Getting known through buzz: one of the best ways of promoting your music as an artist

How can you create a buzz with your music? It’s a question that all budding artists ask themselves in order to make a name for themselves and boost their musical careers.

Buzz is one of the best ways for artists to promote their music. With immediate visibility and a massive buzz around your music, buzz allows artists to make themselves known to the general public and gives them the opportunity to stand out from the competition. But buzz is often short-lived, so you need to be well prepared to make the most of it.

The benefits of creating buzz for your musical visibility

Buzz is one of the best ways to promote your music as an artist. This helps to raise your profile with the general public and increase your visibility.

On a one-off, intensive basis, this creates a community around your music and your image.

Buzz, viral marketing, trend… There are several terms for this phenomenon. The principle is simple: create musical content that will arouse the interest and curiosity of Internet users, and spread rapidly across social networks. For the buzz to work, the content has to be original, funny or moving. It must also be easy to share or take back.

Buzz can take several forms: a video clip, a blog article, a photo, an infographic… Anything that arouses the interest of Internet users can create a buzz. In your case, you’ll be looking above all to create a buzz with your latest video, your latest album or even, possibly, a musical cover version.

The benefits of buzz for your musical visibility are numerous. This allows you to :

make yourself known to the general public;
reach a wide and diverse audience;
create a community around your music;
extensive media coverage;
gain notoriety;
give your career an intense boost in a short space of time.

If you want to make a name for yourself as an artist, buzz is an excellent way of promoting your music.

How to create a buzz with your music: 9 tips and advice

Buzz is that little thing that gets everyone talking about you and your music. This is what makes you known to the general public and what makes them love you (although not always). But how do you create a buzz with your music? Here are 9 tips and advice from the Red Label Agency team to help you achieve this.

Orient your music to current trendsHere are 9 tips and tricks from the Red Label Agency team to help you do just that.

It’s not easy to make a name for yourself in a business as competitive as music. Buzz is a good way of growing your audience, but your music has to be right for it. Current trends, which you can assess via social networks or the various specialist channels, allow you to identify more specifically the sounds that work and are most likely to buzz. You can try your hand at creating specific music that follows a particular trend. This will increase your chances of buzzing.

On the other hand, when composing for a specific style of music or in a specific way, it can be complicated to force yourself to sing or play differently. As an independent artist or band, you have your own image, your own specific characteristics and your own style of music. Trying to create a buzz by copying current trends will not be a simple exercise, nor will it be suitable for everyone.

Note also that if you make a name for yourself by creating this kind of buzz, listeners will only know you for a style that doesn’t really suit you.

Know your audience so that they identify with your sounds

Another more interesting way of raising your profile is to compose music or a melody that will really appeal to your target audience. You’ll have much less chance of creating a buzz, but by creating music that matches your style, and the style your listeners are looking for, you may be able to create a buzz on a smaller scale with your target audience.

One way of doing this is to highlight stories that your fans can identify with in your music. To do this, you need to know a little about them, what they expect and what you can offer to satisfy them. Knowing your audience is the minimum requirement for buzzing, at least among your closest fans.

Arouse specific emotions

Playing music is good. Sharing a sound that instils specific emotions in your audience is even better, because it’s this kind of strategy that will ensure that your sound is appreciated by your audience, if not more. It’s not always easy to create a buzz, but as you’ll have noticed, all the sounds that have made the buzz so far have shared a specific emotion, from the most ridiculous to the most dramatic.

Let your creativity flow. When you compose your music, always start from the principle that you need to make your listeners feel something, not just listen.

Play with social networks

The best way to make yourself known is to create a buzz

And the best way to create a buzz is to share your sounds where the majority of listeners are: on social networks.

By sharing your sounds on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and elsewhere, you significantly increase your chances of getting noticed, and maybe even making one of your songs go viral and create a buzz. There are many different ways of using social networks to generate buzz:

Share your sounds across all your networks and encourage your community to do the same
Create a trend from your sounds, via Tik Tok or Instagram Reels for example
Do some teasing on your various networks, about your future releases or your next albums

Compose your news, get involved

Another effective way of creating a buzz is to create music that is committed to a topical issue. It’s a good way of taking sides on a news item, building up a small community and even getting invited on TV to talk about it.

Beware of the other side of the coin: this also means that you may be building up a base of haters, depending on the subject. Be aware that you won’t always make friends if you adopt this strategy.

Try to create a new trend

We’ve already mentioned it, but what’s working very well at the moment are trends on the various social networks (Tik Tok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts…).

By launching a trend with your sound, and encouraging your community to pick up on it, you increase your chances of it going viral, being picked up by strangers and your music becoming trendy.

Quite complicated to set up, you’ll probably have to do it several times before you succeed in starting a trend.

Be careful not to do this with all your music so as not to distort your image and your sounds.

