How To Release A Single In 2021 (The 21 Day Plan)

what's up guys damian keys here welcome back to the channel it is that time of year when we delve into all of the new strategies and evolution of you releasing your music in 2021 and this year because it's 2021 we've got the 21 day plan do you like what i did there because last year was 2020 and we did the 20-day plan this year's 2021 yeah you get the picture but everything's changed everything has evolved i should say things have evolved a lot because we've had this massive pandemic on top of that consumption patterns have changed technology is still shifting and changing as are the algorithms and we need to be right bang up to date when it comes to how you release your single so whilst there is a 2020 version of this and a 2019 version of this this one is going to be the most in-depth and the most up-to-date with the strategies that you need to do right now so first things first we need to discuss why we're doing this which is basically avoiding the the 24 hours of promotion and then getting stuck how many times have you just led up to that promotion you've got your single ready and then you have that release day feeling of like really excited and 24 hours of crazy and then the next day you wake up and think what am i going to do next what's the next thing to do i don't really want to bug people and then that feeling of spamming oh i don't want to tell you again to listen to it so how do we avoid that well we avoid it by being organized we avoid it by having a strategy a very clever strategy that evolves a couple of weeks before the release date and on top of that at least a week after it which means we are then going from one single into another single and instead of having this kind of feeling where it's like all promotion don't know what to do for a while all promotion don't know what to do for a while we've got this kind of smooth ebb and flow as you get momentum from one single into the next single now then in case you haven't seen last year's 2020 release this year is bigger and better not only with more information but we have spared no expense because this year we have an ipad and on top of that a magic apple pen amazing and as well as the 21 day plan this year we are going back six weeks before the release because i want to start looking into the things that you need to do pre the release strategy so it's going to be a big one now first thing we need to discuss is release day we always work from the end and we work backwards you need the release date first where is that going to be now if you're going into january february march this is good time to release music so therefore we need to release on a friday why because friday is international release day why i don't know it's changed over the years but since everything's gone digital friday has become the home of international release now can you release on any other day yeah of course you can but the problem is everyone else's calendar and diary is set up for a friday which means playlists blogs radio tv promotion magazines newspapers etc they tend to understand that this friday release day signifies their week so everything is is in accordance with planning on fridays so if i were you i would release on a friday it does make sense and the next thing is we need to talk about what we are going to do over this video and over the next year because things have slightly changed and now there is a very clever model to help you not spam people and continually build your strategy and that revolves around video because over the years video has become cheaper to make obviously even in this setup we are making this ourselves it's not costing anything now when you are looking at the biggest of big artists they also understand that they understand the amount of time effort and money that goes into making a song for example from having nothing the song inception through to the arrangement through to the recording through to the mix through to the master through to the distribution all of that could take months and months and cost a lot of money whereas videos well technically you can knock videos together over a couple of days so this idea of what used to be 10 15 20 years ago of the music goes with the music video and we try and get that onto mtv or one of those sort of channels and then we try and get the music video onto certain programs like the chart show on top of the pops etc that's kind of gone because we now watch the video and we say yeah great i watched that thank you very much but we don't watch these videos again and again and again in the same way that we used to consume it now because of that it means once we've watched the video we've kind of done it we've gone yeah brilliant tick thanks so therefore we need to come up with another strategy for them carrying on to promote it well what's wrong with more videos so this year's release strategy revolves very heavily around a video strategy you making videos but even cleverer than that you making videos that aren't going to cost the earth instead of making lots and lots of music videos which are going to cost you money and time what you're going to do is you're going to start doing what i call the christmas dinner effect think about christmas dinner you buy enough food to feed 5 000 people everyone comes over you eat loads of food until you feel fat you argue and you fall asleep on the sofa brilliant but what do you have for the next day for boxing day you have turkey and leftovers what do you have the next day you have turkey curry what do you have the next day after that you have turkey salad what do you have the next day after that you can see the pattern we're using up all of the leftovers you bought it you cooked it but we've got stuff left over now if we're clever we can use this strategy moving into our new 21 day release because when we're gonna make one music video it doesn't mean when we're shooting we have to shoot enough for one we could technically shoot enough for three four five different types of music video so for example you can have the official music video the unofficial music video the behind the scenes music video you could have the lyric video you could have the live video you could have the acoustic video you could have a collab video where you literally cut some of the the work the lyrics out of the production you get someone else to come and sing it and all of a sudden you've got another stream on spotify you've got someone else to help you promote it and you've got a chance for another video and then even cleverer on top of that if you're making three four five six videos for a release which can help you push this out over a period of a week or ten days you can then do teaser videos of the big videos what am i going to post well i've got six videos for this one song meaning i've got six chances to get this into someone's head so that by the time they get to that sixth seventh eighth listen they're like i do like this i am gonna go to spotify and i am going to listen to it