Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

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OccinticLady
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Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by OccinticLady »

Hi all,
So, is it usefull to use facebook and instagram to promote music? I would start with soundcloud later on, as I suspect the real "serious" people to go there...
I want to be ready for the "big league" before I go on the field.
Thanks for meditating along with me...
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by d.healey »

That depends on who your audience is and what you intend to do with those platforms (paid adverts for example).
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by milo »

Marketers tell you that you should be where your intended audience is. It's not their job to find you -- it's your job to be where they are. So who is your intended audience? And where do they hang out?

In my experience, Facebook and Instagram are no longer good for general purpose marketing for content creators. It used to be that you could put up good content and it would magically get shared and passed around. Now it's impossible to break through the algorithm. No one can guess what it wants.

There is also the corrosive effect on your soul that social media tends to have. I actually went off of both platforms a few years ago and haven't really missed them.

There is also some benefit to playing in a sandbox for a while to work on your craft. This is best done in a small venue, like a local music scene or a small online forum (like this one, actually). As your skills improve you will branch out into bigger markets.
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by alexson »

SoundCloud and Mixcloud are the two big platforms for sharing music but I think Instagram will be the good one up to some extent.
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

If you audience are millennials then: yes. Anything before or after that: no.

Teenagers think that Facebook is for their grandparents to keep in touch with them. The "2nd baby boom", born in 1970 and up, are done with it: nobody watches their photo's of food taken in a restaurant anymore.

The guy from SpectreSoundStudios (a producer for starting Metal bands) on Youtube says that a quickly made YT promo video that goes viral can do miracles, recording albums, Spotify and EP's do not. I personally only follow new bands that I've seen live at small festivals or in my home-town. I've grown to hate the big stadium shows and the 3-day-camping-in-the-mud-go-berzerk overhyped festivals with a big headliner. Millennials, on the other hand, rather spend all their vacation money on something like that than on a "real" vacation.
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by OccinticLady »

Wow!
Quite some usefull insights.
Did'nt know that of the "agegap" around facebook. Come to think of it, it is somewhat dated.
I, indeed, doubt now that the "contacts" dont hang out there (anymore)...
Thanks for the insights. I should indeed be sandboxing a bit (a lot, in fact) moe before diving in after my target audience for real. And a facebook presence will indeed not help anymore.
For now, I toss a weekly vid on yt just to get into the discipline of working with the music, instead of hanging around and "waiting for the fish to bite"... :wink:
Thanks all
Lov' ya
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by Largos »

Instagram is more designed for promotion. Facebook is designed for keeping in contact with people you already know. Just as long as you know, whatever platform, uploading just your music won't make anything happen and that social media marketing involves making connections with the audience in some way with other content.
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

Facebook has become a publicity nightmare. Well, for Mark Zuckerberg at least.

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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

@OccinticLady: I don't know what your age is but you can ask your own friends if they use Facebook or Instagram. I'm a grumpy old man so I hate all social media with a passion.

My nephews, however, are each addicted to their own favorite soc. media shite and glued to their phone. They never talk, look out of the window or play computer games anymore (let alone do dirty things with girls). Their neck has grown crooked: it can only look down. They cannot participate in traffic because they are now physically incapable of looking straight ahead and cannot scream for help if they are in an accident because they have lost the ability to speak. They used to be fine lads with which you could have a good laugh and play football in the park or on the Xbox. Now they have changed into a mutant being from Star Wars. The doctor says that they will need serious surgery after puberty to re-humanize their neck, vocal chords and brain. Sad but true.
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by tavasti »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 9:22 am If you audience are millennials then: yes. Anything before or after that: no.

Teenagers think that Facebook is for their grandparents to keep in touch with them. The "2nd baby boom", born in 1970 and up, are done with it: nobody watches their photo's of food taken in a restaurant anymore.

The guy from SpectreSoundStudios (a producer for starting Metal bands) on Youtube says that a quickly made YT promo video that goes viral can do miracles, recording albums, Spotify and EP's do not. I personally only follow new bands that I've seen live at small festivals or in my home-town. I've grown to hate the big stadium shows and the 3-day-camping-in-the-mud-go-berzerk overhyped festivals with a big headliner. Millennials, on the other hand, rather spend all their vacation money on something like that than on a "real" vacation.
I don't know if it depends on which country you live, but in Finland I would say most facebook users are 30-70 years old. So if your target is that, facebook might be usefull.

I don't know about youtube. Currently amount of ads there is getting higher, and it is possible that people start avoiding it.

