One of the best ways to start circulating your music among record companies is the demo tape: demo tapes and music marketing go hand in hand. A demo tape (shortened from “demonstration”) consists of a song or group of songs, recorded for limited circulation or for reference use, rather than for general public release. It’s very useful for musicians and recording artists who wish to craft a sketch of their output and use it for different purposes. For example, they might use them as a personal reference during their creative process or as a way of distributing their music and work in a rudimentary manner amongst professional environments such as bandmantes, arrangers, producers, or even other artists. Many consolidated artists and musicians use them, for instance, as a way to workshop new material during their process of recording.
Demo Tapes and Music Marketing: Secure that Contract
However, the most important use musicians have for demo tapes is as a tool with which they can approach recording labels to showcase their work with the expectation of eventually signing a recording contract with an interested party. In this sense, the demo tape is one of the most efficient tools at the disposal of aspiring musicians and artists who seek to reach a new level of professionalization and to have the opportunity of recording and releasing their works with the support of the musical industry in the hopes of attaining a larger audience. Nonetheless, the larger recording labels have a tendency to ignore unsolicited demo tapes which arrive by mail. Consequently, aspiring musicians and recording artists have to be clever and original in the way in which they approach these labels if they hope to be noticed and listened to by the more important parts of the industry.
The ways in which demo tapes are used tend to make them scarcely available to mainstream audiences, which in turn makes them very valuable for the most devoted and completionist fans of musicians. In short, demo tapes are one of the most useful tools an aspiring artist has at their disposal, and should they know how to use them, these tapes might end up being highly sought after in the future.