and then we can cut those down to make more content the macro into the micro we can take these big videos and say well let's do a teaser a teaser of the official hey there's a teaser of the collab there's a teaser of the unofficial there's a teaser of any of these videos the live performance the acoustic one so we're making lots of content which whilst we're shooting a video all we need to do is say hey while we're here let's just plug everything in and do a live video or if we need to mine the live video mymy live video or do an acoustic performance what have we got we've got another chance to get that song into people's head this is what i call the christmas dinner effect of what we need to be doing with videos so we're going to start six weeks out okay and there's a reason for this because i'm working with artists all of the time and because of that there are plenty of artists who are putting their music on spotify at the last minute and what happens when you put music on spotify or other dsps last minute something goes wrong sometimes they put them on the wrong on the wrong platform uh or the wrong profile sometimes it just doesn't go on at all but things can go wrong so therefore the reason why we start six weeks out is very very simple if you're going to get your stuff mixed and mastered you need plenty of time for things to go wrong what happens if you get that mixed back or that master back and you say oh i don't like it now i've got to send it back again by the time you get it back another week has gone we're another week closer and the last thing you want to do is get to that point where you've only got a couple of days left and you just think oh just get it out just get it out and i'll start again next one so we need to leave plenty of time hence the six week trailer lead up to the release date okay it's six weeks before the big day so therefore we need to think about what we're doing that week not specifically on a specific day but just over that week so six weeks out now we need to make sure that we get the mix and master back and you're happy with it because if you aren't you still have a week or so maybe even two to get it back but ideally we want to get it back that quick we also want to think about artwork we want the artwork back because we want to start drip feeding it in everywhere over your socials over the next couple of weeks we don't have to announce it we can just be quite clever with how we're placing some of the artwork and then most importantly we need to have brand awareness ads now this is really crucial instead of actually putting music out and then putting one advert which pushes people across to spotify which absolutely will build numbers but what for because everyone's falling out at the bottom and not coming back into your instagram and so in order to retarget we need to have them in a place where we can retarget let's say everyone becomes a big fan of your music we need to be able to get hold of them and say buy my merch or come to my gig if we can't do that they're just numbers on spotify and therefore we can't re-target them so effectively we need to build the party as i'm always talking about and by building the party it means making great content but pushing people into it we need to have some kind of ads that push people in and so therefore you need to be setting this up early and drip feeding some money into saying this is where the party's at and that should be done at least six weeks in advance if not all the way through the year so you're bringing traffic through your instagram so we can retarget that all comes under the bracket of setting up the party if you can set up the party so when someone comes in they go this is great i love this i'm gonna hit that follow button at that point you've got them even if they don't but they engage you can still retarget them so that's six weeks okay next week one week goes past at that point we're up to five weeks before the big release strategy now at this point we want to upload to spotify and other dsps so i'm using spotify as an example but these are title cetera et cetera et cetera we need to upload if something's gonna go wrong we need the time to be able to get in touch with your aggregator distro kid tune call whoever it is and say there's been a mistake i need to fix it that can take a week it can take it can take a few days of stress so let's just make sure we've got plenty of time and guaranteed if you leave plenty of time nothing will go wrong if you leave it to the last minute everything will go wrong that's just the way that is and the other thing that we do is we start thinking about shooting a decent video because whoever's going to edit this also needs time to edit it they can't do this in a couple of days so give them plenty of time so this is the week where we shoot our first video our whole strategy is revolving around video this is the time to get some macro content then on top of that now we are down to four weeks so four weeks we want to get out and have a good photo shoot because the photo shoot is key the photo shoot is what's going to go into your hero picture it's what's going to go onto your epks what's going to go on to your press releases this photo shoot is absolutely crucial to the first impression to people when they are hearing your music and hearing about your art and you as an artist so this photo shoot is crucial needs to be done with plenty of time just in case they aren't good enough and you need to do something else so week four or four weeks out we've got this photo shoot then after that we want another video so at this point we'll have a performance video maybe you get to choose the types of videos but it's let's say a performance video and at this point once it's gone live on spotify or not live once it's gone the back of spotify we need to pitch to spotify playlists because that does take a few weeks and you can do it a week before but why not give them plenty of time so it can be done four weeks before that's when i would do that then after that you can also set up your pre-save so if you want to do a pre-save then that's the time to do it so that's four weeks out then after that now we're dealing with three weeks so we're getting closer to our 21 days so at this point another video let's make an example of a lyric video maybe it could be acoustic video could be a collab could be anything else behind scenes but let's make a lyric video or maybe a collab video so we've got another video another reason to get people there on top of that we can now start researching the research with things like bloggers or um or curators and start to figure out where we can put this music where we can approach people to start putting this music this takes time it's not something that can be done on the day so you need time to start working on this and over this week you need to go and start finding people and names and how you're going to get hold of them and lastly you set up the story so far so at this point you just make sure that you have your story