For me it feels almost impossible to get anywhere. Feels like I’m only relaying on fate and destiny.
What I’ve done is that I’ve put some links on my YT channels banner and put links on some of the videos on YT.
I’ve tried to pitch some songs for Spotify without any result.
I actually wrote in one local facebook group which has given result. They put one of my tracks in their regional playlist. Feels awesome but so far only 5 streams. 
How do you promote your tracks for streaming?
Great discussion topic Stephan!
I guess it all comes down to “how to build your personal brand”, as a composer and artist I mean. There’s a million and million artists out there, and most people just prefer listening to artists they know, unless it’s a “radio station” or playlist on a style they like.
What I will do later after summer is try a new thing: Making Covers of famous tracks!
I hope that will build an audience that enjoys my compositions, and then decides to listen to my original music as well.
That’s a thought I was starting to have after starting the Jurassic Park cover. It’s quite fun and it’s bringing out bits of my own style and what I’m good at and what not so much.
Yes and the more I hear from “famous” composers talking about this, they all seem to say the same thing. Doing rescores, re-orchestrations, covers etc. is one of the absolute best ways to learn. Especially if you don’t “cheat”, meaning that you actually do it by ear, and not go online to look for chord charts, music sheets etc. Because if you do it by ear, you force yourself to analyse and train your music ears which is possibly the most important skill you can develop! 
This is a very big question. I think that many tend to forget that you are competing against labels and setups that are pretty professional when it comes to promoting music. Having said that, there are several areas that you need to have covered
The things I’m trying to focus on are the following:
What genre you will be working on, the more you stick to one genre, the easier it will be to develop your promotion plan
Create your Brand/Story.
Playlist Research, you need to find out several things; First is to understand which ones are the most relevant, but you must also look for medium sized and smaller Playlists since they many times are owned by artists working un the same genre. This will be useful since you will be able to learn about the Playlist Habitat with its hierarchy and interactions. During this process remember that there are persons behind every Playlist.
Research for relevant Bloggers working the genre, these will be the persons you will be pitching both your music and your story to.
Create and promote your own Playlist, in order to start mingling with other Playlists you need to start creating your own playlist and promote it. Something that works great is collaborating with artists in your genre and exchange songs. In other words; what you are doing is putting likeminded followers in the same sack for a period of time.
This process is not fast, I’ve been doing it for around 6 moths and I am learning every day. At present I have reached 400 followers in Spotify and around 100.000 Streams counting all the outlets (Spotify, Youtube Music, Amazon, Apple Music, etc…). I am continuously targeting in the range of 100 playlists each time I launch a single and plan to get this figure up to at least 300 Playlists over time.
If you want to kickstart your Playlist research I recommend that you acquire The Indy Bible for Spotify Playlists. You will not be able to get your complete list you want to target from them but its a good start.
I have my doubts about how effective a YouTube channel is for promoting your music. Bear in mind that they have opened YouTube Music and there will be a period of transition until they get all the music viewers form the traditional Youtube Channel to YouTube Music. I recommend that you focus your efforts in Spotify since they are the only outlet that has managed to get the Playlisting going and are openly working on means to help Independent musicians promote themselves in their platform.
You will also find quite a lot of literature related to the world of Playlisting. My favourite is “Work Hard Playlist Hard” by Mike Warner.
I hope this helps,
/Peter Sauleda
Thanks a lot Peter!
Yes, I guess that’s the way to go. A lot of networking to get on the playlists on Spotify.
Very good achievement to reach 100.000 streams in 6 months. That inspires me
The other stations seems impossible if you’re not a signed artist.
I agree and disagree to a point, though. You definitely want to develop your aural skills, it’s a must. But at the same time, I think it’s also very helpful to score read. First, because it forces you to understand the theory behind how a piece is composed, which then aids you in decisions on how to re-score/re-harmonize. Second, it directly informs you how a great piece was orchestrated, which gives you ideas on what instruments combine well and what functions they most often perform. My favorite example of this is William’s Hedwig theme from Harry Potter, where the first instance of theme A after the celeste intro sounds like a pianissimo horn, but it’s actually woodwinds + vibraphone + harp!!
