10 Best Music Marketing Campaigns

An engaging music marketing campaign can be the difference between success and failure as a band, artist or musician. 

With technology surrounding everything around and content almost overwhelming us when competing for our attention, music lovers have more choice than ever when it comes to new music.

As a fan, this can be brilliant, with so much new music at our finger prints.

However, as a music maker or industry professional looking to get an artist heard, this overcrowded environment can mean there are more challenges to overcome than ever before when connecting with an audience and building a fanbase.

Find out more about ICMP's Digital Marketing courses.

What are Music Marketing Strategies?

From posting animated track snippets to putting together an effective one sheet, there are multiple different music marketing strategies pursued by our favourite bands and artists.

A marketing budget will often dictate what approach might be taken with independent artists and emerging acts often needing to be more inventive than bands signed with major labels.

However, there are many different tools available to use. An effective music marketing campaign could see an act draw on anything from billboard ads to sponsored Instagram reels to attract press coverage for a new release, EP or live gig. 

How to Learn the Latest Music Marketing Ideas

To respond to this new world, we've launched a new course aimed at equipping marketing professionals with the skills to succeed in music marketing.

If you're looking for some more music marketing inspiration outside of studying a course, then we've compiled our top advice below...

Look to Your Musical Icons for Inspiration

Aside from honing skills via attending university, it is also well worth looking to your favourite artists or record labels for inspiration. 

Although marketing ideas cannot usually be repeated, you may well discover some tricks or discover some new creative sparks to get you excited and prompt you to start thinking in a way that can help you stand out from the rest. 

From hosting online Q&A's to landing exclusives on streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music, the options out there are many when it comes to winning over new fans. 

Create a Music Video ... or any Visual Content

According to the Visual Teaching Alliance, 90 percent of the information the human brain receives is visual, which it processes 60,000 times faster than anything written.

This is perhaps why visual content, particularly video content, usually performs so well on social media posts.

By sharing music videos, or music video teasers, then you're more likely to make someone stop scrolling and take a look at whatever content you've posted.

This is why more than half of marketers believe that video is the most valuable form of content when looking to achieve social media goals. 

Rely on your Music Industry Connections

Utilise your effective communication skills to establish and develop an extensive network of music industry contacts.

How do you do this? Well you can start in the classroom by connecting with your peers and fellow music industry students. Then you can extend this by reaching out to like-minded music industry professionals via social media platforms such as LinkedIn or Instagram.

You can always kick off a connection online, then meet up in person when the time feels right or you want to collaborate further.

Alternatively, offer your services or facilitate opportunities for collaborating to begin these partnerships. If they can be mutually beneficial, then they could prove to be invaluable.

Music Marketing Inspiration

Here, we explore some of the most exciting music marketing campaigns out there for marketing inspiration…

Beyonce | ‘Cowboy Carter’  

Beyonce is perhaps the biggest star in contemporary music. As befits her 'Queen of Pop' moniker, her marketing tactics continually change the game for how artists interact with audiences. 

In 2013, she shocked the industry with the surprise release of her self-titled fifth record. Many artists have followed her lead since then and releasing a record without any warning is now a common tactic. Then in 2016, she released 'Lemonade' on Tidal for the music and HBO for a visual album, something few stars of her stature had tried previously.‘Renaissance’, released in 2022, again set the path for others to follow creating this multi-faceted story of Beyonce as a cultural force around which everything else orbits.

The marketing campaign around her 2024 album 'Cowboy Carter' began in February at the Super Bowl and an ad that was seen by what an estimated 120 million viewers.

This latest record broke into the country music market thanks to well-thought out and authentic partnerships with Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Miley Cyrus, Willie Jones, and more.

It goes to show how Beyonce lives and breathes each musical world she inhabits and the results were incredible. On Spotify, the album became one of the most-streamed albums in a single day in 2024, the biggest debut of the year for a country album, and the biggest debut ever for any album by a black woman, with over 76 million streams globally in its first day.

