D.I.Y.

Bob Baker: Music Marketing Espionage Online

image from 3.bp.blogspot.comOne of the big questions that self-promoting musicians ask is, "Where should I focus my efforts when it comes to marketing my music online?"

In addition to creating digital outposts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more … you also need to reach out to websites, bloggers and podcasters who cater to your target audience.

But there are so many millions of sites to consider, which ones should you focus on?


That's where a little online music marketing espionage might prove to be helpful.

What do I mean by espionage? Well, what if you could uncover a list of the prominent websites that currently cover and link to the most popular artists in your genre?

Knowing the websites, journalists, bloggers, and podcasters that are actively sending web traffic to artists similar to you could be valuable, right? Of course. Luckily, there are a few online tools that can help you discover this data for free.

So here's what you do:

Make a list of three to five popular artists in your specific genre of music. Better yet, make a list of the top independent artists who are thriving in your category. That way, you'll uncover online sources that support unsigned and up-and-coming acts.

Armed with this list of other artists, go to the following websites:

Google Advanced Search Trick

Go to Google.com. In the search box, type the word "link" followed by a colon and then a particular artist's website. It will look like this "link:www.artistwebsite.com" when you're done. Don't use the quote marks and leave out any spaces. Click "Search."

The search results will show you a long list of web pages that link to that artist's website. Here's a screenshot of results for Bon Iver's home page.





Bon Iver

Open Site Explorer

Another place to search for inbound links and other web stats is www.OpenSiteExplorer.org, presented by SEOMOZ. Go there and enter any artist's website and it will spit out another list of results. There's a pro version of Open Site Explorer, but the free version gives you plenty of links to work with.


Open Site Explorer

Uncovering these incoming links to other artist's websites is just the first important step. Next you'll have to visit each of the links and determine which ones are worth pursuing. That will take some time. But having this prime list of sites that already cover music similar to yours will give you a big headstart.

What do you think of this idea? In what other ways do you discover the best websites, blogs and podcasts that cover your style of music?

Bob Baker is the author of three books in the “Guerrilla Music Marketing
series, along with many other books and promotion resources for DIY
artists, managers and music biz pros. You’ll find Bob’s free ezine,
blog, podcast, video clips, and articles at www.TheBuzzFactor.com and www.MusicPromotionBlog.com.

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8 Comments

  1. This is great advice. I just set up about fifty sites listing the details of my new record label (Healing Chime Audio), and now to set out and find how other meditation / ambient labels and artists are getting exposure will help me to know where and how to link so that it actually works. What a simple tip that really makes sense. But I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it like that. Thanks!

  2. I don’t think google’s link tool really works anymore. They give you virtually nothing at all to go with. Tools like opensiteexplorer and ahrefs are much, much better for this sort of thing.

  3. I agree with Mike. Google’s link tool is useless.
    I just tested it by typing link:www.sakisgouzonis.com and I got just 9 results! lol Needless to say that my website is the most popular independent artist website in Greece, and many press sites/blogs,fan pages/profiles,etc link to it.
    OpenSiteExplorer is just a bit better, but it still “hides” a lot of information.
    Unfortunately, there isn’t a reliable link tool today.

  4. I think this whole idea is flawed. Do you really think of you get your website perfectly aligned with the browsers that you’ll magically start getting better gigs, selling more downloads and getting more streams?
    Maybe, if you’re a wedding band.
    Don’t waste time on trying to capture accidental web traffic. Spend your time making fans of your music who will buy your recordings and come to your shows. Make your website a tool for them.

  5. Something that I’ve found to be helpful for both myself and artists on my label:
    I find a few artists that are in a similar vein to my sound, then search them on Elbo.ws and Hypeem.com to see which blogs are writing about them. I then do a quick perusal of each blog to make sure things are current/get their info, then BAM add them to the press list.
    Works well.

  6. I found this to be very insightful. Thank you! I’ve also been getting a lot out of drummer Brian Doherty’s website as well. He has some interesting views on music and the music industry at briandoherty.net

  7. This. Goes for the whole of marketing/ online presence etc. As long as you actually HAVE one, spend 98% of the rest of your time writing better songs, making better recordings and producing a better live show. That’s what we want to be doing anyway isn’t it? I’m not competing with cats doing human-ish things anymore, I can’t possibly win.

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