8 Ads Hacks for Musicians to SUPERCHARGE Their Growth

I can get people to watch this video for one cent, two cents, three cents. Now here's the magic. Wow. A lot to unpack there. Because the first 24 to 48 hours, the most important thing. It seems like common sense after the fact. Exactly, bro. Everyone is like, all right, I'm running ads. I'm gonna drive it to my song on Spotify or my album. I say, don't do that. Bro, this one is a controversial one. We're gonna test this the seven songs. What is the test entail? Um, man, just to fing go. Ultimately, as an artist, the most important number in your world is f it's the game. Before you go spend your money, like please rewatch this episode, share this with a friend, because like these are good places to start. Those of you that have been tapped in with the one more time podcast, the timekeepers, if you will, trying to make that stick. Still unsure on that one, but let's roll with it.

You guys know that we talk all the time about content marketing and how the the freeness of it, you know, is the magic of it, right? You can download social media for free, and a million people can see a piece of content, find your music, and you can go crazy. But if there's one thing we learned from the years of interviewing people, some of the top music marketing experts in the game, by the way, it's that ads are a part of every successful musician's strategy. For sure. And every business's strategy. Like if if we if we're serious about treating our music careers as businesses that they are, like every business runs paid ads. Like it's just a a part of every promotional marketing mix. It's the game. It's the game, right? So you know, to your point, what we want to do on this episode is we want to play some of the clips from our past episodes that have been specifically around music marketing and paid ads. And there's different tips and tricks and hacks that each of these people have. Um, and we want to just kind of like play them and unpack them for you guys. And this isn't the place to get like which button do I click in meta ads manager, Google Ads Manager.

Like if y'all want to see a video like this, drop a comment. We'd love to we'd love to make one like that. This is more like general frameworks and approaches, right? Um, so it we've learned a lot from these. Our audience seemed to get a lot from these. All these videos went stupid viral on social media. So let's get into the first one. There's platforms like Symphony where you can spend a hundred dollars on targeted ads. We can even go on our Spotify for artists and look at our top 10 cities and make sure that we spend in the places where people are listening to our music. We're gonna like hit our homie down the street who has a camera because like we all have one. Let's give him a hundred dollars. Let's go to the streets where you're from, and let's make sure that we shoot a video. But let's also shoot a bunch of short form content. I'm talking about 10 pieces. So while you got your homeboy there, you tell him you turn that camera vertically. A lot of the creators that do mixes and remixes and mashups on TikTok, super friendly, and they need content ideas. DM them, see how much they charge to do mashups for you and post them so that they come from your page.

So now you have another piece of product. Somebody might charge you a hundred dollars to do a mashup. Let's spend on that too, because I think new sounds are important. And there's probably a couple of other answers, but I feel like I've spent $300 and saved you a lot of money, so pay your rent. Then let's react properly after we put our 10 pieces of content out. So that was Amber Grimes, executive vice president and GM of LVRN Records, home to 6LACK, Summer Walker, WestSide Boogie Boogie, a bunch of other of your favorite acts. Um so I know it was really brief, like a lot of that was about content. Sure. We weren't lying when we said we love content here, but there is a bit. But there is a bit about paid ads. And really, my main takeaway from that one is basically where we should be spending, like in what geographies. Right. I don't think enough of our artist friends are checking their analytics on not only social media, but obviously all the DSPs have these uh analytics around where people are tapping in from. And if there are certain cities that you see on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, SoundCloud, and they're all the same cities, it's probably maybe maybe explore those cities.

It's not a Coincidence. Run some ads in those cities. Yeah. It's obvious. It sounds obvious, but it's worth mentioning. I think a lot of people don't think about it. For sure. So I would say, like, immediately right now, go look at your top five cities. If there's any overlap between platforms, before you run ads, make sure we're spending money in those cities. Absolutely. Like that, that's it. Let's get into clip number two. What most people are doing is they're trying to get people on the first date to Spotify. They're trying to get people on the first date to go to their YouTube channel. And it's like I never go to Instagram to leave Instagram. I'm going to meet you where you are. So I'm gonna run a 60 to 90 second video. Now, the reason that I do that on discovery and awareness is because I can get people to watch this video for one cent, two cents, three cents. Now, here's the magic. When they push play, they chose to listen to this video. Now, the reason that I go longer than most people are saying, dude, just run five-second videos, 15 seconds, 20 seconds. Ultimately, as an artist, the most important number in your world is 31. Because that's how much you need to get paid for a stream.

