How to Release A Single

Recording Academy CO Chapter Panel

Panel Hosts:

Amy Abrams: 7s Management

Bonny Dolan: Music Supervisor & Grammy Board

Alexandra Dunne: Publicist

Anna Frick: Master Eng. & Grammy Board

General Tips About publicists and Marketing

• Your spend on recording is equal to your spend on marketing

• Your publicist is your biggest fan or cheerleader, don’t go with any publicist

• Before you meet with your publicist, write goals of where you want your publicist to take you.

  For example, if you’re small, you should start with a local publicist to get you more locally known.
  If you go on tour, then you get you a touring publicist. Or maybe you already know that a traditional publicist isn’t your method and you want to work a publicist who specializes in digital media.

• Work with a publicist 3-6 months before your album/campaign

Content That Helps You Grow Fans

It used to be all about music videos and all about the final record. But now you should consider breaking things into several clips:

• A solo acoustic version of your songs

• A clip of your guitarist shredding

• The album art cover can make a big difference on your reception

• Covers help your band get discovered by new fans and can be key to growing a fan base

Consider things that make your music unique and break it into mini content. Let’s get the fans guessing the number of time signature changes, or the vocal range of your singer, or get the audience bits of lyric videos clips. Everything you put out should tie into your story as a band or artist so that followers can connect with you, deeper.

It’s more about content creation that it is the final record.

And because content is so important to build deep and loyal fan connections, pick the content channel that you do well. If TikTok isn’t your thing, don’t do it.

How to Playlist and Get Across DSPs

• Submit your music to the correct playlists

• Playlisters will look at what your social media looks like and if you have media coverage, and if people pre-saved the link using their DSP-given link

• Someone pitching to playlists specific to your genre is essential

• You will not have success DIY playlist pitching, it’s notoriously wasted time unless you’re a specialist in playlist-relations

• One way to get on more playlists is to do band/artist collaborations. It’ll help you get on multiple playlists

• Tidal is much more artist friendly than Spotify

Album Release Tips + Going On Tour

Release a record when you can tour the record. It’s best to release in the spring or Fall, because it’s too busy to tour in the Summer when there are so many festivals.

If you go on tour, you can ask the promoter for the local media/press list so that you can plug your tour. Then when you release your next single, you can tap that press list again and let them know about your release.

Song Credits

Get your ISNI number. This is a unique artist identifier. It’s about $10 to get. It’s becoming more and more important to get one, especially if you collaborate across projects.

Check out Session.io or soundcredit.com to list your song credits.