all ready of of your netflix trailer as people are going to go who's this bad i keep hearing this song i keep hearing about this artist i keep hearing about this band well you need to make sure that when they come in the story is set now at this point we now go into the big 21 day release okay so whilst this is a 21 day plan the release day is not on day 21. we don't put all of the effort in to get to release date and then go woof done what we do is we put release date on day 14. we have two weeks of build up of making of exciting of of uh getting momentum in order to get to release date and then we go all out on release day but we still have seven more days of carrying on promotion without spamming that's the key bit without spamming finding creative valuable ways to carry on promoting your music which potentially could even be two weeks but we're gonna go with this 21 day plan so therefore if release date is day 14 we are starting obviously with day one now on day one i would suggest banners if you are making your banners you should make them early they are fiddly and a pain but by this point you've already got your artwork so you can start to make banners for your single now here's what i would suggest i would make a couple of banners one of them should say the date and one of them should say out now you can change your banners anytime you want so therefore two weeks out here comes the date on the day it's out now it's a call to action that tells people you can now go and listen to our single so making banners don't forget different sizes for youtube different sizes for facebook etc so you need to make your banners nice and early and now we're going into a bit more research so what i would do hopefully you've already started doing this but make a list of contacts bloggers curators anyone that you think that you can con contact and say right singles coming out or singles out you want that list in front of you the last thing you want to do is go oh it's press day or it's it's release day who do i send this to all of this stuff needs to be done well in advance and a little bit of time per day doing more research stuff on this really helps you to have that that timing where everyone goes at the same time then on top of that you can make a a list of playlists as well so you can oops playlists sorry um and your pre-save link get all that ready so it's in one one place so now if you haven't done all that stuff beforehand and you're panicking this is the time to get everything sorted day one make sure you've got this what we don't want to do is we don't want to start making every single day a crazy six eight hour day because that doesn't help either what we need to do is we need to say look i've just got a couple of things to do and if i do them over 14 days i've got plenty of time to get everything ready and excite my audience and this is all we need to do for day one which then leads us in today two now day two what we're going to do is we are going to write the old press release if you've never written a press release before now is the time to learn because we want to start sending this press release out so therefore it's this is kind of like your your pr day um so as well as writing the press release we're going to call it press day and we are going to start sending it to any press that we can think of now you might have a pr company but for this this is all about you doing it yourself you doing the diy so therefore we're having our press day we're writing a press release and we've got a bunch of contacts we're going to start sending this out so we could even start potentially contacting people on the blog list or people on the contact list now here's the thing with all of this stuff and saying when we come to radio there is a really modern day dilemma about when you send stuff out because the bigger the artist the more time it needs to go into um sending this stuff out because if you're a massive artist every radio station every tv is going to want you in their schedule but they schedule months in advance brilliant the problem is is if you're not one of the biggest artists in the world and you're a smaller artist they won't care until near the day in fact even if they do care near the day if they start playing your single or promoting your single and nobody can actually go and listen to it that's doing you no favors at all so we don't want to be a point where everyone starts playing your single and you're there being like it's not out so therefore nobody can go across to your spotify and you aren't reaping the rewards or the benefits so therefore what i would say is this is a good time to start touching base you don't want anyone playing it or reviewing it really yet because it's not out but you do need to start building these relationships and actually telling people making it very very clear that the date is coming up so if they have got a schedule if they are thinking about writing a blog for the next week or two this is the time to do it so this is press day then after that we're in day three so day three now we're doing the same thing but we're in radio day uh so oops rodeo radio djs now this depends what country you are what city you're in um there are so many radio stations out there that will have a connection think about community radio you are part of a community in your local community so therefore your radio station is looking after you as well as everybody else and you've got a good story with a new single coming out same thing when it comes to other connections it doesn't necessarily need to be local radio it could be that you are in a certain niche with your music and therefore that niche is has a radio station all over the internet you've just got to find the right niche find the right station or the right show on the right station and figure out how you're going to get in contact now when i was a radio dj for a couple of years my job was to play up and coming artists mostly unsigned artists so i get stuff sent from all over the country sometimes all over the world and the way that i was found was very clear it was on the website my email address because people were sending stuff in so i wanted to be found i want to find new music so therefore nowadays you've got instagram you've got linkedin you've got a bunch of other ways but your job is to start finding ways to get in contact with these either radio djs or potentially music supervisors um in order to start getting your music placed on radio now we're going to go on to day four and now we're going to start making some teasers so when i was saying about the the videos you want to get your um your videos ready because what we want to do is we want to hit that uh big release date and then we want to have a bunch of videos that keep people excited about the song the song doesn't need to change but but the visuals do because if you do that people will go i've heard the song but if you say ah do you want to see my new video and they go oh yeah i'll watch your new video there's the song one more