How to set up your release plan

In this article I am going to write down tips and tricks in how to push your new release.

Many bands and artists struggle to make the most of their music and often it is about not knowing what to do combined with a lack of time and bad planning.

Below I will list 10 steps when having a new release.

Uploading your song.

This step should be obvious and is not really a part of the release plan.

BUT. If you are going to do a proper release plan you need to make sure that you upload your song in time (4-6 weeks ahead) and don’t have the cheapest plan where you can’t decide a release date. It is to me beyond sanity to not know when your song is going to be released but still want to have a good release. Impossible to make a proper plan without a date.

Planning Social Media Content

A key to be able to manage everything (DIY) is planning.

Knowing what you’ll need and what you are going to do. Everyday.

Start this process early. You can have a plan that you follow for every release which helps you set up deadlines. This enables you to get things done that needs to be done.

Write in a document what you will post and when.

A good idea is to aim to have content about the release two weeks pre-release and about 2-4 weeks post release. Upload content at least three times a week which means that a release needs about 12-18 posts.

An example of how to write this is by date, day, type of content, type of text

9/9 - Mon - Artwork - announce new release

11/9 - Wed - Promo photo 1 - Story behind the song

13/9 - Fri - Teaser 1 - Reminder new release

16/9 - Mon - Promo photo 2 - Pre save request

18/9 - Wed - Teaser 2 - Release on Friday

20/9 - Fri - Song/video - Release

This is solely an example of how to make a release plan. It can be more content and a longer duration but definitely should have at least three posts a week which should be no problem.

By writing down when and what you are going to post as a content. It will be easier to plan what and when you need to get things done and enables you to batch content.

Batch content

This is the secret ingredient to be successful and not stressful.

Batching content means that you take a day and create material for several posts.

An example is a photoshoot that should give you content for about 3-6 posts and stories depending on how many final pictures you get.

Another example is that you get out and shoot teasers for the whole period in one day.

Change to different clothes. Drive to different locations. Perform the song. Say something about it. Set a day to do this and then you have content for several posts made in one day.

Or take a day to edit out teasers out of your music video

Creativity sets the limit here but by doing all content in a specific day reduces stress and makes planning a lot easier when having the content in front of you.

When having the content batched. Another way to batch is to sit and write all post captions and text on the same day. This often leads to a flow when writing the texts. This makes uploading posts very easy and less stressful as uploading the post only takes a couple of minutes.

Posting on Social media (ongoing)

When having your post planned, this should feel like a breeze compared to having to make up content on the go every week. You got the content ready, a plan written. Some posts can even be scheduled so you don’t even have to think much more about it.

Follow your plan for the posts but don’t forget posting stories everyday and also be sure to respond to any engagement.

Set up Meta ads

Investing in ads is a great way to find new potential fans. Advertising has been a key promoting anything for decades and still is. Using ads along with consistent social media content is the main way I built my listeners on Spotify. Mark that. Having solely ads or solely pitching is short term. When anyone gets interested and click your link you need to have a good social media platform for them to discover more on. This way you get potential fans that follows along for every release.

I can’t cover exactly how to set up your ads. There are plenty of videos and blogs about that topic. Do know that it can take time to manage your audience and getting cost effective.

Your first campaigns will probably be a loss of investment. Keep improving and tweaking until you can master the powerful engine of having access to peoples keywords, behaviour and search results to get your ads targeted to the people most likely to enjoy your music.

Meta ads can be scheduled early in your release plan as long as you got the content.

Get them to run the moment your song is released.

Pitch to blogs

Before doing this you need to ensure that you have an Electronic Press Kit (EPK) that includes all information about the band/artist, biography, links, releases.

Here is my EPK to draw inspirations from. Don’t get caught in the overwhelming feeling of having the most perfect EPK but start to make one and do your best to later tweak it.

When ready to pitch you can search for blogs that covers your style of music.

Actually you can find a lot by just google and you can also look at artists/bands within your own division and see if they’ve been covered by any blogs.

Take the time to write a pitch where you introduce your project properly and do a research on their blog to ensure you are within their range. Share your EPK. Blogs should of course write about you because they want and not be bought but if you are be to offer anything of value back, it can be a good exchange for their work. Like a CD, Vinyl or Merch.

Try to do this as early as you can since blogs and reviewers get a lot of requests. It can take time for them to respond and also the article makes most sense being released on release day or close to it. Don’t wait for this to after the song is released.

Pitch to playlists

This can be a jungle and a lot of musicians gets scammed on this particular part of their music promotion. I wrote an article on how to spot fake playlists which still works to evaluate playlists.

Take the signs in that article within consideration and remember that paying for playlists is always a red flag!

Finding playlists can be done in several ways and I will briefly cover them.

-   Spotify Editorial

• Submission platforms (Submithub, Groover)

• Gate platforms (Dailyplaylists, Soundplate)

• Manual pitching (instagram, facebook)

• Pitching service (Playlistpush)

Spotify Editorial is a pitch only you can do from your ”Spotify 4 Artists” page and is available a day or two after uploading the song from your distributor. Be sure to do this pitch early. Four to six weeks ahead is great and doing this pitch at least one week before release ensure your song is on Release Radar.

Follow the steps and write the pitch as you would for another playlist. You could suggest suitable playlists and also mention how you will promote the song and draw people to Spotify.

To get a placement on an Editorial playlist is very hard so don’t feel discouraged if not making it.

I have personally never made and Editorial playlist and released a lot of songs.

Submission platforms can be frustrating as there can be a lot of seamless declines for hilarious reasons. Read my article on how to do the best of your pitch using Submithub that also can be helpful for groover or even pitching ”manual” through dm’s.

