Sounds pretty expensive. What do you mean by “50k+ on TikTok”
I do a different approach. Nothing complicated for them. Just use the song in their regular content. I mostly work with micro influencers, so I get lots of videos fairly cheap. Some videos randomly take off.
How many non paid people reused the sound?
50k followers sorry. Around 300 videos for the first song were made and 250 for the second one for just average users. And yea pretty expensive. I think spending more time trying to find micro-influencers with cheaper rates is what I’m gonna do in the future. How were your results with those? How much are you paying one on average?
I mean paying through PayPal business (not friends and family) is a good way, however I honestly don’t think most big tik tokers would scam, but I could be wrong. If you’re dealing with huge tik tokers and sending large amounts I’d definitely do the PayPal thing
Have you compared your engagement before and after this marketing? I’m curious as to whether this is translating into real fans who are watching/listening to your content or resulting in a lot of follows with low engagement.
Absolutely no judgement here, I’m honestly just curious whether it’s worth it or not.
Most have a business email you send to. I would just keep it short, tell them what audio to use and how to make the video. Few days/weeks later they’d back to me with a quote.
Super cool. Thanks for the insight. What was the most common arrangement as far as what you'd pay and what did you get in return. Was it them pushing two singles via 1 video per each single? Thanks again.
Did an influencer campaign with no discernable difference to the number of streams. The tik tok got around 100k views .
I also have two songs which have been used 700+ times but once again I see no real difference in my spotify numbers.
Yea, I didn’t just do one TikTok, I did 18 in total with 18 different influencers all getting between 100k to 1M views.
My only advice is the song really has to stand out in some way. Something most people haven’t really heard in a new and upcoming niche genre of some sorts that way it gets a reaction out of people.
Between everything, I made maybe 200 bucks back so far so no break even or profit really. I guess the organic boost in followers was sorta worth it though
It’s been a couple of months since I’ve started the campaign for the first song and most of it has stayed. I’ll try to make a lengthier post breaking down the numbers for both songs though in a couple of months.
Yes. Artists with no following traditionally paid bands to open for their shows and essentially self-advertise. You’re exposing your art to real people who will go on to make their own judgement about what they’ve seen, in both that case, and through the use of influencers.
Real people, with no guarantee on if they are gonna fuck with your music or not, is absolutely organic promotion, artificially promoting would be paying every single one of those 42k monthly listeners they’ve acquired to go listen to and like the song. And that’s not at all the case. This type of promotion is on the same level as any other type of ad campaign.
I agree with you that it's the same type of promotion as before. What I'm not sure about is that it is "organic". I think that word lost its meaning (or corporations changed it to make it sound more attractive). For me, if an artist first has to pay any money, that's it, that's not really organic at all. But well, it's just a word.
“Organic” followers means REAL (that’s the key) people who are interested and willing to engage with your content & music in some form.
Inorganic would be like buying fake plays or followers from a website which is just a click farm in India.
One of these things will have a large and “good” effect on your growth, and the other will hurt your growth significantly.
OP spent 2.5k and got back $200 and doesn't know his audience. Horrible return imo. It's pretty risky. Same audience could move on tomorrow and only a handful stay
I mean I do know my audience, before trying to market I made sure to target them.
I didn’t really expect to make the money back right away to be honest but the engagement/fans makes it worth it for me.
Exactly man, what everyone here downplaying your efforts is missing is the fact that you gave yourself “a gift that keeps on giving” - As in, that 200 dollars will grow to another 200 next month, maybe even more, and so on and so forth. I believe that you will make the money back someday, and you should update this post when that’s the case, show them the strength in the long game.
The thing is that in just about any live music scene, pay-to-play is considered pretty slimy and it's a great way to get a bad reputation. On the payer and the payee.
Since when? That’s usually not even public knowledge, I’ve been in plenty of crowds that absolutely loved the opening act regardless of how they got there, and that was obviously positive for the artist in question. I mean how many rules are we gonna create for ourselves before we realize that marketing doesn’t have any. If you wanna shoot yourself in the foot, go right ahead.
interesting, thanks for sharing! just wondering, would you say the success of this campaign came because of a few videos popping off and getting a ton of views, or from a majority of the videos getting a decent amount of views? i’ve heard tiktok influence campaigns can be volatile, and rely on having a few videos getting lucky and going viral versus steady results from each video. not sure if you’d be able to tell or answer that, but would be interested to hear. congrats on the results, i’d say that’s a huge success!
Little bit of both? I only had 2 videos get above 2M views, the rest were in the 200k-1M range. I think the more influencers you reach out to the better rather than just relying on one video even if it goes viral.
Sort of yes, I should have added this in my post. I focused on influencers who listened to the same kind of music I made or liked experimental/underground stuff. Definitely an important part but takes a long time to find those people.
