One of the most important aspects of being an independent hip-hop artist is being able to leverage all the tools and resources you have to their maximum potential in promoting yourself.
Taking the independent route means you’ll most likely have to do everything yourself to get your career off the ground. So you’ll be doing everything through your own determination and your ability to find the right tools to make that a bit easier for yourself.
One of the best distribution platforms that you can start using at the moment is ReverbNation.
ReverbNation was launched in 2006 and is now one of the top music platforms for independent artists to promote, manage and license their content. While the site is diverse in genres, the hip-hop scene on there is pretty massive – there’s a hell of a lot of talent going through this scene.
The charts can be checked out here and this can let you see what the kind of artists you will be alongside in the charts and the rankings. As you can see, there are plenty of choices out there to pick from.
So, how can an independent hip hop artist leverage ReverbNation to its maximum potential?
As an artist on ReverbNation, you get access to maybe the most powerful selection of tools that you could.
You’ll be able to present all of your musical content through on funnel, and it will deal with countless different promotional tools for you. It uploads your music to a lot of the biggest directories, and can be filled in as a template for each one of these systems.
This gets you massive exposure across so many different platforms, and makes it so much easier to start bringing in the cash with ReverbNation. You’ll be able to use press kits, site builders and artist profile sections to make sure that you give off the perfect vibe that you intended when you first got started.
So, how is all of this possible? It’s fairly simple. You go to the ReverbNation page and you choose a package depending on what you are selling, a single or an album.
You then fill in all of the details needed and make sure that the page reflects what you intended to say perfectly. Then, all you need to do is start making some basic changes to the profile to keep it relevant.
You’ll pay a fee of around $10-50 a year depending on your package. This lets you host that album online and get it looking brilliant and shared across all of the platforms listed on the website there.
This is the perfect way for a hip-hop artist to get themselves noticed quickly and save them from filling in countless different profiles to get exposure. This lets you manage everything from one central media platform.
Check out the features that make ReverbNation unique to other sites:
- TuneWidget – enables artists to place a widget on their website which links back to content relevant to ReverbNation.
- Promote It – great promotional tool that allows artists to advertise their music on sites like Facebook, YouTube, Pitchfork and more.
- Gig Finder – really useful tool that helps artists find and book gigs. ReverbNation allows access to over 600,000 venues so whether you’re an up-and-coming indie artist and more established, you should be able to find a gig that suits you.
- Band Equity – cool feature which lets ReverbNation measure the popularity of an artist based on reach, influence, access, and recency.
- Music For Good – latest feature launched in October 2013 artists to donate half of any MP3 sales to the non-profit of their choice.