But on these submission platforms you often find the most impactful playlists since you have to invest a small amount to be able to pitch. It is a greyzone but definitely not the same as paying for a sure placement. You should take the time and scout what playlists are worth pitching to and invest some of your promotion budget there. Many playlists on these platforms can be pitched to before the song is released which is a good way to start your Spotify pitching before

Gate platforms is almost useless from a streaming/listener perspective. The idea of these lists is quantity instead of quality. Curators offers you to be on their list in exchange that you follow the list, their profile and/or save a song by them.

Many believe that these lists are botted but I don’t see why a curator would invest in bots without taking payment for it. You hardly get any streams from these lists either. My experience is that these lists are not botted but only made to get followers and look better than they are in a hope that they suddenly would ”blow up”.

Why would you even bother to submit to them then?

The answer is, because it doesn’t take much time and they make some minor algorithmic impact.

Although this method is only available once the song is released.

Manual pitching is a good way to present yourself for new potential fans. This method means that you search for a suitable keyword on Spotify. Like ”Metalcore” and filter to playlists.

Find the curator on facebook or instagram writing the same profile name. Many have their accounts linked to FB which should show the same profile picture. Sometimes you need to compare their friends on Spotify to IG/FB to ensure you found the correct profile.

Manual pitching is a time-consuming method finding playlists but also the most ”honest” one.

You can find small genuine playlists as well as bigger ones. Don’t underestimate the smaller playlists when using this method. Often these personal connections and chats are more valuable long-term and sometimes ”ordinary” people even has quite impactful playlists.

Be aware that there are a lot of scams here too. Some curators write their contacts in the description and I would say that 98% of the times someone does this. They want money from you to place the song. Never do that. This is the biggest red flag that the list is botted.

If you got a playlist of your own. Offer to make a playlist trade which is a very neat way for musicians to exchange audiences from each other. Just like with the blog pitching.

Having something to offer in return (but not money) is good to include in the pitch. At least make it clear that you will share the list on your socials the best you can.

Manual pitching is to be done when the song is released.

Pitching service is the most expensive method and also quite risky since you don’t have any control of who your music is sent to. There are a lot of pitching services nowadays and this jungle is the thickest to navigate through. Because when it comes to submission platforms like submithub. They do provide you with stats and are also very concerned to not have any fake lists presented on their platform. On Gate submissions you are never paying a curator anything which would make it quite costly for them to run bots without making any money themselves.

Looking at Playlistpush your lowest starting budget is $280 and that would get you in touch with 35 playlists. That is $8 per submission which is definitely not unreasonable. Someone else pitch your song so you don’t have to and have a network of curators that just like Submithub gets a small fee to consider your song. If you have a bad song. You probably wont get many placements as if you have a good song. This is the real life.

If you run into a service that promise you x amount of placements or streams you should immediately run away. And don’t use Fiverr for music promotion, ever.

Personally I can’t recommend any playlist service as I always done it myself. Playlistpush has been in the game long enough to feel trustworthy but be aware that there are many scammers lurking around. Don’t take their words on being ”organical”. Do your research thoroughly before consider any new player on the market. This method can occasionally be used before the song is released.

Pitch to influencers

This is actually a thing now and should be taken into consideration to get your music out to new listeners. On Youtube, you can find someone with a  successful music channel to react and ”review” your music. It is kind of like blogs but your song will play and people watching the video will hear your song in comparison to blogs where you read the bloggers opinion and later the reader might listen to your song.

Often these influencers also have a social media where they can expose your new music.

Majority of influencers charge you based on the size of their channel/page.

I still think you should find one or two influencers who would like to react to your music. It does give you exposure. Do your own research first to see what kind of engagement other musicians achieve. Second you also get content to post your social media after you’ve released the song.

Nowadays people follow trends and having  an influencer saying ”listen to this” is a promotion tool that is not only used in music but also in other businesses.

It needs to be a part of your plan when releasing music.

Mail-list

Getting into peoples inbox is a way to effectively get your words out without being scrolled by.

It is more likely that the receiver actually reads or at least will have the release date memorised.

On social media it takes only seconds to scroll you by and the information might be forgotten quickly.

It is a fine line to not spam though. Keep the mail informative and interesting. Maybe have one mail that announces the releases, one reminder and finally a ”release” mail.

A good way is to give exclusive content in the mails (audio, video, photo). Something that brings value being on your mail list. You can use websites like ”mailchimp” to make the post more appealing with moving images as well as being able to send a mail to several people in one go!

In the beginning of your career you probably don’t have many to send mails to.

Ways to build a mail-list is encourage to pre-save your song. Offer exclusive content sent to peoples mail (so they can provide you with theirs). Merch or digital download give-aways.

Imagination sets the limit, like always!

Additional (post release)

Threads

Once your music is released. Post and share your music in threads like Reddit or Facebook groups. Don’t expect a major impact but thoughtful headlines might draw interest and in the related topics there are potential new listeners.

Radio stations

There are tons of online radio stations nowadays but the impact is rather low having your song play on the radio. If you want to pitch to a major Radio station that you think there is a chance to get featured on I would say this falls under the ”pitch to blogs” category.

Other than that you can send your released song over to online stations as a neat way to get each other content.

Stickers

Old fashion way of putting up stickers or QR codes at bus stops. Doesn’t take that much time and you might very well have someone who stumbles into your music that way.

End words

Trying to manage everything from making, producing and market music can be a handful.

By having a plan you can reduce the stress and being able to organise what you need and when you need it. For every release onwards.

If you are serious about having your music heard you will have to take these steps into consideration. First of all. Make sure that you actually set a release date.

That is actually one of the most common mistakes musician does.

I hope this article has made sense and helps you to break down what you need to do when having a new release to make the most out of it.

As always I am only a dm away to discuss the topic @aristicmusic.

Good luck with your new release!