3 Marketing Tools That Every Indie Hip Hop Artist Should Have

Being an independent musician is tough. Many artists shoulder the creative and financial burden in the quest to achieve their dreams. Publicity, booking, marketing, and sales are areas that the average artist must take a crash course in to even be able to function on the most miniscule level; however, in learning all of these things you realize that there’s not enough time to do them yourself, and you don’t have the money to hire someone to do them for you. I know this because I’ve been there. I am an independent artist, a business owner, a college student, a father, and a husband. The two things I don’t have are time and money; however, I’ve learned how to leverage the little time I do have with these 3 cost effective tools:
 
Bandcamp
I came across Bandcamp about 5 or 6 years ago. It is a customizable online storefront. The normal account costs nothing upfront to set up or upload music, but they do take a percentage of digital sales on their website. It starts at 15% and slides down to 10% if you made at least $5000 in the past 12 months.
Some of the features they offer are:

• Pricing flexibility – You set your price at whatever you want, $5 or $50. You can change it anytime. You can also give away your music for free in exchange for email addresses.
• Real-Time Statistics – You can check what songs have been played (full and partial), and how many each one has gotten. You can even know which songs were skipped. You can also track your sales and downloads. They keep statistics by the current day, the past 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, and all time.
• Pre-orders – You can set up a pre-order for your album. It’s easy and simple. When people pay, they get to download a song or two of your choosing. Once you release the album, it automatically shows up in their collection.
• Search Engine Optimized – Your store front is optimized to be found in Google search engines.
• Discount codes – You generate and track discount codes.
• Players – Bandcamp offers several styles of embed players. They can be used for one or more songs.

They also offer Bandcamp Pro for $10/month and Bandcamp for labels starting at $20/month with expanded features.
 
Hootsuite and Buffer
Social media is the new street promotion. Artists that don’t believe that are delusional, but posting to each of these accounts separately is time consuming and frustrating. Well, that’s fixed. Buffer and Hootsuite are social media management systems that allow you post to all your accounts at once. Both have free options, but, if you want to really get the best out of them, it’s better to get the monthly subscription. Both start at $10.
You can link your Twitter, Facebook profiles and pages, LinkedIn, Google+, and Instagram accounts to both. Buffer also does Pinterest; however, there is a Hootsuite plugin called Tailwind that allows you to post to Pinterest also.
Features offered by both:

• Mobile post from cell phone or tablet
• Chrome extensions

• Scheduler that allows you to pick the time and date of when your content will post.
• Analytics (You may have to upgrade one more level for Buffer).
• An automatic timing tool that will post to separate accounts at their prime times. This is done using an algorithm that analyzes your social media accounts’ activities.

 
PayPal Here
There used to be nothing worse than people coming up to my merch table after rocking a show, and asking if I took cards. Luckily that doesn’t happen anymore because I have PayPal Here, which is a free app that turns my cell phone and tablet into a point of sale register. They‘ll also send a free card reader that plugs into your headphones jack. There’s no monthly fee, even though, they charge a processing fee for each transaction.
Some of PayPal Here’s features are:

• Management and categorization of inventory list with pictures, and preprogrammed pricing.
• Customization of business profiles and receipts.
• Add other users with separate passwords, and different levels of access.
• Connected directly to your Paypal account, so money is available immediately.

There’s also a chip reader available for $149. $100 will be loading back onto your account once you hit $300 in sales.

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