How to Promote Your Music on Instagram: 10 Essential Tips
Knowing how to promote your music on Instagram is a key skill for any modern musician.
While there’s no magic formula that will guarantee you quick success, the right strategies and techniques can go a long way.
So without further ado, let’s run through some key tips and insights for making the most of the platform.
1. Start with common social media wisdom
Each social media platform has its own strengths and defining characteristics, but there are some strategies that are universal.
Before we get into what’s unique to Instagram as a music promotion tool, let’s run through the basic social media best practices.
Always be sure to:
- Use an eye-catching photo that is aligned with your aesthetic as an artist
- Keep your bio short and sweet yet distinctive (try a bit of experimentation with typography by copy-pasting special characters)
- Use a link-in-bio tool like Linktree to connect to your entire online presence, including your music on Spotify and other services
- Develop and express an identity that is unique to you and reflects your creative vision
- Post regularly and consistently
How often you should post will depend on what your audience and your scene are like.
Identify an artist within your scene who has a decent following, observe how often they post, and learn from the way they engage with fans.
Keep this measurement reasonable, too. If it’s not yet possible for you to be promoting your music on a large scale, don’t use a massively-successful full-time musician as your reference point.
With all that general stuff out of the way, let’s zoom in on the special aspects of Instagram that you can leverage to make it worthwhile.
2. Build your community and your network
Obviously, all social media platforms are tools for community-building in the online world.
But what’s distinct about Instagram is just how rich and complex this sense of community can be.
This is because it boasts a combination of person-to-person relationships and person-to-brand relationships that is quite unique.
In fact, 80% of people on Instagram follow at least one business or brand. This sets it apart from other social media platforms.
You may be thinking, “I’m not a business or a brand, I’m a musician.”
And you’re right — your sense of your own musicianship and artistry shouldn’t be drowned out by a business-oriented way of thinking.
That being said, you are competing to be heard among many other musicians, and you do need to develop enough of a fanbase that you can support yourself.
So while there are major differences between being a brand and being an artist, there are similarities when it comes to how you develop a network, an audience, and a community.
You should follow other musicians in your genre, not to mention labels, managers, promotors, booking agents, music writers, and anyone else who is influential in your scene.
Instagram’s sheer volume and variety of interconnectivity between different types of people in the music world is unmatched, and it’s wise to take advantage of this.
3. Get visual
Instagram is inherently visual and design-oriented in a way that’s different from other platforms.
While TikTok is obviously a visually-oriented platform as well, Instagram offers a balance between still images, video, and audio.
This is why you should treat Instagram as a canvas for developing the visual aesthetic that defines your work as a musician.
In practice, this means posting:
- Audio snippets of your latest release paired with the release artwork
- Audio snippets paired with video or motion graphics in your Stories and Reels
- Your latest press photos
- You latest music video
- Photos of your merch
- Photos and/or videos of you playing gigs
- Photos and/or videos of other artists in your scene playing gigs
- Photos and/or videos of your process in the studio
- Collaborative work you do with visual artists
As you can tell, the sky’s the limit.
Anything that showcases your music, strengthens your online presence, and helps to define your aesthetic is fair game.
Just remember to do this in a deliberate way.
Consider what other artists in your genre and scene are doing in terms of their aesthetics, and spend a bit of time thinking about what you can bring to the table.
4. Understand Stories and Reels
Speaking of video, let’s take a close look at Stories and Reels.
When it comes to using these features to promote your music on Instagram, it’s useful to start by comparing them.
Instagram Stories:
- Last for 24 hours before being archived
- Can be up to 60 seconds long each
- Can’t be edited during creation in the app
- Can be saved by the person posting them but not by viewers
- Can be used to share/highlight image posts
- Are directed toward your followers rather than Instagram users at large
- Allow a maximum of 10 hashtags
Instagram Reels:
- Remain posted on your profile unless you delete them
- Can be up to 90 seconds long each
- Can be edited during creation in the app
- Can be saved by viewers
- Can’t contain Instagram image posts like Stories can
- Are more visible and discoverable for users who don’t follow you
- Allow a maximum of 30 hashtags
Both of them allow you to add audio from Instagram’s music library, though not audio files from your phone.
So, if you want to add your music to Instagram Stories or Reels, you’ll either need to add it to a prepared video with a video editing app or release your music through a distributor like LANDR.
They also both allow you to add Stickers like Polls, Questions, Countdowns, and Reveals. All of these are excellent for getting people to interact and engage with your Stories or Reels.
So, what do these comparisons tell us about how you approach them as music promotion tools?
Stories can be used for more spontaneous, less polished content that engages your existing followers and fans in a way that’s special to your relationship with them.
Reels, on the other hand, are ideally made in a more polished and deliberate way. Since they’re similar to TikTok and discoverable by anyone via the Explore and Reels tabs, they’re far more likely to be the first impression someone has of you and your music.
Both of them should encourage engagement and interactivity, and of course be used to showcase your releases, performances, merch, and music videos.
5. Don’t forget Story Highlights
As you probably know, you have the option of adding select Stories to the Highlights section between your bio and your posts.
Since you can do this in Highlight “albums,” a lot of artists use Highlights creatively to enhance the look of their profiles and make certain important Stories easy to find.
Take advantage of this feature by sorting your Highlights into key categories, like “Live Gigs,” “Releases,” “Merch,” etc.
You could even use Highlight covers, which are more visually-consistent slides that begin each highlight album to make for better presentation on your profile.