Why am I going to spend my money on people that will only watch five or six seconds of a video, knowing that they will never be able to assist me down the road? So, what I'm doing is building an audience at the lowest price point possible of people that have said, I watched 75% of your video, and now I'm going to show them an even longer video the next time at that lower price point. So I'm going to start building up a thousand viewers, 10,000 viewers, 20,000 viewers. And then I may run a retargeting ad to people that have watched 75% of this video and say, now I'm gonna try to get them off platform. Shout out to Rick Barker, man. Taylor Swift's first manager, first manager, music marketing oracle. The Oracle. Dude, super super sharp guy. Yeah. Um, what was your main takeaway from that one? Yeah. So for those of you not maybe maybe not aware, there's different ways to run ads. Typically, to get someone to leave a platform, right? To get like a hotter lead right off the bat, it's gonna cost you more. And his strategy here is kind of casting a wider net, right?

He's just looking for people that it's he's just he's not trying to get him to leave the platform. He's just trying to get people to watch his video. And he's casting this wide net, and he's seeing who is watching this longer video, 60 to 90 seconds, and then kind of retargeting them, which is a much cheaper way to find potential people who will listen to 30 plus seconds of your song on streaming so that you get paid for the stream. For sure. I I love the like on a first date, are you trying to, you know what I mean? Like you're on a first date with these people. Ease in there. Chill the fucking, they're not leaving the party that they're at. Like they're at the Instagram party, they don't want to go to fucking YouTube, they don't want to go to Spotify right now. We don't see one ad and then go to join your Patreon, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I I think about these strategies, and like once again, we're learning just like you guys. So I'm sure you've thought about this stuff too. Where like, like just think about your own user behavior sometimes. Like fuck your music, fuck your ads that you're running. Like sometimes we get a little too like in the weeds of our own shit going on. We're like sometimes if you just take a step back and be like, how do I interact with ads on social media?

There's keys in there that you can learn from. Yeah, do. Do I click to your point the first time I see something? Am I discovering a new artist and immediately going and running to their Spotify or running to their YouTube channel? Probably not. And it's a very hard thing to convince people that like you should be spending money for awareness. Awareness, dude. Even I struggle. there's no return on there's no immediate return. There is in the long term. Do you even you have to like no? I believe I said it funny, but like there is, it's just long term, it's not quantifiable, it's tough to swallow. But all the successful people are doing it for a reason. For sure. And the the real big key here is his retargeting approach. Right. So once again, we're not here to show you what to click and and you know, so on and so forth. But in every ads platform, you are able to create um audiences, is what they're called, where basically you can say, hey, anyone that did watch more than 75% of this specific video, you can literally specify the video. Um, that's who I want to now target with this campaign that is trying to get people off platform.

That was what he was really trying to drive home. Is like once you got them warmed up and we know who's who's interested enough to watch a fucking 45, 60, 90 second ad of someone's music, right? We know they're pretty interested already. Yeah, instead of coming out the gate paying like a dollar to try and get someone to leave platform, you're you're spending a pennies to be pretty sure that they actually might leave the platform and they are interested. Then you come in with the bigger, the bigger money. Exactly, for sure. Let's get in the next one. So there's a secret that I'm gonna share with you guys. Ooh. Okay. Okay. For those of you that run ads, audience network. Okay. You familiar with audience network? I thought that was more about like associated sites, but I think I'm wrong. No, you're correct. Okay, I'm correct. So it's a it's a Facebook, it's a Facebook ad that isn't on Facebook. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, yeah. So where these ads are running are on like if you're playing Spider Solitaire, if you're playing Candy Crush, okay. If you're playing a game, yeah, they're gonna say, Ben, I'll give you five more tokens.

