How to release music: your step-by-step blueprint

Creation of music by itself is an arduous task that requires both talent and effort from a composer. There is a lot of things to consider, such as choosing the suitable genre of music, which depends on both your future career plan with a target audience in mind. It is also crucial to decide how to capture the sound on a recording and what software should be used for composing the songs digitally. After the song is finished, the challenge doesn’t end as it still needs to reach the listeners. Fortunately, it is already well known how to release music in 2024, and we will share the steps with you in this article.

7 steps to promote a single in 2024

Most well known musical hits are released by a coordinated team with a lot of experience when it comes to music release strategy, so it’s not surprising that the most reliable way to success is to become a part of such team or even creating one yourself. Even so among the artists there is a lot of rising stars who managed to make it big with only their own efforts. So, how do independent artists release music? The answer to this secret lies in a correct advertising.

Ensure Your Music is Radio Ready: Mixed and Mastered Professionally

In order for your song to become widely known, the best way to release music is to utilise as many distribution channels as possible. Naturally, it means, that at a certain point in time you should expect the newly created song to appear on radio. The good part about radio broadcasting is an amount of listeners it gets even with all the competition from modern alternatives. The reason for its popularity is free access anywhere from your home to office, and even while driving cars. This also means that the expectations from performers are quite high, since the reputation of radio channel is based solely on a quality of the content it provides. With this in mind, make sure that the sound of your music is crystal clear and the lyrics are user friendly and suitable for the audience you’re aiming for.

Create a Release Plan

The first and most important step in a great journey is to define, where exactly are you going in a first place. Once you do the research on how to release music on all platforms, the next step is to actually plan out your further actions regarding each of them. Make some notes about the names of your songs, the time and order of their release, as well as the preferred platforms. Make some account on streaming platforms in advance and learn how the uploading process goes. Get the covers ready for your album, make social media pages dedicated to music, think of the ways for getting feedback and prepare a calendar to plan and track the future release dates. There is also a legal part to think about, since you will need to register the copyrights and make agreements with the members of your band.

Choose the right distributor

Knowing how to self release music is great, but it can’t possibly be as effective as joining efforts with a reliable distributor. A partnership with a great music distributor can increase your fanbase by making sure that the bigger audience gets to experience your songs. Choosing the distributor that is right for you is quite simple when you consider the following criteria. The popular DSPs such as YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music have the biggest amount of active listeners and put a lot of work into choosing stable partnerships. This means that distributors, who were certified by such platforms, are safe to work with. It is also wise to consider the timezone the partner operates in. Being in the same timezone or having a flexible schedule makes working together much more fruitful.

Design your artwork

While doing research on how to release a music album, artists eventually come up with a need for a cover to their album, as it might be the first thing the new listeners come across when searching for new songs. The contents of art used on a cover are very important as it represents the spirit of your music, giving the chance to captivate the potential listener with a first glance. With the help of a professional designer it is possible to create a piece of art that will suit your own works and help you make them recognizable. It is important for both you and the designer to be on the same wavelength when creating an album cover, which is why you need to share your thoughts and ideas through close communication to make sure they are alligned and both parties are satisfied with results.

Promote Your Release

Once you learned how do artists release music, created the song itself, prepared the artwork for the cover and uploaded it on a streaming service, it’s time to promote your music by launching an advertisement campaign so that more people can get familiar with your works. For promoting digital copies more efficiently, it is recommended to create a web-page dedicated to them. Setting up your own website gives various advantages. Some of them are possibility to acompany the singles and albums with a text description of your choice without limitations of volume, as well as the opportunity to create links to your songs, which will be easily memorable and easy to share. Having a dedicated website also allows listeners to quickly get access to your other songs once they have taken a liking to one of them.

Make a music video

Every person receives information through the combination of different senses, and something is more likely to be remembered when perceived through multiple methods at once. For music, which can only be heard, doing clips is a perfect solution. Once you put music to a video, all listeners will have a memorable image associated with it, thus encouraging them to listen to it again in the future. it is also worth mentioning that having your creation in video format allows it to be shared through a wider range of streaming platforms, as some of them are oriented on working with the videos specifically. This will further increase your potential audience as more people will get to see and appreciate your work even if searching for music wasn’t their initial goal.

Create a Pre-Save campaign

Many streaming services, such as Spotify, offer an opportunity to run a pre-save campaign, which, in simple terms, means that listeners can subscribe to your singles and albums even before their official release. This is an important feature since it allows your fans to show the activity, which is being tracked by searching algorythms and makes your music appear in search engine more often. Doing so will ensure that a lot of fans will be anticipating your next song once it actually releases. Launching a pre-save campaign is another opportunity for your website to shine. You can use it to put the links to all your streaming platforms at once so the visitors can choose the one which is to their liking and listen to your new album comfortably from the first day of its release.

Summarizing How to Release Music Effectively

In this article you’ve learned how to make the song of your creation well-known to public. Once again, here are the main tips. You need to plan-out your actions by preparing a release schedule. Make sure that the sound is of high quality and appealing to listeners. Use the original art by professional artist for the album cover. Use different channels to promote your works with the help of distributors, whose schedule synergises with yours. Putting your music to video makes it more memorable. And finally, a dedicated website is a great tool for advertising. We hope that those advices will help you create a music you will be proud of.