time so the teasers and the trailers is where we can start to build up excitement nowadays we live in a world where everything is like 15 seconds so why aren't we making 15 second teasers of the new video or new videos and this is a time where you're gonna make them it's gonna take you a few hours but i want clips that you can start putting across facebook stories instagram stories so that you're just getting a little bit more excitement don't make one make a couple make one of the chorus make one of a guitar solo make one of an intro but just make it so that there's a couple of teasers of a couple of the videos so that people know what's coming and again it's not spam right let's go on to day five now what we're doing is we're gonna make add assets okay so now ad assets are very very important the ad assets are not making the ads ad assets are making the adverts itself so this is very very important information what we're trying to do is bring people in look after them and push them across which means you need different type of adverts for that we have to get past this idea of just clipping 15 seconds of a song chucking it on facebook ads and getting people to go with a traffic ad across the spotify because can it work yes but why are we doing that we're just trying to build up spotify numbers without actually having the end goal of this return of investment which therefore means we're not really doing ourselves any favors so from the ads point of view whilst we're bringing people in and people are engaging they're liking they're commenting it means we can now re-target those people if you know a decent amount about facebook ads then at that point you can get hold of that make that custom audience and then make a specific ad to say that your new single is out now and push those people across and you've warmed them up and spotify is so much about quality data what we're trying to do here in order to build this this streaming machine is we're not trying to get a million people to listen to one song we are trying to get a couple of thousand people across the spotify to listen to that track in its entirety for a a over a short amount of time to spike the algorithm so it wakes that algorithm up so spotify says ah something's happening here then it goes in and it analyzes the data of the people and the connections and goes oh all of these people have some connections and so therefore these people also listen to these type of playlists i think this music is going to be really good on these playlists and what happens then is your spike starts to filter down into other playlists which brings more people in and that then builds momentum and that's the key to this whole thing so the ad assets is how are we going to push people across does it have a call to action are we saying to people the new single is out swipe up and go to spotify because if not we're just putting some music out and just saying oh i'm so excited about my new single great people go okay great well what do i do now so unless it says swipe up and listen to my my new single then it's just a statement i'm very excited good for you i'm glad you're very excited so the ad assets of what you do this is very very important now ads are very fiddly and i hear all the time facebook ads don't work it's not that they don't work it's that you need to understand how they work so therefore if you don't understand how facebook ads work wait until the end of the video and i'll tell you how i can help you with your facebook ads okay on to day six now day six is very important because we are almost one week away from releasing our singles so before we start promoting it we have to get everything ready so by that what i mean instagram tidy because you are about to go on a big date and if you're going to want a big date you have to make sure your house is in order you may make sure your hair is trimmed if you know what i'm saying so therefore we need to make sure that when people are coming in we're about to get a big influx influx of people coming into instagram when they come in they need to get those impressions now the connections which means if they're coming in and you've just been posting every day going here's some stuff here's some stuff here's some stuff things might not be perfectly in context so your job is to go through your instagram and make sure anyone new coming in because of this single knows exactly who you are what you stand for they can find your music quickly there's nothing worse than going i want to hear you sing and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling so you need to make sure that your house is in order so when someone comes into instagram it is all nice and tidy then after that what we're going to do is we are on to day seven day seven so this is all about socials so now we are just tidying stuff up we are updating socials we need to make sure that everything is ready so therefore your bio you need to have your about section on every uh every social media platform we also need to have your uh link tree we need to have your highlights all of this stuff is very very important just think of the party just think of the venue people are going to come in they're going to stick their head around the door and go do i want to come and spend time here the answer needs to be yes so therefore they need to come in and see these connections and if your bio speaks to them if your uh your hero picture speaks to them then all of that information makes people go yeah this is good so i'll put a hero picture as well in there um that's the bit so and that the same thing needs to be done not just on instagram but on facebook and on youtube everything needs to be ready because we are about to go into the big push leading up to the single so therefore we are about to get people coming through that traffic is coming through we need to make sure that we're looking after them and they get what they want when they're on their way through if that makes sense um now we're going on to day eight now this is about updating spotify so spotify is very very interesting because what spotify wants more than anything is for someone to come onto spotify and never leave despite what they say they want someone to never leave spotify ever again and that go i say spotify these are title apple all of them they don't want people to leave so if they leave for any reason then it's a problem so you need to keep people on spotify for as long as possible with your music with your playlist but also with your information people will get a lot of information from your spotify so is all of your information up today especially going into having this new song have you got for example your about section up to date is your new hero picture and your banner up to date because now we're about to be you know we're about to be releasing new music this is the time to make sure that everything on spotify makes sense your social media are your social media um platforms and links all in your spotify everything needs to be on spotify in one