As an artist, the last thing on your mind after creating music is how to sell it. You probably just want to release it and let the audience decide. But if you truly want fans to consume your music, spread the word, and buy from you, it's crucial to sort out your strategy. This guide breaks down the essential steps to sell your music like a kingpin and build a successful career in the industry.
Product - The Dopamine
Every artist must understand that music is a product. The quicker this is realized the quicker we can get down to business. Feeling is the base element of good audio dope and the more potent you make your audio dope the easier selling it becomes. Feeling comes from high-quality talent and the ability to create emotional connections audibly.
Samples - The first hit is for free
In order to get people to sample your audio dopamine your initial local target customer base needs free samples. This can be done at an open mic, online via social media content, or by busking on a street corner. Wherever you give your samples away for free do it to the best of your ability with the best customer service and the newly addicted fans will come back wanting more.
Word of mouth - Music doesn’t sell itself to others
Even if your music is great it doesn’t sell itself to other people, people do. Many samplers find great artists in the making but it takes the right setting for a person to tell someone about you. So, you’ll want to prompt them with a call to action to follow you and tell a friend about your music every chance you get. The key at this step is not sales but awareness. The easiest way to make this happen is to give exceptional value. However, this is tough because the value is in the eye of the beholder. So, to make it easier, increase your quality and make the value and quality meet in the middle.
Protection - Copyright
Once you’ve tested your product and the streets love what you have, you’ll want to start packing at least a revolver or a .380. You’re going to need insurance so that your assets you’re toting won’t get stolen. It’s important to copyright the music that you’ve been testing in the streets before you get too far gone on the high that “hey this thing is starting to work”. People will steal hot dope!
Backup - Lawyer
If things are moving pretty fast you’ll want to hire some goons to watch your six. Grab a Lawyer so you can be at the ready for the snakes that are ready to get you in a nasty contract when you don’t yet understand the game. Lawyers are only paid when they do work for you but if you’re moving heavily in the streets they sometimes throw you a bone to help you get going!
Package - Blue Magic is a brand
After you’ve created, tested, and sampled your product it's time to package your product. Packaging is the first step to your brand and quality is at the forefront. Spend some money on your packaging so your hot dope is represented well in these social streets. Remember your music has to live in the space of others that have bigger audiences than you as you’re starting.
Market - The Corner
Now it’s time to take your product to the market to sell. Marketing is more so about placing yourself in the right place for the highest consumption levels. The hottest street corners in the business is social media and you’ll want to develop a space in these digital metropolises. Make your corner look amazing for the tools you have on hand because when you start promoting, “Hey look at me”, people will look at you and pre-judge you on appearance first.
Storefront - Streaming and D2C
You’ll want to create a storefront and place your product there because once you start blabbing your mouth promoting you’re newest hottest audio dope dealer, believers will be ready to buy. D2C is available for those who believe in their music so much that they will take the loss of 100 streams to gain $10 in revenue to make up for the 100 stream loss. They understand that $10 supports 2600 streams at one time. Streaming is for those that want every customer (sampler) to be served at any given time, for the lowest point of entry. For streaming artists, awareness is still at the top of their minds and money will have to wait until later because it is a luxury.
More samples - Promotion
Yes I know we already sampled our product but that was to test it. Now we are sampling it for free and even giving some aspects of it away for free in order to sell its complete package. This is called promotion. We are pushing the public to make a motion to buy our music with the finalized version of the free testing samples we gave away earlier. If the public responds well to our finalized free sample then it’s time to make a sale.
Transaction - The Offer
It’s time to make your first offer. What’s your price $.0038 per stream or $10-$25? Is it possible for the consumer to get added emotional connections with you which is really what they want in addition to getting good music to do what they do with and to it? This choice is yours but it better be worth it.
Transaction - The Sell
Upon making the sale, is it easy for me to checkout? Do I have to take out my wallet and purchase or can I use a payment system already built in? Did you thank your customers and tell them to come again? You did! well, that’s great customer service and they most likely will tell somebody about you in the next 48 hours.
Transaction - The Upsell
For the real players of the game, you know how to say, “But wait there's more”! Only true gangsters are bold enough to do this and this is what separates the men and women from the boys and girls. These are the artists who know how to offer great value and experience to their fans, listeners, and customers. If you’re going D2C You’ll want to heavily consider an upsell strategy.
But the money how do you make money?
The money is made through a culmination of this entire process. It’s actually easier said than done but if you get it right you can make a lot of cashflow.
If I go to streaming I can skip a lot of this, right?
This is true you can skip a lot of these steps by going to streaming but you’ll also miss a lot of money. Money that you need to reinvest into your career to keep going. Streaming makes your sales process lackadaisical and in reality, it has made music creators lazy in the attitude of promoting the music as a whole community as well.
What if I get a few sales but not enough streams?
Sales is hard work and it is not for the weak. On the one hand, you’ll have more money but fewer people hear your song, which means more promotion needs to be done. On the other hand, you’ll have more people who hear your song but have no money. So the goal is to amp up your promotion to balance out the two types of sales platforms.
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If you succeed with this strategy
You will begin to grow fast and the manager that you were seeking to help you out will come along, as well as all the fans you were seeking because you were actually giving them what they wanted in a customer experience that they seldom receive.
If you don’t use the base-level strategy
It’s not the end of the world but your fan on-boarding will be harder and you will become stuck trying to figure out why one part of your sales strategy is working but the other isn't.
Conclusion
If you were struggling with how to sell music and make money for real, now you have a better example of how this will work.
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