We will be going over music promotion and marketing budgets for DIY or independent artists, musicians, and record labels in this nifty article.
Independent and DIY artists should start low and slow with their music marketing and promotion (particularly at first) and then only ramp up or scale up their spending or time when:
- They’ve proven that a smaller initial budget is actually working for them
- They are directly getting the results that they want from their spending
This “low-and-slow” approach makes sure that you prevent burnout, get better results, and are ultimately still the artist that is crushing it 4 to 5 years from now.
Music Marketing Budget Breakdown
There are 3 rules that I would encourage every independent artist to live and die by:
- Only spend money on tactics and strategies that drive direct results
- Avoid all other music promotion costs and expenses
- Limit non-music promotion (that are still music-related) expenses
This means the breakdown for your music marketing budget should be 100% allocated to tactics and strategies that get you streams and listeners or brings fans directly to your music.
Examples of music marketing tactics and strategies that drive direct results include:
- Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram ads)
- Spotify Ads
- TikTok Ads
- Playlist promotion
When spending your money on these tactics, make sure to closely track your results so that you can confirm that they are getting you the end result you actually want.
Facebook Ads can be set up incorrectly to target bots and Playlist promotion services can through you on a playlist with bots or a playlist that only drives streams for the 1 week you are on it.
To learn more about tracking your stats, check out my article called Grow Your Streams By Tracking Your Spotify Playlist Stats.
Examples of things you should AVOID in your music marketing budget include:
- Websites and music links
- Courses
- Graphic design
- Music production, mixing, and mastering
- Gear you don’t need
If you can find a free alternative or learn how to do something yourself for free (the University of YouTube is a wonderful thing, my friend!) then I encourage you to do so!
Monthly Music Marketing Budget Templates
I believe that there are two main types of promotional campaigns that an artist is going to want to run on a month to month basis:
- New Release Campaigns to promote a new single
- Ongoing Promotional Campaigns to make sure your music career grows every day
Let’s look a bit closer at these two types of promotional campaigns below.
New Release Campaigns – $100 to $200 per month
Personally, I recommend doing something like Facebook ads which directly get fans over to your new release with a budget of around $100 to $200 to be spent in the first 1 to 2 weeks of a new release.
The reason that I do this is that the ‘Release Radar’ Spotify algorithm is super powerful and only effective in the first 28 days of a new release.
If you can’t get that triggered in the first one or two weeks, the law of diminishing returns kicks in and there’s no point in continuing to spend for a few extra days to have that release radar boost.
REMEMBER: the direct amount of streams or results that you’re going to get from a Facebook ad to Spotify is complete garbage – do NOT get too obsessed with your numbers in the Facebook ads manager.
A smaller budget is ideal because it’s just enough to start triggering the Spotify algorithm where you’ll THEN get a substantial and significant amount of streams.
Ongoing Promotional Campaigns – $1 to $5 per day
This is something that’s running every single day so that you’re always bringing new fans into your world and growing your numbers all the time (even if you don’t have a new release or if you’re caught up with anything in your personal life).
The 2 types of ongoing campaigns that I’d recommend are:
- An ongoing Spotify Playlist Campaign
- An ongoing Indepreneur Fan Finder Campaign
Personally, I am running a Spotify Playlist Campaign at around $2 per day every single day.
To learn more about this type of campaign, check out my article called 5 Reasons To Use Spotify Playlists To Grow Your Streams. 🙂
