by Francesca | Nov 23, 2023 | Music Marketing, Social Media
TikTok’s Music Tab is a great way to highlight your most popular tracks right on your profile for everyone to see. If you haven’t set yours up yet, here’s how to do it…
How To Set Up Your Music Tab on TikTok
About TikTok’s Music Tab
What was previously only available for artists with over 10k followers is now open for everyone! Adding a Music Tab to your TikTok profile allows you to display your most popular tracks or pin latest releases, giving you the ability to drive engagement to your music catalog and convert followers into fans, all from your TikTok profile.
How does it work?
Once you enable the feature, it will automatically populate your delivered music under the music tab, as well as unlock other music integrations like By Artist, Behind the Song, New Release Feature and a TikTok to DSP’s Add to Playlist feature. You’ll also see the “Artist” tag displayed on your TikTok profile.
To enable this feature, artists must do so via a mobile device by following this link.
Good luck!
by Francesca | Nov 23, 2023 | Music Marketing
Your fans show their love and support by interacting on socials, sharing your music with their friends, going to shows, buying merch and so much more. Don’t you think all this effort deserves a little something extra? With exclusive content for only your most dedicated fans, you can not only thank them for their past support, but also give everyone else a good reason to get more involved. Here are 6 ideas for exclusive content any artist can try right now…
6 Types of Exclusive Content For Fan Engagement
Early Access
One of the OG methods for exclusive content in the music industry is to offer early access to upcoming tracks, music videos, merch, and even ticket sales. That being said, one of the easiest ways to do this is through email. Get your fans to sign up for your email list in exchange for this exclusive content. For music videos, you can send a private YouTube link (which also then leads them to your YouTube profile with all your other juicy content while they’re at it). For merch, you can link items right in the email. For new music, private links work too. You can even create a private Instagram or Facebook group chat to share everything in.
However you decide to share it, getting early access to your favorite artist’s latest creation is one of the best feelings there is as a fan.
Private Fan Community Access
Platforms like Patreon and Discord give you the opportunity to create a close-knit community where everyone can chat, share and connect on a deeper level in a private, online space. Not only can they chat it up with you, but they can also connect with each other and create meaningful connections as a community, all through the power and love of music.
If you want to offer different levels of personal content, consider offering different membership tiers with varying levels of access and benefits. For example, you could have a basic tier with offers access to the community and a higher tier that includes additional perks like behind-the-scenes content and merch discounts.
Discounts
Another great option you can offer is a discount on new merch or tickets to your next show. An easy way to do this is to run a social media contest and create a discount code you can share exclusively to the winners through DM’s on Instagram, email, Discord, or wherever you like to send personal messages.
Lyric Sheets and Personal Song Notes
This is one of my favorites, which I have personally received from one of my childhood favorite artists’ at the time. The band sent me a handwritten note from the lead singer with song lyrics from an unreleased song and personal thoughts about the lyrics. (He even threw in an expected, used guitar pick into the envelope. This was over 10 years ago, and I still have that letter in a scrapbook somewhere. That just shows how meaningful something so simple to you can be to your fans.
Personalized Content
From personalized shoutouts and quick birthday messages to even a simple heartfelt DM, something personal goes a long way with your fans. There are a lot of avenues you can go down with this one, too. Consider things like custom songs, personal thank you videos, personalized art/merch, exclusive demos with commentary, and so much more. You can even ask your fans directly on socials what they want from you for more ideas.
Exclusive Events
When it comes to exclusive events you can do, live Q&A sessions are a great option but not the only one! You can also organize exclusive listening parties where you play your new album or unreleased tracks for your subscribers, and discuss the songs or share insights during the event. You can host online songwriting workshops or masterclasses for your subscribers where you teach them about your songwriting process and help them develop their own skills.
If you want to get more interactive with it, take requests to do covers of your fans favorite songs or have fans ask you questions about your latest album, inspirations, or even your career as a whole. TikTok Live is a great place to do this, because viewers can pay to send you Gifts which translate into real rewards for you (similarly to donating bits on Twitch).
To wrap things up…
Offering exclusive content may help you grow your community and connect with your fans, but it does so much more for you as an artist. With it, you can earn additional income, give yourself more creative freedom, run free promo, test upcoming projects, and foster long-term support that will stick with you throughout your career. At the end of the day, this industry thrives on community. Take care of yours, and it will take care of you.