place so that people can go ah this is good new pictures if you've got that photo shoot you can start placing these new pictures in your spotify your spotify needs to keep people on for a little bit longer and if you do that not only are they more likely to listen to that song to move it across to a playlist to hit save to hit follow but also they're more likely to come back to instagram and that's the golden rule we're sending people to listen to the song in order for them to come back we're not sending them to spotify so they drop out we never see them again because that is what is deemed as a disaster so day eight is all about uh spotify day nine right now we're going to start dropping we are on the home or home straight to our singles so now we are gonna start dropping the artwork we're gonna say everyone very excited new single coming out check out our artwork and everyone goes oh that looks good i'm quite excited for this we are building momentum and building excitement the artwork is the first thing to do so we're gonna have the um the artwork and then after that why not create a playlist because at this point you're gonna start getting people across your instagram you're gonna start getting people across your spotify as they go i remember you oh something exciting is coming gonna happen you're triggering some excitement so therefore give them something extra before we get to the single this is important if they're gonna go across the spotify because they just remembered you and they say yeah listen to your track give them stuff that's there a new playlist or something which you can attach to your spotify so that when they get there you could even make that part of your social media at that time when you're putting in stories hey new playlist i've just put that on my spotify so we're getting people in the mood you know when it gets to christmas all of a sudden you're like unpack the christmas songs let's get in the mood well you've got a new single coming out let's get you in the mood so we're dropping artwork we're potentially dropping a um a playlist and at this point from here i'm not going to write down every single time but we are going in all on ig stories every single day there needs to be at least five instagram stories the reason for this people are coming into your instagram at this point if the red ring is not around your hero picture you are not in the house and if you are not home people walk past you go and see your mate you look up his lights aren't in he's not in i'll go if his lights are on i'll knock i'll come in it needs to be there so you need to be putting that red ring around the pictures at least five instagram stories because when people come in they might go huh oh oh okay cool but you're building a connection you're building a small connection with each one and they're more likely to hit that follow button and now is the time you need to do that more than ever so from here on in every day five instagram stories now as you are talking to people at this point one thing i would say is you need to let people know what is expected of them especially people who want to help so one of the things you're going to say is can you do me a favor when you listen to any tracks of mine can you please listen to them in full and don't listen to small amounts of song thinking that that's going to help you get get more money or get more views it doesn't what we want is quality data people to listen to the whole track and if they want to do something extra special they can take your track and they can put it into a playlist one of their own playlists with a bunch of other tracks that they would listen to around it with artists who are similar now those things make a huge difference when it comes to spotify because we're feeding quality data to spotify so if anyone asks what can i do you just say i just need you to listen to that song it's in entirety and take the track and put it into your own playlist because then when it's in their own playlist they're more likely to listen to it just like an old mixtape i made that i've listened to it i'm at the gym maybe i listen to that playlist i'm on a drive maybe i listen to that playlist so we want people to get it into their playlists now day 10 again we're into promo so now what we're going to do is we're going to change the banners changing the banners and you can change them multiple times hopefully you've made a couple of banners but this one has got the date now when people are coming through your socials i want them to be seeing that artwork seeing that color seeing that theme knowing that something's coming as soon as they're coming in as soon as you pop up for whatever reason there is right in their face so changing the banners is important and then we are going to drop a teaser video just a 15 seconds you could even do 30 seconds on instagram should you want to i wouldn't do longer than a minute but a teaser video of things that are coming up is it the official video is it the lyric video is it collab video that's a time where you can drop something and people go oh this sounds good i'm getting i'm getting a bit of a feel for this track now at this point you're not giving them enough so that they go off i've heard that i get it you're giving them a certain amount for them to go oh this sounds exciting so 15 seconds is the perfect amount of time to do that again back to your five ig stories but effectively we need to start building excitement and momentum now we're going to day 11. we are now getting pretty close so at this point we are now setting up ads so at this point when you're setting up ads this is the point where we are about to push the button on them on the release date but if you leave them till the release day i promise you it's going to be an incredibly stressful day so we want to get them a couple of days before so they are ready and at the point where you can just say push the button go and at that point on release day they start to show ads to people who've uh who've been warmed up by your instagram and we're pushing those people across so we're setting up the ads we're not necessarily pushing those ads out and then on top of that back to your five ig stories i'm not gonna keep writing that down then after that we're in day 12. so here we're going to drop a second teaser video it can be a different video could be the same video if you want it to be but we're starting to give little tips away of the music so people are going oh that was a fat riff or that was a cool drop or whatever it is that you just go that was quite exciting can be 5 10 15 seconds but again we're just giving and sprinkling a little bit more excitement into it then after that you get your five ig stories and then something else i want you to think about setting up and putting what's that a whatsapp team now by whatsapp team you can use whatever social media platform but there are people in and around your your your team in and around what you do who love what you do and they could be fans they could be audience