The 6 Best Music Promotion Services For Indie Musicians

Making great music is only the first step to successful music promotion. Some people say that the work is all that matters and that it should sell itself.

But that’s only half true.

Great music will sell itself, but not without a little nudge.

And that nudge could lead to great things for your music career. Because music promotion is not so much about gaining more fans as it is about getting more true fans¹. So really, you need your music to get in front of the right people rather than all the people.

I want to tell you about some music promotion services that can help give your music that nudge it needs.

Before I go through the services you should consider, let’s talk about the types of services to avoid.

The things I mention below are all legit, but even they have downsides to be aware of. Everything in life has pros and cons.

But there are some promotion services that are just downright sketchy. And you should avoid them at all costs.

Here are some red flags to look out for.

Let’s say you visit a music promotion company’s website and you see a “Buy Now” button or something similar. This tells you one thing: they will accept anyone and everyone.

This is not good news for you unless they offer a service that truly would benefit any musician, like writing a new bio or helping to improve your press kit.

But if they don’t care about working with only quality artists, then they’re probably not that good.

If you sign up with a company that promises Facebook likes or Instagram followers, just don’t work with them. You can get in big trouble for this.

Plus, as an indie musician, you don’t want more likes or follows, you want more true fans. And you’re not going to get them with a music promotion service that has bots (or paid freelancers) to “follow” you.

I don’t know about you, but I get sketchy messages on Soundcloud all the time. Every time I release new music, someone messages me and promises Soundcloud likes, plays, and big exposure.

Here’s one I got recently:

Don’t respond to these messages.

If you have to buy YouTube views, are you really succeeding at YouTube? Also, any company that sells YouTube views is definitely using bots. This obviously isn’t allowed and it could get you in big trouble.

A good music promotion service will either have a list of clients they’ve helped and/or they’ll have testimonials posted on their site. If they don’t, ask them. If they’re sketchy, they’ll say something like, “We’ve helped many top-performing artists” but not actually give you any names.

Yeah, stay away.

If a promotional company promises to get your music on Spotify playlists, avoid them. A good playlist curator will, you know, curate the playlist. That means selecting the best songs and turning down the not-so-good ones.

A company can’t promise to get your songs on a playlist, unless that playlist has little to no engagement or followers.

Now let’s talk about some solid music promotion services. I’ve used most of these, so I’ll share my experience with them.

I don’t know about you, but I see Instagram ads all the time. And sometimes they get me. Sometimes I actually click on them. I’ve even followed people because I initially saw their IG ad.

To start running an Instagram ad, just hit the “Promotions” button from your profile. Then you can boost one of your current posts. Or you can go through your Facebook Ads Manager and then choose to run it on both Facebook and Instagram.

Hootsuite has a complete walkthrough² of how to run Instagram and/or Facebook ads. You can also check out Facebook’s ad page for more info.

Advertisements are one of the oldest methods for getting the word out, and they’re still effective. That is if you do it right.

I’m annoyed by Spotify ads about 90% of the time. But that doesn’t mean Spotify ads are inherently useless, it’s just irritating the way people make the commercials.

So if you can create an ad that compels people to listen rather than expels them away from their computer, you’ve got a chance to win over some new fans. As a fan, I’d rather hear your music in the ad right away so I can decide if I’m interested or not.

On Spotify’s ad page, you can learn more and contact Spotify about running your ad.

If you want to run a Spotify ad as well as use some other music promotion tools, you can work with Show.co.

They can help you launch your ad on Spotify, RollingStone, Billboard, Pitchfork, and elsewhere. You can also use their other features to grow your fanbase, such as by running a Spotify pre-save campaign, building your email list, and premiering a YouTube video.

You can get started for free, but the free services are limited to Social Unlock (giving your fans something free in exchange for a social follow/like), YouTube and Soundcloud listener-to-fan conversion, and giving away something free for a fan’s email.

Even though Radio Airplay “guarantees” internet radio airplay, they’re still a legit company.

Here’s how it works: you get a certain number of free credits to play your song on Jango, a free music streaming platform similar to Pandora. Then your song can be included in Jango’s algorithm, which plays your song next to other similar artists. You can also buy credits to get more streams.

The reason I trust this service is because:

• Jango is a legit music streaming platform people actually use
• I use it and I see real people listening to my songs
• Radio Airplay partners with reputable companies, like CD Baby, Tunecore, and Disk Makers

Soundplate is a record label and music platform that also partners with Spotify and Deezer playlist curators.

You can browse through the playlists based on genre and submit your music for free. They just ask you to follow the playlist before you do so.

What might end up happening with a lot of these playlists is that they get a lot of unengaged followers from all the musicians submitting their music. It’s free, so they probably get a lot of submissions. But I still follow some of the playlists I’ve submitted to because they actually have music I like.

Also, Soundplate doesn’t charge anything because it doesn’t cost them anything. They simply connect the curator with the artist.

If you want to get your music featured on music blogs, radio stations, and Spotify playlists, you can use SubmitHub.

Whether or not you believe music blogs still have leverage, you can at least get good press that you can post on your website and include in your EPK.

In Ari Herstand’s in-depth guide on SubmitHub, he says you should submit your music about 4-6 weeks before your song’s release date³.