Creating a Consistent Music Marketing Plan: The Key Tactics for Streaming Growth

There are four direct ways to market your music for streaming growth.

Those are:

1. Collaborations
2. Organic Content
3. Paid Advertising
4. Playlisting
   

Now, two caveats are necessary here.

First, streaming growth is not some be-all, end-all thing. It’s only one thing among many things. Specifically, it is a thing which shows that people other than your mom listen to your music, but that’s about as far as it goes.

Second, yes, I’m being reductionistic. There are certainly other ways to grow a streaming audience: You could open on Taylor Swift’s next tour. You could get your song placed in a Netflix show. You should go up to 50 people at the grocery store and whisper your Spotify profile URL gently in their ears.

But for the most part, things like that are more indirect levers toward streaming. And honestly, they’re harder levers to pull. Especially the whispering thing. People are weirdly protective of their ears.

If streaming growth is your direct aim, then the four tactics above are almost certainly your best bet. All four can be used as primary tactics toward legitimate growth.

If you’re tracking so far, this kind of begs the question:

Which of the above tactic(s) should you use?

I’ve gotten this question a lot recently. So, in today’s email, I want to share how I think about creating marketing plans. The hope here is that you’ll be ready to create one for yourself to grow your own streams.

Let’s get into it.

There are five questions I often ask artists when we’re creating a marketing plan.

1. What are your goals? (A good way to think about this: What outcome would you like to see in six months? One year? Three years?)
2. What is your release schedule? How many songs are you planning to release within the next year, and at what cadence will you release them?
3. How much money do you have to spend on promotion each month?
4. How much time do you have to spend on promotion each month?

And, finally, an underrated but very important question…

5. Which of the four tactics above do you most like doing?

In most cases, the limiting factors you’re working with are time, budget – and, importantly, your own willpower and desire.

In general, while you can build a following using any one of the four tactics above, they typically work best when used in combination.

Think of it like building income streams, or like filling a pool with water – things grow faster when they’re filled from multiple sources.

In an ideal world where you can afford to do all four tactics, here’s how I’d break down my efforts.

If you have more time than money, you’ll likely lean toward collaboration, organic content, and playlisting via your own outreach.

If you have more money than time, you’ll likely lean toward using advertising and playlisting services.

But above all, the guiding principle should probably be: With which tactics can you be most consistent?

If you absolutely hate, say, posting social media content (🙋) then even with all the time and money in the world you might struggle to maintain consistency. And that would crush your chances from the get go, because consistency – not, crazily enough, money – is the foundation for doing absolutely anything well.

So, be honest with yourself. Be realistic about your resources and your own willpower.

If you can only afford to run ads for a month, they likely aren’t worth your money. If you can only grind through 10 playlist pitches before you burn out, then your time is probably better spent elsewhere. If you consider TikTok videos to be a sign that culture is crumbling and you can’t stand the idea of looking at your phone, then you probably shouldn’t bother to drum up a TikTok content strategy.

But if you can commit to doing any one of these tactics consistently, then that’s probably your golden ticket to a streaming audience.

And, again, if you can stack two or more of these tactics together, your odds of overall success rise dramatically.

All right, that’s all I’ve got for today.

If you’ve got any questions about any of this, let me know.

Obviously, I haven’t gotten covered the methods themselves in much detail. That’s partly because the methods will vary significantly according to the practitioner and circumstance. But it’s more because my parents are in town and I have to wrap this email up and get ready for dinner.

But yeah, if you have a question about my line of thinking or about a specific tactic, shoot it over.