You just need to watch this video and I'll give you five more tokens. I'm getting those plays for like 0.001, 0.002. So I'm like, shit, at some point, if the girl on the plane, who every time I'm on a plane, I'm seeing them playing Solitaire, Candy Crush, whatever the latest game is, yeah. After about seven times, if they go, you know what? I like this song. Who is this artist? I just use it strictly for a branding play. I know I can't retarget them. That wasn't the point. The goal was to get people to hear my music. Yeah, and if they have to watch the whole entire ad to get their freaking tokens, why not spend a percentage of a penny to do that? Oh, the things people will do for an extra five gems in Candy Crush. I mean, yes. How many times do you think someone needs to see you on average or in marketing? They'll say seven times, seven impressions, ten impressions.

It's however many it is, because you don't know where their headspace is at that particular time. We know they weren't out searching for you, but when you set up your targeting, it's not gonna show it to everyone who's playing Candy Crush, it's gonna show it to everyone who's playing Candy Crush that likes Journey, that might be over but between 20 and 50 years old, they still use the targeting. Yeah, it just happens to say, I'm gonna go meet people where they are. Yeah, it's just not on platform. Yeah. So this is another one from Rick. Uh, I think this is like even harder to quantify. Even tougher pill to swallow, but even cheaper. It's cheap as fuck. Even cheaper. It's cheap as fuck to just get the earworm going with all these candy crush fiends that need their goddamn isn't it even called gems, probably coins, coins, Yeah. Gold. whatever the fuck it is. Currency. Um, but no, my my biggest takeaway from this is that we do need to be pretty fucking confident on our targeting. Because if we're just showing the song to another Candy Crush user that wouldn't actually like my music, then they're just not ever, you know, then you are just waste, even though it's cheap, you're still wasting that completely.

So I think in his example, somehow we went down the rabbit hole of like Journey. Yeah, fans of Journey, like our music sounds like Journey. I don't know who's making Journey like music. I want to know. I want to hear them. Me too. Um, but so whoever it is that you um, you know, think uh fans, fans of that artist would be fans of yours, we want to be really fucking good at setting up the targeting within these ads platforms. And a lot of these ads platforms have very like sophisticated targeting where you can, you know, set up a bunch of like, you know, really good keywords and interests and artists that are that you know you're similar to. And I think you can probably set up uh, you know, targeting that uses um data from your old videos that have done well and stuff like that, right? So you you know, even though you can't retarget these types of people, like you said, you can still set up the initial like approach, right? To make sure that you're casting the right like net, even though it is gonna be still like a pretty wide net, you know what I mean? Are we still where where do we get this data initially, even? I mean, I know you said like Spotify top cities, you like Instagram has some analytics.

Is there like a place that as far as what similar artists goes? Or just like where do I get the demographics to type into my ads platform? Yeah, I send my ads to. Bro, I mean because Spotify doesn't really give you much. Top cities, sure, but like Yeah, so so there are um I wanna say there's like websites these days, bro. You might even be able to ask ChatGPT or something, dude. Like I would leverage AI for sure. Yeah, but then also this is where like self-awareness comes comes into play, bro. Like you gotta, you gotta be self-aware of who it is that like you kind of like fit the same mold of, and you gotta have a lot of people around you that you trust too, um, to give you this kind of like honest, candid feedback. And also, if you if you have any fans, if you have five, if you have five fans, go check them out. Ask your fans who else they like, right? That that like is somewhat similar to you. Like, just talk to your fans. I mean, that's like just basic community building 101, anyways. You should be talking to your fans about all sorts of shit.

But this is something you can definitely ask your fans, be like, hey, like, if I were to open up for like another artist you like, who would it be? Mm-hmm. You know, kind of like, that's a good one. Yeah, kind of phrase it that way. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. Kind of a good one. Thanks. You cooked. Thank you. Move on to the next one. Hey, Henry here. Sorry to interrupt this podcast, but there's something I have to address. As many of you know here at one more time, we love doing live music reviews. We love hearing the music from our community and providing helpful feedback that is hopefully helping you further your career. But if there's one piece of advice that we are tired of giving, it's that your master is too quiet. We shouldn't have to turn up the volume for your song just to have to turn it back down for the next song. That's not good. But Henry, good mastering engineers are so hard to find and so expensive. Enter DistroKid's newest tool called Mixia. I master music myself. And while I don't think AI mastering will ever replace the quality you get from an experienced human mastering engineer, it's pretty damn good. And if you already distribute through DistroKid, you can now master unlimited tracks using Mixia. And if you don't, we have a link right here.

