Preparing a plan to release and promote your next single is about as important as the time you spent making it. Even if you have a “hit”, nobody is going to hear it if you don’t do the work and take some steps to amplify and share it.
The truth behind how to successfully promote your music is that it takes planning, time, and a lot of administrative effort. But when you do it right, it all feels worth it.
General things to keep in mind when planning to release music independently:
- When you post on social media about your single — GIVE A CALL TO ACTION! Have people join your mailing list, pre-save and pre-order the song, and follow you on streaming services. Make sure you do this every single time.
- Get started preparing to release your music 6-12 weeks in advance. Just trust us. If you leave things to last minute and are rushing: things will go wrong.
- Before you put any money into paid advertising: do your research! Figure out who is already listening to your music — age, location, interests, etc. and then target more folks like them. Try different ads to test effectiveness… do not just try one thing and then give up saying, “ugh! It didn’t work.” This process takes trial & error.
- Show your face and personality on your social media. Everyone is tired of the social media robot personas. Show who you are, talk to the camera, and respond to your fan base. It makes a huge difference.
➡️ Things to do before you distribute your song:
Prepare photos and video content to share to promote your song. You should have 3-6 posts minimum on your pages about each song. You may want to do this ahead of distribution to get a quality cover image. The more you share and promote, the more chances you get to convert people to listeners.
- Video ideas: BTS video, Performance video, acoustic video, Lyric Video, Official Music Video, Unofficial Music Video, promotional ad video, teaser videos from big videos. When making all of these, hire someone to take “stills” for BTS to get yourself more content!
- PR PRO TIP: A common way PR folks pitch music is to offer a music video to one reporter/blogger “exclusively” — meaning only they can cover it and will get to “break” the news. This is a great way to offer something special to a media professional you have developed a relationship with and share your music to a new set of listeners. Keep this in mind if you want to have a music video you can pitch before you release your project.
- Photoshoot: You want to use these for press releases, EPK, hero images, social media, etc. This is your chance to curate your image and this is crucial every single time.
➡️ Key notes on distributing your song (via Tunecore, Distrokid, CD Baby, etc.) to all DSPs:
- To do so, you will need your art (3000×3000 minimum) and mastered recording in wav/mp3 form. Each DSP has different file form requirements, so check ahead on this and make sure you have what you need so you aren’t scrambling last minute.
- Release on a Friday. Everyone tends to understand that Fridays are release days. You should upload/distro your song a MINIMUM of 4 weeks in advance. Better go for 6 weeks in advance instead. If you leave this to the last minute, everything will go wrong.
➡️ After you distribute your song:
Submit your song to the Spotify editors via the Spotify for artists platform.
- After you distribute, it can take up to 7 days for it to be live in Spotify’s back end to be processed, so be patient. Ideally, you submit this form this 4 weeks before the release date.
Set up a pre-save campaign. You can use a campaign built by your distributor, or you can secure your Spotify URI code and use a 3rd party platform to develop your own.
- I like to use toneden.io. I’d encourage you to promote this on social media aggressively and consider using incentivized campaigns like giveaways & interactive content (videos, lives, selfie videos).
Get EPK updated/prepared.
- Prepare press release. Look up templates online & keep it short.
- Pre-save link.
- Private streaming link.
- Press images.
- Update artist bio.
- Update media list (of contacts, bloggers, curates, DJs, etc) and share private listening link BEFORE release. You should also compile a list of radio shows for your region (city/state) and niche (genre/etc.)
- Folder of metadata MP3s. You need to make sure you have metadata MP3s in a folder to share with radio. You should have clean and explicit versions, if applicable.
Advertising ($$$)
- Consider beginning running ongoing paid ads on Twitter/FB/IG.
- Consider paid advertising on Spotify ad manager. You can target regions, like artists, etc. Buy in limit for this starts at $250.
Things to do on release day / that week:
- Develop a pivot/ smart URL — URL that offers everyone you click to choose their own listening platform. Nobody likes searching for a link to where they can listen to your music.
- Update all your pages to banner images across pages for new release. Change pre-save links to smart URL.
- Pitch independent Spotify playlists with spotify link. Here are some places you can do that.
- Send your press release and live links to bloggers, curators, DJs, etc.