There are major advantages to this strategy, including immediate recognition and a community that grows very quickly in a short space of time. The disadvantage of this strategy is that your new listeners don’t always appreciate your other sounds, or on the contrary appreciate your music because it’s on trend, but don’t look any further to discover you or your sounds.

Send your sounds to well-known radio stations

Another way of doing this is to send your sounds to various radio stations in the hope of getting them played to thousands of listeners. This strategy is rather uncertain, particularly as :

Radio stations often play sounds that are creating a buzz, not sounds that they are trying to create.
You don’t necessarily know the conditions under which listeners hear music, which reduces your chances of getting something out of it.
Radio is broadcast to a wide audience, so you don’t always know who is listening to your sounds, even if your aim is to create a buzz and reach as many people as possible.

But it costs nothing, so do your best to give it a go!

Doing a cover version of a hit song

Covers are covers of songs that allow people to discover your music if they don’t already know your work. It’s an excellent way of reaching a new audience and creating a buzz around your music. In particular, you can reach an audience that already appreciates the original singer or group, but you can also reach a very wide audience if you cover the music of a very well-known personality.

Covers are a good way of creating buzz, but they shouldn’t be your main strategy when you’re making music.

Just as when you want to imitate trendy music, if you make too many covers, you run the risk of attracting a community that won’t necessarily appreciate your “real” sounds. Always pay attention to your identity and the image you want to convey to your audience.

More sensitive: look for negative buzz

A final strategy, which is very tricky to master, is to seek out negative buzz. Make music that is debatable, problematic and divisive.

You’re likely to have a fan base that’s in complete agreement with your message, but your aim is to shock: so you’ll also have a lot of haters with this strategy.

Be very careful, because this strategy can be very destructive for your image, and in particular :

if the subject is controversial
if you haven’t planned what comes next, so as to channel your buzz in a positive way, you’re going to have a very hard fall
The consequences are not just musical: you may receive threats depending on the extent of the Bad Buzz. Be ready to roll with the punches

Kanye West is the perfect example of a singer who rides the bad buzz.

In conclusion, there are plenty of ways of generating buzz, and many others that we haven’t mentioned: competitions, live events and teasing are a good way of arousing interest and improving the chances of generating buzz.

Don’t forget that, above all, you must remain true to your identity: creating buzz should not be an end in itself, but just one of several ways of making yourself known.

Creating a buzz with your music doesn't only have advantages

Buzz is a great way to get your music out there, especially if you’re an independent artist. However, buzz can also have its drawbacks. If you don’t manage the buzz well, it can quickly get out of hand and turn negative. So it’s important to think carefully before you decide to create a buzz with your music.

As you can see, there are several sensitive aspects to the music buzz:

Buzz is ephemeral: it will most often work on a single one of your sounds, causing a peak in listening and a meteoric growth in your community, but only for a short time.
Buzz is uncertain: you can improve your chances with all the strategies mentioned above, but that doesn’t mean you’ll succeed in creating buzz. It’s not something you can control: so don’t put all your chances on this strategy.
Buzz is random you’ll attract a large majority of people who don’t correspond to your target community, and who probably won’t be interested in your other sounds, which is the biggest problem in this situation, because you’ll probably be faced with various choices for develop your musical career.

So the best way to make yourself known and grow your fanbase is not buzz. Instead, you need to go and find your target audience where they are, i.e. on the various music streaming platforms (Spotify, Deezer), or on YouTube.

The best solution at the moment is to ensure that you are present more specifically where your target audience is. YouTube is undoubtedly the best platform for this, because you can make yourself visible to your target audience on purpose using YouTube Ads filters.

If you’re looking to create a lasting community, we encourage you to consider YouTube advertising as a channel to favour.

If you’d like to find out more, our YouTube Ads experts are here to help. You can also consult our various offers by clicking on the button below.

FAQ - Music Buzz

What can I do to make my music better known?

There are a number of ways of getting your music more widely known. In particular, you can focus on digital marketing, setting up a targeted communication campaign on social networks and platforms dedicated to online music. You can also take part in musical events, performing on open stages or organising private concerts. Finally, it’s also important to create original, high-quality content for your audience, to arouse interest and set yourself apart from other artists.

How do I know if people like my music?

There are several ways of finding out whether your music appeals or not. You can start by turning to those close to you, who will no doubt be more objective than you. You can then call on music professionals, such as producers or A&Rs, who will be able to give you expert advice. Finally, you can also ask your fans for their opinions by offering them polls or surveys on social networks.

Is the buzz always positive?

Buzz can be positive or negative. It’s important to know how to deal with both types of buzz, as they can have a major impact on your career. If you generate a positive buzz, this can increase your visibility and attract more fans. If the buzz is negative, it can actually damage your image and therefore have a negative impact on your career.

How can you take advantage of the buzz once it's created?

Once the buzz is created, it’s important to know how to make the most of it. In particular, you need to be present on social networks and platforms dedicated to online music, so that Internet users can easily find you. It’s also important to stay active and keep creating original, high-quality content to generate interest.

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