Why Music Marketing Is So Important

I think when people speak about music and music releases, the marketing is often neglected and looked at with little to no importance. As an avid music fan who works in marketing, I often look at the marketing strategies that artists use, and in the wake of the upcoming Eminem album, I have gone into a rabbit hole of looking at some of the best marketing ideas that have been used by artists over the last few years and how this has affected the album.

Musical marketing is different from other marketing because of the amount of money artists have at their disposal; some of the biggest artists won’t just make an Instagram post and be done with it. It is similar for people who like to bet on the Euros matches, they wouldn’t need marketing to know that the tournament exists, but a refresher of the date will help, and this is similar to music marketing. A release date is the most important part of an album release, and refreshing the fans on when this will do massive things for an artist.

Taylor Swift Compared To Drake

Taylor Swift and Drake are the two best examples of artists using different types of marketing. Taylor Swift is the biggest artist in the world and has some of the most diehard fans around in music today and possibly in music history. So when Taylor Swift was, controversially, up on the stage collecting the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album and during her speech she announced the release of her upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Society. 

This announcement had a massive effect on music and had her fans going crazy around the world. After hopping off the stage she posted the album cover to her socials and a few weeks later announced the features and the tracklist. And that was it. That was the marketing done. When you are as big as Taylor Swift, you don’t need a massive marketing strategy and team to come up with the ideas; although it would help, I’m sure the Spotify streams and the charting success would still be there even if she didn’t market her music.

But when it comes to Drake, although he could just drop an album and have massive success, he is an example of incredible marketing in music. His last two albums have been masterclasses in how you build excitement for your music, with his 2021 release ‘Certified Lover Boy’ being marketed with billboards around the US, and he used billboards in different states to show the artists who were on the album. 

For example, he put billboards up around Atlanta announcing 21 Savage, Future, Young Thug and Lil Baby were featured, as these were all rappers from Atlanta, It got these cities even more excited for the album and got the cities involved. As well as this, his most recent album was marketed really well, with announcements of release dates at concerts then those days being changed to build anticipation, masks being worn by Drake and his team, QR codes being used etc. He used a lot of different strategies and got everyone involved in some way, which made his fans and other rap fans even more excited. 

Why I Like It So Much

I would say that music marketing is the most interesting type of marketing, and it may be tied with film marketing. But why is it so exciting to me? I think that the creativity that can be used by artists is the most impressive part. One of my favorite marketing strategies of recent years was used by Travis Scott, who also used the rollout, the time leading up to the release, to announce features and collaborations. A briefcase with the words “Utopia” written on it was passed around to artists, and this built my excitement a lot, and this is why I love it so much. No other form of marketing can build excitement like this and getting the fans’ anticipation at an all-time high before the music is even released can really improve the sales and the performance the music does.