The MOST Important Thing For Music Marketing
Great music is the foundation of effective music marketing. Aim for your songs to be at least 80% as good as commercially viable tracks in your genre before investing time or money into promotion.
By Andrew Southworth
Hey friends!
I talk a lot about music marketing, and specifically about which tactics or strategies artists can use to promote their music. But there is one thing that is the most important, more important than anything else you could possibly do…
It’s actually having great music.
Having great music is a prerequisite to everything I talk about. Without it, you’re basically just wasting time and/or money because nobody will stick around.
Now I don’t mean to say your music has to be perfection. There are many examples of artists ‘building in public’. Meaning they build their audience as they improve over time. But these artists are still starting from a place of ‘pretty good’.
My rule of thumb is that your music should be at least 80% as good as what’s commercially viable for your genre before you start investing in marketing.
So today, this newsletter is dedicated to ways that you can improve your music.
In the interest of that, I collaborated with Futureproof Music School. An online music school that aims to help you level up your skills as a music producer featuring courses, 1-on-1 help and an AI Music Coach. Click here to learn more.
Throw away more songs
Maybe you’re special, or better at making music than I am. But at least 90% of the music i’ve recorded has never seen the light of day. I’m not talking about 90% of the ideas i’ve had, i’m talking 90% of things I actually recorded.
I have over 800 Logic Pro sessions and over 400 Ableton Live sessions.
I’ve released over 100 songs but i’ve recorded over 1,200 songs. I’ve been making music for over 21 years. I’ve been recording music for over 15 years.
I released 4 albums before I ever even thought about marketing. In fact, the frustration of releasing those albums and having nobody listen to them is what inspired me to get into marketing in the first place.
Now these 1,200+ songs aren’t 100% complete recordings. They’re songs that got abounded along the way because they weren’t good enough to proceed to the next stage of production, or I just simply got bored of working on them, or I forgot about them.
Moral of the story, I see a lot of artists expecting to be great after working on 10 songs. Whereas most artists that are successful have worked on at least hundreds before they even got started with marketing.
The more you make music the better you’ll get at making music. The more you fail, the better you’ll become.
Outsource or level up
I’ve typically been more in the DIY crowd for most of my musical journey. Meaning I rarely go to studios, because I record myself. For most of my life i’ve done my own production, mixing and mastering because I took a lot of pride in being completely DIY.
This means I don’t have to spend money on studio time, producers, mixing or mastering. I can put 100% of my budget towards marketing. However, it takes a lot more time.
This approach isn’t necessarily for everyone though.
Many artists work with producers, songwriters, record labels etc. Meaning they’re both paying upfront costs AND giving away percentages of their royalties to multiple parties. As a result they can focus much more of their time on the music because they have a team built around them. It’s just a different approach.
If you go the DIY route you need to level up your skill sets. That’s where Futureproof Music School comes in.
Futureproof is an online music school built by real artists who are actively working in the industry — not just teaching theory. Their courses are short, actionable, and laser-focused on helping you actually finish and release music that grows your career. They offer personalized monthly 1-on-1 sessions paired with a legit community and unique curriculum to deliver an amazing learning experience for only $100 per month.
They have courses on mixing, vocal production Ableton Live, specific genre breakdowns such as Phonk, Dubstep and DnB, sound design and more. I just partnered with them and contributed a crash course on how to promote your music using Meta ads inside of their program.
🎥 Start your 7-day free trial + 25% off your first month using code ANDREW25 at checkout.
👉 Check out my course for Futureproof here.
Collaborate
I’ve found that a lot of the people I know who are most skilled at making great music are often collaborating. It’s actually quite common to see professional songwriters or producers working in pairs. By working with others you can push each other to improve, and a natural competitive-ness can take over and drive you to improve as well.
Working on something on your own can be great, but bouncing it off of other people in the industry can expose the flaws in your work. Your listeners won’t have the ear for it, but a professional in the industry will.
Next time you’re on Spotify or Apple Music, take a look at the songwriting credits for most major label pop songs. You’ll often see 3+ songwriters and more than 1 producer.
I’m very fortunate in my position that i’m constantly talking to talented music creators. Some of my biggest improvements come when I show them something i’m working on and ask for what they think could be better.
Originally Erik Seime was helping me improve my own mixes for my band Every Waking Moment, but for a while now he’s been doing it for us because frankly I don’t have the time anymore and he just does it better / faster. BigJerr is a master of Ableton Live and also just music production in general, and I learn a ton from him as well.
You can also find online communities where you can post your music and get feedback on it. Just always keep in mind who you’re getting feedback from and if their skillset is relevant to what you’re looking to improve. For example a hip-hop producer may know nothing about metal production, or maybe the person you’re talking to isn’t that good themselves.
In a perfect world you’d find some local collaborators that are better than you at making music that you can also be friends with. Or even more ideally, they’re better than you at certain things and you’re better than them at other things.
It also makes the whole music thing a little bit less lonely, and a lot of bit more fun.
More Tips
It’s impossible to make a one size fits all guide for how to make better music. This is why this newsletter kept pretty vague, as soon as I dive deeper it starts getting into genre specific nuances. But here are some more specific tips that may or may not apply to you:
If the song holds up as ‘good’ when it’s just played with a voice and acoustic guitar, that’s a great sign it’s a good song. Meaning, it doesn’t need fancy production to hold up.
Music should make people feel something. It doesn’t have to be happy or sad, it can be more nuanced than that, but it should make them feel ‘something’.
No part of the arrangement should stay completely static. Real drummers don’t play the same thing the entire song, they ebb and flow throughout, so don’t leave a drum loop going throughout the entire song. Make things evolve and build.
The mix should be clear so you can hear all elements of the song.
The master should be louder than -14db LUFS, typically more like -8 to -3 LUFS depending on genre and vibe. Basically, make it loud but make it sound good to you!
Don’t be afraid to copy other people’s song structures or chord progressions, you can’t copyright those things. Just make sure you don’t copy the song itself, make it yours.
Even if you’re writing every instrument yourself, spend time on every instrument as if it were the only instrument you were playing on the song.
Always check your mix on good monitors, car speakers and AirPods and/or iPhone speakers. Good monitors will typically sound best, but the mix should hold up on shitty listening devices too.
Make sure choruses / drops hit as hard as they should, sometimes this means making the parts before them feel smaller.
Pay attention to your stereo field. Not everything should be panned center. Some things should be double tracked to give them a wide feel, like rhythm guitars.
Stack your vocals. Sometimes in a chorus i’ll have a center vocal, 2 double tracked side vocals, 2 harmonies and 2 scream layers for a total of 7 tracks. JUST for the chorus.
Don’t be afraid to edit things. Almost everyone uses Melodyne, manually edits timing or uses VocAlign to sync doubles. I’d much rather do 5 vocal takes and fix a few pitches in post than do 30 takes for the same end effect.
Look up videos on YouTube of people making songs from scratch in your genre. This can be a very enlightening process to watch and learn from.
New Content
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Sammy Arriaga is a country / Latin artist that was dropped by Sony, grew to 1 Million Spotify streams per month organically and made over $250k selling music NFTs. In this interview we talk about how he did it
How to Promote Your Music on Spotify with Facebook Ads (2025):
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.
My ad agency specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.
Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels and FanFunnels are the best all-in-one platforms for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels, build a mailing list and more!
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I hope you enjoyed this edition of Music Marketing Monday! Please give your feedback using the poll below.
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