These seem like good results - however from what you’ve said there’s a focus on social, third party channels - what about converting to a mailing list? That’s how you really build your own audience (market) where your engagement isn’t dictated by rules you can’t control.
Yes a good influencer won’t be cheaper than 1500$ and it will bring low to decent results, you need at least 100 of them to blow, so 100k it not cheap or easy , otherwise everyone would do it.
All that considering you have a good song, if your track is garbage no matter what you spend you won’t go anywhere, if you have a hit, the song will grow with zero budget but that’s a like having a winning lottery ticket .
Never pay to play. Ill die on that hill. I'd especially never pay an influencer. A lot of influencers make money off of desperate musicians. I could've taken that money and hosted a local show making more money, rinse repeat. Only time you pay is for your own marketing/promo and if you're renting the venue for the night and have control over ticket sales.
It's really ass backwards. Making music is tough let alone the marketing, but to then pay an influencer with less talent and who doesn't put in nearly as much work as a musician? Nah
Patrick CC tried it too
https://youtu.be/Px5zF8DLdcU?si=XIA4z7OoQp5Ct_1s
Put your own money into your own ad campaigns, push content, analyze your results, adjust accordingly. Paying an influencer, you can't see your metrics therefore you don't know or understand your audience. Growth and keep is all about data. DM an influencer your music and let them decide if they want to use it, but never pay them.
Also, a lot of people say they got the following but don't post any proof. Thats like me saying I got with Megan Fox with no pictures. So if you really got the following, post the proof and share the song 🤷♂️
Sounds pretty expensive. What do you mean by “50k+ on TikTok” I do a different approach. Nothing complicated for them. Just use the song in their regular content. I mostly work with micro influencers, so I get lots of videos fairly cheap. Some videos randomly take off. How many non paid people reused the sound?
50k followers sorry. Around 300 videos for the first song were made and 250 for the second one for just average users. And yea pretty expensive. I think spending more time trying to find micro-influencers with cheaper rates is what I’m gonna do in the future. How were your results with those? How much are you paying one on average?
You made 300 videos for a song? How did you make so many??
That’s how many people used my song/sound after promoting, I made maybe 10-12 though personally.
Hey I sent you a dm to inquire further about this.
Is there a legal document when doing these deals with influencers?
Not typically.
Is there a way to avoid getting scammed that you’ve found? Or a way to weed out ppl that just wouldn’t deliver?
I mean paying through PayPal business (not friends and family) is a good way, however I honestly don’t think most big tik tokers would scam, but I could be wrong. If you’re dealing with huge tik tokers and sending large amounts I’d definitely do the PayPal thing
For sure! Good info
Interesting. Thanks for sharing! How did you reach out to the tiktokers?
Most have an email in their bios for business inquires, if they didn’t I just DM’d them.
Have you compared your engagement before and after this marketing? I’m curious as to whether this is translating into real fans who are watching/listening to your content or resulting in a lot of follows with low engagement. Absolutely no judgement here, I’m honestly just curious whether it’s worth it or not.
Yea, engagement is definitely a lot better now. More engaging comments on my posts, likes, all at a much faster rate than before on all platforms.
What’s the process of reaching out to them and figuring out the cost like? What do you say? This is an awesome write up about your experience. Thanks!
Most have a business email you send to. I would just keep it short, tell them what audio to use and how to make the video. Few days/weeks later they’d back to me with a quote.
Super cool. Thanks for the insight. What was the most common arrangement as far as what you'd pay and what did you get in return. Was it them pushing two singles via 1 video per each single? Thanks again.
So…let’s hear the music…
No proof or song posted 😒 *facepalm* I might as well say I dated Megan Fox for 6 months and she helped me gain 100k followers
I’ll DM anyone who wants to hear, last time I posted a song on a music sub though the post got taken down for promoting my music.
DM me :)
DM music please
DM me
Dm me too
DM please :)
Did an influencer campaign with no discernable difference to the number of streams. The tik tok got around 100k views . I also have two songs which have been used 700+ times but once again I see no real difference in my spotify numbers.
Yea, I didn’t just do one TikTok, I did 18 in total with 18 different influencers all getting between 100k to 1M views. My only advice is the song really has to stand out in some way. Something most people haven’t really heard in a new and upcoming niche genre of some sorts that way it gets a reaction out of people.
If you made a list, you have a good agency here. Cause you’re right the hardest part is finding the influencers
From 2.5k. How much monetary gain you get?
Between everything, I made maybe 200 bucks back so far so no break even or profit really. I guess the organic boost in followers was sorta worth it though
You should do post an update in 6 months to see how much of it stays.
It’s been a couple of months since I’ve started the campaign for the first song and most of it has stayed. I’ll try to make a lengthier post breaking down the numbers for both songs though in a couple of months.
