How to Market Music on MySpace

MySpace has become one of the biggest leaders in Internet promotions for books, movies and especially music. MySpace has continued to increase the growth for MySpace Music pages with official famous rappers, singers, dancers and music management companies. You already have your music, registered for a MySpace page and have your information ready to sell. So, with all of the competition on MySpace, how do you make your own music and MySpace page stand out?

Things You'll Need

• Music files to add to your MySpace page
• MySpace page
• Computer access

Instructions

1. Put the music on your page that you feel is the best representation of your music. This is not the time to be shy and leave your music off of MySpace for fear someone will take it. That could be the song that will make music executives pay more attention to your career.

2. Include contact information on your page in case someone wants to contact you for a meeting. This information includes phone numbers that you don't mind giving to the public, an email address, your website address (if you have an HTML address outside of MySpace) and your location. Avoid giving out your mailing address for safety reasons, but it might be a good idea to have a P.O. Box to send and receive marketing material.

3. Post interviews in your blogs and on your main page. Posting interviews in bulletins is interesting for your friends, but what about the thousands of people who aren't your friends yet who may want to read about you?

4. Set your music page as public. You will pass up many opportunities for potential performances or work relationships if the right people cannot view your page, including blog preferences "Friends Only" or "Preferred List" if you make your page public. If you want to save a piece of yourself, create an alternate page, and only invite those friends who you want to be able to view this information. If you really want to keep the second page private, don't add each of your pages together as friends so people can't link the two. Avoid putting your real name on your other page in case someone uses Google or the MySpace search engine to find you.

5. Read other MySpace users' pages to see what type of music they're interested in. Do not send random requests to everybody with a MySpace page to listen to your music. If you haven't actually read anything on their pages, you will be wasting plenty of time and energy. Instead, listen to what other MySpace users have as their profile music, on their Project Playlists or any music text they have on their pages. If they don't have anything about music on their page, they are fair game, but be courteous enough to read their page. Personal messages will make a user much more interested in learning about you, especially if you use their names instead of copying and pasting an automated message. Junk mail is the reason why the "Allow Bands to Send Friend Requests" option was put in the "Spam" account options.

6. Check your MySpace page frequently for messages. There's no point in having a MySpace page to promote your music if the last time you logged in was two months ago. Time is essential, and you never know what message or opportunity you missed by not checking your page regularly. If you do not have regular computer access, make use of the library or a friend's home. People want to hear from you, not your spokesperson, especially if you're not already well-known. This is another reason why official MySpace pages have artists who record messages to their friends and state their official MySpace page, to show that this artist actually approves this page.

7. Clean up your profile comments. Sometimes people accept every add that comes their way, but they don't pay attention to all of the comments left. Marketing isn't just going out and saying "Come look at my page." Presentation is also a big part. If you are a an aspiring music artist, but some of your messages are full of vulgar language, it looks like you don't care about how your page looks to others. Consider making the comments on your MySpace page private. You want people to pay more attention to you rather than the thousands of friends who have left comments.

Tips & Warnings

• Do not send invites to random MySpace members asking them to leave profile comments, photo comments and blog comments without reading their pages first. Not only does it show that you could care less about their pages, it's quite selfish to ask someone to promote you when you won't even pay attention to the words on their page.

Resources

• MySpace.com