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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by bulevardi »

milo wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:44 am There is also some benefit to playing in a sandbox for a while to work on your craft. This is best done in a small venue, like a local music scene or a small online forum (like this one, actually). As your skills improve you will branch out into bigger markets.
There's aswel a big group of musicians that will never play in public or go on stage. I know lots of 'studio' and home recording artists that just keep producing stuff and upload it so it starts living a life somewhere on the web for fans to discover. But in the offline world, it will never be seen... unless maybe on a radio one day.
There's lots of musicians that collaborate with each other, exchanging audio files to work on and collaborate, mixing it altogether and put it online, as they are a 'band' with members from all over the world, but they never met in the real world.
They're all homeworkers, selling their music to YouTubers who need background music for their videos, or for the video gaming industry.
milo wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:44 am In my experience, Facebook and Instagram are no longer good for general purpose marketing for content creators. It used to be that you could put up good content and it would magically get shared and passed around. Now it's impossible to break through the algorithm. No one can guess what it wants.
It's difficult nowadays on Instagram for having a good reach. For years I've been building up a network with followers, got good engagement, but since the last 3 months, the number of views is plunged dramatically. When I look at the stats, I see that only 5% of my followers gets to see my content. They introduced 'reels', stories and videos and other stuff like IGTV. Maybe their algorithm is made up so users get to see these things primarily.
A lot of people only share rubbish online. I notice that if you do a lot of effort in creating good content, only a small amount of people tend to like it or tend to do the effort to read/watch/listen... If you upload something very stupid, or with less-quality, it seems that more people tend to engage and you'll have a bigger reach. Very very disappointing reality.
They really need to do something about it, otherwise they won't be relevant anymore.

Facebook however has "Groups" you can join, for all sorts of topics that can be relevant to promote your content.
If you like fishing, get into a fishing group, and you'll be there hanging around with only fishing-minded people, so you immediately have your target audience. The only problem is age, most young people are not there anymore. Even people from my age (38) have quit visiting facebook.

There's BandCamp too, to spread your songs, but it's not really social, people are not getting automatically to your page, you'll need something to promote it too... no engagement.
I prefer SoundCloud, it brought me in touch with lots of cool people 5 years ago... but nowadays it seems nobody is playing music anymore on that platform.
Instagram, BandCamp, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes,....
Get In Touch^^
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by bulevardi »

We haven't talked about TikTok yet....
Véry famous and addictive platform for kids, teenagers and adults.
I know lots of people watching short ridiculous videos in a very numb way.
Apparently things can get very very viral there... Could be something to bear in mind when you need to reach a new audience?

Someone pointed out to me that my music has been used in someone's videos on the background.
(it appeared in my payment overview, I apparently earned 0,00001 cent for it) So if your music gets played millions of times, caused by a video that got viral, you can earn some money to buy a coffee. But I guess you won't get rich from it.
I once managed to create an account to see how things work but I didn't start posting anything there yet...
I'm more into photography, not really a video maker... although I sometimes make a small teaser video, it's not my cup of tea to do that frequently as it is too time consuming for me.
Instagram, BandCamp, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes,....
Get In Touch^^
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by kamiluni »

I hate social, I wish I didn't have to make videos for every damn piece I write but....
today we are in the context where over 600000 new songs are uploaded to Spotify every day, so if one wants at least a chance that someone will listen to one's song, something will have to be done.
So, is it necessary to make videos? yes, it is, and it is also the only way to get noticed...but how?
Do I have to use social? yes, there are not alternatives, there are no longer record companies that discover talent, that is done by social and talent shows. No one radio will play your really beautiful song if you are alone!

Facebook has a great interface to advertise and to be able to see who really watched your music video in full, but you have to have good material to promote. Instagram is worse in that, but it is used a lot so, you need to have a presence there as well.
Tik tok, is in my opinion essential to promote yourself, it has a very good algorithms, best of all to locate content.
What about Youtube? well...it would be the best place for musicians (with videoclips)...but if no one searches for you, no one finds you!

And last but not least, bad to say, but ...quantity is more than quality: presence is the key!

These are my thoughts [I who preach well but rage poorly :roll: ]
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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by Gps »

Its hard to reach a big audience.

I might already have made an (old school) House hit.

Everybody I spoke with, who is into this type of house liked it.
It also got re-shared on sound cloud to a house music group. Somebody on the LMMS forum listened to it twice.

On facebook I most of the time don't even get 1 reaction.

I do realize this has to do with some political views of mine.

I am also a moderator of a dutch yellow jackets page, the number of times I get warned that a person has shared falls information.
That my ranking will go down and such.

The tip I like to give, only use your facebook account for your music, stay out of politics and all the other stuff. Then it might work.

One other problem. I make different types of music, to become famous you need to stick to one type and release a track every two weeks or so, so people wont forget you.

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Re: Facebook and instagram, good for publicity?

Post by RyanH »

Following on @tavasti's post above, it can even depend on your city. I moved from a bigger city to a smaller city, and here, everything is Facebook... which kinda sucks for me, because I ditched it some years ago (bad for the soul, as @milo mentioned).

As for Soundcloud, judging only by my limited experience... I put up a song over a year ago and I think the only listens it got were mine. I think stuff gets pretty buried there unless you get a paid account, in which case I guess they promote your work.

Another option which a lot of people on Linux Musicians seem to use - and some of my friends use for finding new music - is Bandcamp. An advantage of Bandcamp is that people can also purchase your tracks for download.

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