What we know about release schedules

I touched on this a little bit on the Spotify rant, but I think it’s the biggest mistake that I see bands and artists making at an amateur level, so I’ll outline it here so that I can link to it directly.

The mistake

You spend your early years of plucking away at the guitar while writing tunes using the first 15-20 years of your life as material. You gradually learn to put a band together. You play a few gigs. Before you know it you have 10 songs you are proud of. You save up/borrow the cash to record it all. By the time you hit the studio, enthusiasm at your impending fame has driven you to write another 6 bangers. You plough through the songs in a local studio across 3 days to a week and get 16 recorded. You stick your double album up on Spotify/Facebook/Instagram and share it to your 500 followers that include your Auntie Jeanie and your mum’s hairdresser and wait for the world to pick up on your innate talent.

You sit by the phone(does anyone remember phone tables?) waiting for the opportunities to flow in. Will the Rolling Stones call for that tour support first or will Channel 4 call to ask you if they can use your song in the theme for their new drama?

Nothing happens, so you reluctantly continue to play the same gigs at the same venues with the same shitty ticket split deals. You become convinced that if you’d used a different producer the songs would have went somewhere. You sack your drummer for his negativity. You save up money to record again. You become bitter and jaded.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat

Ring any bells?

What you should do

Music isn’t about the music alone. It’s about the gigs, the photos, the videos, the radio play, the press interviews, the posters and the album art(and 1000 other things). Most of all it’s about consistency and doing all these things regularly.

When you listen to other bands and comedians and twitch gamers and youtubers and think “why do they get so many opportunities when their stuff is shite?”. It’s usually because the are consistently uploading that shite. Upload a dog turd once a month for 5 years and eventually people who like dog turds will seek you out and find you.

“Comedian/Musician/Youtuber goes viral with Tik Tok video”

If you look into these stories, there’s usually someone sitting in their mum’s basement who has been throwing stuff at the internet for 5 years waiting for something to stick. You only get to see them after 5 years of effort. You need to take a leaf out of their book.

You’re not going to get discovered/signed/viraled(is it a verb?) from one creative act, and if you were it isn’t much use. You have to see a music career as a job. The longer you take to build that spiders web of connections and networks, the harder it is to lose it. When one revenue stream wanes, you have other ones to fall back on. 2020 has been the stark realisation of that. With ‘live work’ taken away, the musicians who had their finger in lots of pies and had worked up their transferable skills have hit the ground running in trying to adapt and diversify what they do.

In short. Your double album of 16 songs on Spotify is useless unless you are uploading a new one once a month for 5 years. Then. Just maybe. People might start to sit up and notice.

Creating a release schedule.

So instead of releasing all those 16 tracks in a oner, drip them out over a longer period of time. How long a period of time is kind of up to budget and time constraints. I would say that a realistic goal is to try and get 3 or 4 tracks recorded professionally every 3 or 4 months. If recording 2 every 6 months is more realistic or affordable then that works too, but then there’s less space for you deciding you don’t like a song any more.

Once you have those songs recorded, you work out when you are going to release the first one. Choose a date 12 weeks in advance. Make some release artwork. Upload it everywhere it needs to go(www.emubands.com), and pitch it to Spotify playlists

For the next 12 weeks, you are going to hype this track. Every few days there should be a post on social media. Here’s some ideas:

-behind the scenes of the recording

-behind the scenes of the photo shoot for the album art work

-The album artwork

-Introduction to the producer/musicians involved.

-Behind the scenes of the video shoot

-Teaser for the video shoot

Along with this you have your day to day band activity such as gig announcements, post gig celebrations and photos etc. The more people you can collaborate with the more posts you can make with more folk tagged. Introduce the support bands, your photographer and your van driver.

You are also going to try and generate as much PR as possible. Try and do this by approaching:

-Online and Physical Newspapers(the entertainment section of your local paper is probably calling out for content)

-Radio stations(your local community radio station is probably calling out for content)

-Blogs

-Podcasts

When you do this, you are basically trying to do someone’s job for them. They are trying to create consistent regular content. Present them with some. It’s really useful if you have a basic bio, some high quality photos and easy access to bullet points which make it easy for people to describe you:

-The new band with members from this old band

-The band who played this cool festival last year

-The band who had this cool support slot last year

-The band who were on this cool radio station/telly programme 2 months ago.

-Your future plans. Within reason you can be a little optimistic - The band who are hoping to play at some big festivals in the summer.

If you don't have any of those things, then aim to have them. Work out what your best three bullet points are. Don’t get frustrated that you can’t get on the cover of Rolling Stone. Start low and build relationships. If someone gives you a good write-up in the Auchtermuchty Chronicle for your first single, give them a heads up and make their job easier for the second single - maybe one day they’ll work for Rolling Stone.

Don’t be afraid to ask the promoter for your gig which media they are talking to about promoting the gig. See if you can jump on that bandwagon and build some connections.

When release day finally comes, you are ready to do it all again for the next single. You should be able to plan out a year quite easily. Once you know what you are doing and when you are doing it it makes everything make sense. It also helps everyone else in the chain plan their lives in advance. Rather than telling your videographer that you need a music video for next Tuesday, you can knock messages back and forth for months to really flesh out an idea.

You basically continue that cycle until someone is interested in doing it for you in the form of a manager, label or PR agent. They will prefer you to arrive with 6 unreleased songs in the bag than 6 albums on Spotify.

Sidenote: The annual cycle

Once you’ve battled the music industry for a little while, you start to realise that there’s some of the things that are cyclical. Every June/July bands ask me how they get to play at festivals. It’s the worst time of year to ask.

January-February(sometimes even earlier)

It’s time to apply for the summer festivals. Get your Hi-Res photos, you’re up to date bio, your live videos and your boasting bullet points at the ready.

March April May

Arrange some gigs or a small tour and record. Look out for industry events, showcases and multi-venue city festivals(chase your local arts funding organisation to find out where these are)

June July August

Schedule everything around the festival dates that you can get.

SEPTEMBER- October

Arrange some gigs or a small tour and record. Look out for industry events, showcases and multi-venue city festivals. Get your Christmas single/video record if it floats your boat.

November - December

The live scene winds up for the year a little. Work out what your pitch to Festivals is going to look like in January. Try and get involved in Singles/albums of the year lists and “ones to watch” lists.

Closing thoughts

With this knowledge, you can flesh out that annual release schedule and save up in advance for recording, live videos and music videos. When you get asked to play a gig six months in advance, you can work out what value it has in terms of promotion.

This article might seem incredibly obvious, but there’s very few bands that do it because it’s an incredibly hard thing to do. It’s a full time job and life gets in the road. Try and split the load with your bandmates and don’t fall out over it(even harder). Build up a network of fellow creatives who can help you out(Producers, photographers, videographers and journalists) and try and vary them up for cross promotion.

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