How do you keep abreast of trends? There are lots of ways, but we are going to start by talking about ones you can do at home for little or no money. First of all, read and watch the news; they report on trends.

What’s a trend? A trend is something that is happening over time. Interest in digital music was very low in 1990. Only geeks and braniacs knew anything about it. But, as computers caught on and became commonplace, more people started playing around with digital music.

After the internet started becoming really common in the late 90’s early 2000’s, average people started seeing that they could get all kinds of music free, could easily trade their favorite songs with friends, and have more control over how they listened to it. The trend was that interest in digital music was growing. It’s still growing today. The ‘trend’ is ‘up.’

At some point, it will be so commonplace that the number of new people using digital music will stop growing (or at least not growing very quickly). Then, the trend will be flat. If some new method of listening to music comes up, interest may decline, and the trend will be down.

So what? Who cares if the trend is up or down? If the trend is up, that means you can jump on the bandwagon of that trend and ride it. People are hungry for it, and are actually looking for whatever it is that the up trend has. It’s a lot easier to market yourself to a trend on the rise than one that is falling.

What’s that mean to you? Find a rising trend, tie yourself into it, and you can get into the media, and into people’s view. Media sources are always looking for new ways to exploit a rising trend.

How does this translate a seemingly non-music related trend into promoting yourself? As I write this, the trend in the economy has been very much down. What if you wrote a song about it? Give it a catchy title, make sure it creates some controversy, then promote that song. Send out press releases talking about the economy and use your song as an example.

Or, don’t even bother with the song. Write some articles about how poor the economic outlook is, then, within the article, make a small section about how you, as a musician deal with it and how it affects you. Put your website into the article and spin it so that people will want to hear your music after reading the article.

What can you do right now with the rising trend of digital music? How about releasing a song only in digital format? Chances are, you are already doing that anyway because it is cheap and fast. But, have you made a big deal out of the fact that you are NOT going to release it as a cd? That you are going to only release it in digital format?

You may see it as common, but your local news outlets may not think that way. Contact them. Put out press releases around the fact that this is a digital only release and that it is the wave of the future. Put together a show as a release party for the digital release, and make it free for the people who atttend. It can be an event that can make the local news (especially effective if you are in a fairly small market).