Are you struggling to get your songs reviewed by blogs and played on radio stations? What could be missing is a professional relationship with those influencers.  Most aspects of the music industry (as in life!) are built on relationships.  If you have established a relationship with the person you hope to review or feature your song, you stand a better chance of success. Here’s how to create that relationship in three easy steps.

Identify Your Influencers

Research and list all the people you would like to review your next release.  Find the blogs that cover your genre of music or music in your area.  Find the reviewers who review new music.  Research all the radio people and media outlets you think you could get coverage from.  Then follow them all on social media (ideally Twitter and Instagram where you can follow as an artist/band rather than an individual).

Consume And Interact

Now you need to start consuming THEIR output. Read the stuff that they write, listen to their shows and tell them that you are doing so.  When they tweet out their latest blogpost, read it and comment back.  When they do a new radio show, connect on the socials saying that you loved the track by XYZ band and that it was a good choice. Join in their conversations on social media.

Make a connection with influencers on social media.

The idea here is that in the same way YOU want someone to listen to and appreciate your music, they want the same for THEIR content. If they can see you doing that, you provide THEM with value and are adding something to this fledgling relationship. You become known to them and you are no longer a stranger who wants something for free. Allow yourself as much time as you can to build this relationship.

Connect and have conversations with influencers online and start your relationship.

Hit Them Up

Now’s the time to send your latest musical offering.  In your communique even if you haven’t built up a huge connection, you can remind them of how you have been involved in their output. “From reading your blog I know you liked the last song by XYZ band, so hopefully you’ll like ours too!”.  Or it could be “When you played that song by XYZ band last month, I was really pumped as we love them to bits, hopefully you’ll like ours just as much”.

You can now take action and ask for airplay/a review, leveraging your new relationship.

If you achieve success and get airplay/coverage thank them on the socials.

Congratulations, your relationship has now reached the next stage and it’s time to do it all over over again with your next release!

Got any questions about this post or how you can better market yourself?

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