There are something like 3 billion plus Google searches executed every single, by well over a billion users. If you're a solo artist making music and looking to sell your work online, one of the most challenging hurdles to overcome is figuring out how--among all that stuff out there on the internet of things--you're going to get your stuff heard by the right people... which for purposes of this discussion means the people who'll be willing to part with 99 cents to add your latest creation to their music collection. ​ Enter Facebook paid ads. The platform provides a shockingly powerful suite of capabilities to enable you to get your music heard by the "right" audience. For example, I write songs about love and family … typically just a vocal and a few acoustic instruments with VERY light effects & such. If I had to pick a genre, it's definitely more country/singer-songwriter than pop, or hip-hop. If I do what seems to be the norm on many Facebook Group pages, and just push a link to my song to every group with "music" in the group title, chances are I'm going to be blocked by the user community rules in many of them, and in those where I successfully post the link, it's going to be obvious in the first few bars to all the listeners that I'm in the proverbial "wrong place." My song "His New Girl," (about a mom's bittersweet realization that her son marrying is both one of the saddest and one of the happiest days of her life) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTiVoLNtYSs isn't going to get past the first 3 seconds of playing time in a group for metal enthusiasts. Nor would some really cool EDM work in the country music lovers group. You get the point. ​ What Facebook paid ads allows you to do is select from dozens of different category filters in order to place your post on the feeds of people who are interested in precisely the emotion/vibe/feel your music is intended to touch. In my case, I can target the "His New Girl" post to women, ages 40 - 65, who have identified themselves as being interested in "family" and "relationships." If I want, I can target more narrowly to income brackets, state, region, country, and all sorts of other filtering mechanisms--to ensure the time and dollars I invest in advertising get my stuff to the audience I'm trying to reach among that sea of billions. ​ You can then set your budget, which basically dictates how long your ad will run, and you get all sorts of analytic data you can use to assess how well your ad is performing, so you can tweak it along the way if you want to. For about $35, in 7 days, my post popped up on the feed of just under 2500 FB users, and generated 262 "Post Engagements," which basically means they clicked, liked, shared, or commented on the post. That's better than a 10% engagement rate in a world where 3.5% is about the average, and 6% is outstanding. (I hasten to note, as excited as I am about the numbers, I won't know for a few weeks whether any of that translates into actual sales, but initial signs are more favorable than anything else I've tried so far). ​ Bottom line: If you're tired of pushing your posts to feeds where they generate a half dozen "likes" and then seem to "go quite" after about 24 hours, I recommend you give Facebook ads a try. ​ DISCLAIMER: THIS IS ALL SIMPLY PERSONAL OBSERVATION, AND I MAKE NO REPRESENTATION ABOUT WHETHER YOUR RESULTS WILL BE SIMILAR. ​

I've been really, really happy with TuneCore. Lots of great info about who's streaming and (if you're lucky) buying your music online. It's very easy to set up, and intuitive to use. There's a section describing how to register with a performing rights agency . It is absolutely essential you register with one. That's basically how you ensure you maximize the number of income streams your art generates. I knew literally NOTHING about this process or how any of this works, but ASCAP (which is who I registered with) makes it really easy. It costs like $50 or so, as I recall, for lifetime membership -- not bad!