Like nearly any other independent artist, it is likely that you find yourself in a tough situation in terms of budgeting.

If you want to be serious about making a long-term career for yourself in music, then you need to find as many tools for marketing and promotion without breaking the bank.

When you are limited in terms of what you can spend, it’s vital that you are selective on what you try to market yourself with. In a bid to help you out, the following marketing tools may assist.

Independent artists: learn how to build a fanbase and make money from your music. 

Distributing music

The first place we want to start with involves is the promotion of your music and your merchandising. For example, the best place for you to host your music on would be Soundcloud and BandCamp.

Both are among the most powerful online platforms for an independent musician, and we recommend that you use both as best you can.

They provide you with all the help that you need to really make a big impression on your music. Both are great for making sure that you can easily upload, share and connect with your fans via your music.

You will likely struggle to find better tools than this for getting your music hosted.

If you are serious about making a living with music, this is without doubt the perfect place to start with moving forward.

Creating merchandise

In terms of creating merchandise to bring on the road with you or to tell on your website, we recommend that you try and use BigCartel as it is perfect for your situation.

If you use BigCartel, you can sell just about everything through there that might be considered ‘normal’ merch for your style.

With that in mind, then, we recommend that you take some extra time to look at BigCartel. Outside of that, might we recommend that you look at Teespring?

Alongside local printing options, Teespring can make it very easy for you to make up cool and creative t-shirt designs in the long-term.

You will find that one of the best ways to make up high quality merch is through third party programs like Teespring. If you would rather, you could work with a local printing firm and maybe make a deal together.

In terms of promo merch, BigCartel makes getting access to most of the stuff you need to start building a nice band of merchandise to sell so much simpler.

Independent artists: learn how to build a fanbase and make money from your music. 

Digital marketing & websites

In terms of making yourself more visible, then you need to turn to BandZoogle.

They are experts in creating music-related website designs that can help to remove an ample amount of the stress that you feel at this moment in time. the ymake it easy for you to invest in a website, though it will be a pretty big expense to invest in.

Outside of that, might we recommend that you use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Each one offers a vital source of free marketing and communication with fans, which can only lead to more impressive results as time goes on.

If you want to make the most of your online marketing, then it pays to look at the above to get a better idea of what you are dealing with.

Social media is very useful, but you need to be able to use the right tells to manage your social media accounts. We recommend that if you use Facebook then you make use of their Insights software.

It’s one of the best tools for analytics around, and should make the usually strenuous task of better understanding the challenges that you face a little easier to understand.

It should also help you out to use tools like FollowerWonk; a powerful social media analytics tool that makes it easier for you to network with other nearby bands, reach out to popular blogs that might suit your music scene and all manner of other useful solutions.

With that in mind, then, you should almost certainly look to make a wholesome change to the way that you work.

Best of all, though, you should make it quite easy to positively transform the way that your business operates by using these awesome online marketing tools.

Design and networking

Lastly, might we suggest that you take a look at Canva? Even for the amateur graphics designer, Canva is very powerful.

It’s a great tool that you can easily use for making high quality band logos, album covers and all manner of other useful tools.

Add in the fact that it has some music-specific themes and templates to pick from, and you can very easily make up some high quality design and networking solutions as time goes on.

It’s the ideal solution for making the right calls on the ideal format for any digital content you need.

Outside of that, we recommend that you look to get better at networking otherwise. For networking, we recommend that you take a look at WorkFrom; a very powerful and reliable solution that should make it very easy for you to make the most of your downtime when touring and doing gigs.

This helps you to better connect with other people in the location, making it easy for you to spend a few hours online networking with others while you have a bite to eat.

It helps you to find the ideal place to work from if you’ve been internet-free for a little while!

As you can see, then such solutions can make the often fraught experience of building up your profile as a musician a bit easier.

With so many tools to pick from for those on a budget, this should make the challenge of building a long-term and successful music career a whole lot more simplistic than it might seem at first.

With that in mind, then what will you do? How will you go about making the most of your design and networking solutions?

With each of the above, you should have little to no problems here!

Independent artists: learn how to build a fanbase and make money from your music. 

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Written by Stop The Breaks
Stop The Breaks is an independent music marketing company focused on showcasing independent hip-hop artists. Our goal is to help motivate, inspire and educate independent artists grinding around the world. We provide branding, content marketing, social media, SEO and music promotion services.