4 Internet Marketing Basics Every Musician Needs to Cover

Quick answer: Covering internet marketing as a musician comes down to four fundamentals: a dedicated online presence separate from your personal accounts, an email list you actually own, press coverage when you have real news, and content that gives people a reason to stick around between releases. None of it requires marketing experience - it requires doing all four consistently instead of picking your favorite one and ignoring the rest.

You don’t need a marketing degree to promote your music online, and you definitely don’t need to be a tech wizard - you need the discipline to treat your music career like a business, at least in the parts that involve getting people to notice it exists. Here are the four fundamentals worth covering, in order of how quickly you should set them up.

#1 - A Dedicated Online Presence

If you’re still posting music updates to the same account where your aunt comments on your vacation photos, it’s time to split them. A dedicated artist account (separate handle, still your real name or stage name is fine) gives you access to business features - ad tools and analytics chief among them - that a personal account doesn’t offer, and it keeps your music-focused audience from wading through unrelated posts to find what they came for.

If you’ve already built a following on a personal account with a few thousand followers, there’s less reason to split it - that following has real value. But if you’re at a few hundred followers, half of them friends and family, starting a clean, dedicated account now is worth the short-term reset.

#2 - An Email List You Actually Own

Every social platform is, at bottom, a landlord you don’t control - the algorithm changes, the platform changes, and your following can shrink overnight through no fault of yours. An email list doesn’t have that problem. Build one with a signup form on your website or a dedicated landing page, and offer something people genuinely want in exchange for their address - see How to Build a Fan Magnet That Actually Grows Your Following for what actually converts. Once you’ve got subscribers, a regular newsletter with gig dates and new releases keeps you in front of the people most likely to actually show up.

#3 - Press, When You Have Real News

A press release works when you’ve got something genuinely newsworthy - a release, a tour, a notable show - not as a constant drumbeat. Written in third person, stuck to the facts, no hype language. See Music Press Release Tips for the full breakdown of how to write and format one that editors will actually run.

Press coverage does double duty: it reaches people who’d never have found you otherwise, and it builds real links back to your own website - which matters for the same reason your website matters at all (see below).

#4 - Content That Isn’t Just “Buy My Music”

Content marketing sounds like a corporate term, but for a musician it just means giving people a reason to pay attention between releases. For most businesses that’s blog posts and guides; for a musician, it’s usually your actual music and video - a behind-the-scenes clip, a cover, a stripped-down acoustic take, a story about how a song came together. The goal is the same either way: give people something worth their time that isn’t purely a pitch, so when the real pitch does come, it doesn’t feel like the twentieth one this week.

None of this needs to be complicated, and it definitely needs a website to tie it all together - see Everything You Need to Include on Your Website for what that actually requires. Social profiles come and go; your website is the one address that stays yours no matter what a platform decides to do next.

Cover these four consistently and the actual mechanics stop mattering much - showing up, week after week, is most of the job.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need separate social media accounts for my music and my personal life? Yes, once you’re past a few hundred followers who are mostly friends and family. A dedicated artist account lets you access business features (ad tools, analytics) and keeps your fans from wading through unrelated personal posts to find your music.

What’s the fastest internet marketing win for a new artist? A dedicated website. Social platforms come and go and you don’t control the algorithm; a website is the one address that’s permanently, unambiguously yours, and everything else (email signups, press coverage, streaming links) should point back to it.

Do I need marketing experience to promote my own music online? No. None of this requires a marketing degree - it requires covering four fundamentals (a dedicated online presence, an email list, press, and content) consistently, which is a discipline problem more than a knowledge problem.

Ready to put these fundamentals to work? Submit Your Music and let’s help you reach more listeners.