Good luck!
by Francesca | Nov 9, 2023 | Music Industry, Playlists
Back in July, Symphonic Distribution acquired the music industry marketing collective Streaming Promotions. Since then, we’d like to break down exactly what we do and how you can benefit from our services right here. Here’s everything you need to know.
Everything You Need To Know About Streaming Promotions
What is it?
Streaming Promotions is a Marketing Agency that works to push your music organically through relationships. They have connections with over 1500+ playlist curators on Spotify and over 3000 playlists on the platform. They don’t pay for placements or use artificial streams, it’s all based on true human connection.
They start by understanding the client’s sound and focus tracks in a general process – tagging all genres, subgenres, moods, feelings, themes, sensory words, actions, SEO friendly words, similar artists that they believe describes you best. From there, they cross reference all the playlists they have in their network to decide the best strategy for you.
How does it work?
The best way to gain traction on streaming services is to grow monthly listeners. These fans help to grow adoption into algorithmic playlists. These algorithms assist in finding new listeners based on your existing fanbase. The larger the fanbase, the larger the audience the algorithm can find.
Streaming Promotions does this through a couple methods, first of which is through their Campaigns.
- With campaigns, they analyze their vast relationships and create a total marketplace for your project. They reach out individually to each curator and provide information specific to each artist. Then, they email you weekly reports and will schedule a call with their team at the mid-point of our campaign to discuss the progress.
Their next specialty is Song Pitching.
- With this, their promotion team will pitch your tracks (up to 5) and work to get your music featured on Spotify playlists.
Ready to get started?
Despite Symphonic’s acquisition of the service, Streaming Promotions is still a free-standing entity, offering their services to artists and labels world-wide. What’s new is the application of Symphonic’s technology and infrastructure to help double down and continue growing our business, clientele, and services as a team.
That means you get both the power of Streaming Promotions AND Symphonic combined. 🔥
Good luck!
by Francesca | Nov 2, 2023 | Music Industry, Playlists
Spotify offers thousands of playlists meant to fit your every mood. Most of us save these curated playlists for things like going to sleep, working out, doing homework, etc. However, we’re all different. Not everyone falls asleep sleep to lofi beats or gets motivated to kill their workout by Cardi B.
Spotify took note of this, and they’ve implemented a killer solution.
Spotify now offers personalized playlists for each listener based on their particular taste. This means that for those specific playlists, no two will be the same. This applies to some, but not all Spotify editorial playlists, so they’ll be rolling out a blue “Personalized” badge to help signify which ones apply.
Although this seems like a solution specifically targeted towards users, this is great news for artists as well. Now, your music is in front of the best audience and listened to by just the right people.
Back it up
When Spotify first started testing this new system, they found that listeners were more likely to listen for way longer than before. These personalized editorial playlists increased the number of artists featured on playlists by 30%. The number of songs listeners were discovering increased by 35%. After discovering a song through a personalized editorial playlist, the number of listeners who looked for the track on their own for repeat listens was up by 80%. Additionally, the average number of times a listener saved a track went up 66%. Can’t argue with facts, ya’ll.
The Catch
This all sounds fine and dandy, but Spotify determines these playlists through algorithmic processes based on individual listener habits. This means if your song is on a personalized editorial playlist, it might not appear in every user’s personalized version.
The Solution
Please refrain from smashing your guitar in an annoyed rage, artists. Spotify has rectified this by creating unique links to these playlists for artists to share via Spotify for Artists and Spotify Analytics. Anyone who clicks the unique link will see a personalized version of the playlist with that artist’s track in the #1 spot. There is no longer the need to worry about your followers not being able to find your song among so many others in the playlist.
You’ll find these links on Spotify for Artists seven days after the date when your song dropped into the playlist. When listeners click that link, your song will remain on the top of the list for 24 hours. After this, the track reverts to its initial position or removed from that user’s version of the playlist. When your songs get added to one of these playlists, you’ll receive an email notification, so you can make sure to share the good news with your fans.
Never miss a beat, and optimize how you can get the most out of Spotify by sharing your music with the people who will appreciate it the most.
