Rough to Release

 After last month's disappointing experiment with playlisting via SubmitHub, this month I've been looking at direct paid promotion. It's not something I know a lot about and none of my immediate muso buddies were able to make any recommendations so I ended up putting some money behind a company called Badenstock . They're a fairly typical label / promoter / distributor / collective - everyone wears multiple hats these days, not just the musicians - based in Finland. There were a couple of red flags on their website (that I'll come back to) but they seemed to be honest about certain genres not being in their wheelhouse, the fact that there were no guarantees, a commitment to not using bots, and - as a label themselves - they have an interest in making sure their playlists are effective for their own artists. And fundamentally they have a very cheap entry level - $20 gets you a seven day boost with your song being placed on their 'high-quality' playlists and s...

 As a follow on to Part 17 - Distribution Strategies I have started to experiment with some of the approaches. First on my list to throw money at was Playlisting, and to test this I put $50 into the pot with SubmitHub , which is I think the largest of the third party playlisters . Step 1 was researching playlisters and trying to find ones who had a good overlap with my music, then working out which songs to pitch to which lists. Step 2 was throwing that all in the bin because SubmitHub had a very different view of my genres than I did and very few of the playlisters I was interested in came up as options. Nevertheless, I persisted… Week 1 So I picked 4 songs as starters and sent them through to 4 playlisters . I initially picked a few with fairly high rejection rates because, 1) if you don't believe in your stuff then who will? And 2) start high then taper down is an easier way to navigate the system. Four rejections later… Two rejections were basically long winded ways of sayin...

So you've 'finished' your song up to a standard and loudness that you're happy with, now you just lob it up on your website and let it go viral right? Depending on your definition of 'finished' then potentially, yes. If our objective is to get something written, recorded and released then our job is done and we can give ourselves a pat on the back and move on. Seriously, that's a piece of art that is out in the world that didn't exist until you turned your hand to it. You created something from nothing, and that's a kind of magic.  But if we're hoping to attract a few more listeners, and we don't have the same levels of 'brand recognition' as Taylor Swift, then we're going to need to put in a bit of work. This work is 'marketing'. It's a dirty word, and a dirtier business, but at some point you're going to have to face into it.  Well, it's not really. Basically marketing is just letting potential customers (you...