Charli XCX | 'Brat'

Have you had a Brat summer? It's been one of the questions of the season thanks to Charli XCX and her latest album. 

2024's biggest success stories has been Charli XCX and 'Brat'. The acid-green background and low key Arial font look as if they were dreamed up in a moment, then unleashed on the public consciousness without much thought other than just about getting the music out there as quickly and chaotically as possible. 

It's the impact of the record on social media where its has been felt the most. Charli already has one of the most devoted fan bases in the form of Charli's Angels, her engaged community.

Still, it's almost the artwork around it - easily replicable and incredibly striking - has led to it going repeatedly viral due to memes and social media moments. Even the US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris co-opted the artwork for her campaign in the run up to the US elections. 

While this mainstream audience has been wooed, Charli has also managed to commander the attention of taste makers, partly due to the electroclash influenced sound of the record and a Boiler Room online performance. By taking the stage with the influential, yet cool platform, she was able to win over an underground audience too, covering all bases. 

Stormzy | 'This is What I Mean' and Adidas

As an artist, Stormzy, like Beyonce, is writing his own rulebook with his music marketing strategies.

While his creative roots are in the abrasive rhymes and beats of UK grime, he's set up his Merky Books publishing house and launched a scholarship at Cambridge University.

Like Beyonce, Stormzy is capable of turning his hand to any medium. It means all platforms are up for grabs to fuel a powerful marketing strategy. 

His 2022 record, ‘This is What I Mean’, has seen Stormzy using heavyweight promotional tactics somewhat removed from his early career. Its release was propelled by a high-profile BBC interview with Louis Theroux, and an online video where Stormzy plays the record to the inspirational and inspired producer, Rick Rubin.

Alongside the album, Stormzy has long-been associated with Adidas and features in the brand's ‘Impossible Is Nothing’ recent World Cup 2022 campaign. 

The 'Family Reunion' film follows Stormzy as he unites with a number of football heroes including Lionel Messi and Jude Bellingham. 

Radiohead | 'Kid A'

As we all know, the digital world dominates pretty much every part of our life.

However, at the end of the nineties when Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ was being teased, the internet and streaming services were not as ubiquitous as they are now. In fact, if you wanted  your music to be heard, then you had to rely on a marketing strategy to promote a physical format rather than a stream or download.

Radiohead, who feature ICMP alumnus Ed O'Brien on guitar, have always been known for their forward-thinking approach to their music and career. They decided to market the album entirely online, which made it the first album to be promoted like this. 

Not only did they transform album promotional campaigns, then band also changed the way albums were bought with their 2007 release, 'In Rainbows'.

This was self-released and fans had the option to purchase online and pay whatever they wanted - even nothing if that is what they wanted.

The record went on to sell three million copies across all formats.

Clean Bandit | Club Bandit House Party

Clean Bandit, featuring ICMP alumnus Luke Patterson on drums, have enjoyed huge success, demonstrated by a willingness to innovate and utilise a variety of strategies to promote their music to build an audience. 

During the pandemic lockdowns, the band chose to live stream DJ sets on YouTube which featured guest vocalists in addition to having the full band alongside themselves during these performances.

These Club Bandit House Party live streams were more than just gigs to camera with an array of shots and footage from a variety of angles, including drone footage.

Teased by social media posts, this manifested itself into the House Party Against Hunger virtual event with international advocacy organisation, Global Citizen. 

At the same time, this ingenuity was offset by the promotional misfire of the Microsoft Cortana ad. A slightly awkward visual experience for band and audience to say the least…

Creeper

Back in 2016, six-piece horror-punk band Creeper managed to create an online buzz for their core fans and existing fans through a brilliantly managed marketing campaign.

After playing Reading and Leeds festivals the previous year, every Creeper-affiliated social media profile was deleted and the band members were reported 'missing'.

A new website simultaneously appeared tying their disappearance to the unsolved case of missing paranormal detective James Scythe.

Clues were left across the internet and social media. Back in reality, the British quartet created buzz culminating in the announcement of the release of the album 'Eternity, in Your Arms'.

