Warming up your audience and keeping it engaged, in anticipation before a release is crucial especially if you haven’t been working on developing a strong bond with your fans or releasing consistent content regularly which is a normal practice taking into account the intense recording or songwriting phases you went through.
It is strongly recommended that you start planning for your album or EP release about 12 months in advance. This allows you to settle the frustrating yet common delays throughout the release period. These delays are happening because you have to rely on outside vendors, and delays can happen as many things might be out of your direct control.
Since you’ve got a full 1 year before you can release your music, there is plenty of time to warm up your audience and get them involved in the process. In this article, MusicPromoToday will share with you five of the most effective ways of doing so.
1. Engage Your Audience
If your fans feel personally invested in the project, they’ll be much more likely to listen, purchase, and share it widely when it is released. Hence, you can get your audience involved in some parts of your project. For instance, you can create a poll on your social media asking them to quote for the best cover art for the single or the album/EP, or you may even let them decide on the song’s title. However, before doing so you have to share your secret with them – the secret of you releasing new music soon, and sharing some pieces of it with them will make them feel special. This way, your fans will be engaged in the process of supporting you the whole way through. As the project starts to take form, share bits and pieces with them such as demos of a few of the songs, cover art, etc.
2. Take Your Fans To The Studio
Not literally of course! It may seem commonplace to you to spend time at the studio recording music but the majority of your audience has never set foot into a recording studio in their life. To your fans, this environment with its special atmosphere, is something unique and mysterious!
Too often, you may be simply very busy with the recording process in order to think of capturing studio footage while you’re actually recording. You can assign the role of “behind-the-scenes reporter” to a friend or a family member who is often hanging around at the studio during the recording process. Ask them to come up with creative ideas for shots and video footage to capture you while recording.
These kinds of videos are not only great for potential future music videos, or documentary footage in the far future, but they are also a great way to get better engagement on social media than anything else.
3. Offer Your Fans To Invest Into The Project
Think of doing some form of crowdfunding for albums or EPs. Once you’ve gathered your great studio footage, you can use it during your campaign pledge video you can find the starting of a crowdfunding project after your studio sessions are over very beneficial. Thus you can show that the album’s already underway.
There are also other ways of raising crowdfunding besides your videos of studio recording. There’s still physical album manufacturing, digital distribution, PR campaigns, Facebook ads, release parties. Moreover, even if a small percentage of your audience invests in the crowdfunding campaign, it still means that promotion has continued to warm up the rest of your audience and has built anticipation for your release.
4. Release singles
Releasing singles can actually become a trail of breadcrumbs to lead your main audience and draw in potential new fans toward your big release. Each released single gives you a new chance to get in front of your audience again with a new message and product. Besides, in the new music business, it’s relatively easy to release singles digitally. Simply ask your fans to add the song to their library on Spotify and it will warm them up before the big release, besides it will move them further to the “fan discovery” step. The number of releases before your full release depends on you. However, 3 is a magic number in terms of giving the artist new opportunities for promotion while preventing oversaturation.
5. If Your Music Has a Story, Then Share It!
Try to make the release of your album’s singles slow as a single gives you the opportunity to go further and share a story behind each song. You can talk about collaborators who contributed, or talk about lyrics and instrumentation, or even share a captivating story about the song. Share your idea behind the lyrics or you can even create a blog post where you are sharing about your writing process. Taking into account the importance of social media, you can as well adopt a special hashtag and encourage your fans to use it when talking about that song. Actually, there is no limit to the kinds of content you can create around one single song.
The whole process of warming up your audience is very important, crucial to reaching your streaming goals and sales. Being purposive and providing consistency are key factors. The process of warming up your audience doesn’t have to be overwhelming. In other words, planning your release 12 months in advance gives you the time and space you need to do it right.Make sure to read our other articles where we expose methods, strategies, insiders, and tips on how to run your music pr / music marketing campaign. If you need guidance then contact us through our form and we’ll get back to you in no time!
