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The One Thing

Tom DuPree III

One high-leverage idea to scale your audience (and your business). Delivered every Tuesday.

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The independent artist’s complete marketing playbook

Every artist should utilize the three pillars of digital marketing: organic content, advertising, and email. The problem is that most artists get stuck either creating content or running ads and never move beyond that. And they almost always leave out email altogether. Each of these avenues has its own unique benefits, but the trifecta of success lies in utilizing all three. So here’s a five-step sequence to implement content, ads, and email into your music marketing strategy. The right way....

5 days ago • 3 min read

I am a firm believer that advertising on Instagram is the most effective way for artists to grow on Spotify using paid ads. This, despite the fact that Spotify has its own, native ad platform. Due to my belief in (and experience with) the efficacy of Instagram ads, I’ve never run a campaign of my own within Spotify’s ad studio, but this hasn’t stopped me from seeing a lot of data from artists who have advertised there. And none of the results have been good. Ever. However, as someone who...

12 days ago • 4 min read

“How do I make money from music?” It’s a question I’ve gotten more times than I can count. And as someone who has spent the better part of two decades in the music business, it’s a question I’m certainly qualified to answer. Many independent artists focus on turning streaming into their sole source of income, but in my experience, the musicians who cultivate successful, multi-decade careers are those with many irons in the fire. So because this newsletter is titled The One Thing, our focus...

19 days ago • 5 min read

Using paid ads to grow on Instagram is comprised of three basic steps. First, we can use an awareness campaign to spread the word and let people know we exist. Second, we can run a campaign to send users directly to our Instagram profile, using the native call to action in our ads. And third, we can tighten up the entire system by retargeting users who have engaged with our ads and content but haven’t yet chosen to follow us. Now if you’re new here, we’ve spent the last three weeks covering...

26 days ago • 3 min read

Growth on Instagram starts by generating awareness—getting eyeballs on your content. But once people know you exist, it’s time to get them to take a little action, and one of the lowest-barrier-to-entry actions we can ask of someone is for them to follow us on Instagram. And fortunately for us, this is easily accomplished with ads. Now, if this is your first edition of The One Thing, we’re in part three of a four-part series covering a multi-step advertising process to grow on Instagram. So...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read

A huge thanks to all of you who replied to last week’s email (or commented on last week’s video) to express interest in seeing a more detailed breakdown of how to grow on Instagram with ads. Because so many of you seem keen to dig into this topic a bit more, we’re going to spend the next few weeks dissecting each step in the process. This week, we’re starting at the top and unpacking how we can generate more awareness for our existing organic content on Instagram reels, specifically. Let’s...

about 1 month ago • 4 min read

Building an audience on Instagram is an integral step for any artist- or creative-driven business. There are lots of options downstream of winning on the ‘gram. I’ve personally tested many different ads to grow Instagram, and we’ve put the winning combo to work for a slew of artists over at DuPree X. Whether you’re trying to succeed as an artist on Spotify, sell products, or simply become a full-time content creator, I want to help you take the first step. So here is the exact advertising...

about 2 months ago • 4 min read

Congratulations. You created great music, ran high-quality ads, and implemented an effective retargeting strategy to earn that highest-of-high-value results: the email address. Now what? Well, once you’ve taken a moment to be proud of yourself (and you should be—generating leads isn’t easy) it’s time to start thinking about how best to nurture these newfound relationships. Email is such a huge unlock for independent artists on the path toward building a business, but there are a lot of...

about 2 months ago • 4 min read

At its most basic level, music marketing is all about percentages. When we understand those percentages, we can craft a predictable and repeatable game plan for career (and financial) success. Implementing a simple funnel-based marketing strategy allows us to move from a “spray and pray” approach to a more calculated, data-driven approach to promoting our music and building a business on top of that. So rather than simply saying, “Tell more people about your music,” let’s dig deeper into how...

2 months ago • 3 min read

Spotify has been hard at work rolling out new marketing and advertising options on its platform. Within the past couple of years, the company has introduced things like Discovery Mode and Showcase in addition to updating existing options like Marquee. All this, of course, in addition to Spotify’s own ad platform. And while these products can certainly be effective (some more so than others), I personally believe Spotify is a long way from becoming an actual threat to advertising on social...

2 months ago • 3 min read
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