Audiomack ARTIST GUIDE
Artists 101
How do I plan a rollout?
A rollout includes how you plan on releasing new music and all of the marketing and content that will accompany that release. Planning a thoughtful rollout is a great way to get fans’ attention and all eyes on you in a crowded market. Make sure to think about the rollout in at least three stages: pre-release, release, and post-release. Each phase of your rollout deserves equal care, attention, and creativity.
“When planning a rollout, the first thing to do is identify your goals. What are you trying to achieve with the release? How does it fit into your overall strategy? Use the answer to help with your planning. When you have a sense of what you are trying to accomplish, pick a date that will focus your efforts. Release show, birthday party, whatever: tying the release to another event helps create a story to drive your marketing.
“Work backward from the date, considering when you have to deliver the music to your distribution partner, and what kinds of marketing tools you need time to create. Put it all in a calendar to create accountability, and never stop marketing, even post-release.”
—Mark Tavern, Music Industry Educator
“There’s so much music coming out all the time. Our team thinks about this a lot. There’s cases where you want to make the biggest splash possible on release day, so you break through the noise. In order to do that, you gotta release the song, the video, and shoot your whole shot in that moment to break through. If you do that, what happens on the Tuesday after the Friday release? How do you keep that going? There needs to be a plan. If you don’t do all that on release day, then you can spread it out a bit. At the very least, have a couple weeks of extra content planned: behind the scenes, remix, social content. Things that bring people back to the song.”
—Benjy Grinberg, Owner of Rostrum Records
“You wanna have some content lined up post-release. Music videos are the best way to fuel a project post-release, because they translate over into streams on other DSPs. Have a schedule of things coming after release and promote music across the different DSPs with your assets ready to go: if you’re added to a playlist, have that asset for socials ready to go. Continue to promote with a post, leading back to the LinkTree. Link in bio is not enough.”
—Ryan Hobbs, Pandora
“The structure is: pre-release, release week or month, and post-release. Figure out how to create longevity for your track. You can tease the song before it’s even released, but I’m also seeing people be really strategic with the press side, too. Space out the coverage, rather than all within the first week. Schedule out highlights or wins every week, so you have one a week.”
—Liz Eason, Label Services, Vydia
