How Do I Build a Release Strategy? How Can I make my music successful?

I recently released a Healthy Metal Hippie podcast episode where I have a little rant about releasing music with no plan. So I am often asked how do I plan a release strategy? How can I make my music release successful? And you’re not alone in asking the question and looking for answers. When we’re putting anything out, we want it to be a success and add to our future.

Think back over the last months, or years maybe! You’ve spent a long time creating the music you’re almost ready to release. A single, an EP a full album – whatever the case, you’re ready and you want people to have a listen. So you pop an Instagram post up and said “New Single! Next Friday!”  and then you post once more on the Friday “New Single Out Now!” and – that’s it. Your job done! Let the streams roll in! Let the sales keep flying in! Minted. …. No. God I wish it was that easy. But the truth is, no. If it were that easy, everybody would do it. It takes some planning. You put in so much love and effort and time into the work that you’re releasing, why do you not put the same work on the other end that will help give it the life it deserves?

So how do I make a release plan? The structure really is pretty simple but there’s about a million approaches you could take depending what you’re doing. Simply, I’d put it like this:

PRIOR TO 4 WEEKS OUT:

Send copies to varieties of media for review, trusted people to post about it, advance copies to build hype. Give them time to listen to it before it becomes a panic.

PRE RELEASE 4 WEEKS:

Variety of teasing posts announce the song, audio snippets, graphics, behind the scenes content.

RELEASE WEEK:

Daily posts building hype, releasing reviews you’ve received back etc.

DAY OF RELEASE:

Reward people with recognition for sharing and posting and listening to it. Remind multiple times through multiple channels that it’s out.

POST RELEASE:

For the weeks following, continue to share and talk about it. Because your release plan does not stop on the day of release. It continues to snowball and gain traction.

Remember that stopping the conversation stops the progress. This is an absolute bare bones structure of release and I’d expect no less than 6 weeks on campaign for release. As a loving reminder, it’s most likely that you’re a smaller artist than the Stones, Paul McCartney... and well, a load of massive artists, and if they’re not announcing a new release once and never speaking about it further, then there’s absolutely no way you should be either. The conversation and the hype needs to build! It’s a good reminder to note that potentially only 2% of your following sees each post, so quantity in these cases can absolutely make a big difference.

You deserve to have a great release and it can be a reality with a great strategy in place. Feel free to use this as a guideline to build out further on your next release!

Or get in touch, and we’ll help you build your custom release strategy!

Our coaching memberships also offer ongoing strategy support and we’d love to see you in our groups. Let's build something special.

Heavy metal hippie music helps with music release strategy