There is little doubt that music promotion services have garnered both a positive and negative impression depending on the experience of the artist
or group. Most of the negative issues associated with this form of promotion hinge on providing a quick fix that promises to jump-start careers when all they do is over-promise and under-deliver.
However, there are good music promotion services that exist and provide powerful benefits to artists who use them correctly. Identifying the good ones from the not-so-good ones is all based on looking over their approach and promises. Basically, even the most explosive artists have garnered their fan base over time, so here are six things you need to consider before choosing a promotion service.
Qualifications
A good music promotion service does not accept everyone, which means those that do are simply not very good. This is because some kind of filter is needed to separate out the right ones that fit their services from those that do not. Otherwise, they appeal to no one in particular.
No Top Clients
If you do not see a client list on their website or you do not recognize the clients they have even after you have researched them, then you need to go to another service. You should check out their client list first before signing any contracts and verifying their list is accurate. Otherwise, you will not get much for your efforts when signing with the company.
Work Around the Edges
This means that the company does a lot of busy work, but very little of meaningful effort. Press releases, tweets, and advice on branding is all well and good, but it really does little good unless combined with real work like licensing, ads on the radio, alerting the press directly, posting reviews, and so forth. Remember, you can blog and tweet about your efforts, music promotion services should get you opportunities.
Fake Social Media Likes & YouTube Views
Purchasing “likes” for Facebook and Twitter no longer works and is being cracked down upon severely which means if a service promotes this type of effort you are likely to suffer the consequences. In addition, purchasing YouTube views is also being cracked down on and shunned as an unnecessary shortcut.
Old Fashioned Email Blast
Marketing on the internet has evolved well beyond “email blasting”, a technique that didn’t work well a dozen years ago and works even less today. While email marketing is an important part of promoting your efforts, if they still use email blasts they you might as well pack up and go somewhere else.
Record Deals
The goal of music promotion services is to land you a record deal with a notable company. Anything short of that means that they are offering a lot of promises that they cannot back up. Remember that promises are free and not worth the paper they are written on unless backed up by real results.
A proper service lets you know where you are and what is needed to get you a solid recording contract. Their efforts should be tailored to building up your career so that getting a record deal becomes easy. Otherwise, you should shop around for another service.
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