Music Marketing Plan for Indie and DIY Musicians

This is essential reading.

I came across this the other day and rather than just tweet it, it’s one of those things that needs to be on here for people to go off and read in the longer term, as it’s so important. I was impressed that a group of respected Musician Resource Bloggers had come together to pool their knowledge and skills in such a way. And I am very impressed by the content of what they’re doing.

Spearheaded by David Rose at Know the Music Biz (itself a great resource site), this is what it’s all about, “the goal of the Indie Artist X Project is to develop a basic, actionable music marketing plan designed around simple strategy, prioritization of tactics, tools and a reasonable budget that can be implemented by any indie artist who has the inclination to follow it”

What this means for you as the aspiring artist is that these folks have gotten together and written down a blueprint of their current thinking as to how an artist, aspiring to a major label ethos or fervently DIY, can get themselves noticed. There is a wealth of information and this will be updated over the next four months as they apply their ideas to a currently secret test case artist. They’ll be filing reports as they go.

Read David Rose’s full explanation here – he puts it better than me!

Then you can check out the very cool Google Documents workbook that lists all their plans split into easily digested sections here.

As I said above, I am impressed by the content, and, if you’re not up to speed on all the latest ideas on how to market yourself as a musician or band, then this sets out a very easily followed plan.

As with a lot of what we comment on, I would always caution that before you rush into a new phase of marketing your band, you have a critical re-appraisal of your material and where your band’s development is at beforehand. In order to get the world to take you to its bosom, you need to be really good, really great songs and a polished performance. It’s that simple, but, of course that doesn’t make it easy.

If you can assess your current state of development disp[assionately, and if you’re ready to earn the love of a noteworthy fanbase, then go and read the Marketing Plan and you will get better results than 99% of wannabee rock stars.

These days, if you’re good and you have a web savvy marketing plan and you stick at it, you will succeed on your own terms.