You can sign up for DistroKid with 30% off. Upload unlimited music yearly for an insanely cheap price. Humans perceive louder as better. It's dumb, but it's true. Use Mixia for a clean master and you won't sound weak on that playlist. Let's get back to the episode. I also look at the conversions. Like how many people actually look to the external links because it tells you on the post how many people clicked your link from this post. If you're an artist, I mean, see how many people actually clicked your fucking Spotify link. Right, right. It sounds obvious, but it's like I don't know that a lot of artists are doing it. Artists will tell me I I put out a TikTok, you got two million views, I got zero streams. Sometimes I'll have a post that does 30,000 views, get like a hundred followers from that. But sometimes I'll have a post that does 700,000 views, and the ratio is not the same. What I would do is take the post that even has a lower amount of views, I would take that one and try to run ads towards that. Promo God. The God. I wish he spelled his name G-A-W-D. So badly, bro. Maybe he's up, maybe he's up for a re-brand.

Let's talk about it. For sure. So I mean, like, just right off the bat, I think I made another post about this because I thought it was so like, it's one what's one some of these, bro, are just it seems like common sense after the fact. Exactly, bro. Hindsight is 20/20, as fuck with some of these. And I think it's like, look, his point is is you might have a fucking video that crushes, right? As far as the view count goes. But it converts nobody. Exactly. We're interested in conversions. Who is excited enough to go click a link to listen to your song or watch your music video or whatever, whatever it is that you're trying to send them to off platform? That's what we want. And that's what we want to use in our ad. Because an ad, unless we're trying to once again run up the views, right? From a brand awareness perspective, right? If we are running any sort of conversion ad where we're trying to convert people to click a thing, aka leave the platform and take them somewhere. Which is tough.

Exactly. We should use a piece of content that already had a really high ratio of link clicks to uh views, right? Like that ratio needs to be very high. That's why he's the god. That's why he's the promo God, bro. Let's run another one. I think we got another one from promo guy. Oh, do we? Ads could be really expensive. But one way I will say that works, if you have a low budget, had an artist who had, like, for example, a $2,000 budget, instead of stretching that for two months, we spend it all in the first two days. Oh. Because the first 24 to 48 hours, the most important for a song. If you can get Spotify to see that people are listening to the song in the first 24 to 48 hours, you get shot out in the algorithm. I started with this artist with zero monthly listeners. Right now he's around 50,000. How many streams did you convert from the ad spend itself? So we got like 2,000, 3,000 conversions, which equates to about six to 7,000 streams. Tell me about like what happened after that. It was too many playlists to count. It was like thousands. You know, if you run ads, like you'll see your playlist ads go up a lot. Like a lot of them is personal playlists, a lot of it is algorithmic playlists too, you know, Discover Weekly, Spotify Radio, stuff like that.

Yeah, definitely it does push your content out once you show the right audience. Bro, this one is a controversial one. I don't know if you saw the comments on this. There's a lot of other fucking music marketing ads gurus out there that don't necessarily stretch it out more than two days. Well, their point was, and this is what I just want to make sure our audience understands the point of people kind of like combating this idea or like kind of like you know arguing against it, is that you don't have enough data to know what's working. Yeah. If you throw it all at something and you spend it all in 48 hours. Well, I think there's no test uh time period. I think there can be with testing out content that uses the song before the song drops. I think you can see if people are reacting to the song well. If you have pieces of content that are outperforming with parts of the song before the release, then that's a good indicator, at least where like maybe this is worth pushing. Because he makes a good point. Like the first Spotify is an algorithm, just like anything else. If it sees something doing well in the beginning, it pushes it out because it thinks it's gonna keep people on the platform.

