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5 social media marketing tips to increase a rappers’ following

Social media marketing for musicians – simple but effective

Most artists especially rappers don’t know how to promote or market themselves effectively on social media channels. The key to success is to create sustainable relationships with your audience. Once you’ve converted a listener to a real fan you can count on his ongoing support and engagement in the future. Here is a short infographic with some basic ideas to help you getting started. Click on the graphic for the full size view.

Infographic social media marketing musicians

Effective music promotion depends on a good social media strategy

Reaping the benefits of good artist promotion and social media marketing is no rocket science but actually very easy to do, there are just some things that one should consider when developing a marketing strategy as an upcoming artist. If you follow these 5 steps you should see an increase of encouragement and attraction happening on all your used social media channels. No matter if you are promoting on facebook, twitter, YouTube or SoundCloud – just remember that you funnel your audience and always have a clear call to action defined.

Share this infographic with other artists that might need also help in social media marketing.

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Artist spotlight

5 surprisingly easy ways to get press coverage for your release

We get many mails from upcoming artists and rappers that ask us for advice and don’t know how to start marketing their music releases or themselves to their target audience.

Unfortunately the marketing strategy is an important factor when it comes to the success of a single or album release and should never ever be neglected. A simple and effective way to promote your new single or album is press coverage by authorities like hip hop websites and blogs. Even if your team is relatively small and struggling you should at least submit your music to some blogs to gain some attention of the media.

To help you out we compiled a list of useful hip hop blogs and sites, that are constantly looking for content to publish on their blogs.

Below are 5 links where you can either submit your music, get featured as the artist of the week or apply for an interview.

Please note that by following these links your marketing is not done – this should be just an orientation and at best the beginning of something bigger.

1. Northstarhiphop.ca

NorthstarHiphop.com is one of the most visited websites in Canada for urban media, covering several upcoming rappers in interviews or artist spotlights.

2. HipHopBloggersUnited

is one of the leading hip hop blog networks and was named one of XXL’s 2009 Top 100 Hip Hop Websites.

3. Backpacks and Traps

Backpacks & Traps is a hip hop blog focused on conscious & political rap. All lyricists and storytellers should definitely take a closer look at this one.

4. Hip Hop N More

Hip Hop N More is one of the biggest hip hop blogs, currently ranked no. 9 in the Digital Power 30 list by the well-respected Source Magazine. They have a Spotlight section where an upcoming artist gets featured weekly.

5. Face2Face Magazine

Face2Face Magazine is a new underground magazine with focus on the hip hop culture, always looking for new talents.

Take these 5 tips as a starting point for your marketing strategy – but don’t stop and remember that marketing is always a continual process – if you consider this you will see results soon.

rapper's success

The 3 most important things that most rappers don’t have

Over the last few months I’ve tried to figure out what are the differentiators between successful and unsuccessful artists and why in particular rappers often lack of these factors. During my research I found 3 certain attributes, that were always to a great extent responsible for the artist’s achievements. Let’s take a closer look at these observations in detail below:

1. Work ethic

And I’m not talking about the hustle of doing constant Facebook or twitter updates here. I’m talking about relentless hard work. This means being absolutely professional in interviews, maintaining a fan base and having an unquestionable image to a unified sound. You can’t expect the release of your first mixtape to be a total success. But maybe your third release will be. This process takes undoubtedly time but the truth is that the correlation between the success and the consistency of an artist is a proven fact. You don’t believe me? Let me give you two examples:

50 Cent flooded the underground rap scene with mixtapes for years before he got his first major deal.

Macklemore has actually been distributing his mixtapes since 2000. It took him nearly twelve years to reach the status that he has today. Therefore it’s not enough to believe in yourself, you also have to work extremely hard.

You want to become successful? Then DO THE WORK!

2. Image

What is your artist image? Is your artist branding consistent? What set’s you apart from other artists?

Most artists I look at can’t even provide a biography upon request – which is the absolute minimum to have available when it comes to telling your story. If the person that might be interested in your music can’t find any background informations about the artist, you make a bad impression and appear unprofessional.

To make my point clear: I’m not saying that great branding alone does make you a great artist at all. If your music sucks and your social media marketing strategy is weak an interesting image will not save you. But having a clear vision of who you are and what you stand for is important for the impression you want to make on your potential audience.

3. Quality content

Your music is your most important asset and THE crucial product that defines you as an artist. It is the most essential piece for the emotional connection you want to create with your fans. Your message, your delivery and your style are reflected in each of your songs and responsible for how your fans perceive you.

Therefore it is so important that your music equates to the industry standards. Unmixed or unmastered songs, fuzzy vocal records or muddy rap instrumentals are fatal and should always be avoided. Ensure that your songs are ready to be released in terms of sound quality – because once they are online, they will be available forever.

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Rapbeats-300x111

RapBeats.net relaunch

RapBeats.net is relaunching its marketplace for urban production music today.

Unlike other music production marketplaces which are difficult to use, have expensive subscription rates or a poor customer service RapBeats.net is the most advanced website for musicians, beatmakers, urban music producers and anyone who need to find a solution to license their music in the best, quickest and most efficient way possible.

Today the marketplace has been substiantially upgraded and now offers the following features:

Producers using the RapBeats.net marketplace can take advantage of:

- their own subdomain
(g.e. http://rapbeats.net/producername)

- flash banners for customizing their profile

- a HTML5-player making beats streamable on mobile devices and tablets, protecting your beats from getting ripped (no MP3 file in source code detectable)

- instant payments via Paypal after purchase is done

- instant shipping of beat downloads to their customers


- an innovative tagging system to sort their beat catalog

- maximum exposure to our visitors on our main page

If you are interested in becoming a producer of RapBeats.net please contact us via mail.

RapBeats.net is developed and maintained by the RAPBEATS.NET UG, a company based in Berlin, specialised in the urban production music licensing field.

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