Hip-Hop Music Promotion for Artists

Popular examples of artists who’ve made it big on the back of pushing their music from a marketing standpoint include rap artists MGK, Lil Pump, G Eazy, and more.

More specifically, you can see how these artists pushed their music to their audience and developed a unique brand, voice, and disposition within the scene to help them get recognition. MGK, or Machine Gun Kelly, has long been known as the rapper from Cleveland with hard bars that are incredibly skilled at speed rapping.

He’s recently made the major jump to becoming a pop-punk artist with a hip-hop flair. You’d think this would cause him to receive a lot of backlashes as he completely switches genres. Due to how he pushed his music and promoted himself, he’s gained millions of views, followers, and has skyrocketed to even higher heights of success with hip-hop groups.

The same can be said for G Eazy and Lil Pump. Have you noticed that these artists, and many others, suddenly become a large name seemingly overnight? You may not have ever heard of them before and then one day you wake up and they’re the next big thing in music. How does this happen?

Develop an Engaging Social Presence For Hip-Hop Artist

These artists have all managed to work and push their music in a new way and created a brand that defines them to go with it. In the upcoming months, they’ll slowly begin to change their personas, make a sudden change in their music, their clothing may even change, and a slew of interviews will be done. This is all done to help change the image of them that’s either already been established or to create one before their project debut.

This perceived overnight success is anything but. It’s a carefully crafted strategy that has been refined for many months, if not longer than a year.

So, how do they do it? These are some of the things any hip-hop artist should look to do to help push their music:

• Create a unique sound
• Interviews, interviews, and more interviews
• Promote yourself
• Network and collab
• Spend money to make money

Creating a unique sound is perhaps the easiest part of this entire list. This should simply be the music you create. If you’re the biggest Blink 182 fan in the world and your music mimics their style, it’ll be difficult to get your feet off the ground. Everyone in the world has heard of and loves Blink 182. If your music is no different, this gives little incentive for a new fan to want to check out your music

Because of this, creating your unique sound and style within the hip-hop industry is incredibly important. You must give the public some reason to listen to you rather than their already-established favorite bands and artists. People are awful at changing. They need to be almost forced into changing their tastes and habits so ensure that you’re providing something they connect to and love.

Once you’ve perfected the style and sound of the music that you want to present to the world, you should be self-promoting out the wazoo. This is more than waiting for the local radio station to pull you on-air. Every day you should be looking to push yourself to the public in different ways.

Make a Soundcloud account, put all your music on there for people to listen to. Create a YouTube channel and uploads videos. Even if they aren’t professional quality, an amateur video can be a great way for you to connect to your followers and fans in a more intimate, personal setting.

Of course, social media is going to be one of your main tools as well. This includes creating a page, account, or channel, on every single one of them. Not only should you be involved in these social media outlets, but you should be incredibly active on them as well.

Pushing your hip-hop music is more about pushing the music itself, it’s about pushing the music and YOU as a whole promotion package. With the ever-changing digital world becoming such an integral part of society, being able to market yourself amongst all the other artists who are trying to make it has become much harder. You need to be able to sell yourself and the music as a package to separate yourself from everyone else.

Even if you’re a budding artist and no one knows your name, you should be looking to do interviews as well. If you don’t have any contacts, don’t fret. Many artists don’t start with a plethora of contacts and knowledge of big names in the industry. Putting together a package of your music, some statistics on your online following, and why you stand out from the rest of new and upcoming artists will grab the attention of media outlets.

If you get rejected nine times, the tenth time where you get put onto a hip-hop podcast or a hip-hop radio promotion, it’ll be worth it. Not only is this most exposure in general, but it’s also exposure from a trusted source. Most people formulate their opinions based on the two-step flow of communication. In simple terms, most people will formulate an opinion based on the opinions of the people they trust.

You can see this development of opinions from communication in many different forms. From Rush Limbaugh on the radio to XXL’s Rookie of the Year award, examples of opinions being formulated based on someone else’s opinion is everywhere. This is what makes interviews and promotions so important for an upcoming artist.

Surround Yourself With Strong Promotion Tools

Networking and collaboration are another great way to help get your name and music out there. If other local artists are creating music of a similar style and flavor, link up with them to get on a track together. Many artists avoid collaborations and networking because they perceive other local artists as under them. In other words, why work with someone when you’re more talented and destined to make it big and they’re not?

The answer is simple – because you need to meet people. When you’re first beginning your adventure into how to push hip-hop music, you’ll realize that connections are everything. A great way to develop these is to meet other artists, get in good with them, and slowly discover who they know and work with. From there, you can network with them, and continue on your networking goal. Eventually, you could get with a bigger name artist or meet a producer that takes a look at your work.

Many, if not most, artists who make it big will tell you that their success is due to their unrelenting pursuit of making connections and networking within the scene.

You have to be willing to spend money to make money. This can be a bigger barrier than other things you can do simply because you may not have a lot of money to spend on promoting yourself and pushing your hip-hop music. There are many resources you can purchase to help boost your popularity across social media platforms and other areas of marketing. They include:

• Ads on both Twitter and Facebook.
• Look for blogs and other online spaces to purchase advertising space hip hop.
• Third-party packages go a LONG way.
• Getting your music in Apple Music.
• Making collaborative playlists.

