I have seen a lot of talented artists fail at marketing their music.

Great songs, bad everything else.

It’s painful.

And heartbreaking.

There are many potential ways to get it right as an independent artist, but there are several guaranteed ways to get it wrong.

Promoting your work is hard enough without shooting yourself in the foot, so let’s unpack five common mistakes I see artists make.

And how to avoid them.

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Avoiding social media

Independent artists overlook the power of social media to their detriment.

Marketing—no matter the product or service—is a game of attention.

And right now, the attention is on social media.

Too often, the conclusion seems to be that social media “just isn’t for me”.

This is false.

If TikTok isn’t for you, that’s fine, but there are a number of other ways to succeed without stepping too far outside your comfort zone.

Yes, there is short-form video, but there is also long-form video, photos, stories, blogs, and short-form text via Twitter and Threads.

Artists can also join communities and subreddits to discuss and share their work.

You are not constrained to the outlets that make you uncomfortable.

Think outside the box and join the conversation.

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Phoning in the visual

Your music is the most important thing.

But we live in a visual world, and how you present your work is almost as important as the work itself.

The visual component of your song is what captures attention and gets people to stop scrolling.

No matter the platform.

Only once someone has stopped scrolling can they be bothered to give your song a chance.

No stop, no listen.

You must capture attention with your cover art and video content.

You must retain attention with your music.

This is the game.

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Ignoring paid ads

Advertising on Instagram is the single largest force multiplier for music discovery.

When done correctly, massive cross-channel growth flows downstream of this one move.

Music marketing is kind of like the Wild West these days, and there are a lot of bad actors taking a lot of good money from a lot of innocent artists.

This makes it difficult to know who to trust.

I like ads because they are transparent, verifiable, and serve as the foundation for building an actual business on top of musical success (if that’s your thing).

You won’t find that anywhere else.

This is why our entire strategy at DuPree X centers around advertising.

If you’re struggling for traction and haven’t tried ads, I recommend reconsidering.

And if you have tried ads but haven’t quite hit your stride yet, keep going

And put the other four items on this list into practice too.

They will help.

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Lack of research

We’ve all heard it: if your audience is everyone, your audience is no one.

I get it, you like to create different kinds of music and don’t want to be boxed into one specific lane or genre.

Same.

But it’s not reasonable to expect every song you make to thrive under the same artist account if they are vastly different.

That’s just not how discovery works on any platform, Spotify included.

Every online recommendation engine is built on pattern recognition and behavior modeling.

This means genre and artist associations are important for discovery.

So take the time to put together a list of similar artists, songs, and genres so you can make sure your music has some semblance of product market fit.

Understanding the market for your work will help you find your place in it.

If you don’t know what your audience wants, how can you serve them?

And don’t be afraid to create more than one artist project to scratch the itch.

That’s what I do.

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No new music

The best way to market a new song is to release a successful song right before it.

Because the last thing you want is for your track to blow up with nothing in the pipeline after it.

A consistent release strategy is an artist’s best friend.

The more we embrace streaming as the standard, the more powerful your body of work becomes.

The independent artists stacking tracks are the ones winning, not those releasing a song or two here and there.

It may take 20-30 songs before something hits for you.

That’s ok.

We’re playing the long game, focusing on catalog streams, not just a flash in the pan.

The best advice I can give you is to constantly produce new material, batch your output, and compile a list of unreleased music so you can get ahead of the curve and stay there.

I know for a lot of people this feels like work.

That’s because it is.

But being overprepared beats playing catchup every time.

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