No, that part's not even you can't even argue. It's not debatable. No, exactly. Like Andrew Southworth, uh, all the like ads to streams, gurus, yeah, all agree that like there is a philosophy of drive as much fucking traffic to you to that song as possible. And Spotify doesn't know the difference. They don't give a fuck. Yeah, If you paid to get them there or there, as long as they're not bots, don't go fucking. Don't buy. Don't buy. For God's sake. Do not buy for anything away from this. Literally. Yeah. Don't pay for that. Pay for ads who are real people, yeah, right within meta ads manager or Google Ads Manager, etc. The danger is that you need to be confident that it the song will perform well because you can pay to run ads on anything. Yeah. Doesn't mean it's gonna do anything. Oh, meta ads would gladly take your money, regardless of if it was a wise investment or not. Absolutely. They're not out here to just say what's a safe ads investment. So I would say try and prove out that people are reacting to content that you post for free at first, or that your fans have told you they love that song, or just something is indicating that this is worth blowing, you know, my whole ads budget on this song in the first 24 to 48 hours. I think that's how Promo God actually did uh comment back to some of those like people that were challenging his approach.

Yeah. Was like, we've already done the tests. Right. And there was other he might have said just organically, or maybe even you are doing like other paid ads that are cheaper. You know, like you know, awareness and kind of like just cheaper campaigns that aren't conversion campaigns. Once again, I don't want to get too nerdy on this one, right? This isn't that episode. But um, but yeah, generally speaking, you should try and test it out in some various form before you are just like spending your whole fucking budget in two days. Right. But there's benefits. But that first one to two days is important. It's kind of important. Yeah, for sure. Let's be real. Let's get in the next one. Building his social media, registering him at ASCAP BMI, sound exchange, um, MLC, making sure he's educated about how the music business works. We're gonna test this the seven songs. What is the test entail? Um, it entails making a minute and a half video with his iPhone. It's sort of the same video for each song. It's you rapping the chorus, the verse, and a chorus, and then we're gonna run a hundred dollars for two weeks on each song at the same time, and we're gonna see how long people stayed on each song. It's gonna tell me the order in which I'm gonna release those seven songs.

Do you go best? Best to worst. To worst. Absolutely. We're gonna have a month's worth of content or two months worth of content because you're new. I want to make sure we have a lot of stuff in the can and we're ready to go. We're gonna figure out who your audience is by people that sound like you. We're gonna go to the chart metric stats on people that are similar to you at a similar stage, similar sound. Testing is gonna help us a lot too, because we're gonna look at the stats on the back end of that. You don't have any social media, so I can't go into your SoundCloud or your Instagram yet and see who your fans are, but I'm gonna watch it. Once we're ready, we're gonna put a plan together. The money's gonna be there, and we're gonna start dropping. I'm not gonna shop him a deal, probably for two and a half years. Wow. Because he needs leverage. Wendy Day. Wendy Day legend. Has negotiated some of the biggest deals in music history, specifically hip hop history. I mean, no limit records, I think was one of her deals, right? Big one. the big master P deal. Got them a bunch more than they were about to take. Yeah.

Uh shout out to Wendy. Man, just a fucking goat. Yeah. Um, this one's interesting because her ad strategy is dictating the release schedule. I know, which is massive. So good. And some people already are cringing at that. But I think it's smart, man. Dude, some people are like, wait, you want me to spend money on ads before I even release the song? To decide the order of which I release my song? Are you fucking crazy? No, she's not actually. These are really good points. Um, I do love how that was baked into like how to blow up in a, you know, a new artist with, you know, with no social media. Yeah. Um, my biggest thing again is the testing. Yeah. It's just we gotta make more informed decisions, right? I know this episode is all about ads, but to your point, making informed decisions about what we're releasing, right? Um, and I think that that whole test philosophy can manifest itself in different forms, right? But I think what she's saying is basically to your point, how are we going to release the songs if we're just getting started? Um, but my main takeaway from this is just like test, test, test, look at the data, look at the data.

She's literally seeing what percentage of the video like people watched. You know what I mean? Um, and I think that that's that just goes for anything that you want to do, right? Like, what is the most what is the most popular? Like, I know And watch time, by the way, is the metric to be paying attention to. And y'all can release whatever the fuck you want, right? But at the end of the day, we are in the business of trying to get people to listen to it, and we want to know what people like the most. You know, that is- And it's not always your favorite song. Exactly. It's actually usually not. Probably not. We've heard either people on the podcast or just famous artists. Y'all all heard the interviews of the Tyler the Creator, Billie Eilish type artists who have said, like, I didn't think that that one that went was gonna go. Yachty still hates Poland. Look at Poland. Poland's up there. Yeah, for sure. And by the way, on the testing note, like, let's be grateful that you, you know, back in the day, these like companies had to spend like hundreds of thousands to make a commercial to run on TV, and then pray that it worked. They had no idea.

