Album release checklist for the DIY musician - success plan!

This kind of post comes up all the time and this latest one from CD Baby listing what you need to do when that huge box of CD's has just been delivered is a good checklist to have to hand.

When your album is finished, your work is only half done; and oftentimes, that first half is the easy part.

Radio promotion, PR, booking, web maintenance, and all the other “business” elements of a music career generally don’t come naturally to artists. But if you can learn to embrace the fact that these tasks NEED to get done in order for anyone to hear your music (and chances are that no one else is going to handle all those things FOR you), then you’ll eventually find a sense of fun and accomplishment in the non-musical chores too!

Not only does it then list 12 steps that you need to go through but it also links to loads of further articles that expand on those steps. This is one worth bookmarking!

Whilst we're on the subject, there's a great pre-release checklist on MusicianWages here and you'll then need to check out Cameron's mind bogglingly good series of posts on everything you need to know about self-releasing an album here. It's awesome!

BUT, and this is CRUCIAL, this is all bollocks unless your album is worth releasing in the first place (read our post here) and you MUST have built a fanbase first - READ this post from Topspin dude Ian Rogers (he really is actually a dude) which is the best one post description of how to build that fanbase that I have ever seen.

I'll be sending endless people who contact me and ask about how they should release their album to read this post - I'd hope you'd bookmark it and refer to it as this is pretty much the plan on how you acheive DIY success!

What is an Album now anyway?

Image by kevindooley

When someone who's worked at a major label with superstar acts wants to tell you something about how to succeed as a musician, you can bet that you should be listening.

That's the case here in this great piece on Hypebot about how the Album is dying and what it will become.

I don't agree necessarily with the overall view of the piece, as the format showcases music and great music is at the heart of what we all do, but there are two sections that are required reading for artists.

One in the middle of the post where Ethan 'defines the Album':

• Branding: an album serves as a tent pole around which to rebrand a band. Logos, type faces, color, visual identites. This also applies to non-visual things such as: message, statement, platform, etc.
• Visuals: both with and without music, related closely to branding
• The Hook: something that serves as the tweet worthy summation of what this Album is aiming at
• The Angle: a unique method or action which serves as an easy method for someone to write about the record
• The Timeline: the sequence of events and windowing of releases culminating to…
• The Release: Not the end game, but rather a stop along the way
• The Music: Can’t forget about this? Or can you?

And at the end, where he sets out rules for a release:

• Announce the release when it is ready to ship. Lead times should be at most 4 weeks from announcement to “in hands”
• Self-direct all publicity and promotion. Own the visual language/identity, own the messaging.
• Fans matter more than radio stations, website exclusives, etc. Giving a video to the NY Times ahead of your own YouTube won’t get you a good review: don’t do it.
• Hear it and buy it: don’t put anything up to hear, watch or experience if it can’t be purchased. Reward loyalty for your fans through exclusives.
• Make your fans product evangelists. Everyone wants an iPad because everyone they know wants one or has one. Make your release so amazing that you want to tell the world about it.
• Own your press: disintermediate, be selective with interviews and use the channels at your disposal (video, twitter, etc)
• Make it an event. Time it properly, make all messaging unified and coordinated.
• Let the Release define itself: if you can’t summarize it in one sentence, keep winnowing it down until you can. It might be an app, a collection of songs, a video album, etc

These are both critical things to understand and why 'just having good music' is never enough!

You can read the whole post here.