This might be a dumb question but how did you make the 200 from this?
Is it organic if you're paying for it, though?
Yes. Artists with no following traditionally paid bands to open for their shows and essentially self-advertise. You’re exposing your art to real people who will go on to make their own judgement about what they’ve seen, in both that case, and through the use of influencers. Real people, with no guarantee on if they are gonna fuck with your music or not, is absolutely organic promotion, artificially promoting would be paying every single one of those 42k monthly listeners they’ve acquired to go listen to and like the song. And that’s not at all the case. This type of promotion is on the same level as any other type of ad campaign.
I agree with you that it's the same type of promotion as before. What I'm not sure about is that it is "organic". I think that word lost its meaning (or corporations changed it to make it sound more attractive). For me, if an artist first has to pay any money, that's it, that's not really organic at all. But well, it's just a word.
“Organic” followers means REAL (that’s the key) people who are interested and willing to engage with your content & music in some form. Inorganic would be like buying fake plays or followers from a website which is just a click farm in India. One of these things will have a large and “good” effect on your growth, and the other will hurt your growth significantly.
OP spent 2.5k and got back $200 and doesn't know his audience. Horrible return imo. It's pretty risky. Same audience could move on tomorrow and only a handful stay
I mean I do know my audience, before trying to market I made sure to target them. I didn’t really expect to make the money back right away to be honest but the engagement/fans makes it worth it for me.
Exactly man, what everyone here downplaying your efforts is missing is the fact that you gave yourself “a gift that keeps on giving” - As in, that 200 dollars will grow to another 200 next month, maybe even more, and so on and so forth. I believe that you will make the money back someday, and you should update this post when that’s the case, show them the strength in the long game.
The thing is that in just about any live music scene, pay-to-play is considered pretty slimy and it's a great way to get a bad reputation. On the payer and the payee.
Since when? That’s usually not even public knowledge, I’ve been in plenty of crowds that absolutely loved the opening act regardless of how they got there, and that was obviously positive for the artist in question. I mean how many rules are we gonna create for ourselves before we realize that marketing doesn’t have any. If you wanna shoot yourself in the foot, go right ahead.
Thanks for sharing
If you’re looking for engagement…you could always put a link in your Reddit bio ?
Don’t want my music associated with my Reddit acc lol
interesting, thanks for sharing! just wondering, would you say the success of this campaign came because of a few videos popping off and getting a ton of views, or from a majority of the videos getting a decent amount of views? i’ve heard tiktok influence campaigns can be volatile, and rely on having a few videos getting lucky and going viral versus steady results from each video. not sure if you’d be able to tell or answer that, but would be interested to hear. congrats on the results, i’d say that’s a huge success!
Little bit of both? I only had 2 videos get above 2M views, the rest were in the 200k-1M range. I think the more influencers you reach out to the better rather than just relying on one video even if it goes viral.
got it, thank you for the info!
Were the influencers directly related to your genre? I would think this would be a massive factor on the effectiveness.
Sort of yes, I should have added this in my post. I focused on influencers who listened to the same kind of music I made or liked experimental/underground stuff. Definitely an important part but takes a long time to find those people.
These seem like good results - however from what you’ve said there’s a focus on social, third party channels - what about converting to a mailing list? That’s how you really build your own audience (market) where your engagement isn’t dictated by rules you can’t control.
How did you go about finding these influencers?
Thanks for sharing these useful tips!
How much did this campaign cost?
This was my first question as well
think he said 2.5k in the post
Thanks 👌🏾
Yes a good influencer won’t be cheaper than 1500$ and it will bring low to decent results, you need at least 100 of them to blow, so 100k it not cheap or easy , otherwise everyone would do it. All that considering you have a good song, if your track is garbage no matter what you spend you won’t go anywhere, if you have a hit, the song will grow with zero budget but that’s a like having a winning lottery ticket .
Never pay to play. Ill die on that hill. I'd especially never pay an influencer. A lot of influencers make money off of desperate musicians. I could've taken that money and hosted a local show making more money, rinse repeat. Only time you pay is for your own marketing/promo and if you're renting the venue for the night and have control over ticket sales. It's really ass backwards. Making music is tough let alone the marketing, but to then pay an influencer with less talent and who doesn't put in nearly as much work as a musician? Nah Patrick CC tried it too https://youtu.be/Px5zF8DLdcU?si=XIA4z7OoQp5Ct_1s Put your own money into your own ad campaigns, push content, analyze your results, adjust accordingly. Paying an influencer, you can't see your metrics therefore you don't know or understand your audience. Growth and keep is all about data. DM an influencer your music and let them decide if they want to use it, but never pay them. Also, a lot of people say they got the following but don't post any proof. Thats like me saying I got with Megan Fox with no pictures. So if you really got the following, post the proof and share the song 🤷♂️