How to Promote Music on Instagram?

With the recent release of Eminem's new album, "The Death of Slim Shady," music-related Instagram accounts literally exploded, reposting fragments of clips and sharing them on other platforms. Moreover, the artist made several posts on Instagram, announcing the release himself, which brought even more hype. 

It's obvious that when a start of such level makes announcements and promotes tracks, it's hard to avoid that. Still, when you know how to promote your content via any platform, the size of your audience does not matter at all. You will surely increase visibility and get your music heard by new users. Instagram will become a crucial factor in your music promotion, especially after reading this article. We are not magicians, but we will show you a couple of tricks that will change the game and make your promotion campaign more effective.

How Can You Use Build-in Instagram Tools to Promote Your Music

This table represents common music promotion methods for Instagram

What Exactly Is Instagram Promotion?

Some people think that promoting music on Instagram is just making random posts with their music in the background and waiting for the engagement. Unfortunately, this process is a bit more complicated, and it requires users to have a specific plan, timing, and an understanding of how your content affects the Instagram algorithm. Platforms like Spotify and Apple Music allow users to share their songs via Instagram, adding links to stories and reels, but it's ineffective to build your strategy only around these promoting options. You need more ways to make your tracks heard, and Instagram is a nice option to start your promotion campaign. If you're also thinking about this, keep reading because we will show key steps every musician should know.

Paid Instagram Advertising: Is It Effective?

Before discussing free promotion methods, it makes sense to discuss paid Instagram promotion. You invest in pushing your posts (reels, images, and stories) and increasing reach. The system presents your content to users who might be interested in it, giving you more views, likes, comments and saves. People find out about your music and proceed to your profile to learn more about your tracks.

Key takeaways about Instagram advertising:

• 76% of marketers feel satisfied with the ROI they get by advertising on Instagram.
• 65% of companies spend up to $6 per 1000 impressions.
• The price range from $0,00 to $0,75 per click for Instagram ads remains for 59% of businesses.
• 53% of companies spend up to $500 per month on Instagram advertising.
• Instagram ads take up to 20% of the overall advertising budget for 49% of businesses.
• 54% of companies spend from $0,03 to $0,08 per engagement on Instagram ads.

Daily Instagram promotion may cost up to $4.00 (per 1000 impressions). The price per engagement may differ depending on your goals and budget. For example, an average business spends approximately $500 per month on Instagram promotion. The basic principles of using Instagram promotion for business do not differ from those used by musicians. Companies use this platform to expand their presence and get more sales, and musicians want to increase their target audience by reaching more users on the platform.

When you decide how do you want to promote your music on Instagram, you should decide:

• How long do you want your paid campaign to last?
• How much can you spend on it?
• What do you expect to achieve?

When you have a basic understanding of what your music promotion campaign will look like, it's much easier to allocate resources and balance free and paid promotion. You won't spend money recklessly and work according to the plan, which will allow you to succeed fast. Now, let's discuss the essentials of free Instagram promotion.

Manage Your Profile Before Starting Promo Campaign

Once you consider yourself a musician and run the page as such, you need to optimize it properly. Select a trademark profile photo and get an appropriate nickname. It's not necessary to use your real name—come up with a nickname that will quickly become memorable among listeners. 

Customize your description. Mention the genre you work in and leave links to the platforms you are presented at. If you had a release recently, leave a link to the original music video. If you have too many links to share, use a link tree to combine them.

Since Instagram allows users to pin posts on the top of the page, you can pin posts related to your recent release. When people check your profile, they see your post and find out more about the album or the release, just like Eminem did with his recent album.

Use tools to schedule posting, optimize your bios, edit your reels and IGTV videos, and have advanced analytics. For example, Iconosquare is considered one of the most effective tools for analytics despite its age. It was used before the platform even offered its own analytics, giving users the advantage of receiving accurate data about audience activity, impressions, overall engagement, etc.

The application is paid, but you can get yourself a free trial to test features and understand how Iconosquare works.

A tool called HypeAuditor will help you analyze historical data, track engagement rates, and identify spikes of follower activity. For example, if your follower count suddenly increases, the program will show it. This platform also allows you to perform analysis on YouTube, so if you decide to promote your music via this resource, you will be able to analyze it quickly.

HypeAuditor significantly increases your capabilities, allowing you to build long-term marketing campaigns, identify gaps, and simplify music distribution.