they could be friends they could be family but you're bringing them in and saying look just for a couple of days i just need your help i don't need a lot from you but i'm going to set up a little whatsapp team can i put your number in it so we're all in it together so it builds a bit of excitement like the old school street teams now you can have two people in there you can have a hundred people in there but what we're doing is we're saying we're gonna get as much damage as possible music is so much about timing the releases are incredibly important to know that you're trying to spike an algorithm which means that scene in braveheart where they're all stood there and he's going wait and the enemy's running he knows that if one person breaks then it's game over so he's saying i will tell you the moment that we will all go at the same time and we will win he's going wait wait wait wait wait now and as soon as he says now everyone charges and it's the most powerful it's the same thing with your music we're not trying to get a million we're trying to get a good amount of people to spike an algorithm a thousand plays over a month brilliant a thousand plays over an hour now you've just done something incredibly clever and very smart and spotify will recognize you so timing is crucial and that's where the whatsapp team comes in then after that we've got day 13. so day 13 we are now one day away from the big release so from here and in we have to get our house in order so first they collect assets you don't want them all over the place especially if you've got a few people or a band or whatever and certain people have got different things everything comes together we need everything in one place so tomorrow is going to be nice and smooth so right now our job is to build buzz that's what we're going to do we're going to get excite oops get excitement going we're going to start telling people tomorrow's the big day we're going to start even getting on the one-to-ones we're going to prepare the team this is a preparation day on top of that one thing i would definitely do and this is this is something that artists don't do set alarms set your alarm early to get up but set alarms are things that you need to do once you've planned your perfect release day have 30 different alarms on your phone don't forget to do this don't forget to do that have it actually go does buzz buzz do this now because that way it's going to keep you on on the path and you're not going to be sat there going what should i do i've put the song out what should i do that's what we're trying to avoid so we're setting alarms then why don't we this is just a thought but why don't we set up the lyric video you could if you don't want to put anything out the day before because it could be the night before but if you don't want to do that you could do another teaser but what about okay fine we might put it out a day before as some kind of lyric video or a part of a lyric video so people can go oh this sounds really really good knowing that the official video is coming out the next day what we don't want to do is the music on the day and some kind of official video a couple of days before when it's out on on the release date we want the official video going out on the same day so potentially you could look at either lyric video or another teaser to say it's coming tomorrow we need your um your ears across the spotify um and then after that you've got your five ig stories one more time okay ladies and gentlemen it is today it's day 14 which means it is release day so we are ready for a big day one thing i would say is you need as much time as possible so if you're working a full-time job you might need to get up earlier after that you might need to go later it would be handy if you've got the full day because we want to get as much potential in this as possible and get as much momentum as this as possible but you know i'm going to do everything i can with this plan so that all you need to do on the day is have a tick list of things so firstly as it's release day obviously we need to make sure that release has come out so if it hasn't come out you've got a bit of a problem it should have if you've done everything you can through your aggregator it should have come out so uh check the release then after that we are going to launch the official music video and then after the official music video we are going to change the links and the banners we are now saying it is out now so the banners need to say out now the links need to say out now everything is pointing to this which means email links it means banner links it means anything that you can do to say it's out go there now you'd be surprised how many people come through your youtube come through your instagram they might not subscribe they might not engage they might not follow they might not even do anything but that doesn't mean they're not there and that doesn't mean they don't potentially aren't going to go across to spotify so all of these links need to be easy to get people there then after that why don't we start reminding the press and by reminding the press i mean anyone who's taken notice of your um of your track whilst you've been emailing them any curators any bloggers um any anyone on radio anyone at all who's just gone oh yeah cool this is the time to say hey we talked a couple of weeks back i'm just letting you know today's the day my new track is out now that was crucial for me because i'd forget people say oh track's coming out all of the time and i'm like yeah great great great great but if you don't remind me it's just a normal day this is your big day this is your release but it's not mine but i'm quite happy to listen to it i'm quite happy to play it i'm quite happy to promote it if i'm a blogger if i remember if i don't it's gonna just be in the abyss it's going to be in the bin somewhere so let's have a little bit of a reminder then after that i'm going to write this nice and big because this is crucial one to one time one to one time is so important what we're doing with one to one time is we are actually spending hours of that day getting in contact instead of going to facebook and saying everybody new singles out everyone go brilliant no problem at all whereas if you go into your email into your text into your whatsapp into your dms into your messenger on on facebook and you say oh dude can you do me a huge favor just let you know the new single is out could you do me a favor and go and listen to it to the track in its entirety it would mean the world to me most people will go yeah of course i will no problem at all three minutes out of my life no problem plus i'd like to hear it anyway but if you don't and it just pops up on some kind of facebook page most people will just see it and go oh yeah yeah i will later or they'll go yeah whatever and they'll just go straight past it this is how we consume so we've got to be able to to get the attention one to one is such an amazing way of getting that attention so after the one to one we