Review for "Top 18 ways to Promote your Music in 2015" By Donavon Parker

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Review for “Top 18 Ways to Promote Your Music in 2015” by Donavon Parker

“Top 18 Ways to Promote your Music in 2015” is a quick start guide on how to navigate the huge world of music promotion. Parker specifies in the title it is designed for the year 2015 but many of the tips and advice are about mass social media and online venues which extend beyond 2015.

Alright, let's first deal with the elephant in the room; its 2017 now and I am reviewing a book about the music industry in 2015, don’t worry though as the author has made sure to make this relevant for the next few years by addressing new and up and coming technology. I also have to start off by mentioning to anyone purchasing or thinking of purchasing this book, do not click on the embedded link the author has included to his own website, because it is just ads, annoying page ads and as far as I can tell, any links you can find out there in the web verse all lead to annoying ads. I tried to reconcile this issue with Parker but as of the posting of this review the author has not been able to contact me.

Parker starts by dispelling some long held beliefs about the modern music industry and makes it clear that how artists and bands operated and shot to stardom 10, 15 or 20 years ago doesn’t cut it today; musicians who want to adequately promote themselves have to take full advantage of modern media, and recognize not everyone will become the next big thing, but that acquiring a good fan base is always important. Parker also analyzes cost, time and output, making sure new artists know how much time to spend on particular aspects, and what kind of result they can expect from that, so that artists know what is worth spending time on doing and what is not. The biggest benefits to this book are the links Parker provides, to advertising platforms, free music sources and pretty much anything you could think of. It means of course this book only really works within an online format, but Parker starts off by saying its condensed online format was designed to make the book as cheap as possible to allow anyone to be able to afford it, (hence the lack of a cover page) and who can fault him for that? (In case it doesn’t translate, that was a rhetorical question, of course no one can fault Parker for thinking of struggling artists’ wallets).

My biggest issue with the (very short) book was the tone. Parker used an extremely formal tone throughout, that made the writing feel stuff and stilted. I have zero experience in the music industry, apart from being what Parker refers to as ‘a consumer’ but something that is designed for use in a young person’s game such and music can afford to be a little relaxed, easy going and informal with the reader. Of course that’s not to say that older artists and bands don’t deserve assistance in getting their music out there, or that they don’t need help too, in fact there are times when Parker described social media platforms assuming you have never heard of Facebook or Twitter or how to use them. And really Kudos to Parker for trying to widen his audience for this work, difficult to achieve in 13 pages.

Apart from my inability to stick to a strong schedule and review this on time, I actually really enjoyed the break from the norm. It was concise, to the point and not overly technical, which meant a noob like myself to the ways of the music industry could easily understand what Parker was talking about. Overall though the book had some problems, firstly the fact that it wasn’t really a book, or what I would consider a book, more like a booklet. I understand the authors desire to make it short, to keep it affordable, but perhaps he could do a follow up, or maybe publish a more in depth book for those who want to learn more. Perhaps he could do a series, including books on how to record and refine recorded music, how to produce albums etc. My only advice to Parker if he did like the idea of continuing the advice he gives is not to worry so much about the formality of language, you aren’t speaking to congress, you can relax and let your experience in the industry speak for itself.

To buy this book click here.