This is something we see brands doing more often than musicians, but it’s still worth trying out.
The key idea is to present content in a way that is categorized and easily discoverable on your profile.
6. Go live
Live streaming is essential to the social media ecosystem today, and Instagram’s answer to this is live broadcasts.
If you’ve never done a live broadcast on Instagram before, the steps are described here. You can even start a practice broadcast that will not appear to anyone else on Instagram.
Let’s lay out the key specs of the feature:
- Live broadcasts can be a maximum of one hour long
- When they end, you can optionally share them on your profile as a “replay”
- Like Stories, live broadcasts can also be archived privately
- When you start a broadcast, your followers will be notified
- You can see who is viewing your broadcast
- You can show images from your camera roll directly in your broadcast
- You can hold a Q&A with your viewers through the “questions” feature
As you can see, there are many potential applications of live broadcasts when it comes to promoting your music on Instagram.
You could, for instance, encourage fans to ask about your production process, offer a preview of an upcoming release, or broadcast yourself jamming live.
It’s also important to remember that unlike stories, live broadcasts are discoverable via the Explore tab.
Whether or not your live video will appear in someone’s Explore feed will depend on how many people are attending and how relevant it is to the person’s interests.
It’s unlikely to happen if you have a small following, but it will be something you can leverage later on to be discovered by new fans.
Meanwhile, whether or not you share the recorded broadcast on your profile afterwards is up to you.
But as a musician, you may want to use broadcasts to emphasize exclusivity or the importance of being there in the moment to catch a Q&A, preview, announcement, or live jam.
This would mean keeping your broadcasts temporary and letting your followers know this so that they’re incentivized to tune in.
In addition to this, you should understand your audience well enough to know when a decent number of them will be online, schedule your broadcasts in advance, and make announcements to let everyone know ahead of time.
7. Leverage collab posts and tagging
Tagging has been a common feature of social media for a long time, but a relatively recent feature on Instagram is collaborative posts.
Both of these are very useful tools for promoting your music on Instagram.
Whether you work with other musicians and perform at the same events as them, or you work with visual artists for artwork and music videos, be sure to tag everyone who’s relevant.
And when collaborating with another artist on a track or a release, promoting it through a collaborative post is essential.
This is because it exposes you and your work to that artist’s audience, which can potentially earn you new followers and fans.
Always keep these features in mind when it comes to building connections and expanding the reach of your music.
8. Consider a creator account
Many aspiring musicians simply use a standard personal Instagram account for their music, but we often recommend taking a more professional approach.
Creator accounts are one of two types of professional accounts on Instagram, the other being business accounts. You can switch to either for free.
While business accounts come with their own benefits, creator accounts are typically more appropriate for musicians.
Here are a few benefits they come with:
- Detailed insights about your followers
- Scheduled posts
- More options for sorting your DMs
- Paid boosting of posts, Stories, and Reels
- A creator label on your profile (i.e. “Musician/Band”)
- Access to Instagram’s full music library for your posts
- Shoppable posts
Paid boosting of posts, Stories, and Reels is an especially useful feature that you don’t get with a personal account.
It can come in very handy when promoting a new release, an upcoming gig, or a music video, for instance.
Meanwhile, the “shoppable posts” feature allows you to tag specific products and brands in your posts. This, in theory, could be useful for selling merch.
However, Instagram’s shopping features for creator accounts are more focused on affiliate marketing and partnerships.
You would need a business account to use Instagram as a storefront for your own inventory of merch items.
And even then, the process for doing this is, in our opinion, a bit more complicated than it’s worth.
When it comes to merch, we recommend selling through Bandcamp or an ecommerce platform like Shopify.
You can still promote your merch on Instagram by posting great photos of it and linking to the shop in your bio.
Altogether, we think that the benefits of a creator account — especially paid boosts — make it a great option.
9. Don’t overthink your grid
Another defining characteristic of Instagram is the grid layout of user profiles.
Over time, it’s become common for businesses and brands to plan and execute their grids in creative ways.
You might see grids that assemble parts of an image to form one giant image on the profile, or grids that display images in symmetrical, patterned, or themed layouts.
While this is a flashy move that looks cool to whoever happens to see your grid, our opinion is that it’s not worth the effort for musicians.
The time that it takes to execute a grid like this (and the fact that you have to share three posts at a time to do it properly) can detract from the frequency and consistency of your posting.
This is an example of an Instagram strategy that makes sense for brands and businesses but is unnecessary for musicians.
That being said, this doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea to aim for a grid that looks good and is aesthetically consistent overall.
It can be advantageous to make a visually-striking first impression with promoters, labels, or other influential people who are taking a look at your profile.
This is simply another reason why it’s important to craft a distinctive aesthetic for your music and use Instagram as a creative tool to express it.
10. Don’t overwhelm yourself
There’s no need to mince words — social media can be a lot, and Instagram is no exception.
Musicians often spend a huge amount of time and energy maintaining a strong presence across all channels.
It is, of course, a lot easier if you’re able to get help from an expert who can help you with your promotion in a personalized way.
But even if you do have help, it’s important to remember that building a following takes time and patience.
Instagram is a powerful tool for building connections and community through music, but the pressure to constantly post and never miss out on anything can take a toll if you let it get to you.
The key is often to see it as a creative medium and community-building tool rather than a ticket to viral success.
Stay dedicated to the development of your voice and abilities as a musician, and leverage Instagram (and other platforms) to make yourself known in a truly creative and authentic way.
Various contributors from the LANDR team of music mentors.
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