Wendy Day breaks down music marketing as a coordinated effort across multiple channels, not isolated tactics. A single push like a video or radio campaign creates short-lived buzz without sustained exposure. Your image and message must stay consistent across everything, and you're competing with video games and TikTok for attention, so you need a distinctive hook.
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Hey guys, Wendy Day here. So I want to talk about marketing today, right? And the thing about marketing is there's, um, there's many ways to market and promote an artist or yourself if you are the artist. And the thing about marketing is because there's so many different ways to get in front of people It's not one way that's going to make you successful. It's hitting them in as many ways as possible that's going to make you successful. And what I mean by that is, um, you can't just do one thing. So there's, um, placing digital ads, there's street team promotion, there's radio if you have a radio song, um, there's playlists, there's, uh, touring. There's just so many ways for you to get music in front of people that you really have to do them all. In fact, to have a full pie, you need all the slices. And I look at marketing as pieces of the pie, like different aspects of marketing as pieces of the pie. And a lot of you out there, when you're working with an artist, especially if you're new to this, um, like you'll go and do one thing, like for example, you'll shoot a video and you'll put it out and your artist will get a little bit of a buzz and it'll last a couple of weeks and then it'll go away. And And then you're like, well, what happened? Like, the artist didn't blow up. And then you'll start asking around, and somebody will tell you, oh, what you need is radio. So then you go and do your research, and you go and find a way to get radio, and you hire a radio promotion person, and you get the song either on internet radio or mixed show radio, or maybe you have a huge budget and you get, you know, you get radio rotation, and you think you're plugging along and everything's going to be great, you're going to blow up and become a millionaire overnight. And then once the radio dies down phone and goes away, nothing happens. You know, you get a little bit of a buzz and then it kind of dies. And then you're like, you know, what? And then you read somewhere online or somebody tells you, oh, you need a publicist because you've got to be on the blogs in order to succeed. So that's what you do. You go and you find a publicist, and, you know, the publicist is pitching all these blogs and Of course, you get the smaller blogs before you get the larger blogs, so you're frustrated because you're getting on blogs that you've never heard of and you're spending all this money, you know, like $1,500 a month to $8,000 a month for a publicist, and you're not getting anywhere. And, um, you know, even with the little bit of posts that you get, you might get a little bit of buzz and then it goes away. And now you're frustrated because you've spent a lot of money and you're like hitting, you know, peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys, but you're not really blowing up. And the problem isn't that you're not doing the right things. The problem is that you're not doing everything at the same time. Your timing is off. You're not, um, you're not getting the message out there and then reinforcing it through reaching people in a different way. So there's no repetition in your message. You're just one more artist that's in the music industry, you know, whoop-de-doo, you know, nobody cares. You've got to build a platform for the artist, and you've got to make people care, and they've got to see you enough in order to recognize and remember who you are. Because there's just so many artists out here, and there's so much noise. Like, you're not just competing with other rappers and singers, you're competing with video games, and you're competing with, you know, um, streaming shows and streaming TV. You're competing with Twitch, you're competing with TikTok, you're competing with all of these things that take away people's attention from your artist. So you've really got to stand out. It's like you're in a room full of balloons and they're all float— they're all the same color and they're all floating at the same level. You don't really notice a balloon until one of them starts to rise above all of the others, or if one's a different color. Like if you're in a room full of black balloons and a gold one is there, you know, it's going to catch your eye because it's so different. But for the most part, in the music industry, you know, we're all the same color balloons. And it's not until one of them rises above that stands out. You know, like if you're in a room full of black balloons or all white balloons and there's one red one, that one red one's gonna stand out because it's different, it's unique. And that's what you need to be. You need to be different and you need to stand out. You need to rise above all of the other balloons somehow. And that's what marketing does. It propels you forward so that people notice you. It can't make somebody like you. It can't make somebody give you money, but it can catch their attention so that if they relate to you and they like your music, maybe they'll support you. And, and that's what you want them to do. You want them— it's like you're a politician and you want them to vote for you with their dollars, you know. So coming back to marketing as an overview, you've got to learn the different aspects that work. You've got to learn about, you know, digital advertising. You've got to learn about Spotify playlists. You've got to learn about You know, how do you market your YouTube videos? How do you market your, your merch site? If you've got a show coming up, just posting on your Instagram and your Facebook is not enough. It's not gonna sell out a show, especially if you're a newer artist. So what are you going to do in order to get people to notice you and to embrace you? And, you know, what content are you going to supply? What's your image? You know, what are people What are people thinking about when they see you? What comes to mind? You know, are you a rapper who makes club music? Are you a fashionista? Are you somebody that smokes weed? You know, are you a stripper? Are you, you know, an entrepreneur? Like, what is your image? Who are you as an artist? And once you figure out who you are, is your social media conveying who you are to people? You know, is it, is it explaining without using words what type of human being you are, what type of person you are, what you stand for? Can somebody say in one sentence who you are and what your image is? You know, and that's really what you aspire to. You know, you need to put out content that conveys who you are. If you're somebody who's, um, you know, really anti-drug, for example, and then all of your content shows you smoking weed or swallowing pills, you're gonna look like the biggest hypocrite in the world. And I'm just using that as an extreme example because your content has to show who you are. If your image is that you're ballin', you cannot climb into a Ford Taurus, you know, and unless that's— there's a reason for it, right? And you better have a great explanation of what reason is. Because if you're not committing to who you are, if you're talking about being really wealthy but you're flashing fake money, or if you're climbing into, um, Bentleys and you're taking private jets and you own a helicopter, you know, and then you're asking a DJ to play a record and you don't even want to buy him a drink, but your image is that you're a multi-millionaire, you've got a serious problem. It's going to be really hard for you to succeed. So over the next couple of days, we're going to talk about different ways that you can market your music. And for those of you that have been watching these as a series, you know, please comment down below what you've done to market yourself that has worked for you. You know, please share. Just like you're gaining insight from these videos, you know, let's give back to everybody that's a part of this. Let's talk about the stuff that works and doesn't work. And I'll kick it off right here. When I have bought Billboard billboards in cities for artists in the past. It hasn't worked. It's been a big waste of money. It's been great for their ego because they, you know, all their friends see their billboard, they see their billboard when they're driving through a certain neighborhood for a month, but there is no correlation unless people know your music already. Like, a billboard's gonna work for Drake, it's gonna work for Lil Wayne, it's gonna work for Gunna because people know who they are.. But if, you know, you're Louie Lump Lump and nobody knows who you are and you have a billboard, they are not going to see your billboard and go check out your music. It just doesn't work that way. It's a waste of money. So, um, comment down below on the stuff that has worked for you and the stuff that hasn't. I'd love to know. I'd love to see what you guys are doing. And, um, tune in over the next couple of days and we'll talk about some different ways that you can stand out and market your music. Thanks for tuning in.
