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- CLASSIC Formula for Music Marketing
CLASSIC Formula for Music Marketing
Revisit the most vital components of your growth strategy.

If you want to be great at music marketing, just remember the word ‘CLASSIC’:
C = Collaboration
L = Leverage
A = Advertising
S = Streaming
I = Identify
C = Capture

C is for Collaboration
This is the easiest place to start and something that EVERY music creator should be actively doing.
I can’t count the number of times I have discovered a new artist because they had a collaboration with an artist that I already liked.
When you collaborate, you naturally grow your network in a meaningful way. If you choose your collaborators wisely, then each new collaboration multiplies your chances of finding big success.
So make sure you pick collaborators who are in it for the long haul.
It takes years of dedication and consistency to build a successful music business, so if your collaborators give up and go do something else, then that part of your network is no longer growing and finding opportunities that link back to you.
L is for Leverage
What I mean here is that you should always be thinking of how you can leverage channels that have already gathered your ideal audience.
Yes, sometimes organic growth just happens, but most of the time people reach the tipping point by leveraging the followers of influencers, bloggers, media personalities, and also collaborators and superfans.
Publicity is a way of using leverage, but too many artists try to use publicity too early. Use digital marketing to start the fire, and use publicity to pour fuel on the fire. If you don’t even have a fire started, there is no reason to pour fuel on it!
I also group 3rd party playlisters into the ‘Leverage’ category. They have gathered an audience of people who want to hear a certain type of music, and you can leverage their playlist to reach more people who might end up becoming your fans.
REMEMBER, the biggest audience is usually NOT the best audience. The most TARGETED audience is usually best at early stages.
Keep targeting in mind as start to think of how you can leverage other people’s channels to find your fans!
A is for Advertising
Yes, I know, it sucks to pay for ads to reach your audience, but that is the reality of most platforms.
Here are a few specific tips that I have seen work consistently for people to build a fanbase:
Use IG or FB Stories and Reels as ads, getting people to swipe up or click into a Linktree or other similar link hub type landing page. DO NOT have them go straight to your Spotify profile. And DO NOT give them embedded previews of your music. You want them to be able to choose whichever streaming platform they prefer as quickly and seamlessly as possible. Spotify has the most market share of all streaming platforms, therefore the majority of people will choose to stream there. For a more in-depth look at this strategy, check out this video I made for HOME Members about How to Get Spotify Followers and Streams.
YouTube Ads. What I love about YouTube ads is that you can target people who are watching specific videos and specific artist channels. And the cost per view is less than on FB and IG. Learn more about this strategy by checking out the post I made on the HOME for Music platform called Youtube Ads for Artists.
Test, repurpose, and repost your old content. For IG & FB Stories, you only need 15 seconds of a vertical video to launch an ad. So you should put in the hard work to do the testing and find your most engaging and ‘high conversion’ 15 seconds and use it over and over again on different audiences. If you don’t want it to look like you are sending people to old content, take down your old content and repost it. You can also re-release old songs that did not get the traction the first time you released if you see that those are working for a particular audience. In fact, I am repurposing this post right now… I originally wrote it almost a year ago, but it is still 100% accurate and relevant. My audience has grown and changed, PLUS it will be a great reminder for those who saw it the first time around!
S is for Streaming
In order to market your music effectively in 2024, you MUST deconstruct the streaming algorithms.
Each platform is different, but since Spotify is the most popular, most artists want to see growth on that platform.
So here is a great marketing secret for understanding the Spotify algorithm:
There is a free website that can help you understand how Spotify classifies all of the music on the platform. According to GitHub:
“EveryNoise.com is a website that expresses Spotify genres across 3 dimensions, primarily heavy/light and organic/mechanic, with a third 'undefined' colour dimension. Glenn McDonald (Senior Software Engineer at Spotify) is the creator of EveryNoise, the dataset contained in this repository has been derived from his work.”
Music marketers use this site to get an idea of the clusters of artists that appear in the genres that they want music to be classified into. So, if I am marketing music that is similar to our Homie Taylor Bickett, I can just type in her name on the EveryNoise site and find out that Spotify classifies her genre as ‘alt z’. If I click into that genre, I can see a cluster of other artists that the Spotify algorithm shows as being similar to her music.
This helps you get laser focused on finding artists to collaborate with and also identify playlists where those artists are being discovered.
If those playlists are controlled by ‘3rd Parties’, then you can usually figure out who curates the playlist and submit your music to them. This allows you to LEVERAGE larger audiences as discussed above.

S is for Social
Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past couple of years, then you know that the most effective platform for artists to market their music is now TikTok.
I won’t pretend to be an expert on TikTok, however I have personally seen many artists gain organic traction on the platform. Success on TikTok typically translates much better into streaming growth than other social platforms and virality on TikTok often attracts the attention of managers, labels, publishers, etc.
Here are my top three guidelines for success on TikTok (and any other social platform):
Consistency, consistency, consistency. Don’t make a few posts and expect major results. Show up every day to make content, and even then it may take months or years to see the growth you want to see.
Don’t try to recreate the wheel. Look at what is working for popular creators, and observe what kinds of posts are trending. Then make your own version of those types of posts.
Get influencers to share your content. This goes back to leverage… building an audience from scratch is hard, but a shoutout from the right influencer can help you grow much faster.
I is for Identify
Taking the last point about influencers a step further, it’s important to remember that influencers do NOT have to have millions of followers to be effective.
Influencers can have smaller engaged audiences. As long as they are authentically sharing about content like yours, then they can be a good candidate. You can identify these people using hashtag research like Gary Vee outlines in his IG growth hacks.
Use the hashtag research tactic that Gary Vee outlines to convert superfans of other artists into being your superfans. Just start casually engaging with their posts and sharing the ones you like most. This will make them notice you and check out your profile too. Don’t be aggressive, but focus on finding superfans online and building genuine relationships with them. If they like the music you are making, they will eventually end up sharing about you as well.
You can also use data about your own social media followers to identify your potential superfans. Who is liking your posts? Who is commenting? Who is sharing? Who shows up at your shows?
I cannot overstate the importance of actually identifying these people.
You have to get specific about who your real fans are, and then you have to convert them into being your superfans. Give them some extra attention and perks.
Make them feel special!
Figure out how to make them your brand ambassadors who share all of the content that you put out. If those people have an engaged audience, this will become a HIGHLY effective growth tool.
C is for Capture
Once you have identified your potential superfans, influencers, and brand ambassadors, you MUST capture their direct contact information.
The easiest way to start doing this is by using a Google Sheet. Here are the most important data points that you need to capture:
Their first name.
Their last name
Their email address
Their phone number
Their zip code or the city where they live
You can set up a Google Form on a tablet at your merch table to capture this information at all of your shows and anywhere else you can capture it… in your ‘link in bio’, through your social media posts, through your pre-release campaigns, through your website.
Start by sending out an email and/or a text every time you are releasing new music or merch. Once you get good at managing your data, you can use the geographical information to let people know when you will be in their area for live performance opportunities.

You would be surprised how much money and new fans you can make offering people private house shows.
By capturing your fan data, you can leverage it to make more money and build better relationships with your fans. So don’t skip this step!
That’s a wrap for the CLASSIC Formula. Make sure you revisit it often and implement each of the components in the formula to build a comprehensive music marketing strategy.
Cheers to your massive growth and success in the upcoming year 🥂