8 Keys to a Successful Album Release
Having a successful music career takes more than just talent, practicing music and performing in front of crowds. If you want people to listen to your music and pay to come to your concerts you have to do some work marketing your music. Here at Madison Records, we’re experienced with the marketing side of music. Promoting our artists is all part of the fun of the music industry, and we’ve learned from our experiences along the way.
Proper planning and a good marketing strategy go a long way toward finding success with each new album you produce. Here are a few key strategies that can help ensure your own success.
1. Start early. The work on promoting your new album doesn’t start on your launch date -- it starts much earlier. If you’ve already built up a fan base, use your social media accounts to communicate your progress. If you don’t have a big fan base yet, if this is your first album, now is the time to start building. Encourage friends and family to share your posts with their friends and family, and spread the word to get more likes and follows. Topics to post about could include the subject of a song you’re writing, where you find your inspiration or pictures of you playing some tunes.
2. Plan a party. Releasing a new album is definitely cause to celebrate, and a launch party is an important part of your marketing plan. The party is a way to bring family, friends, the media and even some of your fans together to introduce the new album. One of the direct benefits of a party is it gives you an opportunity to play your new music for a smaller crowd before you go out on tour with it, and even sell some albums. The other benefit is in building awareness. By hyping up your event you’re letting the public (and especially the media) know that you have something new coming out.
3. Make use of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are all great tools when it comes to marketing a new album. Hopefully you’ve been posting your progress and building up excitement for the new album. That shouldn’t stop with the release. Continue to post about the launch party and concert dates and share interesting facts about the album. You should create a hashtag specific to your album and use it to encourage shares. Make sure to tag as many people as you can in your posts, to reach out to friends of friends of friends with your news. It can be challenging to find time to post regularly on all the different platforms, which makes scheduling apps such as Hootsuite attractive. While it’s find to schedule posts ahead of time, remember to keep them as relevant as possible. We also recommend not writing one post for use across all platforms. Each one has its own style, and a post that reads well on Twitter doesn’t always translate well to Facebook, and vice versa.
4. Get it out on streaming platforms. In addition to the physical CDs that you sell at concerts or through Amazon, make sure your music is available to download on Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and other streaming services.
5. Don’t forget Youtube. While it’s not necessarily a music site, people go to this site to listen to music. It’s a great way to share your video, or even just a recording.
6. Tell your story. Your album is much more than a collection of songs. It tells a story of you, your band, and where you are in your career. Help build awareness of your new album by sharing that story with others. Reach out to bloggers, journalists and DJs to let them know you’re launching a new album and would like to share your story with them. Don’t just limit yourself to your hometown. You can make connections in the cities where you’ve scheduled concerts for in-person interviews, and phone calls and email work great for getting the story out when you can’t be there in person.
7. Play, play, play. Launching your album is only the start. Now it’s time to get out on the concert circuit. Set up a tour to help promote your new album and get in front of your fans.
8. Make a plan. Every good marketing campaign starts out with a schedule. Now that you’ve read over the key components, get out your calendar and start making dates to accomplish the tasks before you.
Check out some of our artists (through their social media and websites) to see some of the ways Madison Records’ talented team has launched their own music.