Musicians, is money really the answer?
Are you not doing as well as you think you could because you don’t have enough to get your music to more people?
This belief is something many musicians hold—that everything would be fixed if only they had more money.
But is it true?
When it comes to marketing your music, having money can be a straight up saviour, a helpful little booster, irrelevant, or a source of even more frustration and confusion.
Today we’ll talk about this.
And whether you’re camp “everything can be done for free”, camp “I can’t do literally anything without money”, or somewhere in between, I hope this letter will encourage you to identify and work on what really matters for you.
Let’s get into it.
Are you in the right place?
Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes I see musicians making is assuming they’re in a place where putting money (or more money) into their marketing is not only a smart move, but also the only thing standing in their way of ‘success’.
Sometimes this is true, but often it’s not.
Here are some situations in which I don’t think it’s a good move:
- Your songs aren’t awesome yet (maybe you’re not too far into your music—making journey)
- You’ve done little to no work to build your presence and you’re assuming money will fix that problem
- You have no experience with or understanding of using money strategically for marketing
- You think spending money will replace you having to work hard.
There are situations in which you can use money to your advantage without knowing what you’re doing—like if you’ve got someone who does know what they’re doing helping you with a campaign.
But to be real, 99.9% of the musicians I talk to about money are not ready for it.
They don’t pass the test (above) and often are either operating on the false belief that money is the only way forward, or hoping it will mean they can bypass doing the work.
In most of these cases, even if the musicians had $50—$100K to put into their marketing, they’d be horrified at how little they’d get from it.
Sure, they might get some decent streaming numbers from that (or maybe not), but they’d likely find after spending all that money there’s still a big cold gap between them and their ‘fans’.
I’m not making this up.
I’ve been around artists with this kind of money who either didn’t know what they were doing or weren’t willing to do what’s truly required to make spending that money worth it—doesn’t end well.
I will say there are times where I’ve seen money solve big problems for small artists.
There are rare circumstances in which something like simply running an ad takes care of a lot of the work the artist needs to do in terms of building a fan base (on social media at least).
It can reduce the need to make so much content, and can more quickly get the right kind of fans closer to the artist.
But although I’ve seen it, this is exceptionally rare, and I don’t recommend you go into building a fan base with this expectation.
As a guide, before you determine whether or not money is going to truly help you build a fan base, get these sorted:
- Make really awesome music
- Work hard on your social media and content game
- Learn a bit about how to spend money on marketing that will actually help you
- Be prepared to continue to work hard no matter what
If you do have this stuff in place, it may be worth considering putting money into your marketing.
But until you accept that you have your work cut out for you regardless—that there’s more to building a fan base than simply having music and money—you won’t make real progress.
Now let’s talk a little about the social media and content game.
Can free get you further than paid?
In 2024, this isn’t at all weird to say.
There are plenty of cases in which artists are getting infinitely more from their organic content than what they’d get from putting money behind their posts or advertising their music.
From what I can see, there are two parts to this:
Part 1: The way people respond to music marketing nowadays.
Although I would no longer say TikTok is undoubtedly the best place for an artist to be, the ‘TikTok—ification’ of music marketing has made a real mark.
And while TikTok has been horribly damaging for musicians (and everyone) in ways, it’s also opened up the playing field more than any other social media has previously.
It’s achieved three major things that are relevant to this point:
- Given people a lot more choice when it comes to media they actually want to watch, read, and listen to
- Changed people’s perception of the Instagram—y ‘highlight reel’ approach to social media
- Allowed a culture of supporting the underdog to flourish more than it ever has on social media.
So people no longer feel like they have to be told what to like.
They no longer automatically consider high production value as better.
And they’re rooting for the underdog (authentic, struggling musicians) more than ever—or at least it feels like it.
I think it’s the subconscious view of a lot of people that:
- Organic content comes from the underdog (the authentic, struggling, but genuinely good musicians), and
- Paid ads come from the oppressors (the rich, out of touch elite who think they can buy their way to getting what they want).
Basically, it’s my view that a lot of people are much more likely to support an organic post and give it a massive boost by interacting with it than they are to support a paid ad.
Part 2: The far reaching algorithm.
The other reason organic content can be sometimes get you so much further than paid promotion is because of how far your posts can go.
If you put something out there and it gets a lot of engagement, it will often continue to get pushed out.
And if new people who see it continue to engage with it, it just keeps going.
