How to Use ChatGPT for Music Publicity

When was the last time you ran your own DIY PR campaign? If you have to stop and think, it’s probably been too long.

I get it—putting together a PR campaign can feel overwhelming sometimes, trying to figure out everything from which single to push first to how to write the pitch, contact the best writer, and everything in between to make it as successful as possible. But, part of the key to a successful music career is consistency, and that includes your publicity efforts.

The good news is, there’s a new tool that can help you do all of this and more: the research, the writing, the subject lines, all of it. Even better? It’s free.

I’m talking about ChatGPT & AI. Here are a few ways it can help you.

Research and Write Your Pitches

This is a hack you’re going to wish you’d known ages ago! Personalization in pitches is a key part of what makes a pitch successful. But it can be really time consuming to try and personalize every single pitch—it takes a lot of research, reading, and careful wording to make sure the writer knows you’ve done your homework and appreciate their work.

So, let AI help. You can feed it the last few articles that the writer has written and ask that it condense the points, summarizing them and telling the writer what you like. Give it a little bit of your own flair and voila! You have yourself a personalized pitch.

Create a Robust Media List

The second biggest challenge of DIY PR/Publicity is finding those media contacts. It can take forever to find the perfect writers, podcasters, or playlisters for your song.

Here’s an example of how you can use AI to come up with media contacts. First, I typed into Chat GPT:

Can you please give me the name of 20 media outlets that cover indie rock (you should always be kind to your AI robot). This is what it gave me:

Now that you have some outlets in mind, you can ask AI for guidance on who to reach out to:

From there you can go to the website to grab the email!

Write Press Releases

AI is brilliant at getting the framework of a press release (or even a bio) together. You can enter bullet points and ask it to write a press release or put together a really rough draft of something and then give it a prompt like “make this press release sound better” (really—it will!) or “make this funnier” and so on.

Here’s an example of something I asked ChatGPT:

Here’s what it came up with:

Impressive, right?!

Come up with hilarious or quirky pitch’s to slide into their DMs

When you want to say something clever but you just aren’t sure what will do the trick, AI to the rescue!

First, do a little bit of research that you can put into ChatGPT. Then, ask it to write a funny/witty/quirky/etc. pitch that you can DM them. You can even say “write it in the voice of (insert favorite comedian).

Check it out:

Come Up With Brilliant Subject Lines for Pitches

You can have the perfect email but if you can’t get them to open it, it doesn’t matter.

Try saying this: “write 5 subject lines for this pitch” and paste your pitch. You can add in adjectives (funny subject lines/serious subject lines/thought provoking subject lines). Play around with it.

Here’s what it came up with for me:

Help Write More Compelling Social Media Posts

It always comes back to this doesn’t it? And yes, music journalists most definitely pay attention to your social media! In fact, many times they’ll take a look at your socials before deciding if they should cover your music. That means that keeping up an engaged audience is an important part of doing your own music publicity.

But, it can feel exhausting to constantly be thinking of new topic ideas. So, AI can help with that too. You can ask it to come up with ideas, topics, even TikTok and Reel scripts!

Here’s an example of that:

It can even give you ideas for certain platforms, like TikTok:

And then script them for you:

While you’ll still have to tweak it to add in your personality and brand voice, it’s GREAT for getting started and saving you hours of time.

Increase Audience Engagement

Going hand in hand with the help AI can give in creating content is how it can help you to increase audience engagement. When it comes to music PR, understanding and connecting with the right audience is paramount to success. With the assistance of AI-driven tools like ChatGPT, PR professionals gain access to invaluable insights into audience preferences and emerging trends within the music industry. Take this for example:

Using this information you can start to see not only what to create content around, but how to pivot your strategy to include some of the trends that might work with your existing brand and audience interest.

AI Can Help You Analyze Data (and make better decisions)

Sometimes with social media, it can feel like you’re flailing around in the dark, can’t it? When doing you’re own PR, you can collect data from various sources such as social media, websites, and email campaigns and feed it to AI, which will analyze it to identify trends, audience preferences, and campaign effectiveness.

You can then use the generated insights to refine your PR strategies, focusing on what resonates with your audience. This process allows you to adapt to industry trends and optimize your promotional efforts for maximum impact. In other words, let AI help you make better decisions.

Help You Promote the Article

Last but not least, promoting the articles you secure for yourself is an important part of the DIY PR process. After all, it’s only right that you thank the outlets that have shared your music by sharing yourself. But, if you’re looking for something more creative to share on social media than just “Thanks outlet name!” You can put the article in AI and ask it to generate a summary for social media.

Here’s one I pulled from a review of The Front Bottoms show at Kemba in Columbus, OH: