5 Great Tips for Street Team Marketing-Music Ideas for Hiphop R&B Artist

1. Paper the Heck Outta Major Events – Make some great black white fliers of your band on semi-glossy paper. It cheaper than doing the post cards so you can paper( “papering=pass them out) the heck out off all kinds of great events where you know there will be a crowd. Make sure it has A Photo of the band or great graphic, your website, your myspace page, and dates and venues of your coming shows. We did this at the Greek Fraternity and Sorority Fest one year. A few of our friends were going and they said that would pass out fliers. We had people saying they saw us everywhere and we weren’t even there…crazy.

2. Tell Everyone About Your Music – word of mouth is still a great way to “get the Word Out”. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, just tell them. Verbally invite them to your gigs and ask that they make a commitment to bring a few of their friends with them.

3. Promote At Radio Street Team Events – Show up at local spots where there will be a radio station promotion and pass out CDs or fliers. You know you’ll hear on your favorite radio station anounce where their street team is going to be, and at what time and day. Plan to be there, too. Give a CD to the Radio Street Team, and pass out fliers and free CDs to the people that showed up for their promotion. It’s like having free radio advertising for the crowd type of crowd that likes your type of music IF the radio stations music fits your style.

4. Email Blast – Your street team should each have a list of friends and family that they can send emails too regardining upcoming shows, or just about you as an indie artst in general. These should not be spammed messages to people they don’t know but warm contacts of their friends and family. They are just “sharing” with them information about you, their favorite artist, and what they are doing with you, and here is what you look and sound like…

5. House Concerts – Perform at one of the Street Teams members’ homes, or the home of one of their friends. You’ll be able to really connect with your warm market, people who know they are coming to hear and see you perform, and are open to having a good time. They also may know a little more about you and your indie music because they probably visited your website before coming to the show. This is also a great opportunity to ahve street team members gather people in the audiences email address for you mailing. You can also set up to sell them your CD and other merchandise.

Next, contact any local or regional newspapers or entertainment type papers in your area. Most of these newspapers have weekly band listings in their entertainment sections. Email or call the papers until you find the proper contact and send them all the info they request. Usually you’ll want to send Show Place, Date, Time, Band Name, and Cost of show (if applicable).

Lastly, search for concert calendars on the internet for free listings in the city or regional area your playing the gig. Many concert calendars will list your shows for free. Find some of the more popular ones that may get more internet traffic. Do a search on Concerts listings, events listings, free band listings or something of this nature, and add the city to the search.

Above are a few ideas for inexpensive or free self promotion of your band. Try to use all or most of these tactics for every show you self promote. Remember, the more fans you get to the show the better the chance you’ll have of getting booked there again and building a career in that city or region of interest. Good Luck, and get out there and self promote your indie music.

Turn to Tunecore to get your songs on iTunes

I was so excited when I finally learned about Tunecore.com. At first I had only heard about CDBaby.com as the only place on the web that can distribute your music CD and that they also were now getting to the digital outlets…but they were taking a 10% fee on each download. That’s not bad. BUT, then I heard about Tunecore and had to check out how it worked.

When you sign up for Tunecore.com, they distribute either one track, several tracks, or a whole song for you in digital format to iTunes, Rhapsody, IMVU and more places where fans can dowload your music. The great thing about Tunecore, which is different than CDBaby.com, is that you get to keep all of your roylaties. Now, I don’t think Tunecore sells physical CDs like CDBaby does, which is actually an advantage that CDBaby has, ’cause I do believe that fans often do want to “hold” a copy of a CD of your music BUT its great that with the digital downloads you have the choice of collecting all of your royalties.

Here is another BUT…Tunecore.com has annual fees for using their digital distribution service for your music.

When you submit your music, you can choose to pay a submission fee of 99 cents, and then 99 cents for each digital store you want that song to sell in, and then a $20 per year storage and maintenance fee OR you can choose to pay a flat fee of $9.99 with all stores included for one track and the $20 per year storage and maintenance fee.

I think you need to choose your best songs before you decide to place them for downloading on Tunecore.com and then market the heck outta them. That way, all their fees will just be the cost of your doing business with your music. I”ll be loading some of my stuff up soon if its not already up before you read this. Let me know what you think about Tunecore.