Spring Training Music Marketing

Posted on 02 March 2010 by gregrollett

I wanted to share a quick video with you today on getting back to the fundamentals of your music career and music marketing in general. I’ve been hearing from a lot of musicians about how to take their career to where they want to go and many times they are not even ready to present themselves to the world.

Check out the video and I’ll have some more insight after the jump:


Spring Training Music Marketing

So in the video, I compared your music marketing to baseball’s spring training. Every March major league baseball players descend upon Florida and Arizona for spring practice and spring training. They use the month to get back to fundamentals, work on their strengths and get into playing shape. They go through brutal workouts, blazing heat and play games at 1pm everyday for a month to get up for a 162 game season.

And these guys are getting paid top dollar.

Imagine if you took the same approach to your music career?

Get into spring practice for your own music business. Work on the fundamentals that will prepare you to have a great year. In the video I mention the 4 key areas to focus on right now, before you go off and work on any marketing tactics – get these down:

  • Your Music
  • Your Website
  • Play Shows
  • Start Building Your List

Your Music

First thing is first. If your music aint good, no one cares about anything else. And if your music isn’t in the formats that your fans need to listen to it in, it’s the same as not existing at all. So, go record. Then get your MP3′s, WAV’s, losless and other formats for all the places you are going to need to send them. Get feedback and get your music into your fans hands as quick as possible.

Your Website

This is the broken-record portion of this post. Get at least one domain from GoDaddy and get hosting from HostGator. Quit relying on 3rd parties to hold the most important thing about your business – your data. Go install WordPress, look for a theme and have your site up today. Not next week or next month – today.

Play Shows

If you really want to be a player you need to play shows and in order to get top dollar at your shows you need to have a great show and draw a crowd. Common sense right? Well then, stop waiting for the big payout and go play out. Open-mics, jam sessions, MC battles, beat showcases – anything to start developing a crowd and getting in your practice.

Start Building Your List

To me, this is the most essential business move in the game right now. Go sign up to Aweber, FanBridge or ReverbNation and start getting every person who says they like your stuff to signup to your list. No excuses, no waiting. If you don’t collect the data now, they will be gone.

What Else?

What else can you add to the musician’s spring training? What are some fundamentals that you need to be working on to execute in your music business? Let’s chat in the comments.