Top 5 Ways Your Song Can Gain The Most Exposure

The September 26 2009 issue of Billboard features an article, Maximum Exposure that lists 100 ways bands, singers, and songwriters can promote their music across different media and genres as determined by 24 Power panelists.

The top 5 are:

#1 Synch Placement in a Television Ad for Apple

They point out what happened to various artists when one of their songs was used in an iPhone advertisement. Jack Johnson’s “If I Had Eyes” appeared briefly in an ad showcasing the iPhone’s new voice command function, and resulted in:

Digital Track downloads of the song totaled about 1,000 in the week before the ad appeared June 29, tripled in the week the spot debuted and sold more than 2,000 copies in each of the following two weeks.

#2 Performance on Oprah Winfrey Show

O can make a book hit number one, so why not do the same with music?

#3 Song that runs during a major special event such as the Super Bowl, Olympics, etc.

Artists that appear during the half time show always show a spike in sales after their appearance. I wonder how Janet Jackson did after her costume mishap?

#4 Song featured on Itunes’ free single of the week

Boxer Rebellion’s song, “Evacuate” was the Free Single of the Week the same day as the album’s release after a member of the iTunes music unit discovered the band on MySpace. The album went to No. 4 on the iTunes U.K. top album chart and “Evacuate” sold 2,000 digital downloads while moving 12,000 digital copies.

#5 Synch placement in ABC’s ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

Each episode of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is actually the title of a song. Ed note: I do not watch the show so I am not aware if that actual song is played at some point during the show, but according to this site I have not seen the title song played.