A music promoter is someone with music industry connections, knowledge and experience who’s skilled at generating promotional opportunities for artists. Many music promoters work for PR and publishing firms that actively promote album launches, live events and beyond.

An agent is a music industry professional hired by an artist to represent the artist’s interests and generate business opportunities. They’ll negotiate artist fees, manage media relations and sell the artist’s music to radio, film and television producers.

A publicist is a music industry professional with media connections who actively manages the artist’s public persona, appearances and generates media coverage opportunities like interviews, magazine features and media appearances. Publicists typically generate a PR strategy and help with framing the artist's story for the artist’s intended audience.

If you want to hire a music promoter, reviewer, influencer or writer it’s best to approach them with a pitch about yourself as an artist alongside your album, or single. Giving the writer, influencer or promoter an idea of who you are, what your music is about and the story you’re telling will help with creating a narrative about your music. A pitch about your upcoming album and the details behind its concept and creation is an example of the kind of story music promoters and writers are looking for.

Be realistic about the kinds of reviews you can expect—if you’re a breakout artist, getting your music written up as part of a new and notable round up on a blog or magazine is a good place to start.

To get the most out of a paid influencer shoutout, it's important to set expectations when you approach the influencer. Ask what the influencer is and isn’t willing to do to give your tracks a shoutout and ask for an idea of what they’d like to do in their shoutout. If the influencer has any examples of past work, don’t hesitate to ask for those as well}