I’m a strong believer in the power of music blogs when it comes to gaining reviews for your music. Sure Spotify and playlist placements are great, but there’s nothing quite like the power of words. That’s where music blogs come in. Think of them as the secret sauce for beefing up your online presence, while helping you find new fans and gain the respect of the industry. Getting reviewed isn’t just about getting your name out there—it’s about building a community and gaining credibility.
Choose A Few Blogs To Get Started – Look, Lurk, Leap!
Your music is unique to you, your listeners, and potential fans, but that doesn’t mean that your music belongs everywhere. This is actually a good thing!
What I mean by that is if you’re a folk artist, you won’t fit on a blog that’s geared more towards rock. Those just aren’t your fans. Spend some time reading blogs and understanding the culture of each one you like and once you’ve found one that makes sense for your genre, think about which writer is best to pitch. Check out the artists they’re already writing about and if you feel like your music fits into that, they could be a great fit to approach. Take your time with this. Remember, it’s about forming relationships and, just like any relationship in your life, it takes time and patience to develop.
How Do I Find Blogs to Submit To?
Today, most blogs can be easily found on SubmitHub, The Indie Bible, through a quick Google search, or The Hype Machine.
What’s The Hype Machine? The Hype Machine keeps track of what music bloggers write about. They handpick a set of kicka** music blogs and then present what they discuss for easy analysis, consumption and discovery. This way, your odds of stumbling into awesome music or blogs are high. This site also tracks the most blogged about artists and songs on their network.
Another way to find music blogs that might be a fit for your sound? Google! You can look to see what kind of press other local artists are getting and see if that blog would be a fit for you too.
But hey, maybe you don’t have endless time to put in this kind of research. Places like MusoSoup and Groover are a one-time pitch and upload site where you just need to do the work once and submit to hundreds of blogs, playlists, and magazines. You can also always get in touch, and we’d be happy to chat.
SubmitHub
SubmitHub is one of the most incredible resources for indie musicians looking to either do their own press or aid in existing press efforts. We could write a whole article on it! And well, we kinda did. But here’s the quick version.
Submithub works best when you start small (around 10-30 credits) and spend some time learning the platform and targeting your best fits when it comes to features. Go after those big outlets if they feel like a fit, but don’t completely write off the smaller ones. Those can be some of your biggest fans and longest relationships.
Take the time to really fine tune your genre while using SubmitHub (they even have an AI analyzer to help you with that!) and get a feel for the type of coverage you’re looking for — reviews, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc. Lastly, be realistic with your expectations. While there are a lot of artists on SubmitHub, it’s one of the quickest ways to drum up a little press and is an invaluable part of your toolkit when it comes to music blog coverage.
Business Music Blogs
Straight up music blogs aren’t the only place to get coverage for your music! In fact, there’s a lot of value in thinking outside the box and approaching business centric music blogs. Here are my favorite Music Thought / Music Industry / Music Technology blogs
Hypebot
A journal of music, technology and the new music business.
CD Baby
CD Baby’s DIY Musician is a daily blog and podcast that focuses on digital marketing and promotion advice for indie musicians.
http://www.diymusician.cdbaby.com/
Bandzoogle
The Bandzoogle blog offers advice on everything from marketing to booking and more.
http://www.bandzoogle.com/blog
Billboard
One of the largest daily news from all aspects of the music industry.
Bobby Owsinski
Daily digital promotion, social media, and apps and tools from one of the most versatile and impressive music production writers.
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