How should I release my Fundamentalist Christian music in Northern Virginia?

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all how you should release your music as a fundamentalist Christian musician in Northern Virginia. 

Before we get started, let’s have our moment of silence. 

At this time, I would like all of us to take a moment of silence and pray to God to help us to become the musicians that we are supposed to become. Take a minimum of 5 minutes and pray for this. 

Now back to the show

*The next part is going to be directed at kids who are wondering about releasing their music independently. I admire kids who start their journey early and I ENVY you. However, that doesn’t affect what I’m about to tell you right now because I am about to give you some very valuable information that will help you in the long run. If you’re an adult and have already spent a lifetime working at your music, then the next part is not for you. Let’s start

When you’re a kid

So when you’re a kid, you’re young and ambitious and you probably have a heart set for the Lord. 

That’s GREAT!! That’s awesome!. Not the ambitious part, but it’s awesome knowing that you have a dream and are willing to work for it. 

I want to encourage you to pursue your dreams. However, just know that good things take a long time to succeed. 

Good things take STRONG EFFORT to succeed. 

So like, you might be wondering how would you promote your music as a kid.

That’s a great question and I could sit here and talk about how you need to write in a blog consistently for long periods of time. I could sit here and talk about how you need to make YouTube videos everyday. 

However, none of that matters unless you have the musical talent to back it up. 

I mean I guess that if you would like, you could start writing in a blog and talk about music from the little experience that you have. However, I wouldn’t recommend that because when we’re new musicians, we often don’t know the whole concept. 

And what I’m trying to get at is that you have to be a music professional to blog about music. 

I’m not saying that a kid can’t be a professional because obviously there have been child singers who made it big. 

However, it is extremely rare and most of us, 99.5% of us, need a lot of time in order to actually become a professional in music. 

You need countless hours practicing the guitar or piano or writing songs. 

You need countless hours producing music and just being immersed in the music world.

So, I like your drive! And keep going! Rome wasn’t built in a day, but when you see those big named artists playing at the Superbowl, just know that it was a lifetime of work that got them there. 

Don’t get discouraged, trust me when I say that this music life is the BEST LIFE that you could imagine. 

I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen a payday for my music, other than some music theory work, but trust me that it’s the good life. 

PLUS, if you’re a Christian musician, you have faith that God will provide for you every step of the way.

Which brings me to another point, do you have more faith in the Lord than in me? Because if you have faith in God, then you know that the Lord rewards those that diligently seek him. You know that God provides for the people that love him, and since you are worshiping the Lord with music, DO YOU THINK THAT GOD DOESN’T SEE THAT? Do you think that the Lord doesn’t understand that we all have needs that need to be met? Haha! Remember when Jesus said, Oh ye of little faith. 

So the moral of the story is, have more faith in God than in me. 

God knows the stereotypes of musicians, God knows of all the problems that musicians face in the music industry, God knows what your specific needs are! How could you doubt God? 

When God is the good father, how can we doubt him?

Now some practical advice for all ages

Now that we’ve got all that squared away, When you’re releasing music, you need to build a hype around the music that you will be releasing. 

When I say a hype, I mean, you have to get people talking about your music. You have to get people to search you more often for the music that you’ll be releasing. 

You have to create a buzz around the music that you will be releasing. 

But before you can do all of that, It’s important to note that you should already have a substantial following before you do all of that, because if you don’t have that, then who are you going to talk to your music about? 

So before you release any music, you should have already been building your following for a long period of time. 

Whether that be on Facebook, Twitter, a blog, YouTube, etc. etc. 

And when I say that it takes years to build, it takes YEARS! 

I mean like a minimum of 2 years and it could go on to 7 years. 

That’s how much effort needs to be placed in a blog or following before you receive a good day. 

But it makes sense because if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. 

And if it wasn’t something good, then it wouldn’t take so long. 

Therefore, just by those two facts alone, we can understand that building a following is a good thing.

After you’ve built your following, it’s important to do a few things to release an album.

1. Release singles (When you release your single, you need to release your BEST music. Because if you release anything that’s less than your best, people will not buy your album. People will automatically dismiss the album even though there might be great music in there. So wait until the album is finished and release the single. Distrokid, CDbaby, TuneCore, are all great platforms to put your music on Itunes, Spotify, etc. etc. 
2. Blog or Vlog about it. Of course with your blog or YouTube channel, you need to talk about your upcoming album, talk about the themes that are talked about on your album, talk about your inspirations, what instruments you used, how long it took you to complete each song, the story behind the song, etc. etc. Make sure that you say things like,(This is just an example, not to be used in your own promotion strategy) “This album was inspired by the last kids who ever sang on this earth!” You see how that was a bold statement? USE BOLD STATEMENTS. Of course don’t clickbait the thing, but use honest bold statements, if you clickbait it will hurt your reputation.
3. For local musicians. I’m kicking myself in the butt because I didn’t do this when I first started getting serious about music, but it’s better for musicians to start gaining fans locally. It’s actually easier to rank in google for local spots than nationally. Because think about it, if you’re a musician and you try and rank nationally, then you have to fight the search engines through the Justin Biebers, the Michael Jacksons, The Ushers, or if you’re a Christian musician, the Hillsongs, the Lecrae’s and all of their related blog posts, it’s practically impossible to break through the noise because they have so much more authority than you. But if you rank for say D.C. area musician, It’s 1000X easier to rank because hardly anybody would be ranking for the local spots. I’m starting to do that now.How does that relate to releasing music? When talking about your album, make sure to mention, “local D.C. musician on the rise” or maybe “Detroit Christian musician” whatever is your local scene because that will help you to dominate faster. I am against signing to a record label, but if you would like to get signed to a record label, labels look to see if you can sell out to a local area first. To a record label, it’s much more impressive to sell out 5,000 albums in a city, than it is to sell out 10,000 albums nationally. 
4. Perform live. Of course perform live. When you perform your songs, you need to tell people in your blog about what venues you will be at so that they can buy tickets. When you’re first starting out, you might not have a lot of money to go to L.A. one night and then N.Y.C. the next, so this is where being a local musician first will help you more too. You could perform a local circuit that you made up at an exceptionally lower rate than taking a plane from city to city. 
5. Give or take to do all of these things, it would probably take around 6 months to complete. So announce your album six months prior to releasing and then promote it by using the above methods. 

*I don’t care where you live or what your situations are, you can do this, it just takes hard work, time, and effort, don’t give up.

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and  I will see you all next time.

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!