Ads on both Facebook and Twitter can be great ways to promote your website or another piece of content you’re trying to push to the public. This could be a recent interview that ran on a large media outlet or simply to your music playlist on your website. One major benefit of these services is that you’ll only be paying for these services when they work. In other words, if you run an ad and it receives zero clicks, you won’t be paying anything at all. You’ll only be charged when people are clicking and interacting with your ad.

These are also great tools because you can easily track the performance of the ads as they’re running and after they’ve finished. You can see which demographics are most interested in your music/ads and what’s the best way to reach them. By learning this key information, you can easily adjust how your strategy to gain more followers and fans and spend less money at the same time.

Blogs and other online spaces sometimes offer paid spots to do artist highlights as well. You’ll find a plethora of them throughout the internet. Be wary, as some aren’t reputable or don’t receive a lot of traffic themselves which will make them worthless to you. Look for popular blogs that are seeing to run more content on new artists and make a pitch to them, the bigger the website or blog, the better.

Of course, hip-hop promotion packages are also available from third-party services and always a great idea. These services promote you and your music across the broad spectrum of social media platforms. For example, Artist Push’s HIP-HOP STAR package is an ideal service to take advantage of if you’re looking to get a boost in viewership. This incredibly robust promo package gives you a huge boost that can be key to getting yourself set up in the hip-hop scene if you’re a budding artist.

Purchasing individual services such as playlist placements and spots onto blogs are good ideas, but you’ll need a combination of everything to make your debut on the scene as perfect as possible. By purchasing the HIP-HOP STAR & Hip-Hop Promo Push packages you’ll be getting everything you need while saving a bit of money to boot. It’s truly the best deal for the fame-seeker in us. Buy it now, don’t wait for someone else to steal the spotlight. 

Let Your Music Be Heard With Playlist Placement

Through services such as Artist Push, you can utilize their services to get your music within streaming playlists that receives thousands of plays per month. You’ll be able to select what, how, and where to promote your music so you can get the most for your money as well. This can become an even better strategy after you’ve done a little demographic research so you can target your fans even better.

It should be noted that an important part of getting yourself onto playlists is getting yourself onto the right playlist. Artist Push will allow you to select the playlist of your choice and see what kind of music that that specific playlist caters to. Pushing your music is great, but pushing it to the wrong crowd is a recipe for disaster. 

Know your audience, know where to find them, and then push your hip-hop music hard to them. This one of the key methods in learning how to push hip-hop music. Soon, you can have your music on the best hip-hop playlists. 

Apple Music Playlists Placement for Hip-Hop Music 

Services such as Artist Push can get you into popular playlists that trend for new and upcoming artists. Not only will you be able to target where your music is being played, but you’ll even receive royalties for the number of listeners that stream your music.

Be careful, as a large part of purchasing these services come with the risk of selecting the right playlists to put your music into. If you haven’t done the due diligence on your end to know where your music will be most effective, you can’t expect effective results by throwing your hip-hop music just anywhere.  

Get Press & Blog Coverage With Hip-Hop Music Blog

Promoting your music through hip-hop music blog spots can be an excellent way to effectively promote your music and yourself to the public. 

Many of these blogs will be attached to other parts of the brand. For example, XXL isn’t simply a magazine They’ve evolved into an online media outlet that has podcasts, online interviews, and a blog as well.

When you’re looking to push hip-hop music, you should be looking to get onto as many of these well-advertised blogs as possible. This gives you exposure from a credible source and will forever be a place on the internet that users can find that will lead them to you.

How to Push Hip-Hop Music on Hip-Hop Blogs with Artist Push

You can get onto hip-hop blogspots by networking and finding connections, or using a third-party service such as Artistpush. Artist Push works to take your music, videos, a project, or a recent interview and publish them onto their respected blog. Artistpush’s main goal to help promote artists from around the world in their specific genres, so their blog focuses on exactly that.

By being featured on a blog like this, you’ll be able to gain constant exposure forever. Getting featured on dedicated hip-hop blogs is one of the best hip-hop PR moves out there. It’ll also help you gain a more reputable standing within the industry as other blogs and marketers will see that you’ve been featured online in the past and have a better standing than your competitors will. Promote the blog post and highlight your figure among the crowd. 

If you’re wanting to jumpstart your rap career, building a connection with hip-hop marketing companies such as Artist Push is a smart move. 

How to Get Onto Hip-Hop Blogs Without Third-Party Services

If you’re more into getting onto blogs the old-fashioned way, you’ll have to go back to square one with marketing and connections. 

Check out your local radio stations, send them a track, and give a little background information on yourself. If one of these radio stations has a talk show that’s dedicated to hip-hop music, even better! If there’s something like this, make sure to address the specific show or on-air talent rather than addressing the radio station as a whole.

If you’re in a smaller area and perhaps don’t have access to larger media outlets, don’t’ fret. You can still promote yourself locally and online. In this case, promoting yourself via blogs that are connected to an online brand will be your best bet. 

Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and get rejected, it all leads to success in the end.