Nov 11 Branding & Online Promoting for EDM Artists (BPMstr Week 5 Update)

EDM Branding and Promoting: Course 101

I can’t say that I can rest easy now, but I feel that I have achieved a lot in 5 weeks since my EDM site – BPMstr.com – went live. The most important question I asked myself last week is, “What is my EDM niche?” And the answers helped me define my first marketing campaign. Next, my electronic music site is fully operational (and now has the cool “black look”), and my social networks are set up and working. During Week 5, I properly configured both of my YouTube channels (it’s very important to add proper tags to your videos), and last – but certainly not least – I released TuneDome EDM Network…. TuneDome is free non-profit hub for EDM enthusiasts – from producers and DJ’s and managers to devoted electronica fans to get inspired, to learn, to stay in touch, to generate new ideas, and to promote cool songs/tracks and new concepts in the EDM world. So, it is also no surprise that I spent time and used my college knowledge of marketing: the icing on the cake is at least as important as the effect that the cake produces on your hungry taste buds (read on).

Several EDM Videos Released This Week

Be sure to check out more ADE 2012 videos I released during Week 5 – these are a small fraction of what I recorded in Amsterdam, and I will keep pushing out more in the coming weeks. Enjoy.

More About my Quest to Become an Electronic Music Maestro

If you are not in the music business, you just read the short version of my weekly report, and you can skip the rest of this article. But if you are an aspiring DJ and want to succeed in EDM beyond playing gigs for $50 a night, below you will find some useful advice.

Branding for EDM Artists

So, Week 5 was a sigh of relief for me in a way, because I can finally see all my links and buttons working between the BPMstr.com website and all my social pages elsewhere. The first thing I did was to create proper images to represent myself properly on the Internet as an EDM DJ and producer. This included my Facebook Fan Page cover image and picture (both for TuneDome and for BPMstr), my twitter background and picture, my Google+ cover image and cover, and my SoundCloud account. If you click on my social buttons in the upper right of this page, you will see that each image on the linked page has a photo or picture element and a tagline: this is important to deliver the message about you to those who might be – or become – interested in your electronic music art.

Promotion for EDM Artists

There are two ways of promoting yourself in the exploding EDM scene and to promote your electronic music. One is passive and one is active, and both work well (the word “passive” isn’t meant to sound cheesy).

The Passive Method… this means to sit and wait until people find you, and this method is perfectly legitimate and IS valuable. This is what happens when, for example, you upload a video of yourself playing or DJing to YouTube and wait for people to notice it because you tagged it correctly using keywords; this also happens, for another example, when you have a website and hope that people will find it because you configured it correctly for all the related keywords and meta-tags, and so it is now relatively easy to find on Google and Yahoo. There is nothing wrong with the passive method, again, but for it to work you must do a LOT of homework: I recommend that you read my previous weekly updates to learn more about building your online identity.

The Active Method… this means that you reach out to people that represent your audience and tell them, ask them, or otherwise entice them to go directly to you – to your site, to your Facebook page, etc. In the perfect world, this is the equivalent of making 6 billion business cards and giving them to every person in the world. But in the real world, you must be a little more efficient. You need to sort out those who are potentially interested in your electronic music from those who are not. In the world of marketing, this means defining your target market, or target audience. Who are they? Brunette nine-year-olds? Retired executives in North America? College students in Bangladesh? Or females who speak Spanish? Ask yourself bluntly and plainly: “Who is most likely to dig my music?” And then go to them. Do your research, find a few people who like your tunes, and then reach out to them on Facebook and or by phone or by email and ask them to follow you AND to tell others about you. This WILL work. It will take time, but this method will work and will translate into a following.

Once you have a small following, be consistent in generating new music, and be methodical and letting your audience know every time you have a new EDM track out: “Hey, John, I have a new track – check it out and let your friends know!” It doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? Well, but most people aren’t doing it. Why? Doesn’t matter! What matters is that if you do this, you will get somewhere with your electronic music career and they won’t.

Mastering My Tracks 2 and 3

I spent about 10 hours this past week mastering my two next tracks. This is a tedious process, but I love it. Izotope Ozone is my friend, and Ableton is my King.

Plan for Week 6

1. Find some available naked chicks that live nearby (OK, this is not in my plan – I do this every day)
2. Release at least 2 more Videos from Amsterdam Dance Event
3. Finish mastering my songs 2 and 3
4. Cover tutorials for FinalCut Pro (to help me make better music videos)
5. Actively promote TuneDome EDM Network (join it free and Win an iPad!)

That’s about it for week 4. Like this post? Subscribe! And please “remember to like” and share a couple of things from this website with your friends – my social links are now everywhere on this site!

Cheers ~

BPMstr | The Artist of the Tempo