Would you like to know how to promote your music in order to gain a MASSIVE following of dedicated fans? The fact is, many musicians put a great deal of time into recording music only to become frustrated when they are unable to promote it effectively and gain fans. As someone who mentors musicians to achieve success in their music careers, I am asked about this problem on a frequent basis. In order to become a successful musician, you must understand how to promote yourself effectively to attract new fans to your music (and music career).

However, the answer to "How do I get more fans and promote my music career?" is not easily found by taking a highly generalized approach that ‘seems' to work for other musicians. At any given moment, you (or the band you play in) may be struggling with various unique challenges that would require that you take specific actions in order to get more fans or strengthen your promotional efforts. That said, no matter where you are in your music career and what challenges you face, you have 3 goals to achieve if you want to both gain more music fans and promote your music:

1. You need your music to be heard by more people.

2. Once someone listens to your music, you need them to help support you in some manner (buying your albums, watching you live, purchasing any merchandise, etc.)

3. You need to transform your fans into totally fanatics who will use word of mouth to tell all their friends about you and your music.

Regardless of what your specific musical goals are in the music business, the three goals listed above are the main factor for building a relationship between you (as a musician) and your fans.

Even though these goals are separate from one another as specific achievements, they are all connected together. Once you are able to reach success with one of them, your potential to achieve the others with increase greatly. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you can make progress to take your music career in the direction you want.

To successfully promote your music to more fans, you must begin to think in a creative and strategic manner rather than simply taking random isolated actions (most bands make this mistake continuously). In other words, instead of looking for a general, all encompassing formula that you can copy to get more fans, you must train yourself to think like a successful professional musician. When I train musicians in my music careers development program, I show them how to creatively come up with ideas to get more music fans in a way that relates to their own specific music career. When you understand how to think in this manner it will be much less difficult to effectively promote your music.

To get you on the path to gaining more music fans and expanding upon your current music promotion efforts, I will now show you various things that you can do yourself to accomplish the three goals mentioned above. However, before I delve into this topic, take the time now to measure your current music career promotion abilities by filling out this free assessment on the topic of how to promote music.

Ok, now that you have finished the assessment above, continue reading to find several actionable steps below that you can use to promote your music. While you are reading through them, do not focus as much on the actions themselves; instead think creatively to see the ideas and thinking ‘behind' the actions to understand why they are so effective. This will keep you from simply ‘copying' them and will lead you to come up with ideas that you can benefit from in your specific music career situation.

Music Promotion Action Step: Get more people to listen to your music.

Solution #1: Join other musicians in participating in a compilation CD. After you have released a compilation album, you have achieved a couple of important things. First, you have successfully produced a record that contains your own music. Second, not only have you gained a tool to promote yourself to your fans, but you have gained a tool that potentially promotes you to every other musician's fans on the album (with no additional effort on your part). Remember, the goal of this is not to make money directly, but rather to use the album as a very inexpensive tool to promote your music (and the music of the other musicians) to more people on a larger scale. You can also apply this idea as a way to leverage your own album releases and products to a bigger list of fans. The idea of "leverage" (using one action to gain multiple benefits) is absolutely critical if you want to achieve a high level of success in your music career. This is something I help members in my Music Careers Mentoring Program develop and refine.

Solution #2: Team up with the other musicians in your local area. Many musicians make the mistake of considering all other local musicians as "competition" rather than a great opportunity for leverage. Instead of doing this, work together with one or more bands in your area (with a similar style to yours) to get more fans to see you play and listen to your music. One idea to help you do this is to set up a performance with you and one or more bands at a specific club/venue in a combined effort to bring in as many fans as you can. By doing this, you will not only build rapport with the owner of the place you are playing at (because you'll be bringing in more business), but you will gain the chance to promote your music to the fans of other bands. This idea may seem like common sense, but you'd surprised at how many bands never think about this (or actually go through with it). Additionally, a lot of bands do not get much out of this idea because they play with bands who are of a totally different musical style or work together with bands who do not put out a good effort to promote the show to their fans…and the main benefits they seek to gain out of the performance are lost. If you are collaborating with a band who is not putting out much effort to contact and attract their fans, simply don't play with them. A popular example of this idea is how smaller bands will approach bigger bands and request to perform as an opening act. However, it is not necessary to find a highly successful band to make this work – simply look for musicians who are dedicated, ambitious and willing to take action.

Music Promotion Action Step: Get your fans to take the next step

Solution #1: Give people a good reason to become your fan AND purchase your music. People who are successful with their music promotion efforts understand how to get their fan base to purchase their music rather than download it (without paying) while also making them into loyal, returning customers. One way to do this for yourself is to create a valuable incentive that can only be attained by the people who actually buy your music. In order to effectively do this, you should create something that is not easy to reproduce digitally. For example, some kind of merchandise item, a backstage pass, a special event ticket, etc (that is only available once the fan can prove to you that he or she purchased your music) are some great methods for achieving both of these goals at the same time. The point here is to get your to understand the idea of using one method of music promotion to accomplish multiple goals at the same time and bring you closer to your fans.

Solution #2: Know and understand who your current fans are and what they want. The best way to get the most out of your music promotion is to promote yourself to those who already know you and support you anytime you begin a new project in your music career. Most musicians worry about not having enough fans for their music, but at the same time they don't really know who their fans are or how to get into to contact with them. Rather than figuring this out, these musicians spend a lot of time promoting themselves to the general public. The truth is, there is certainly nothing wrong with promoting music to the general public; however, this method for advertising is expensive and very time consuming. That said, make sure to find an effective way to stay in contact with your fans at all times. This will greatly improve the results of your promotional efforts.

Music Promotion Action Step: Transform your current fans into FANATICS

Solution #1: Put together special gatherings or events that immerse your fans in your music and engage them on a whole new level (in contrast to merely listening to your music or watching you live). There a nearly endless ways for you to do this – limited only by your own willingness to be creative. However, remember the key is to develop your relationship with your music fans.

Solution #2: Focus on rewarding your most loyal fans with unique gifts that casual listeners don't have access to. This concept can be used together with the first point described above or as an idea by itself. If you'd like for your music fans to take a particular action (for example bringing more people to your performances or to purchase your albums), focus on finding something of high value that you can offer them that goes beyond the scope of music. (Remember: Your music fans do not necessarily want free money or t-shirts…think of something specific to offer them)

As you can tell by reading the information in this article, the more specific and detailed you get when coming up with strategies for getting more music fans, the easier it is to determine the exact steps you need to take to make it happen. Instead of focusing ‘only' on your music to build up a following of music fans, work on developing the additional "pieces of the puzzle" mentioned throughout this article. Once you begin doing this and expanding the promotional efforts for your music, it will become much easier to gain music fans and achieve success in your music career at a faster pace.

Start getting more music fans by assessing your current music promotion skills in this test about how to promote music effectively.