Like, social media is free, and you can post infinitely and run infinite tests. We're just so used to it now, but it's we live in a great time where we can get this data for free at scale. But fuck content, bro. Fuck content. Fuck Instagram. We're gonna make some shirts still that say fuck content. Oh. I think it's gonna go up. Bro, no, I we have to. That'd be great. You weren't into that idea at first. I am now you are. I'm on board. Did you just hear it and then be like, let's do it? I would wear it. Okay, even though I love content. Let's go to the next one. Everyone is like, all right, I'm running ads, I'm gonna drive it to my song on Spotify or my album. I say, don't do that. Make a playlist, make your pin playlist on your artist profile, drive them to that playlist, make your song number one, make another song number two, make another song number three, and then mix in a few larger artists. And now Spotify's algorithm is like, all right, they're listening to you, and then Drake, and then post. Spotify is now putting them together. Boom, boom, boom. Guess what happens next week with the Radio Discover Weekly? You get one stream, you get two streams, you get three streams. You're in the Radio Discover Weekly.

They're liking the playlist, following it, they're following you. So that $1 turned into five different actions. Meg, man. Shout out to Meg, co-founder of Symphony. Symphony. That was the platform that Amber Grimes in the very first uh ads hack that we played. Um, she referenced using Symphony to basically, you know, automate and target, run targeted ads. Um, Meg is the co-founder of that company, that company Symphony. We have a promo code uh in the description. You get one month free, give it a shot. It really is incredible. It kind of just It's built for artists, by the way. Whereas, you know, a meta ads manager, you kind of gotta make it work for you and music, but this is like made for you guys. Oh, this is the simplest form of running ads that you can do. And I think Meg realized how painful it was to be in some of these ads manager platforms, it is and how artists don't want to have to become fucking ads experts, right? But y'all do need to run your own ads, especially if you're you're a DIY, you know, indie indie musician. Um, so yeah, Symphony is incredible.

Um, as someone like him, we've got like I think either one or two more uh clips from Meg. Two more. Uh yeah, that are just once again showcasing his like genius when it comes to this shit. How do you feel about this approach? I think it's great. I mean, the playlist approach, it it makes sense. There's so much more opportunity than spending to try and get them to listen to one song. If you can spend the same amount where they potentially take all these extra actions, I think you're just getting more value out of your dollar. For sure. I I think a lot of other people have have used this approach too. So I he's definitely not alone in thinking that this is a a solid investment or like way to spend your money on ads. Um, yeah, it it takes time, right? Like, you do have to make the playlist. If you want it to be an actual like engaged thing, you have to update the playlist. Like, it's not for the like lazy. I mean, y'all aren't lazy out there, right? So this is perfect for you guys, but for the fucking lazy assholes that don't, you know, don't want to do that. Maybe this one isn't for you.

Um, because it does kind of require, but it's kind of the you know, higher level of effort, but like higher payback, probably. I think anyone that's this far into this episode is pretty serious about their career. That's very true. We're only talking to the ones that care. Shout out to you guys. Exactly. Let's go. get in the next one. What else you got, Meg? At what point should an artist start running ads? Most artists should start testing ads early on to at least see the cities and countries that are resonate with your music. Because on Symphony, you run 50 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever. You're gonna see the whole graph of like top cities, top ages, top genders, top demographics. Within a few releases, you're gonna see which cities are really hitting for your type of sound for your type of genre that at that point scale up based on what you think is working the best. So this is huge. It goes back to what I was saying about where do you get the data from? I was literally about to say this answered your fucking question. This is it. Like you can use our code in the description, sign up for Symphony for free for a month and run 20 bucks and get like data that you literally cannot get anywhere else so that you feel confident when you come in with the bigger budget that you're spending it smartly. Yes, exactly.