Don’t get me wrong, ads can do this too; if a paid post gets a lot of engagement, generally speaking that ad will become less expensive to push out to more people.
But you could make a post that reaches a million people completely for free.
I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s absolutely possible. I’ve done it, and so have many musicians.
To reach a million people with an ad (one that’s effective and gets people to act on it), you’d need to spend a bit.
Nowadays, if you’re a musician who’s got the stomach for learning how to play the organic game on social media, you could save yourself thousands upon thousands of dollars in marketing.
There are independent artists reaching millions of people for free every single month on social media, which massively boosts their Spotify streams, which (looks like it) earns them $100K+ a month from streaming.
Isn’t that just insane? Free (or basically free) marketing that leads to over six figures a month directly from streaming.
It sounds like bullshit, but it’s real.
And although for 99% of musicians this will likely never be the case, some artists are doing it.
I want to be very clear that I’m not saying ads are bad—I love ads for musicians, and for the majority who aren’t able to achieve the kind of insane results we just talked about, ads may be the most powerful strategy at your disposal.
But to say defiantly that money (either an abundance or lack of it) is the only reason musicians succeed or fail is simply wrong.
I want to keep this letter focused on the money discussion, but if you have absolutely no idea how to show up on social media, this can point you in the right direction.
When money makes things worse.
Not only can pouring tons of money into your marketing be a less effective approach to getting your music heard than organic social media content, sometimes it can be a total waste, or even make things worse for you.
How? In two ways:
#1: Blind spending to hurt your growth.
Despite the belief of many musicians, you cannot simply spend money to get ‘x’ result—not in most cases anyway.
This belief leads to one of the most common mistakes I see musicians making when it comes to putting money into marketing: Spending money the wrong way.
There are all kinds of ways to spend money on marketing your music:
- Running ads
- Boosting posts
- Paying PR agencies
- Influencer marketing
- Playlisting
- …the list goes on.
But just because you’ve got these options doesn’t mean they’ll automatically get you great results—or even make sense for your situation.
For example, one of the most overlooked parts of running ads is the learning curve.
Sure, you can boost your posts in some way which can look incredibly easy on the surface. But if you don’t know you’re targeting the right kind of people, you could actually hurt your growth on social media.
I see this all the time. Musicians will hit the boost button on TikTok or IG and maybe get a bunch of followers, but those followers don’t engage with any of your future posts, which leads to a decrease in overall engagement because the platforms stop pushing the posts out.
Another common example is musicians using Meta to run ad campaigns but not knowing which kind of campaign to run or how to run them.
So they put a bunch of money into a campaign, it doesn’t work, and they conclude that ads don’t work.
And this applies to basically everything; if you blindly put money into ads, boosting posts, influencers who will feature your music, playlists, whatever, and you don’t know what you’re doing or why, there is no guarantee it will benefit you.
Learning how to spend money strategically is a skill just like anything else.
If you’re doing this yourself, you cannot expect spending money to ‘just work’.
You need to know exactly how the thing you’re putting money into works and why it’s a good move for you specifically.
If you’re paying someone to pitch to playlists or get someone to write about you because ‘it’s just what you do’, you might want to reconsider spending that money if you can’t answer how that genuinely contributes to your long—term success.
Anything you spend money on should have a long—term benefit, and most things that have a long—term benefit require you to learn how to use them properly.
A general guide: If you find an approach to spending money that seems too easy, be careful.
If you’re hiring help, ask them how their service will benefit you in the long—term.
It’s easy for them to tell you they’ll get you streams, or added to playlists or something. But where does that lead? How does it add to your future? They should be able to answer that.
#2: High production, low conversion.
You can also easily waste money on high—production assets.
If you’re pouring money into expensive videos or marketing material that you think will automatically work just because it’s ‘high quality’, think again.
One of the biggest eye—openers for me was finally understanding that my version of high quality is not the same as someone else’s.
That doesn’t mean high—production value assets are automatically bad or don’t perform well—that’s not true at all.
They just don’t guarantee success.
Remember, it’s much harder now to trick people into thinking something is good just because it has a high production value. And that’s a good thing!
Although it’s not always this simple, if you’re an artist who makes incredible music but lacks the skills or resources to produce flashy content, you stand more of a chance of getting deserved attention with lower production stuff.
And remember how we talked about people supporting the underdog on social media?
Sometimes a high production value signals to people that the artist is less authentic or accessible than the artists who go the more casual, raw approach.
