Strategies in popular music marketing to the local person in Uganda

Abstract

This research focused on strategies in popular music marketing in Uganda and the main focus was put on social media following the research objectives; to identify the social media channels and the tactics used within each channel; to determine the psychographic characteristics of sample Facebook users; to determine which social media marketing channels and tactics are most effective with sample Facebook users who actively seek music through social media. Musicians in Uganda are still using the analog strategies to market their music and some of them are not aware of the most effective strategies that they can use to market their music. Others know the digital strategies to market music but have not endeavored to take the initiative to market their music using the available spaces. However there is a motive to explore marketing strategies in this study that Ugandan musicians use. Nowadays with technology advancement the music industry in Uganda has not stayed behind. The industry has adopted to the new digital promotion strategies and has gone beyond just the broadcasting media like radio and television but now utilizes social media as well. The evolution of social media has introduced new avenues whose capability for marketing a product or service is beyond other platforms. One industry that has adopted these social media marketing techniques is the music industry. Participants were selected from people using social media platforms, journalists, media influencers and bloggers, musicians to provide their views basing on the research objectives as explored in the study. Participants in the study demonstrated both Maven and Early Adopter characteristics. The most frequently used platforms used by the Ugandan musician’s population were Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok and YouTube. Research showed that using these platforms to share music videos, concert footage, interview materials, and free MP3 downloads were effective social media marketing tactics on the population. The best strategy used to market popular music is by Radios and television the same strategy that they used in the past decades however it was discovered that social media platforms are currently taking a center stage in marketing popular music. Musicians have not fully utilized online marketing because they do not make it a point to hire professional social media handlers, influencers and bloggers to market their music. Some have not found the right ways to gain in the online marketing space.