need to set the ads ads to go live because now everything is pushing people across the new track is that we need sign posts that's all advertising is don't get caught up with complicated advertising all this is is you saying look i've warmed you up there's a new track coming out if you think about your favorite artist where there's a new song coming out you want to know about it we have to stop thinking that you're bugging people or annoying people with your music you are solving a problem you are saying hey i've got a new track out people will go oh thank god for that i've been waiting for this for a long time so no apologies i don't want to apolog apologetic marketing out with us to push people across hey our new song's coming out it's awesome get across there at which point people go oh brilliant that sounds fantastic off i go so those ads need to go live then we want hourly and i yes today hourly social media updates so therefore i would say probably stories is probably the way on your instagram but you can put out plenty of social media if there is one day of the year where you are allowed to slightly go over the top and slightly spam people with too many um social media posts today is the day you will be forgiven if you do again tomorrow and the next day and the next day people might get pissed off but today you're allowed this is a celebration this is you're telling people about the journey the story the excitement the emotion how you feel how other people feel all of this goes into uh today and then what about a launch party or if you can't have a launch party for whatever reason you could have a live stream launch party so then it gets to six o'clock seven o'clock and it's a celebration of the day guys come and join me for a live session you can be promoting this all the way through the day you can promote it over the week if you want come and join me six o'clock just so i can say thank you just so i can play the new track and we can just have a celebration and that's where i'll be i'll be on instagram live for example so get that in it's just another thing that you can do to a promote and be look after your audience so the thing will release today is what we're not trying to do is make the entire thing around this day if you've just gone fast forward fast forward fast forward just give me what to do on the release day that's why releases don't work what we've got to do is make release day one day one part of the process and i don't mean one part of the promos process of one single i mean one part of the process of the next five releases 10 releases so that we're building momentum again and again we're building up so we're getting more people more excitement more uh retargeted people to push across so in which case then we are going to the day after now this is where everyone falls down they just go oh i don't know what to do next whereas we are going to say don't worry because we still have assets that we have built we're going to use this song as an asset to bring people in and on the next single we're still going to use this song as an asset to bring people in but day 15 now we're lucky because we made other videos we went hey new performance video and everyone goes oh that sounds quite good that comes out today so it's a performance video same song but it's a performance video it's a different video it's gonna go in the second time first time you hear a song yes all right second time that's quite good by the sixth time you're like oh this is great and then you're in the car you're like what was that song i heard the other day i want to play that so performance video comes out the next day it's almost like another release day because now we've got a new reason to promote and we are not spamming then we're going to update your art uh your oops update your artist pick excuse my child like writing uh artists pick on spotify just when anyone goes to spotify you're like this is the song this is the one you need to listen to it basically is a pin it pins it to facebook it pins it everywhere else you can be doing that across social media pin everything um so then you've got maybe a giveaway so why not at this point we have a giveaway so we've we've had our big hooray due to loot to do we've got the single coming out now we're gonna have giveaway what is it do you want to give away some merch do you want to give away some um something a bit more personal do you want to give away some tickets whatever it is that you want to give away have that planned so today is the day where you say today we're giving away this to promote our new single again it gives you a reason not to spam and then on top of that you're gonna pin everything uh sorry pin your new single oops to or video to your social media so again what we're doing is we are not allowing today to go down we're going to say no no this is just another release day it's just that yesterday you heard it for the first time but that doesn't mean you're going to hear it again today but i'm not going to spam you i'm going to do this in a respectable valuable way and then we go on to day number 16. so what are we gonna drop that's right some kind of video we're maybe gonna drop the the second music video i'm just gonna say but it could be the unofficial video it could be the behind the scenes video there's so many ideas for music videos that you could do and what's great about that is they don't need to cost you any more money other than the time of editing what you've already made so you get to decide what that second music video would look like but again the song is the same we have to break out of this habit of saying i've done that now we say no no this song is going to be promoted for weeks it's just that i'm going to find different ways and a different video is perfect so we're going to drop that second music video and at this at this point we also need to start studying the ads and i would say optimizing optimizing if i can spell that optimizing ads because optimization of ads basically means we've put something out we want to see how we can improve them because if we're getting you know 12p a click and we can get it down to 10p or 8p or 7p the way we do that is the 1 rule with ads and again if you're not sure about ads don't worry wait till the end and i'll tell you how you can learn all of this stuff but story uh studying those ads optimizing those ads becomes very very important and always remember at this point anybody who is sharing your stuff gets a reshare because what you're doing even if it's 50 people because you're valuing that person if someone goes on their instagram and and plays their track or shares their track you share the share of their track because you're you're basically rewarding them but what you're actually doing is you're showing everyone else that if they do that they get rewarded and they're more likely to share it of course if they share it the more people who share it the more it's getting out there shares is the fastest way to grow anything and that's how something becomes