In an interview with Portsmouth.co.uk, Creeper frontman Will Gould said:  "We were looking at how other bands have marketed their records, and what we found was a lot of tacky oversharing online. You can find out what breakfast cereal your favourite singer likes, for goodness sake."

"Half of the mystique of those older records is that you didn’t know everything about those artists. We felt that by going missing we were making more noise than by saying nothing at all."

Spotify Wrapped 

Spotify is one of the music industry's leading streaming services. In its Spotify Wrapped campaign, it has cornered the music industry's digital advertising at the end of year to become an annual tradition.

Initially, this started as a way of Spotify users showing their year in review around the mid-2010s and what they had listened to on the platform.

Now, it's grown into an important music industry event with both users and artists proudly displaying their stats from early December.

For the music streaming platform, Wrapped is a key way of going viral on social media at a time of year when it is notoriously challenging to do so amid a deluge of festive content.

According to the company, there were over 60 million shares from 90 million users in 2020, a huge win for any music marketer.

Spotify is always setting the bar for music marketers to follow. Their 'Found Them First' campaign was an innovative way of giving users a chance to show how they had discovered a musical artist before anyone else. 

Wu-Tang Clan | 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin'

US hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan can lay claim to releasing the most expensive piece of music ever made, their album 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin'.

Their seventh studio record was recorded in secret in New York, and limited to just one copy as a double CD. It was stored in a secret vault in Marrakech in Morocco, then auctioned. The buyer was not allowed to commercially exploit the album until 2103.

The marketing strategy to limit the record to just one copy was part of a response to what the group had seen as the negative impact of the digital music world on their music.

Writing on their website. Wu-Tang producers Rza and Cilvaringz said: "The music industry is in crisis. The intrinsic value of music has been reduced to zero. Contemporary art is worth millions by virtue of its exclusivity ... By adopting a 400 year old Renaissance-style approach to music, offering it as a commissioned commodity and allowing it to take a similar trajectory from creation to exhibition to sale ... we hope to inspire and intensify urgent debates about the future of music."

Aphex Twin | 'Syro'

Released in 2014, 'Syro' was electronic music producer Aphex Twin's first record under this guise since 2001.

At this point in his career, the producer had become increasingly elusive following the unexpected spotlight he'd attracted since the release of his hit tracks such as 'Windowlicker' and 'Come to Daddy'.

For an innovative artist, more comfortable working in the shadows, the marketing strategy was aligned with creating mystery and posing more questions than answers.

The 'Syro' promotional campaign began when a blimp with the Aphex logo was seen over London, then Aphex-styled graffiti was spotted in New York and other US locations. Then the Aphex Twitter account posted a link which could only be viewed on the deep web. When accessed, this featured album information such as the title and track listing although confusingly these track titles were coded messages that had to be deciphered.

Prince | 'Hit N'Run' 

The Purple enigma that is Prince happened across a genius marketing strategy for his Hit N'Run tour of the UK, US and Europe back in 2014.

Instead of organising a conventional tour with a run of dates to promote his latest album, the artist decided to embark on a campaign of guerilla gigs where the location and venue of the show would only be revealed on the day itself.

Nearly all of the promotion for the shows was undertaken through Twitter on social media, with 3RDEYEGIRL's official feed and Prince's manager Kiran Sharma tweeting mentions of the shows, then waiting for the die-hard Prince audience to do the rest through reshares and online excitement.

These shows aimed to bypass traditional marketing methods and develop a closer connection with fans based solely around Prince's skills as an incredible performer - a tactic that paid off. 

Music Marketing's Future

As we've seen from the above, the music industry is full of inspirational  music marketing campaigns that have helped artists attain huge success with their creative careers. 

Excitingly, technology has opened up even more opportunities than before with social media, an artist YouTube channel or Spotify playlists providing musical talent with a range of channels to tell a person's story as an artist.

As a musician, band or artist, you need to do your research into the opportunities out there, draw up your strategy and get as creative as you can.

Good luck!