Check out my Playlist “musing By Day” if you think you have something that fits just send me the link and I’ll put you in my next update which will be out next week. I’ll be launching a new single tomorrow :).
Below is the link to my Playlist!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2tHNXUJKpyaIOrRNFgJKWz?si=HjBUcd6dRT-kkjNORX08iw
Good point, I had not thought about the reading aspect for learning! I guess because I prefer harmonizing by ear, and feel a sense of “pride” when Ido it that way lol. But yes, now that you mention it, you can get way way more details of the original composers’ choices if you get access to the full score.
However, the downside is, full scores are expensive to collect and not even always available on the market. Where do you buy them from?
Thanks a lot for the opportunity!
I think my music is a bit to acoustic sounding to fit, but thanks anyway!
Very true, they can be very expensive, but there are some that can be had for a cheaper price. I own several John Williams, Beethoven and Camille Saint-Saëns scores, most of which cost between 50-80 US dollars. You can find them here and here.
Could you please stick to the subject.
Kind regards
Has anyone, filed for artist + publisher status through a PRO such as ASCAP or BMI (U.S.)? I don’t know if they really promote artists, but this is the more traditional way to get your music out there, especially if you’re looking to e a library music composer. Companies browse their playlists to look for music to license for their commercial projects. This is what I’m trying to do with my music, but it’s kind of a tough situation, as I’d like to do the traditional artist thing and have fans listen to my music, but getting paid for it, most modern orchestral composers do mixed media and licensing.
The PRO only collect money.
That’s one of their jobs yes. I don’t know about PROs in other countries but with ASCAP you can act as both artist and publisher and with the music you upload to your user account, it’s stored as part of particular "playlists’ by ASCAP for easy access for commercial producers to scan and source music to license for their projects. Is your goal simple to have people listen to your tracks or to sell them for media projects?
Seems like a nice feature with playlists in ASCAP. Didn’t know about that. Hope it works well for unsigned artist too. We don’t have such things here in Sweden, PRO: STIM
Thanks for asking about my goal.
My main goal is to monetize my youtube channel and the other 2 is to get revenue from streaming and licensing from Pond5.
Youtube and Pond5 is easier to get some kind of understanding about and to affect a little by title, description and keywords.
Streaming seems very difficult to affect and promote when you’re unsigned, but Peter’s tip about networking and concentrate on Spotify make sense and don’t bother about Iheartradio and all the other stations for now.
Ok. Yeah, I don’t know much about streaming options. Like you said, it would seem to me that it’d be hard to raise your profile that way because most listeners are too casual and listen to random playlists but don’t really check the artist? Or you’d need to write in a similar style to more well known artists to get linked to people searching for those artists?
Like Mikael said, you need to build your profile and brand which is why we mentioned doing covers of established tracks; that way people searching for those pieces of music will get suggestions to your tracks. This is essentially how Alex Moukala got a huge YouTube following. He does orchestral covers of existing pieces and every now and then does an original.
As for PROs/music libraries, if you have many pieces out there, usually, you’ll get repeat customers if you write good music and in the style they’re looking for.
There is a new world around the Playlists. Many are run by music enthusiasts who in turn have enthusiast with similar tastes listening. The way it goes is that when on of their listeners hear something they really like they will follow you so that they get your latest stuff. Your profile is something you shouldn’t over complicate. A nice professional profile photo and a bio stating a bit of what you are doing in music with some links to whatever SM you have a presence in should be enough to start with.
Think that you want to become buddies with the Playlists you dig, so never, never ever, start by sending a link to your tune saying “hi, please listen to my new song for consideration…”. Start by really listening to the tunes, following and commenting. If you have a playlist of your own you can even take a song from their playlist and let him know, etc… That is a very nice icebreaker, it shows that you are genuinely interested in what he is doing with his playlist.