And I I love the idea of there's no better time to start running ads than now, right? Like people are afraid, like if I only got 20 bucks on it, I can't run ads yet. Like, well, no, if your ad budget is 20 bucks, you can start. Yes, yeah, and you can get a lot of data. I mean, you when you're talking about getting penny types of views, I mean, you know, you can get a good amount of data for 20 bucks. Once again, I mean, it'd be better if you had 200 or 2,000 bucks, you'd have more data, but like let's work with what we got right now and get started to your point to be able to then start like doubling down on like where it is we know, like shit. If I'm a New York drill rapper, like New York's probably one of my top markets. We might not have to use this approach to find that out. But like if you're in some other market, you might not know where you should be spending the money, right? So I love this. And not only the ads, but like I think this data should come into play for like damn near every aspect of your career. I mean, you're thinking about what type of content to make. If you know who you need to get to listen to your music, you know who's gonna be fans.

You can kind of, you know, dictate how your content should look or sound or shit. I mean, if you want to go crazy with it, like you your music could be tweaked. You could kind of start adding in bars that make sense for the type of people that are gonna like your music or mention specific places or things that they're interested in. You know, I'm not saying like completely, you know, facelift your art, it should be your art at the end of the day, but like use it as a tool. It's a tool, like anything else. It's a fucking tool. I mean, damn near like you could collaborate with an artist in a specific city. Like if you started seeing like your music popping off in like the UK, yet you've never even worked with a UK producer or worked with a UK artist, like it's probably time to do that, right? So there's just like little things that it can reinforce, like maybe things you'd already been thinking about, or it can bring up new ideas that you'd maybe never considered, right? Love that. Last one, let's get into it. Interestingly, we're kind of at a middle ground nowadays. There's like content of artists talking to the camera, but then there's also highly produced content that does really well. You are either making pieces of content that has a really good hook that's facing you, or you're making quick cuts from a music video clip.

Think about how quickly you're scrolling, right? And like something has to catch your eye in the like raw talking to the camera. Are they just talking? Are they singing? It's a hook, right? It's like POV this, or like, have you ever had this situation? Catchy title text. Yeah, you know, but then song. But then song, right? Okay. But you gotta catch them. A lot of people are scrolling Instagram on mute. I heard a lot of like 40% of people are on mute. Put three seconds before the hook of the song, three seconds in they can unmute it and it's gonna start. with your hook, right? That's a cool. don't come in first. Wow. Yeah. A lot to unpack there. Yeah. So this it's kind of a content tip, but it is the idea is that of course it is. This is content that is we sneakily are still recommending you make good content to promote your music. We're still getting the content in there. But the good content becomes your ad. That's the idea. For sure. And I just think that everyone, I mean, the most common question we get from you guys probably is what type of content should I make? Should it be lower quality, right? Or should it be higher produced? And the answer, I hate to say is both.

It's everything. We do need all different types. Like just the answer is yes. Should I do this or this? Yes, exactly. Um, but I love that whole mute thing, bro. Yeah, that was good. That's something you and I go back and forth on too, even with our own content of like how quickly should we like say the big thing. Say something exactly, right? Um, so yeah, maybe maybe give it a few seconds before like the shit really starts to hit. Yeah, um, and and and you'll actually notice like check out some of your like favorite viral, you know, videos that are music related content. I've started to notice that actually be a thing where like I just saw a video from Nissan. Uh it was his lyrical lemonade, uh like freestyle type video or whatever, and he did some little like two-second thing before he really started spitting. And I think that's another like perfect example of exactly what Meg's talking about, where like you kind of give them that little delay before it hits because they're like they're interested in because what's happening, then they hit unmute and then you're spitting. Absolutely. Yeah, they need that couple seconds, Meg, because I I mean shit. I am usually unmute when I open Instagram.

So absolutely. I know other people are for sure. So yo, these were nine hacks from music marketing experts in the game. Once again, these were not what button do you click in each ads manager, but these are just frameworks, approaches, philosophies, little tips and tricks, man. That like before you go spend your money, like please rewatch this episode, share this with a friend, because like these are good places to start before you actually spend like big bucks on ad campaigns. And I just want to add that like ads in general, they it's tedious, you know, it's tough, it's data. A lot of creatives aren't necessarily like numbers and data people, but this is something that is going to be part of any successful career, and you need to at least have some basic understanding of it, even if you do hire someone to handle it for you down the line, having an understanding of it so that you can hire the right person and make sure they're doing the best job they can for you is gonna be invaluable in your career. So just put a little time into it, give it a try.