The Album Rollout Series: Part 1 - Do The Work Beforehand
Content creation, getting organized, finding your audience are just a few things to consider BEFORE rolling out an album.
WOW. Its been a minute hasn’t it? How’s your 2023 going so far seriously let me know below. What are you working on?
With this Newsletter I’m starting the beginning of a brand new series: ‘The Album Rollout’. Right now it’s 3 parts but I might extend it to more as I go through tips and keys. I’ve been assisting artists with rollouts & marketing for 9 years now and I want to get more information out to artists outside of social media so here we are.
The first part is all about DOING THE WORK BEFORE HAND.
As I work and have conversations with artists, one thing I notice is that in some cases artists aren’t considering the promotion of their album until after it’s finished. However, if you put in a bit of work as you’re recording the album or at least before you announce it to the masses, you can save yourself a lot of stress.
Content Creation Around the Creation of the Album -There’s so much content that can be made while you’re in the studio and in the process of recording your album. It doesn’t require a large budget either. First let me say, I’m not trying to turn you into a content creator I promise. However CONTENT PROVIDES CONTEXT to the supporters and fans you’re expecting to support (in some cases financially) your album. Second even something as simple as attaching your phone to a tripod to record your session can provide hours of content that you can use both in the pre & post-rollout of your album and all you had to do was record the work you do in the studio. That’s just one of many content ideas you can use to drive people to your music.
If you’re curious I posted like 20 different content ideas last week on Twitter CHECK IT OUT HERETake Time to Find Your Target Audience - Think about who you want to appeal to with your record and do this before the rollout begins. It can be a bit too much to be searching for your audience while simultaneously rolling out an album that’s supposed to be heard by said audience. It’s not just about what genre of sound (though that is part of it), but it’s also about your other interests, what you stand for at large, your brand (which is your unique 1 of-1 self), location, and still most importantly who YOU want to appeal to. This can be confusing and sometimes hard to pin down so if you ever need hands-on help with this let me know.
Don’t Forget Promo Materials - Don’t wait til the last minute to do a photo shoot and have some press pics for when you send the music out to publications, writers, and festivals let alone your own fans. Make sure your banners and profile pictures on social media accurately reflect your new release. One big mistake I see all the time is artists who never update their pinned content! Some of you have a pinned tweet from when you went viral five years ago, change that jazz!
This list isn’t exhaustive either, I just wanted to get some quick tips up here of some things I see artists missing when they're rolling out their life’s work.
Part 2 - will be out soon and will be focused on the Newsletter. How are ya’ll reading my Newsletter but don’t have one for yourself!!!
Let me know if you have any other questions or topics you’d like me to cover. I’m back in the writing groove now, so I’m trying to write shorter content versus entire articles that are a billion pages long. Do you like this form of written content gimme some feedback!
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Take a second, breathe, drink some water, get a damn Website and give yourself some damn credit for once.
What am I working on for 2023?
The concept EP I've been working on for the last two years is scheduled for release 20th June. It's about Black experiences told from my first-person point of view, open, vulnerable, authentic, and kind of scary. The streaming version is 6 songs, and the compact disc version has 2 additional hidden songs as well as music hidden between each track for about 10 minutes of additional music. The CDs are also coming with a 16 page lyric booklet with essays to contextualize the content. The artistic aesthetic is that all personnel on this project are Black: engineer, musicians, mixer, mastering engineer, essay writers, videographer, art director, etc. I just started promotion of its first single, which will be out 25th April. The refresh on my bio, artist photos, and website will happen within the next month.
You'd be glad to know that I made a conscious effort to take video of the recording sessions for this project over the last couple of years, but I don't have the skill set to do anything useful with it, so I'll be turning it over to a videographer next month. I probably didn't take nearly enough video or photos, as I know I had days where I got so involved in the work that I didn't take my phone out, and there were some days that I forgot to bring the tripod, that sort of thing. Compared to my previous albums, however, there is a LOT more content to use.
I'm also in a duo that's completely different as far as genre and feel. My cowriter for that project lives in England. She has a background in marketing (though not for music), so with the above project in my lap, she's going to have to do most of the promotion work on what we have coming. We're in the tracking process right now, and would like to have our first couple of singles out by the summer. (My cowriter is headed to the studio later this week to sing, and she plans to video the entire session.) Those first couple are going to stand alone, and will basically serve to introduce the project. Then we plan two EPs, one in an indie folk direction, and the other in a more rock direction. We might get one of those out in 2023, but certainly not both.
I'm also writing a neo soul album. I love the genre, but have never tried to make that kind of music before. I am not the right voice for that kind of project, so my plan is to have featured vocalists for each track. I'd like to at least start tracking on that project by the beginning of fall.
Def here for your nuggets of information in short form in a format like this. I feel like all your tweets always have excellent info but having that info in a centralized location here is a good decision.