Best Music & Artist Promotion Platforms in Nigeria

At the rate at which Nigerian musicians (both the A-list artists and up-and-coming artists) churn out songs these days, it is really difficult to be heard or score a hit record especially for up-and-coming musicians hence most record labels managing these up-and-coming musicians have resorted to advertising in order to put their artist’s content out there.

But just like in every other business, music advertising needs the right strategy, platform & timing, and the fact that you spent a lot of money in advertising a song isn’t a guarantee that you will get great results especially when the right strategy isn’t in place.

In this article, we will guide you on the right and wrong platforms to promote your songs in order to get the great result but first, the song must be great because as you all know, in business, no amount of advertising can save a bad product, so after creating a masterpiece in the studio, here are some great platforms where you can advertise your songs.

Right platforms to advertise/promote songs

(1) Social Media

There are just three things I like about the promotion of songs via social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube and they are

(i) Your song is being shown or promoted to the right audience.

Unlike running an ad on social media blogs like Instablog9ja or Tundeednut where the audience is mixed & your song is also shown to people with zero interest in music & bot accounts where you also get to pay for that, social media ad campaign puts your song directly in front of the right audience and potential fans.

On platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, before running an ad, you have to select the type of people you want to see your ad and you can select people like Davido fans, Wizkid fans, lover of Fuji music or Afro-beat and so many targeted audiences which ensures that you get the worth of your money.

(ii) You pay for what you get

There is no fixed price as you can run an ad campaign that is being targeted and calculated and you get to pay only for the number of people reached by the ad campaign. So let’s assume you run the ad when a lot of people aren’t online then you’ll pay less and only have to pay for the people who saw & interacted with your song ad.

(iii) You can promote your song with any amount

For as low as ₦500, you can promote your song on social media but you won’t get much engagement which is way better than other platforms with a fixed rate for promotion. So if you’re on a budget and want to promote your song, then social media is just the right place for you.

It doesn’t get better than that, with these three features, social media is definitely one of the best places to promote your song.

(2) Comedy Skits

Promotion of songs via comedy skits is one sure way to force your songs into the memory of potential fans without being spammy or unnecessarily annoying.

In this type of song promotion, the Instagram comedian makes a skit which storyline fits the song, and the song is being inserted into the skit either at the end or during the skit and trust me if the song is great, people will definitely go check the full song out. The good part is that apart from the huge following some of these Instagram comedians have, a good number of people who aren’t following them visits their profile/page once in a while to check out their skits and even if their followers aren’t online when the skit is being posted, they ensure to check the pages of these comedians whenever they come online. Also, these skits get downloaded by various people hence exposing your songs to the same person repeatedly or more people as the downloaded comedy video gets shared with others via Whatsapp or Instagram story, Xender, Bluetooth, and many other means.

I remembered vividly how Xploit Comedy forced the song ‘Tattoo’ by Soft down the throat of me and my friends. They used the song in most of their skits during the time of the song release and eventually I loved the song and became a fan of Soft. To this day, that song is still on my Nigerian songs playlist on Spotify and each time I stream it, the artist gets revenue from the streams. So promoting songs via comedy skit is one strategy that won’t go out of fashion.

(3) Music Streaming Platform

Unlike Apple Music where users can only stream songs with a premium account or on a free trial, some other music streaming platforms like Soundcloud, Spotify, Audiomack allow users can stream songs for free but with ads intervention at intervals. Promoting your song on these streaming platforms has great ROI (Returns on Investment) for two reasons.

(i) The perfect audience

The people who are on these platforms are there for just one reason, to listen to songs, so if a commercial of your song comes up and the song is great, they will surely give you a listening ear.

(ii) Get Paid back in return if users like your song

These streaming platforms pay artists royalties when their song is being streamed, so if you promote your song on these platforms and people love it and continue to stream it, you’ll get paid for the streams so it is a win-win situation.

(4) Radio

Call it old fashion but radio still remains one great channel of promoting songs.

A lot of people still listen to the radio in Nigeria despite the growth & popularity of the internet and in Nigeria, the people who listen to radio do that in order to listen to the news or for music and that right there is the right audience for your song promotion. At the right price, most of the OAP’s in Nigeria definitely know how to get your song on the lips of Nigerians by giving your song enough airplay during their commercial breaks.

But this also has its flaws as it is considerably expensive but if you have the money to go for it, then I urge you to do that.

(5) Music Blogs

During the early days of the Nigerian music industry, Nigerian music blogs played a huge role in the growth of the industry as they were the only place where a huge number of Nigerian get to know when a new song is out and also to download it.

Despite the popularity of music streaming platforms these days, these blogs still garner a lot of visitors to date, and that for sure is a great platform to promote your song. Here you get the right audience (lovers of Nigerian music) and if your song gets uploaded or pinned on the front page of these sites, people will definitely check it out.

(6) Feature an A-list Artist

Featuring an A-list artist is one great way of promoting yourself as an artist or promoting your song as you get to tap into an already established fanbase of the A-list artist and may likely win some of their fans over to yourself.

Even tho this is one great way of song/artist promotion, it also has its constraint as the A-list may not be willing to work or associate their brand with you or may charge your ridiculously and still not deliver a great song for you out of lack of motivation & may not post the song on their social media platforms when it gets released.

Wrong platforms to advertise/promote songs

(1) News/Gossip Blogs on Social Media

A lot of musicians/record labels still consider the gist blogs like Instablog9ja or Tundeednut as the best platform to promote their song due to the huge following these blogs have on Instagram.

These are great platforms for the promotion of songs, but if you take a close look at the ROI(return on investment) you’ll discover that you may be at loss most times and I’ll explain why & how. These blogs have a fixed advert rate which is usually expensive due to the huge following they’ve got. Singers/record labels look at their followers’ count and pay comfortably with the expectation of their song reaching a great percentage of their followers but this is not usually the case as many factors come into play and may leave you at loss. Some of their followers only check these pages for viral gossips or funny videos and never bother to check on ads on these pages so the only chance you have at getting the worth of your money back is if a huge number of their followers are online at the time when the ad is being posted and see it on their feed otherwise when they came back to check these pages later on they will most likely not care about the ads.

A good percentage of their followers are old & inactive accounts, bot accounts or accounts that rarely come online, or don’t get to see posts from the blogs on their feed when they are online and that is evident in the number of views & likes these pages get on their individual posts as compared to the number of followers that they have.

(2) Television

The internet has won a huge percentage of TV consumers over but regardless, these TV stations still charge a huge amount of money for ad campaign even tho it is losing its relevance continually by the day.

People who still watch TV have different interests some of which isn’t music and they only get to stick around for their favorite program and once there is a TV commercial, a good number of them are back on their mobile phones until the commercial is over. But regardless of this mixed audience who rarely still pay attention to commercials, you get to pay a huge fee in consideration of this huge audience which is not likely to convert.

 

But again, if you have enough cash to go around, Television and/or gossip blogs are worth giving a try.