The people over at Cyber PR recently released a great marketing plan for DIY artists wanting to release an album.  Here’s a condensed version of that guide to help you get a simple overview of the process.

Preparations

The Technical Stuff

Make sure you allow plenty of time for CD duplication/replication and for upload and processing by digital aggregators.

Website

Ensure it’s up to date and that your webite is able to showcase the album pre-order.

Social Media / Newsletter

Do you have a good presence on the major social media platforms and is your branding apparent on it? Do you have an artist fan mailing list?  The idea here is that you should make sure you have built up a large enough audience to sell to.

Press

Do your research and start to identify which media outlets might be interested in the release.

Six Weeks Before Release

Release Single/Singles

Cyber PR recommends releasing a single six weeks before album release.  I’d suggest releasing LOTS of singles every eight weeks or so prior to the album release, each one of them is a mini ‘advert’ for the forthcoming album.

Announce A Live Show/Listening Party

Schedule an ‘offline’ event to coincide with the album release.  For my own band, I programme a full tour around each album release naming the tour after the album so each can promote the other.

Listening or playback parties are popular for higher profile album releases.

Start Press Campaign

Nows the time to send your promo/review copies.

Create a Presale Campaign

• Use all your existing social and fan channels to tell people about the forthcoming release.
• Create an ‘event’ for the album release on Facebook and invite everyone you know.

Two Weeks Before Release

Countdown to the big day on all your social channels.  Hold an online contest to win the album and album themed goodies or offer tickets to the launch party/show.

Contests on social media are a great way of drumming up interest in your album release.

Release Day

• Create a fun video informing fans that the album is out.
• Send a newsletter to your mailing list.
• Update your Twitter/Facebook images advising people the album is out now and where they can buy it.

Post release

Get fans and friends to review the album on iTunes etc.  This is called social proofing. Read more about that here.

Getting people to leave reviews of music on iTunes and Amazon is a great idea.

Read the article in full here

http://cyberprmusic.com/album-release-preparation-the-musicians-guide-to-marketing-plans-part-1/

Got any questions about this post or how you can better market yourself?

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