| Local
Marketing Periods |
| When you release
a music product locally, you are "marketing." A big part of
marketing is to get your product to your potential customers when
they are ready to buy and when they aren't buying other things.
Established artists have fans that are waiting for the next release
by their "favorite" artist. It wouldn't make sense then to release
your product at the same time that more established artists are
releasing. This the times that your record will get the most
sales is during periods when there aren't a lot of national hit
artists releasing. |
| Probably fifty
percent of prerecorded music sales occur in that short period
between Thanksgiving and Christmas. National labels time their
releases so that they are "well known" to the buying public by time
Thanksgiving arrives. Your product needs a longer time to get
established and known in the marketplace if you are releasing local
product. Thus, you would want to release before the national
companies release their "year end" product. |
| Proper timing can
easily mean twice as many sales for the local label. Later in
this article I will give you the specific marketing periods that I
see every year. |
| Sales Targets
On Your Release |
| Maybe you read my article
entitled "Right
Steps On The Road To A Hit."
This article recommends a sales target between 1000 and 2500. In
step 3 of the plan that I laid out, you are to release your first
product with a 1000 sales target. In step 4 of the plan, your second
release is a product that you want serious sales from (2500 or
more). The first few steps from my article are below: |
|
TOM'S
RECOMMENDED "RIGHT" STEPS |
|
STEP
1 |
Get
some music together and get heard by the public. To sell
records you will have to be doing shows/appearances
regularly, at least 4 a month. Start writing (or
obtaining the use of) original songs. Even if you
don't perform them, practice them - you'll need songs to
record. |
|
STEP
2 |
Start
to record and plan on continuous recording. You will
probably need to record twice as many tunes as you plan to
release. Your first efforts won't be your best and
probably unacceptable to you by time you are halfway into
the project. Take the free recording training that is
available through this site, no matter what your job in the
group is. Have the person who is responsible for your
recording go further, like getting an
Alexander
Magazine training subscription or attending a recording
school. |
|
STEP
3 |
Plan
and execute your first release, where you target selling a
thousand copies. At this point you should consider
getting a paid A & R screening service to help you judge
the quality of your product and to obtain professional
advice on which tunes to include in your release. Definitely
study marketing strategies and at least take advantage of
the free services that we recommend, as well as any others
you can find. |
|
NOTE |
Realize
that you need to obtain the target on each step before
progressing to the next step. If, for instance, you
put out a record and only sold 500, you will need to repeat
step 3 as many times as you need to for obtaining the
goal. The next step often has to be repeated. |
|
STEP
4 |
On
your next release, use a target of 2500+ sales. You'll need to
use your experience with the first release to make
the elements of your second release better than the first -
things like the quality of recording, songs and
performances. Try to recapture your old customers and
get new ones. Professional training and advice becomes
much more of a necessity to finish this step. |
|
| Radio Airplay |
| To get a serious level of product sales, the timing
of your release becomes important. All areas of promotion
become important, including the hard-to-get airplay. |
| If a radio station program director could add 3 new songs to his playlist
this week and he has received 5 major label releases on national hit artists,
two would not get played this week. These two releases would
be on the list to get consideration next week. Since he will get
more records to review next week, your test release will get buried
and never added. This is one reason you want to release at the time
of the year when the
program director doesn't receive 5 major label releases a week.
|
| The thing to know is the timing. Mis-timing will bury you test
release in major air play competition and proper timing of your release will give you the best
chance for air play success. You want to give your test release time to become established
before the semi-annual flood of releases on major artists. If your record is
established by that time it has a fighting chance with the competition. The schedule
is in the table below. |
| Other Factors |
| You may think
that if timing has to do with airplay, its not that important
(because you'll get little airplay anyway). This is not really true.
The major year end releases also eat up the prime shelf space at the
stores; newspaper and magazine editors also write about the national
releases and have little time and space left over for the local
releases. Interview time on radio and TV (something you can
get and do want) is similarly devoted to major rather than local
artists during this period. The best times for a local release
are in the chart below. |
MAJOR ARTIST RELEASE SCHEDULE |
TEST
(LOCAL) RELEASE SCHEDULE |
APRIL |
JANUARY - FEBRUARY |
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER |
JUNE - JULY |
|
|
2004 |
| If you want to
still release this year, time is of the essence. Releasing
after Labor Day puts you directly in competition with major arts
which can only distract from sales you may otherwise get.
|
