We all want to support all of our friends in as many ways as we can, but financially it may not be possible. Buying merchandise and gig tickets may not be in your budget, but all is not lost, there are lots of different ways that you can support your musician friends- for FREE.
Follow
A simple and easy one to start with, follow their music pages. Social media has become an essential part of music promotion and has a lot of sway when it comes to being booked for gigs, or label interest. Though having followers isn’t everything, it can definitely help! Follow them on Spotify, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook etc and if they have a mailing list, definitely sign up to it!
Comment + Like + Save
Similar to the above, engaging with your friends' content is crucial to creating interest and a fan base. Liking their posts isn’t always enough, but commenting on their posts whether a couple of words of meaningful engagement or championing your friends is enough to boost their spirits but also to help them with the social media algorithms.
Share
Sharing is caring. The algorithms love sharing and saving posts on social media, especially Instagram. Tagging them in your stories, which doubles as promotion and free content for your friend!
Write reviews
On Facebook you can leave reviews of business pages and other social media platforms have similar functions too. Leaving a review looks great for your friends' music, and also gives a nice ego boost too- just keep it professional.
Recommend them to a friend
Similarly to sharing on social media, word of mouth does wonders for any business. You can show their music to other friends or family members.
Add their songs to your playlists
Whether you use Spotify or another streaming service, adding your friends' songs to your own playlists means you get to listen to your friends and support their ventures, but also make the algorithms move in their favour. Creating more monthly listeners for your friends and it looks great for the stats.
Offer a place to stay when touring
If you don’t live in the same city as your friend, and they are gigging or on tour. Offer them a place to stay, most people will be grateful for a place to crash, save a long journey back home or an expensive hotel bill. If you’re lucky, they may even give you a free ticket to the gig.
Celebrate their achievements
There is nothing better than seeing your friends succeed. Celebrate their achievements, tell them how proud you are of them, a great way to being a great friend, but also being supportive of their career.
This is just touching the surface in terms of free things you can do to support your musical friends. If you can afford to, buy your friends music and go to their gigs too, it’s always appreciated.