How to market your music without feeling gross 🤮

It ain't easy being sleazy...

Ok, so in the last 48 hours I’ve had ~30 meetings with independent artists discussing their biggest problems with their music careers…

And pretty much every single one mentioned how they struggle with promoting themselves.

“It just doesn’t sit right with me…”

“Social media just isn’t my THANG…”

“I just don’t think I’m very interesting….”

“Stop eating all the mini doughnuts, you’re gonna get fat…”

(Ok, that last one was me to myself)

So here’s a little handy-dandy rule to follow to help you rewire your understanding of marketing that will make it feel much more natural and intuitive.

Good marketing = making the truth interesting.

Most people assume that marketing requires bending the truth… or inflating something to be bigger than it really is.

And when they bend the truth, they’re left with this gross feeling that they assume is “just part of marketing”.

But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the real challenge of marketing.

The real challenge is figuring out how to make the truth interesting.

Here’s a perfect example from one of my students, Claire, that netted her 10,000 streams of her debut release (with no ad spend).

Notice how Claire simply… tells the truth.

Now… if Claire did what most people do and assumed she needed to do a viral TikTok dance to promote her song…. well… that would have had very different results.

But she didn’t.

She simply told the truth about who she is, and people resonated (this video alone hit ~400,000 views).

(You can stream Claire’s song here by the way.)

So if you’re struggling to promote your music in a way that doesn’t feel gross or sleazy or uncomfortable…

Then that’s probably a good indicator that you aren’t embracing some part of your story or identity.

Chances are…. whatever you’re most nervous to share about yourself, is exactly what people will resonate with.

Remember, good marketing isn’t inflating what you’re doing.

It’s simply finding ways to make the truth interesting.

And that… is a challenge worth accepting.

🫡⚔️

Michael from MAD Records

PS: (If you want to work with our education-funded record label to help build your music career, we’re looking for 30 unsigned artists to join our brand new “Artist Incubator” program. You can learn more by clicking here.)