The truth about music promotion is that it takes time, it takes effort, and it takes contacts. Every composer starting out trying to promote his song or his melodies will find this out very quickly. For every composer, for every songwriter who succeeds, there are a thousand who fail.

Of course, most composers want to have their work appreciated and enjoyed, but at the same time they want to make some money from it. This means that they will have to find someone to buy it, either in the form of sheet music, or in the form of videos, recordings, or internet downloads. This is the difficult part, as the public already has an enormous choice of music readily available on the internet, a lot of which is completely free.

Formerly the music promotion business was in the hands of publishers. A composer had only to submit his composition to a composer, wait for it to be evaluated, and then wait, hopefully, for a publishing contract to arrive. This, however, was a long drawn out procedure as the volume of demonstration songs received by publishers was very high, and a reply would only be forthcoming if the song interested them.

Therefore, contacts are important. If you have these, then it will shorten the time for your work to be considered. If you don’t, then there may be a long wait before you receive a reply, if there is any reply at all. Don’t be discouraged by this. Keep writing and submitting. Most composers have a large number of works in the submission pipeline.

Nowadays there are many different kinds of publishers, some of whom are not really publishers at all, but merely song-matchers. Such people will received enquiries for tunes and songs to fit a certain purpose, perhaps for a certain artist, or for use in television or in films. They will then search around for something to meet the specifications.

A great many aspiring composers feel that contacting individual publishers is a waste of time, so they put their songs up on websites where it can be listened to by one and all free of charge. Their objective is publicity and the hope that if their performance or song is noticed by some promoter or other, it will lead to a contract. Again, this is a hit-or-miss approach, but it has the advantage of speed.

In this modern age, however, it’s not really necessary to use publishers or other middlemen at all. A singer can promote and sell his own songs on the internet without having to surrender any of his income to anybody. Or he can give his songs to various radio networks, who will pay him a small fee every time his song is played.

A song which becomes a big hit will make a lot of money for all concerned including the singer, the record-label, the songwriters, and others who took part in the production. Big hits, however, fade fast, and are seldom rescued from the obscurity they fall into after a month or two. Evergreen songs, on the other hand, are songs which remain popular for almost all time, resulting in a steady and, perhaps, life-time income for the composer. Anyway, to be successful, the composer must keep writing and must not give up, even though music promotion takes time and effort.

There are many ways to promote your music online. Using music distribution companies can help get your music on iTunes or many other music broadcasters.