A lot of South African musicians have one common problem and that’s getting their music heard. Most artists don’t put in enough effort at marketing their music but they want to blow up. How can you blow up if people don’t know your music? You can produce the best song of the year but it won’t blow up if it is not properly marketed. This is a guide on how to market your music in South Africa. We will focus on marketing your music to gain traction and grow your fan base.
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1) Put more time in your craft
You know what’s hard to market? Bad music, it’s really hard to market bad music, you have to invest into producing good music, producing good music makes it that much easier to market your music in South Africa. Don’t just produce substandard music and expect it to be marketable, it’s hard.
2) Do online marketing for your music
You will never go wrong with online ads; online adverts are very cheap and currently the best way to market your music in South Africa. Especially for artists that are still new to the game or artists that haven’t blown up. Don’t just go to Facebook and leave your links on everyone’s timeline and hope that people download or listen to your music. 11 years will go by while you are doing that without seeing any success.
You can get over 5 000 people to listen to your music by just paying R1 000 on Facebook. You can’t tell me you have never held R1 000 in your life. Spend more money on promotions, that will put you ahead of everyone else in the game, more people will know your music. That will significantly increase your chances of blowing up and being a successful rapper or musician in South Africa.
The best platform to promote your music is currently Facebook, there are millions of people in South Africa who have Facebook. You are probably one of them, open a Facebook page and start paying for promotions.
3) How to make paid promos
There is a reason why people go to university study marketing. It’s easy to make some mistakes when you are making a marketing campaign on social media. The first thing you have to do is open a Facebook page for your music and get people to like it. You don’t get them to like it by inviting them, instead you pay for the likes by making a paid promotion. Try to get at least 1k page likes/followers. This will set you back between R1k and R1.5k but it comes with new possibilities. You will have an audience that you can reach out to at any time, your download links to Audiomack will be seen by more than 500 people.
If you have a lot of money to throw to your music then I would suggest you aim for 5k page likes. That way you will know for sure that your music will be seen by thousands of people, that audience is huge enough to make you blow up. The next step is to promote the music through paid ads, ever noticed those ads of KFC, Nike or Adidas that you see on Facebook when you are scrolling through your wall? Those brands paid to have those ads there, you can also pay to promote your music for as little as R50. R50 will get your ad to about 800 – 1k people. See how cheap that is?
Even the biggest celebrities do paid promos on Facebook, it’s the best way to alert people about an upcoming project or get them to download your album. If you would like to learn more about how to market your music digitally then contact me.
4) Position yourself as a brand
Music is business, the sooner you understand that the better. Branding is super important, you have to sell yourself, especially on social media. Do some competitions and giveaways on Instagram. Host a twerk competition and give the winner some money, do anything to make you that more famous. Go to places, invest in good photography, this article is written with rappers in mind. For people who are into RNB, house and other genres; focus heavily on promoting your music through Facebook.
5) Produce music videos
Do you know how J Molley got famous? He made music videos for his music and promoted them on YouTube. YouTube also runs a paid promotion platform; you can pay to promote your videos.
Conclusion
If you want to successfully market your music in South Africa then you have to put in some money. It’s difficult to market anything without money. Do everything in your power to get some money and put it behind your music. Else, you will have to settle for performing for free to get exposure, which doesn’t work a lot of the times until you get a record label behind you.
Lil jim
29 Sep 2021This information will help lot of upcoming rapper
But sometimes the upcoming Rapper don’t have much money to pay for their promotions that’s why they can’t blow and it is hard to make money in South Africa that’s why they use to leave links on everyone’s wall on Facebook
sibabalwe
29 Sep 2021Yeah that’s true, making money is hard and hopefully those who don’t give up will make it 🙂
M.Z.O
18 Oct 2021Im sure besides music we have other daily jobs on the other side..so lets save some money just to make ourselves rich
sibabalwe
19 Oct 2021Danko!
Xolani Cele
26 Nov 2021Powerful and informative thanks.