More about SIMA’s Indie Promotion Course

What you’ll learn from this course:

SO YOU’VE CREATED A MASTERPIECE, THE NEXT BIG HIT. NOW WHAT?

Having spent an inordinate amount of time creating the best song you have ever written – now what? How can you get it heard? 

The answer is simple: you need to promote it. Even if you manage to find a record label who will sign it, you will still need to know exactly how to promote your song.

Let’s just say this right up-front: it’s a simple process but it’s NOT exactly easy to do it. There are a lot of details to how it’s done, and you must, above all, have the right work ethic and discipline to do it right.

If you don’t have the stamina to promote your own song, and if you can’t find a record deal, then the only other alternative is to hire a promotional company. But that can be very expensive. So back to square one: learn how to do this yourself. Which is why we’re here!

The simple steps are: create a great song, prepare your marketing materials, start promoting it online, pay for a few ads, make sure you’re registered where you need to be registered in order to be able to monetize all of this and… you’re rockin’.

But the devil is in the details. And this is what makes this course so valuable.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO LAUNCH A SINGLE?

Typically you need to plan to spend about two to three months to do a proper launch. Per song. But there are also many things you need to learn first, before you even set your release date.

It’s usually the most mundane things that tend to take the longest. Setting up a photoshoot – if you don’t know how and with whom – can morph from being a single-afternoon affair to a process which (if unchecked) can take days or even weeks. The same goes for creating videos, preparing press releases, etc.

You also need to learn how to monitor your song’s performance and the performance of your ads.

In this course, we will strive to teach you all the steps and, finally, help you do your first song launch.

WHAT WILL I NEED? AND… WHAT MIGHT THE OUTCOME BE?

You will need a computer with a spreadsheet, a graphic design program and a video editor installed. And you need to know at least the basics of how to operate all that software. But don’t fret – if you don’t know all that already, we will teach you! We’ll also teach you how to productively outsource certain aspects of your promotional work.

Aside from that, if you’re a good “natural psychologist” (i.e. you know what kind of ad copy or what kind of visuals work), you’re already ahead of the rest of the pack. If you don’t know that yet – again, don’t fret. We will explain how it generally works.

Apart from the initial launch preparation which might take you a number of weeks, once everything is on track your promotional activities from then on will take you no more than 30 minutes to an hour per day.

If you do everything we recommend, you can virtually count on boosting your following by orders of magnitude. If your fans and followers are sufficiently numerous, you won’t merely become more well-known. You will also be able to “monetize” your popularity (i.e. make money on it). Also, if your numbers are really large, you will eventually find yourself in a perfect negotiating position to sign an equitable record deal – if you so choose.

REQUIREMENTS AND OTHER KEY POINTS

NOTE that this is a GROUP course. Each session is 2 hours long, 1x per week.

The reason why this NEEDS TO BE a GROUP course is because of the mutual feedback and assistance that the participants will provide to each other.

You will need:

A PC or a Mac with a spreadsheet installed. Also a graphic design program and a video editor. You should also make sure you have enough storage space for saving your projects and sound files. If need be, buy an external disk. Your energy, focus and intelligence. And discipline to be consistent, once you get started.  Finally, and this is optional though highly recommended: you need to have a great song ready to promote! This way you will learn everything in practice, not just theory.