I am somewhat in awe of how good a job this post does. I was thinking about writing a blog post on the same theme on our blog the other day, but intended to cover it all in about 1000 words. Not only would that have not been good enough, but it’s now redundant! I’ll just link to this post instead!

Your focus on the DIY plan has particular relevance because you’re a musician. In my experience as a manager, the root cause of all the records that we failed to break, when we should have broken them, was always the same thing.

We didn’t create and stick to a timeline.

In the UK, and it’s similar in the US but more complicated as it’s a bigger area, you need 8-12 weeks to get a peak in radio play. I’d apply that same logic to any release – single or album, label backed or DIY.

That means that before you start doing anything to promote the record – i.e. 12 weeks before release – you must have all the core elements of your release in place. In practice that means not sending out promos until you have cover art; having metadata done and filed with your digital aggregator; having an EPK set up and ready for your PR (or you!) to point people at; tour dates all set and scheduled, etc. That kind of thing.

Basically, don’t let something not being ready and to hand, cock-up your release. That way you can focus on doing the shows to support the release, pushing promo like crazy and you’ll get the best result.

Sod’s law unfortunately states very clearly that something will go wrong anyway, despite your best efforts, but planning and scheduling will make that bump in the road less disastrous.

Having said that, I’ve realised that the post I should do to link back to yours is that timeline. I’ll try to get it done as soon as and post back here when I have.

Ian

This of course is if the artist is extremely keen on maximum success other than just making a few quick bucks…where most of time you ended up buying low quality albums with maybe just one “OK” song.

Wasn’t Michael Jackson’s (Billie Jean) and (Beat It) hit singles before he released them on the Thriller album? And didn’t Thriller bacame a big hit or even bigger than Beat It and to a lesser extent, Billie Jean? What was the result? Thriller became the biggest selling album of all time and still is today.

I would appreciate your professional view on the above mentioned.

Thank you.

T