Again, not always.
High quality is important, and sometimes high quality does mean high production value.
Sometimes to create a convincing experience, the camera quality and lighting and edits matter. They’re how you’re getting the message across.
This can be especially important in certain performance videos—the aesthetic is part of the appeal, and to skimp on visual quality or production value is a bad move.
My point is high production value doesn’t automatically = high quality.
So before you decide it’s worth putting a ton of money into expensive marketing material, consider these:
- Is your music awesome and more highly produced content worth it? I know this is subjective, and I believe there is an audience for everyone, even if some are much smaller than others—but we need to be realistic about the kind of audience we expect based on the appeal of our music.
- Are you already (genuinely) working hard on connecting to an audience and you think this will enhance that connection? Or is this highly produced material a way to avoid doing that work?
I’m not saying you can’t use high—production stuff simply because you want to. And again, I’m not saying it’s a bad move; sometimes it’s the best move.
But in 2024, nothing is going to be more effective than genuinely entertaining, insightful, interesting or emotionally compelling content.
You won’t be able to hide behind high—production value if the real value isn’t there.
Your audience needs something real to feel truly connected. And this is good! We want this to be the case.
We don’t want the people with the most money or resources to automatically win.
When it becomes a game of real value—which it has—people with less money and resources stand more of a chance than they otherwise would.
This is not a letter on how to better connect to an audience, but if you want to learn more, read the Level 3 section in this post.
The good side of money in marketing + how to use it.
So far we’ve talked a lot about the ‘bad’ side of money in music marketing: how musicians can easily use it the wrong way, sometimes get better results going the free route, or even hurt their progress by spending money.
But there are situations in which money is the way to get a great song to reach more people and build your fan base.
What I haven’t acknowledged yet in this letter is just how difficult it can be for the majority of musicians to achieve decent success with organic content alone on social media.
There are countless examples of great artists making great content consistently and not getting much recognition for it.
This is where the argument “you don’t need money, you can do everything for free on social media” starts to become questionable.
On paper, it sounds great: Make great music, make lots of great content, stay consistent, and you’ll get there.
In reality, it’s not so simple.
Sometimes the amount of learning, effort, and emotional strain required to reach the point where simply making and posting content works well is not worth it.
In some cases, it may be better to get your social media content to an acceptable level (once people actually see your stuff they think it’s great), but use paid methods of driving traffic to your profiles and/or your music.
The truth is sometimes even obviously great stuff doesn’t reach enough people organically.
There are plenty of different reasons for this, some of which are within your control, some of which aren’t.
And there are other free paths you can take to fix this (such as leaning more into engagement on social media).
But you may be one of these musicians, and know how frustrating it is to put a ton of time and energy into getting yourself out there and get next to nothing back.
If your music is great, you’re doing your best to play the content game, you’re consistent, but things aren’t working the way you want (and your expectations are reasonable), paid promotion may be a really good option for you.
You may also be the type of person who doesn’t gel with social media, and yes, those people do exist.
As much as I think many more musicians could learn to enjoy social media if only they had the right approach, some people would get a better result putting energy into different areas of their music career.
If you think this is you, I first challenge you to honestly answer exactly why that is.
It might be you actually would enjoy it if only it worked for you.
If that’s the case, you’re not “not a social media person”—you’re just in the same boat as millions of other musicians who haven’t found the right approach for them and/or done the work to make the progress they want.
But if you know yourself well (be honest) and you can see how the energy you’d need to use breaking down the many barriers between you and your success on social media could be much better spent…
…paid promotion may be a saviour for you.
Let’s assume it’s the right move for you to utilise paid promotion. What should you do from here? Which is the best way to go?
Which way is best?
This is where we need to come back to the question of what will benefit you long term.
Many paid promotion options—in my opinion—don’t accommodate long term growth (even if they say they do).
If you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll know my preferred method of paid promotion is running ads with the goal of getting ‘conversions’ through Meta’s Ads Manager (currently you can do this through Sales, Engagement, or Leads campaigns).
This hasn’t changed, as I’m yet to find any paid option I trust that gives you more control over the growth of your listener base.
These ads—when set up right—reach the type of people who actually act on music ads they like, and they generally lead to streams, Spotify followers, and social media followers.
They make sense for long term growth, because a percentage of the people who discover you through these ads stick; they don’t just listen to your song once and then you never see them again.
