It has been decided that this forum is not for the things that you ask about.  Your thread will probably be gone soon.

Fair enough, not sure how to remove the full thread but oh well lol

Imo someone should only start promoting their music once they have a clearly defined sound and plan on maintaining it.

When artists change sounds too much I think it makes it harder to develop a fanbase. It's like if Zedd were to release a Jazz track. The track could be the greatest Jazz track in the world but it wouldn't appeal to his audience because they know him primarily for his work as an edm artist. Now what he could do is release the jazz track underneath a separate name and do that for every single jazz track that he makes.

It's just like madeon and porter robinson. They used to make hands up music underneath the aliases Deamon and Ekowraith. When they wanted to change their sounds though they decided to change their aliases because it was to different from their old music.

Take this band as another example. Falling In Reverse. They're primarily a post hardcore band so when they released this track it was a disaster. They released a rap/electronic song and the response was TERRIBLE. So many of their fans wrote hateful comments in response to the music video because they don't follow Falling In Reverse to listen to rap. They listen to them for their post-hardcore music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcbOfVKSMkA

That's why I think being clear on what your sound is an artist is really important. If you're going to promote your music then at least make sure you're clear what you want to sound like.

Quote from: Lydian on March 30, 2016, 03:30:39 am

If you're going to promote your music then at least make sure you're clear what you want to sound like.

...and make sure you actually sound like it.

To me this is the most important thing. I want to convince myself that I can come up with new tracks in the style I'm going for, before starting to think about marketing a brand. Other than that, I think you are ready when you feel like people should hear your music I don't think you can really lose much by sending a couple of emails.

firstly, I'm not anywhere near sending demos, but here are few tips I catched when I was thinking and learning about promoting:
When?
- you should send demos to channels and labels only when you are 100% satisfied with your sound and mix. Make your first impression count
- talking about building a fanbase, It does no harm to start collect followers on SC and Facebook even before your first song upload. It's the numbers of followers that count when you send your profile links to labels.
How?
- if you aren't established, sending promo to Trapcity, Suicide Sheep etc. is a waste of time for both sides. These channels are very picky and most of the time you need to know the guys that uploads songs there. I'd suggest 2 things: First - do some good research around the youtube and find medium/small sized channels that uploads their good music in genre you make. Secondly, try to make contact with owners of these channels, and not by sending them promo in the first message. You can show them how big fan of them you are, bring them some value from you... make friends with them
- you can reach some following even through cliché stuff like youtube comments, if stick to ORIGINALITY of the comment, not typical "I'm 12 years old bedroom producer, check my channel" but comment songs relevant to your style with something like "can you imagine this song with sax intro and in 110 BPM? Give my channel a try!"...

my two eurocents here.
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- you can reach some following even through cliché stuff like youtube comments, if stick to ORIGINALITY of the comment, not typical "I'm 12 years old bedroom producer, check my channel" but comment songs relevant to your style with something like "can you imagine this song with sax intro and in 110 BPM? Give my channel a try!"...

my two eurocents here.
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I always see people spamming comment sections and I never really thought it could be a smooth way of getting followers, but what you just said sort of makes sense if done well enough. I just don't wanna be "that guy" lol

I always see people spamming comment sections and I never really thought it could be a smooth way of getting followers, but what you just said sort of makes sense if done well enough. I just don't wanna be "that guy" lol

key to reaching listeners is to be one/think like one. I know this can work because sometimes even I read these comments and sometimes I visit their channels and eventually I find really cool song. But yea I completely ignore or report "that guy"