Tools All Independent Artists Should Use

We know that independent artists don’t have the budget of A-listers or the help of an entire staff, which is fine! The internet has a lot of free and affordable tools at your disposal. Whether you want to create a website, find music blogs, dive into audience analytics, or anything in between, we’re here to help. If you’re more a visual learner, our YouTube channel has a plethora of resources for you. Here’s a list of tools all independent artists should use…

Tools All Independent Artists Should Use

Tools to Get to Know Your Fans

Knowing your audience can be the driving force behind earning more money. Whether your fans ingest music via Spotify or discover new artists on Instagram, this data can be crucial to you.

• Next Big Sound: This tool can help you to find and grow your audience so you can focus on creating what you love, music. Next Big Sound allows you to get insights for free.
• Spotify for Artists: This is a huge tool to dive into if you’re trying to make it in the streaming world. Spotify for Artists can help you to learn more about your listeners and where to book future gigs.
• Pandora AMP: Pandora is offering this platform as a free resource to musicians to help market their releases. Knowing where your audience is coming from and being able to engage in these listeners creates a big opportunity for musicians and artists.

Music Blogs That Want to Help You

• StoryAMP: This platform can help you to connect with journalists who can spread your story.
• Electronic Musician: Electronic Musician covers all aspects of music production —performance, recording, and technology, from studio to stage.
• Noiseporn: For $50 per submission, this blog will provide you with a 100% guarantee that your track will be listened to, critiqued, and considered for support on their website, which will give your track exposure to music fans, producers, and major record labels. If they feel like it may not be a good fit, you will receive a refund for your purchase.

Create Your Own Website

Having a website is crucial in today’s digital world. You can use it to connect with fans, sell merch, host all of your music, share photos from past gigs, and more! Here are some website builder tools to help you:

• Squarespace
• Wix
• Weebly

Social Media Management

Let’s be honest, no one has enough time in a day to consistently post on all social media platforms. That’s why social media management tools come in handy. These are perfect for scheduling future posts about upcoming gigs, new music, and even blog posts if you have one.

• Sprout Social: This is one of our personal favorites for scheduling content and analyzing data. It is integrated with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+.
• Symphonic Social: We’re obviously a little biased with this platform but it is the ultimate platform to engage with fans, increase sales and grow your plays.

Crowd Speaking Campaigns

At this point, you’re probably familiar with tools like Kickstarter. Well, this is like Kickstarter but for social  media posts. Instead of asking people to donate money, you can have influencers share your tweets. Thunderclap can help you get started with crowd speaking.

Design Tools for Flyers, Cover Art, etc…

You’re excited to release your track but you forgot to include a release cover in your budget. No worries. Tools like Canva and Promo Republic have templates that can help you out and some are even free.

Free Guides

• The Ultimate Spotify Guide for Musicians: We’ve put together the ultimate Spotify guide for musicians including all of the latest features, how to use them, and how to promote your tracks.
• Music Marketing Plan Template: Marketing your music shouldn’t be a difficult task. After all, your main focus is to create music. We’ve created a music marketing template that will help you to maximize your potential without draining your creative juices!
• Music Publishing 101: Did you know that there is more to music than playing live shows and selling? Music Publishing is the business of collecting royalties for the usages of songwriters’ musical compositions.

Organizational and Project Management Tools

Staying on top of everything you’re trying to accomplish doesn’t have to be a pain. Google Suite and Trello will help you to stay on track.