiarity you need with the software over time.
Find a community.
Learning to produce on your own can be a lonely journey, especially as a bedroom producer. When the going gets tough, doing it all on your own might even cause you to give up. Finding a community that understands what you’re going through can be a really useful resource. There are great producer communities around the world, for example Ableton has various User Groups in different parts of the world that can be a good place to start. There are otherwise also many other communities online that meet regularly who you can connect with.
In Conclusion…
Starting your production journey is the hardest part, so just take that first step! Whether that’s downloading a free trial of a software or enrolling into a free class to start. I completely understand the frustration of not knowing how things works and wanting to give up, but as you chip away at it one session at a time, you will see your skills develop and evolve. When you get to the point where you’ve created something you love and can pump it up in your car during a summer’s day drive, trust me… it will all be worth it.
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👀 Want to learn even more?
Claim your FREE music production mini mentoring session with Xylo here. In addition, you can join her mailing list with additional resources right here.
Good luck!
