In this day and age, there are more producers, remixers, mashup artists and bedroom sound-hackers out there than ever before. So it's important to make your stuff stand out from the crowd. But how should you set about doing this, and getting yourself heard? Let's run over some options...
There are plenty of ways of getting your message out there, but there are also a few things you need to make sure of first, before you start shouting from the rooftops.
To begin, you need to have a point where people can hear your stuff, and get information about your, for when the hits and listeners start rolling in. Five years ago (or even three), this would have been a Myspace page, but since it became a spam graveyard everyone deserted it. Facebook? It's fine for now, but what's to say it won't go the same way? Anyone with a couple of thousand friends on there can tell you how much spam they've been getting lately. Soundcloud is a great place to host your tracks, but it's limited as to how much information you can include, and how much you can customise your site.
Indeed, social media as a whole can change quickly, as new sites come and go. So instead of setting up profiles on every new system that comes along, a better idea these days is to set up a blog. The likes of Tumblr and Posterous offer simple sites that are easily customisable, and easy to post to. From these you can link to a simple 'place-holder' on Facebook that just redirects people to your main site.
On this site, you should have some basic information. Embed tunes from your Soundcloud account and youtube channel, have a press shot or logo in case anyone wants to write about you, include contact details, and a short biography explaining who you are and what you do, any releases you've had. That'll do for now.
So, you're all set up for when the hordes start piling over to your site. Time for step two; getting them interested!
You can start close to home; hit up your friend list on Facebook, tweet about your new site, tell some buddies on AIM. You can even post on some forums where you're a regular, and people will check out your stuff. This is the easy part; all of these listeners are people who would be sympathetic to your cause, as friends who are interested to see what you've been up to, for instance. The challenge is getting people who have never heard of you to listen.
For this, you need an angle. Everyone is a bedroom producer with some tunes, so you need to distinguish yourself somewhat. Send your beats out to all the DJs you can get contacts for (hit them up on AIM or Facebook). Don't be precious about the tracks – people know the score these days and know not to share, so the more exposure you can get the better, and it all helps to make your case. Saying that these tracks have are getting plays from DJ's X, Y, and Z will make them stand out from the next forum post along. When sending out tracks, it's best to aim slightly low; the likes of Skream or Eric Prydz will be receiving hundreds of tracks per day and can't possibly listen to everything. If you start a touch further down the league table you're more likely to be heard, and those DJs can pass your tracks along to their crew, or even some bigger names. Don't forget the internet radio DJs too – these can reach a worldwide audience.
You should also think about getting a good DJ mix together. Putting single tracks up on your site is all very well for the heads, but the people who will make up the majority of your future fans are those who go out to the clubs on a Friday, listen to mixes on their iPod on the way to work, and don't want to be sifting through tonnes of demo tracks. So a good mix is important, and this is another reason for getting your tunes out to as many DJs as you can – because then you can start swapping tunes. This comes back to the same issue of making your mix stand out; anyone can mix the Beatport top 10 together; a mix full of unreleased tracks will be that much fresher. But don't just stop there – can you incorporate a live aspect somehow? Do some special edits exclusively for the mix? Get a local MC to come down and do some hosting? Again, the more distinctive you can make the mix, the more people will want to check it out, so really go to town on it.
Once you've hit up your friendlists, it's time to get onto the blogs. This is going to involve a lot of research – you need to sit down, get surfing, and make a list of blogs and their contact details. Don't just stop at five or ten – spend a whole weekend gathering hundreds of the things. Yes, hundreds. And don't forget the foreign language blogs too! There's a whole world of music fans out there. This is a boring process but it will really help make people aware of your stuff. If you can email blogs individually it will yield better results, but if you don't have time you can mass-mail. But remember to always BCC people in – no-one likes being reminded that they're just part of a big campaign.
In your mail, include details of what you do (and a description of what your music sounds like, don't wait for them to click), your website, and – this can't be stressed enough – a link where people can stream your beats. Bloggers get so many mails these days they can't afford to waste their precious spare time waiting for a MegaRapid.com before they can get an idea of your style. You should keep the blogs up to date with what you're doing – don't mail every week, but maybe every few months – and consider offering a free tune at (say) 192k to those that seem interested. Blogs always like to have something exclusive to offer their readers and it's a good way to persuade them to post about you.
If you're going to go down the 'free tune' route (and it's something we'll look at in a future column) then consider setting up an account with the likes of Bandcamp or Topspin. These services enable you to offer tracks in exchange for an email address, and there are even sites that can set up a free track for people who tweet about it to their friends. This will help get the track out further, or enable you to build up a mailing list so that next time, you can go directly to people who already like your sound.
Don't forget also to go on the hustle for gigs; get in contact with promoters in your city for some local warm-up slots, and look on local forums for details of parties in your area that you could hit up. Bring CDs of your stuff to hand to some of the other DJs, and make sure you shout about it too – if you can help with promotion, you'll be more likely to get a repeat booking.
Self promotion is, as you can see, an awful lot of work, but when done properly it can really boost your profile. We could write thousands of words on it, quite frankly, and many people have done - if you want to go into depth then try reading sites like musicthinktank.com where industry people go into some serious detail about how to do it.
But when you come down to it, the single most important thing you can do to get your name around is to write incredible music. If you're writing tunes that DJs are begging you for, word of mouth will do the rest! So before all this, make sure your tracks are not just up to scratch, but blowing up the dancefloors. That's the most helpful foundation you could have.
Then, once you've got the beats sorted, fire up a spreadsheet and a browser, and get hustling!
