Seven Days Of Sound: Promotion, promotion, promotion (free mix inside)

High Eight returns with a delve into what happens once that dancefloor banger is out there in stores, and how it makes it into the consciousness of the buying public.

There’s no doubt that the focus of a release has to be the track itself, but it all counts for nothing if the people don’t know about it.

Independent labels like my own Re:Connect don’t have huge budgets for promotion, so the main way of making people aware of the release is online. We all know there are a million and one websites out there, and tools available to spam your contact list to death, but it’s a necessary evil if you’re to spread the word about your latest hot tune!

Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, and all the big social networking sites are great tools for doing just this – getting your “click here to buy” links in front of people who are already sat at their computer and are a captive audience. It’s similar to throwing a party – if you want 100 people to turn up, you’ve got to invite 1000. “Spam” messages and “group updates” can get annoying, but at the end of the day at least you know that recipients have “signed on” and are half expecting these messages.

Specialist forums are key too – they are frequented by (usually) people passionate about the key subject, and are willing to make positive input into promoting your tune, assuming they like it.

Mainstream press is obviously a huge help too, and although it’s harder to get in there, if you can get a review in a magazine it lends huge amounts of kudos to your release (and ultimately some free advertising). Placing an actual ad in a magazine like iDJ or DJ Mag can be great for reminding people about your release and showing some degree of professionalism to the label, but can be costly and often smaller labels just don’t have the spare cash to do this kind of thing.

The most important commodity for a small independent label to have, is a strong and reliable email mailing list, they’re like gold dust, but it’s also important to make people feel like they’re not just giving over their all important email address in return for just a bunch of regular nonsense. I always try to give something back to the people that sign up for my mailing list, usually in the form of free tracks or DJ mixes, exclusively before I make them available to anyone else via the website. It can help to make people feel a bit more “special”, and part of the “team”.

One of the hardest parts of this side of the job is finding the right balance. You need to expose your releases and artists to the buying public (usually DJ’s), but at the same time over-exposure or flooding can have the adverse affect. I’m a DJ and music buyer too, and usually if something is over-hyped, or over exposed, I’m personally put off by that and will usually ignore that act or tune. Constantly pushing your message down people’s throats can be just as bad as saying nothing at all.

There’s ultimately always a cost, and it’s either time or money. Doing things the financially cheaper way needs a lot of time and effort put into it if you’re going to save as much money as possible. Creating your post, formatting it correctly for different types of message board or website, posting it individually on each site, creating an uploading nice images so it doesn’t just look like a load of text – this all takes time. Of course, it’s always an option to pay a company to do all of the above for you, and if you’ve got that disposable money available it makes life a lot easier.

Sometimes it’s just nice to give something away for free, even when you get nothing in return. Get my brand new exclusive DJ mix for free on the link below:

High Eight's "Seven Days Of Sound" Mix April 2009 (right-click, save-as)