Get Profile Verification

This option won't affect your Instagram promotion directly, but it will present your profile as credible and reliable so that people will consider you as a real artist. To make your profile verified, you need to access settings and request verification. After that, the platform will ask you to enter your personal data and links to your profiles on music platforms (optional), and that's it. You successfully made a request for verification, and now you need to wait for Instagram to approve. If your profile wasn't verified, you can submit for verification once again after 30 days. 

Edit and Customize Your Content for Better Quality

Instagram is about visual content. Regardless of what you do (run a personal blog, sell goods, or provide online services), you have to make sure your content has outstanding quality. If you post images and videos to promote your music, make sure they have an appropriate quality. Use editing tools to customize pictures by adding special effects. If you can't edit the video yourself, consider hiring a professional editor. Come up with a script for your reel and explain what exactly should happen. After that, ask the editor to use your music as a background. 

A music band, Bring Me The Horizon, shows a good example of Instagram video promotion. Their music videos are crafted to represent the tone and style of the song. They also add a short description to show the main motive of the track.

Share Links to Your Songs and Profiles in Stories

Besides sharing links to your content in profile descriptions, it's also essential to leave links in Instagram stories. You need to remind users of your latest releases and encourage them to proceed to the platform and listen to music directly from your account. Add "click on the link" phrases as a call to action. If you simply leave a link, people will probably ignore it. Still, if you give a direct indicator to action, there are more chances they can do it. It's essential not just to get better stats but to receive royalties and increase your income. If we talk about monetization on Spotify or Apple Music, it's essential to mention that these platforms offer good monetization conditions. If you want to receive higher income, Instagram is one of the best platforms to help you do that. 

Don’t limit yourself to default content ideas. Record mini-guides about music editing, content posting, and reviewing other topics to take advantage of and share your experience with others. You don’t need to reveal all your secrets. Just show some basic examples that will help beginners avoid pitfalls.

Use Proper Tags

People think that if giants like 21 Savage or Eminem don't use hashtags, they also can avoid it. Well, it works a bit differently. Tags are essential for both music platforms and social media where you promote it. When artists use tags on SoundCloud, they trigger the algorithm by making their music visible. If they use hashtags on Instagram, they make their reels and posts visible to others on the recommendations page. Even though people don't search for the content directly, the system tracks the content they engaged with before and offers similar content.

When you are at the beginning of your path, hashtag usage is essential because you have to present yourself to the world and build a strong presence so others will recognize you and keep following your profile, waiting for the next release. Use genre-related hashtags so it will be easier to identify your tracks among thousands of posts. Later, when you become more popular, you can come up with a branded tag and use it for all your posts, not only for promotion.

Let’s review the case of Carly Oso to better understand how hashtags increase visibility. He is a guitarist who creates covers for famous songs and his own music. He uses various hashtags to make his content visible, and we can analyze them to understand correct tag usage better. First of all, he has music-dedicated tags #music, #makemusic, #Igmusic, and so on, so his content appears when searching directly with these tags. 

Second, he adds tags describing the genre he is working in (#indiemusic, #indieartists, #folkrock, etc.) Finally, he uses the tags #carlioso and #onemanband to distinguish himself from other musicians. Once we look through his posts, we see that the tag number often changes. Moreover, the author doesn’t spam, using up to 10 hashtags in one post. 

After reviewing this case, we can say that tags are extremely important for visibility. You should combine default tags related to the genre or style of music and add personalized tags (for example, those that are related to your nickname). 

Run Live Streams

Going live on Instagram is another part of the promotion. You build strong connections with your audience and get closer to followers. When people know who exactly stands in front of them and who is the author of their songs, the audience-author connection becomes stronger. If you are a beginner, a live session is also an option to hear honest feedback and think about possible changes. The success won't come immediately, especially in the music industry, so it's important to hear what your audience says.

Use Paid Promotion From Specialized Services

Another effective way to promote your music via Instagram is to use paid social promotion. In addition to paid Instagram promotion, you use promotion from professional services. Experts give you organic traffic and increase your engagement, giving you more likes, comments, and follows. Depending on your goals, you can select something specific or purchase a combined Instagram promotion package. You get your stats balanced in all aspects (getting more followers, likes, reposts, and comments), and you can share it among multiple posts to get organic growth. A well-balanced targeted engagement (focused on people from the music industry) will help you grow and become recognizable. Since you'll receive organic engagement, such a package will effectively promote your content. 

None of these methods won't work separately. Only when you follow a plan and consistently post content on Instagram, your listens will grow. Stick to the plan and master music marketing to become the best in your genre.