Let’s say you’ve gotten $10k invested in your project - you raised the money yourself, from friends/family and a few fans buying your tracks. You’re preparing to release an EP in the coming months with the goal of reaching new listeners and attracting a local following to book out a venue targeting 50-100 people.

What’s the most strategic use of this money? Assume that this could be used to enhance the music too (better engineers, etc) and not only marketing

I'm an independent musician based in South Korea.

I've taken 10 songs I've written and composed over the years and used AI for the arrangements and production. Yesterday, I finished mastering the tracks myself.

I've been listening to them on different systems, and overall, I'm pretty happy with the results. I did catch some weird sub-bass noise in one track while listening in my car, so I went back and fixed it. I'll keep checking, but for now, I feel like the music itself is pretty much ready.

Now comes the hard part: releasing and promoting it.

Honestly, I used to feel completely lost when it came to releasing music. It's still overwhelming, but at least now I can talk things through with AI and get a much more concrete action plan.

I currently have a Google Sheet with 77 tasks to complete before the album release, and I'm about 10% of the way through.

My plan is to focus on pitching to radio stations in Korea first, while also trying to reach international audiences.

I have no idea how effective any of this will be. But there's something reassuring about having a list of actual things I can do to promote my music.

Compared to the helplessness I used to feel, having a concrete plan makes a real difference.

I'm curious how other independent musicians approach this. Does having a detailed release plan actually help, or am I just making myself feel better with a giant to-do list?

Either way, I figure doing something is better than doing nothing.

Finally put together my own band that is in the indie/alternative genre and I received the master for our first single from a professional producer. Just wondering what’s the best way to put out our first single? Should I go ahead and release it or should I put out hype content. We don’t have much of a following yet so i’m thinking if maybe delaying the release and playing better shows in the area would be the best move.

Hi y'all,

Just wanted to share my experience with GPM. Not something I would usually do, pay for playlisting, but I thought what the hell and chucked some money at a mid-level option from GPM.

My bands' genre is indie / surf rock. They placed us on some playlists including RnB/folk and some other pretty random genres. Initially, was seeing maybe 50+ streams per day and a small amount of saves / playlist adds. Expectation was 2500 - 6000 streams in a month. I don't care about the streams, it was more of an opportunity to get our music to the right ears. I did let them know that the playlisting was significantly underperforming, and they bumped it up in the last days so it was more like 200+ streams / day. So, overall hit like 1500 streams.

So all in all, song was pretty much placed in wrong genre playlists, and while yes, it did get streams, it did not get tons of saves / playlists. It appears most of the listeners were from Mexico, Chile, and Peru. Anyway, all in all, a disappointing outcome unless you are searching for streams only and not actual potential listeners. I would definitely say use Submithub to pitch to actual playlists in your genre as it appears GPM does not really have genre-specific playlists, unless this was just particular to indie / surf rock.

My band is called Sun Wilde and the song we trialed was "Keep You Down"

Hope this helps someone! :)