Posters On The Underground - How To Promote Your Music

When you go on the London Underground, and you take the escalator, on the way down, you’ll see rows of posters promoting everything from the latest shows at the theaters in the West End, to the latest Fintech app to the new Dua Lipa album. These posters are about 2 feet by three feet wide, if being generous - at most. So not exactly…huge. These posters start at about 250 pounds each for 2 weeks, the premise being that at some point seeing one of these posters for the 2 seconds you pass by it on your descent to the tube will somehow magically convince you to do something Dua Lipa related.

Now that’s one single random poster, in one city functioning as one tiny cog in a promotional MACHINE. We don’t have that, but let it put that 50 pounds you blew on SubmitHub into perspective next time you’re disappointed about results of your latest promo effort. I want you to feel better about reality, and adjust accordingly.

When you release a new single as a signed indie artist, and your actual little label with a modest budget (I’m not sure how many of those there are these days) hires a plugger to promote your new single it’s going to be well over a thousand pounds and has no guarantee to get you even ONE radio play because the music industry isn’t quite as rigged as some people have you believe. If it’s not the right song for the right program director at the right time, it’s not happening, And even then probably only if there’s some supporting activities like a tour happening to support the release. You may or may not have that option, but you surely do have access to a myriad of online alternatives to take advantage of. Whether it’s BBC Introducing, specialist shows, local radio, college, internet radio, playlists - it’s out there.

You can find the names and contact information for play-listers, reviewers, bloggers, writers and so on without too much difficulty - I have even showed you how to do it previously, but the manual effort required is significant. We all know there’s a thousand scammy promo services out there, but at least they mostly look like scams and are easily avoided. SubmitHub and the like are also troublesome sometimes unless you're on top of how it works. There is however more information out there than ever before available to you for free, you just need to sift through it and make a plan.

The bottom line is many if not most grass roots indie people are working, have jobs, lives families and little time and even less desire to really truly put themselves into being a part time PR person. It’s hard enough to find the time to create and do the fun part - make the music for most people.

So, I am asking you stop comparing yourself to “those” kind of artists, and if you insist on getting onto the treadmill of promo at least don’t beat yourself up, and try to keep perspective about your means and scale of investment.

Before we continue - here’s the elephant in the room - you have have to have something promote-able to promote or it will just not work. That’s often why playlist submission services don’t. Don’t shoot the messenger - the closer you get to anything remotely mainstream the closer you have to be to being close in quality and feel to the records that are huge in that genre. So if you make pop, rock, chart type hip-hop or anything mainstream you have a very steep mountain ahead of you. You need to up your game to that level, or you’re f**ked.

But here’s the thing - there’s something for everyone out there. I was seeing one of my artist friends express frustration recently, and what he does is very specific. It’s prog rock, or at least prog adjacent. Now that’s niche. However, there are, believe it or not prog rock festivals where bands you have never heard of play to a rabid fanbase of prog rock weirdos. NEARFest has been running for 20 years, and I only know about it because I mixed a live show album of a British band that was signed to Sony for two albums, and now several years later after that, were well known in their niche. There are quite successful cult-ish bands. For my frustrated friend, I’d ask what they know about that scene? Find every website, writer, internet radio, playlister, zine, fest, tiny indie label, bands that are happening and get involved. Those are your people. Get on it. There are whole communities out there in the world, almost all online as well supporting whatever it is you do.

Same goes for almost any slightly left of centre style. Much like Gen-Xer’s are going on rock cruises to see hair bands that were killed off by grunge and are now half resurrected from the grave, there’s lo-fi synth pop, goth rock, horrorcore rap, you name it out there somewhere doing quite well without the poster in the underground. But it’s up to you to do the legwork, find out the who and where and stop relying on a scattergun approach or giving up after sending 20 whole emails. Organize your life, do it. Or don’t.

I hope this has helped you if you’re struggling. Nobody likes doing it. Hey if you do. - start a PR company and help out some grass roots Indies! Stop beating yourself up - you literally CANNOT compete with the machine, and nor should you.

There's several more articles on promoting yourself here on the blog - like this one about using your mailing list so feel free to check thouse out... and if you ever need a partner to help mix your next record and be absolutely sure it's the best it can be reach out and say hi - I'm always looking for great artists to collaborate with!