You’ve done it! You’ve finished recording your very first album. Congratulations! All of your hard work and music lessons have paid off. Releasing your first album is something that can be confusing for new artists. This guide will take out all of the guess work on how to release your first album by showing you how to make your music accessible and letting people know that it’s available. Lets dive in!
Your record is done, but is it done done?
In addition to mixing and mastering, you’ll need to check the following items off before we can market your amazing music!
- Album art/logo
- Band photos
- EPK (Electronic press kit)
- Lyrics typed
- Credits typed (who played on the record, who wrote which song, who recorded/mixed/mastered the record, special thanks, etc.)
- Make a music video and upload it to youtube, keep it unlisted
- Create a social media page solely for the purpose of promoting you as an artist or a band
- Thank your piano teacher for showing you how to create amazing music!
Ok, it’s done done, now what?
It’s time to distribute your music to the digital streaming platforms! CD Baby and Distro Kid are services that you can use to distribute your music to major streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. These services collect royalties for your music and mail you money. They also copywrite your music so that it is protected. The main difference between CD Baby and Distro Kid are how you pay; CD Baby charges a flat rate per album (plan on spending about $50 for a full length album or $30 for a single) while Distro kid charges monthly subscription with unlimited uploads. When you upload your music, you will be asked to upload your album art, lyrics and credits. They’ll also ask what date you are releasing your first record.
NOTE: Making significant money off of album streams can be very difficult, especially as a new artist. Spotify will pay you $0.003 – $0.005 per stream on average, so why are we even uploading to these platforms? To make your music as accessible as possible to new listeners.
In order to make the largest amount of money off of your music, you’ll need to upload your music to a service like Bandcamp. Unlike streaming platforms, Bandcamp enables you to sell your music directly to the listener and gives you 85% of your album sales. You set the price too! The process of uploading your music to Bandcamp is similar to the distribution services. Now that your music is on Bandcamp as well as the distribution platforms, it’s time to get people to listen to it!
Create two lists
One of the best ways to promote your new music is to get it reviewed. Your first list will be an email list of blogs, influencers, podcasts, YouTube channels, streamers and local publications that promote the type of music you’re releasing. The next best way to promote your music is to tell people directly that your music is out! Create a second list of people that listen to the type of music you are releasing. You can find them in the comment sections of music videos or social media pages of bands/artists that share the same genre as you. We are going to DM these people. The bigger the list, the better. At a minimum, Try to get close to 100 emails for reviewers and 1000 individuals on social media. Now that we have a huge list of people, it’s time to conduct our marketing campaign.
NOTE: The attrition rate for getting influencers to review your music is very high. Only about 1 -3 percent of the influencers you contact are likely to give you a review. That’s just the way it is if you’re releasing your first album, so make that list as huge as possible!
The Campaign
6 weeks before your album is to release, Email every contact that you have on your gigantic influencer list. Here’s what you’ll need to include in your email:
- Who you are, what type of music you make
- What day the album is releasing
- That you’d be honored if they would review your album
- Your EPK
- Band/artist photos
- Links to your youtube videos
- Links to your bandcamp page
- Say thank you at the end of the email
On your social media page, you will begin a 6 week campaign of daily posts letting people know that you are releasing your first album. Keep it simple, fun and entertaining. Use a small clip of the chorus of your best song for each post so that people know what to expect from your music. If you’d like a deeper plan for using social media to promote your album, I recommend this guide.
On release day, make your music video public, check that it’s live on Bandcamp and announce on social media that your album is live. Send a mass DM to your huge list of people and tell them the album is out today, providing a link to your Bandcamp page.
Conclusion
Releasing your first album isn’t complicated, but it does a bit of effort. There are many other ways to promote your music but if you follow this guide, you’ll greatly increase the chances of having your music heard and potentially make yourself some money in the process! I wish I had someone to tell me this when I was younger so I hope this guide will help you on your journey as an up and coming musician. Thank you for reading! Contact me if you have any questions!