The requirement of proper advertising for your music is not neglectable. If nobody knows about your music, no one will listen to it. In my experience, a good album release strategy will help your music to get heard and prevent it to be listed on forgetify.com.
To help you plan your own release I prepared a table with a 4 months countdown. You can use this table as a reference for your album releases and adapt it so it fits your needs. If you have some suggestions about what I missed, please write it in the comments, so I can add it to the table.
4 months to go
3 months to go
2 months to go
6 weeks to go
2 weeks to go
release party
| Time | To-Do |
|---|---|
| 4 months to go | Create your cover art and prepare photos for social media and save them to one place. You should have low resolution copies (e.g. 400px X 400px, .jpg) ready. They will come very handy! |
| Finish your last recordings and find an audio engineer to mix and master your production. Feel free to contact me for this job. | |
| Find remix artists and provide them the single tracks of your production. | |
| Create an electronic press kit (EPK). This is a .zip file containing cover art and some press information | |
| Start to plan the release party. At this point, you should try to find a venue and book it. | |
| 3 months to go | Pitch your album to relevant media outlets. You can start with regional radio stations and newspapers. Also use SubmitHub to find Magazines, YouTube Channels and Influencers. Your pitch should include your EPK and invitations to your release party. |
| Start promoting your release event to your fanbase and friends. Also, you should find other artists, who will perform at the party, at least 2-3 DJs. | |
| Plan 1-3 single releases, depending on your album’s track count and personal taste. You can release them every 2 weeks before your albums release day. This will allow you to build hype for your album and stay continuous in your fans’ social media streams. | |
| Upload your album and your singles to a distribution service. Depending on the stores you aim for it can take up to 4 weeks for them to check if your release fits covers the guidelines. My recommendation for a distribution service is Distrokid. If you use the following affiliate link you will get a 7% discount: I want to distribute my music via Distrokid. | |
| 2 months to go | Start your social media game: You should use tools like Hootsuite to plan posts for Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms (Hootsuite has a free plan which allows you to plan up to 30 posts ahead). |
| If you had success with your media pitches in before you should now have a lot of interviews in radio, magazines, and blogs. Use your social medial channels to share them with your audience. Also, make sure to reach out a second time to the press outlets that did not answer on the first try. | |
| If you plan to offer CDs or vinyl this is your last call to get the master files to the duplication companies. If you want merchandise like t-shirts or bags, you should find a production company and order them too. | |
| This is also a good time to start preorders for your music and concert tickets. | |
| 6 weeks to go | Remember your single releases? They’re now showing up on streaming platforms. Make sure they get enough coverage on your social media. |
| 2 weeks to go | Did you offer physical preorders? Make sure you make them shipping-ready on time. Depending on where you have to send them you need to visit you postal office a few days in a row, to make sure everyone receives his CD and t-shirts on release day or the day before! |
| release party | Make sure to make the best out of your release party. If you don’t have talented photography friends with good equipment, hire a professional. This will provide you with awesome pictures that allow you to connect your fanbase. They are also super awesome when you apply for other gigs – release parties tend to be very energetic events. |
