A Music Marketing Budget

should be decided to effectively plan a music marketing strategy. But how would you arrive at that budget? What elements should you consider while making the budget? The thought of creating a budget may make you want to go to the rehearsal studio instead. But trust us, it's important, especially for independent artists trying to make their place in this vast music industry. We've jotted down a few pointers for you to start off with. 

Also, before you go any further, you've got to check out this Music Marketing Budget Planner we made, it's perfect for indie musicians like yourself trying to figure out your next steps (financially) in the music industry. It's 100% free, hit this link here to check it out

 Separate long-term and short-term goals

The most common mistake an emerging musician makes is to consider all goals while planning a budget. Getting your next release a marquee ad on Spotify is a short-term goal. However, investing and creating your own merch is a long-term goal. For the moment, these look like the same thing, at the end of the day, it is for marketing after all. That’s exactly where we go wrong. While making any budget, first set your goals and categorize them. We recommend giving long-term goals more financial importance than short-term ones. You must take into account the paths that will bring you the most success in the long run, not just at the moment. Make sure you keep realistic goals. 

For example, if you’d like to sign up with a label or distributor, make sure what your rights, royalties, and other benefits and losses are. These contracts are based on long-term goals so considering this will significantly impact the approximate budget you’d have in mind. Speaking of labels, do give our articles on Record Label Contracts: Types You Should Know and Publishing Deals: Types You Need To Know. And yeah, this really does become an integral part of your marketing plan. The more efficient the label is with its distribution, the more people you could potentially reach. To determine the results, you will need to wait for 1 to 5 years depending on the type of contract you have signed. That’s why it is a long-term goal. 

The duration required to accomplish such long-term objectives will have an impact on how much funds you need to set up the essential ways to get around. Keep in mind that each paid channel should result in enough engagement from your audience. 

You don't want your efforts to be ineffective or insignificant. Make these things matter and affect your growth in real-time. 

Evaluate 

Before investing a lot of funds in a channel that doesn’t give significant returns, you need to evaluate your methods. Have you tried collaborations with other artists on social media? Has that increased, decreased, or made no impact on your following, shares, and interactions with your followers? Yes, these things matter. You as a musician should pay attention to such things as well. No impact also indicates no returns. If collaborations as a method are not working out for you under the big umbrella of music marketing, then you need to evaluate why it didn’t work and try out an alternative method. Always have a backup plan. Without options b and c, your strategy will seem incomplete. 

Spotify recently introduced the Discovery Mode. Have you tried that out yet? Why is/isn’t it working out for you? If you actually have no idea about it, please don’t skip the article on How To Use The Discovery Mode On Spotify in 2023. The more you sit down and analyze, the more you’ll find your losses and loopholes that you could manage. These services will be a part of your budget and you will need to make clear demarcations for it as the results indicate. There is no point if you continue to acquire services that have not yielded the results you desired. Hence, before jotting down the final budget, make sure that all the channels you are investing in or you’ll be spending on, have shown a positive response before and show an implication that they will continue to do so. 

Prioritize

It’s very important to divide your funds and prioritize your funds accordingly. Branding services, release packages, social media research, publicity, playlist rankings, release promotions, and other agencies are a few that you might find yourself thinking about and these agencies will cost you money. If your social media presence is doing well, you don’t have to worry about that channel while plotting your budget. Speaking of the same, check out our article on Music Marketing Using Social Media in 2023.

If it really doesn’t matter to you and you want to do traditional marketing, then prioritize that. Spreading out all your funds equally is a utopian thought and we recommend dropping that idea. When you prioritize a few over the rest, you will know what works for you better. The pointers we mention work interdependently, not in a single chain reaction. Keep a note of that. 

Cost of Production

If you are interested in selling physical copies of your music, like vinyl records, then you should be aware of the cost of music production, pressing, manufacturing, and distribution costs. If your budget is limited, we recommend you adopt the ‘go all digital’ strategy cause in all senses, it is cost-effective. Of course, you will need equipment to make your music, be it top-notch software that you would need to buy, rent or subscribe to, and so on. 

In order to release your music to streaming channels, you must pay either an initial deposit or a repetitive annual payment. Note the expense when creating your budget if you intend to distribute your music in this manner. Estimate the expenditures if you intend to create t-shirts and other merchandise to be sold. If you want to reduce the preliminary expenditures for merchandise, you can choose to employ print-on-demand services like Printful. 

Press Affairs

We cannot stress this enough - it matters. Traditional and conventional press agencies such as print and broadcast media play a huge role in your advertising and marketing plans. A solid EPK and media presence goes a long way. Speaking of the same, read our article 10 Things You Should Add In Your Electronic Press Kit. Getting one of your gigs covered in a prominent magazine or newspaper may be just momentary, but the impact it will have on building your brand for your music will go a very long way. Include the expense of hiring a publicist in your music marketing strategy if you require assistance with the release and distribution of a new release or show.

To balance your spending, do your best to predict how much money you'll make over the course of the following year. This will demonstrate what has to be trimmed from the budget or acquired from outside sources. Lastly, as the year goes on, you should monitor your expenditure. Make a spreadsheet with a complete list of your expected spending and revenue. Excel Spreadsheet, Apple Numbers or Pages, OpenOffice, a Google Workbook, or a Google Doc can all be used for this. If you don’t really want to do this, you need to hire a financial advisor or manager for your plans who will keep track of all the plans (make sure you think about his or her remuneration too while making your budget in the first place). 

 We have added a free budget tracker here. It includes all the possible channels you'd want to invest in and a space to note down what you should do about it. Take a look:

You could get a free download as well! All you have to do is duplicate the sheet and add in your data accordingly. Check out Greaserelease Budget Tracker right now!

We at GreaseRelease, have a bunch of curators on our network who are looking for new & exciting music to push on their massive playlists. If you make music and want to reach a wider audience, check out our submission platform and get a chance to reach millions of listeners! Submit your tracks now! 

 

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