How to promote your music for free — Hack (#SMR = short; must; read)

Most musicians think like failed startups. Too much time creating. Not enough time promoting.

When Lil Nas X dropped out of college to pursue music he didn’t create much. Instead, he lived on Twitter, made online friends and got popular posting memes. His account quickly grew to 30,000 followers.

The plan was to use his following to promote his music. But it wasn’t that simple. In Nas’s words:

I’d post a funny meme and get 2,000 retweets. Then I’d post a song and get 10.

So Nas got creative. He stopped tweeting SoundCloud links and started writing a song he could promote through memes. In his words:

It had to be short. It had to be catchy. It had to be funny.

Old Town Road was the result. And on the 3rd December 2018 Nas paired it with a video of a dancing cowboy and shared it with his followers (see tweet).

The video went viral. So Nas stuck to this formula: Short viral videos. To the tune of Old Town Road. With the full song linked underneath.