#DearArtiste™

As an upcoming artiste, the ability to promote and push yourself to get heard is the most important skill you can have. If you don't have money to hire PR people to run media campaigns for you, it is up to you to make sure people know about your music. There are some basic things you can take care of yourself if you are need promotion and you cannot afford a PR company.

However, let me sound a note of warning here: YOU STILL NEED TO SET ASIDE A BUDGET! Because you will eventually get to that place where you need to pay for some essential services. Be that as it may, check out the following tips:

Dear esteemed artistes, it is no doubt very evident that you are much loved and appreciated by the management and staff of #DearArtiste ™ Management and PR and also the team members at www.dearartiste.com

Working with you all has been an amazing and fulfilling experience and we look forward to doing really great things this new year and beyond.

As usual, we are greatly committed to helping you attain your full potential as an artiste and also creating a platform where your materials can be accessed via our online music portal.

Because we believe in professionalism and we are committed to doing our best to instill that same degree of professionalism in you an emerging artiste, we have put together the basic standard list that all music entries must attain in order to be uploaded on our playlist.

I speak with upcoming artistes everyday and I can tell you that one topic that takes precedence in those conversations is MUSIC PROMOTION, and how to go about it on a low budget.  It's going to take genuine love to be a successful artist because most upcoming artistes do not have money.

Internet music promotion entails these two things – getting reviews and coverage on music and entertainment blogs and internet magazines, and your own promotion work that involves interacting with your fans, usually using social media. 

If you are an artiste considering online promotion, you need to pay attention to this. Too many of the same stories over and over again about how naïve unsuspecting and ill informed upcoming artistes have been scammed by the recent crop of “online publicists and PR” people, I think it’s time you get educated about this.

Hey! it's good to be back with another PODCAST. this time, i talked about all you need to know about putting your new material on radio, for the very first time.

This is not a sales pitch! It is disheartening to see a label executive or an artiste share a hulkshare link of his or her artiste's music. That should be left to the blogs and pirates!

The music industry has gone digital and so should the money. free music is possibly the best form of promotion but it is beyond having the most popular music  blogs put it up , after having it on a file sharing platform like 4shared or hulkshare.

Megaupload, limewire are down, that should give you a hint about hulkshare's future, even with their swift response to copyright complaints.

A certain artist told a fan who asked for the download link to his music to GOOGLE it. Shoot the artist! Music is your trade, you should have a link to all your free music or a link to buy your music.  even a D'Banj doesn't have the right to ask a fan to google  his music. A website has its purposes, but be smart and take it beyond that. In all honesty, your dotcom website alone can't do it, you'd still need the digital store widget to sell on your website and bunch of other stuff.

Here's an advise, Dear Artiste run an active Reverbnation or MyTruSpot account where after release to blogs, you upload every track from you and push that link instead.

 We can say the blogs have their audience already, (never take a blog posting as an achievement. This is not to say you should stop asking them to publish your material, and appreciating it after they do or burning the bridge if it doesn't meet their 'standard').

Then take it to Twitter, Google+ and Facebook to build a followership on these platforms.

 If you are consistent in doing this, it would reflect on the reception of your music on the long run. With Reverbnation and MyTruSpot, you provide a one stop, mobile compatible portal where fans can your catalogue, video, photos and events. Do yourself and your fans a favour, give your  MyTruspot.com or Reverbnation.com page the priority you give the blogs putting up your song to mark its release.

This is a critical step in the digital promotion for your career!

 Dro Ameh is a long serving blogger, writer, web and TV content developer for a pan-African cable TV network as well as a partner at the 'Digit-all' company - GBTH Company

FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER @dirtyhiphophead

Facebook, Twitter. We all know that social media marketing is the way forward. But if you're involved in music, there is one social network you should not be absent from. YouTube is booming in popularity - 3 billion hours of video are watched every month – so if you're not sharing videos, you're missing out. Whether you're a musician, mogul, or marketer; your music business should have a YouTube Channel. It's free to sign up, easy to fill out your profile, and you can get sharing video content in a matter of minutes. Sharing your content with audiences the world over has never been easier.