The same cannot be said for a lot of other paid promotion methods.
Sure, it’s good to get on some nice playlists because you watch your streams go up. And sure it’s good to get a bunch of views on your music video…
…but what happens after that? Do these people follow you so they can check out your future work? Or do they disappear and never commit to you?
I’m not saying all other paid promotion methods are bad. Not at all.
I’m not against playlists or anything either. But it comes down to using them in the right way and making sure they’re worth your time.
Going back to the ads, an important reminder that if you are going down this path, you have a learning curve ahead of you.
You may need to set up a business ad account on Meta and get your social media profiles connected to it.
You’ll also need to set up your pixel (or “Dataset” I think they call it now), and a few other things.
And you will likely waste some money initially learning what to do (how to actually run these campaigns). There’ll be a period of frustration—just like anything else—to get the results you want.
(I take you through the basic setup of these ads in this.)
This is a good time to remind you that every path is hard, no matter which one you pick.
You can try to market yourself for free, or do it with the help of money… but no matter which way you go, there will be challenges to overcome.
An artist saved by ads.
A little while ago I worked with an artist to help her release her first song.
Although this artist had some initial success on social media through content promotion, after a while she was feeling defeated by her lower reach—especially with how hard she was working and after she’d seen the way people responded to her music initially.
This was a situation where the way she was playing the free game (social media content) just wasn’t working well enough.
We knew it wasn’t a song issue, or a work ethic issue; we’d seen people go crazy over her stuff and I’d seen her drive.
So we ran an ad campaign.
It turned things around immediately.
The ad was very inexpensive because the song is so good, the ad creative was great, and the targeting we used was so accurate.
People who discovered her through this campaign were messaging this artist daily saying how much they loved the song, and she was putting in the work to show appreciation for the influx of love and support.
In a short time, through these ads, she built a real core fan base of a few thousand on Instagram—people who are genuinely into her, and her song now has over 80,000 streams (not bad for a first release!).
To be clear, this artist is likeable and her song is fantastic. This helped.
She also had the awareness to make smart moves based on her specific situation and she did the work to connect with as many of her fans as possible in the ways she could at the time.
But she was struggling to achieve what she wanted without putting some money behind her song to get it out there.
And it totally worked. In this case, money was a saviour.
So what should you do?
When it comes to you, is putting money (or more money) into your marketing the right move? Is it the answer to all your problems?
Many musicians may read the story above and assume they’re in that same boat.
And you might be.
It is entirely possible you make great music but you can’t make things work as well as you want for free on social media, and some kind of paid promotion is a good move.
I wouldn’t say this is uncommon. There have been plenty of situations in which an artist I’ve worked with or spoken to has seriously benefited from ads.
But there have been just as many (if not a lot more) situations in which the artist’s problem won’t be solved by paid promotion.
Let’s not forget how challenging it is to do what you’re trying to do.
Money is not always the answer, and it’s worth getting super honest with yourself here about why things aren’t working the way you want.
I’ve spoken to plenty of musicians who—whether explicitly or implicitly—have told me they don’t want to do the work required to build a real fan base, and that they only want to take certain actions if they’re ‘not too much effort’.
If this is you, it’s very unlikely money will save you.
It’s possible you make such great music that something like running ads instead of focusing your efforts on content isn’t the worst move. And don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of getting more from less work.
But from what I’ve seen, if building your fan base is too conditional, it’s likely not a problem money can solve.
However, if you truly believe your music is in a good place, and that people would genuinely love it if only it reached more people…
If you’ve been working hard on your social media and content game, and you believe what you’re putting out is seriously good—it’s just that it’s not reaching enough people…
And if you’ve accepted that regardless of which path you’re taking to market yourself, you’re going to need to work hard and do what needs to be done…
You’re someone who might seriously benefit from putting more money into your marketing.
In an ideal world, you’re able to attack your marketing from all angles and get as much as you possibly can out of your music:
- Your content is far reaching across all social media platforms
- You’re running inexpensive ads
- You’re driving traffic to your music from shows and other external sources
- And everything is working together to get you moving forward as fast and effectively as possible.
But most of us aren’t in an ideal world, and we have to make smart decisions about where to put our focus, time, and energy.
Sometimes money is the answer. It’s the saviour.
Other times it’s a way to enhance what’s already working.
And other times we just need to put our heads down and get to work.
You’ve got this 🙂
Need help? This will be opening again soon.
All the love,
Alex