viral then day 17 slightly more of the same you get to choose the video but let's say this one's going to be behind the scenes maybe behind the scenes video because it's another reason to get in front of people you get to choose the video but this is the time maybe you can even do a collab video but this is a chance to get more stuff then we're still promoting it's day 18 you could maybe do the acoustic video you could do the collab video whichever one you want and you get to be as creative as you want now from my point of view i've come up with a bunch of ideas but even with loads and loads of different video ideas depending on what your song is called an amazing lyric video is really great an amazing live video acoustic video you could have a choir behind it you could just do different fun extreme creative things to make more videos that's the whole point of this and it gives you another reason i can't stress that enough and then after that we are back onto ads we are optimizing we are constantly improving because if we're not doing that this is when people just go facebook ads they don't work now the interesting thing with this is it would be so easy to go well hang on a minute i've got my music video i did an ad but that's where people fail this is about one percent this is about more videos this is about bringing value this is about optimizing this is about the boring you know yes sometimes when i'm doing videos i say the same thing why because i keep seeing the same stuff optimizing ads is boring but it works and if you want to get your ad click your ad cost down so that more people get across to spotify in order for you to spike the algorithm and get more plays more playlists and then build up and bring in more return of investment sometimes we have to do lots of boring stuff this is absolutely crucial then after that oops we are now on to day 20. day 20 we are going to do a live session our at that point and you know you can do live sessions throughout the week but a live session where you're going to go live and you're going to say hey it's been a week you're going to tell people about the journey what the last last week has been like this is a chance for you to perform a bunch of songs and maybe perform that single again don't forget every time you go live there'll be different people on there so this is another chance for you to perform it if you want to you can stick it down into your ig tv you can save it you can put it across the facebook whatever you want but this live session is a chance where you could start connecting and i think live sessions for these releases is a really powerful way for you to get the one to one because someone pops up and you start having a chat hey how you doing yeah yeah i'm just really excited because my new track's coming out you should be saying that a hundred times a day how are you doing yeah really good my new singles coming out i'm really excited for it and so at that point you're just ramming it home i i feel like there's always this i don't want to spam people message i just don't want to really ram it home but i can promise you having dealing with hundreds and hundreds of musicians all of the time over the last 20 odd years thousands if not hundreds of thousands of musicians where you think is the line for pissing people off is usually nowhere near the line for pissing people off just because you've promoted it twice you haven't pissed people off unless you're promoting it hour after hour day after day week after week at that point you just go all right i get it but we are not at that point over one week with different bits of valuable content so please don't think that you're spamming just because you're saying hey my song is out in a different way it's very very important so live sessions is a great chance to do that one to one and one more time we're gonna do some kind of performance or we're gonna give people a reason one more time to remind them about your track and then after that we are one week into it we are one weekend and this bit's really important i think this day is crucial and i don't think people do this this is the thank yous this is the time where you're actually going to go and thank the people for making a huge amount of difference and i don't mean going back onto your facebook or instagram and going cheers guys it was really really good i mean you're going to spend hours and you're going to do voice messages i'm even going to write that down voice slash video messages because it makes a difference if you just go thanks so much for this week great but if you do a video and go dave honestly thank you so much i just wanted to say i've had such a great week the single's doing so well and i really want to say thank you because you did an amazing job or because i really appreciate the fact that you just listened to the whole track so thank you so much it goes a long way it goes a long way so thank yous are very important thank everybody individually and then after that the next thing is what worked you have to study oops what happened or don't spell that oops slash what worked you're going to write this stuff down you are going to analyze it what did what worked what didn't work what are you going to do for the next single what can you do better just the same as we optimize the ads we also optimize the release on the next release the second single i want more momentum i want to start building up which is why this is a strategy that you can repeat time and time again because it's different videos different trailers different music so you're allowed to do this every four to six weeks without pissing people off so therefore your job is to say what happened next write it down so we can optimize the next strategy so there it is your 21 day release plan for 2021 now there's a lot of detail in there obviously it's not as simple as just saying it bang all that stuff out there's so much in there and if you want to know more if you want a lot more of that detail hours of detail then i have built a road map to 1 million streams in dk music business academy including everything from playlists ads brand awareness everything else that you can think of so if you want to come and join me in dk music business academy there is a link in the description and i would love to have you there but otherwise if you can do me a favor hit that like button hit that subscribe button we won't be doing this one for another year more importantly come and be a part of this community because it's growing every day and i'm so proud of it but thanks for watching and i'll see you guys soon

Channel: Damian Keyes

Views: 335,818

Rating: 4.9332404 out of 5

Keywords: Damian keyes, how to release a single in 2021, how to release a single, how to release music, how to market music, how to promote music, how to get music heard, how to grow on spotify, the 20 day plan, the 21 day plan, releasing music in 2021, how to get Spotify streams

Id: PhVn1vPk_4w

Length: 55min 16sec (3316 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021