Preparing for a new year of releasing music
Batch creating music and content before your release cycle gives you a buffer to focus on marketing and growth. Planning your releases and marketing strategy ahead reduces stress and improves execution throughout the year.
By Andrew Southworth
Hey friends!
Today we’re going to talk about how to prepare for a new year of releasing music in 2025!
I hope you had a great Christmas / Holiday / New Years. This may have been more timely a couple weeks ago, but it will still be useful for any future release cycle you have. We’re going to talk about how to prepare for a new year of releasing music.
Of course there are a ton of valid ways to prepare for a new release cycle. This is just my approach and what i’ve seen work for a lot of people I know. I do something very similar for my YouTube channel and content as well.
Here’s the premise:
Batch create music.
Batch create content.
The goal is to give yourself a ‘buffer’ so that throughout the release cycle you can focus mostly on marketing instead of keeping your head above water.
This might mean getting 3 songs 100% finished with social media content filmed and edited prior to releasing the first song in your release cycle. If you’re trying to hit a release schedule of every 6 weeks for example, a 3 song ‘buffer’ will give you over 4 months of time before you ‘run out of music’.
Depending on what type of release schedule you’re aiming for, and how quickly you write music, you might a smaller or larger buffer.
The ideal situation
I’m about to describe what I consider the ‘ideal situation’ for an artist to be in when it comes to preparing for a release cycle. The most talented and professional artists I know operate like this. I’m going to use a specific person I know as a reference but I know many people that are in similarly great situations.
They started 2024 with a 12+ song album completely recorded, mixed and mastered.
They already recorded most of the social media content for every song, and several music videos and performance videos for key songs on the record.
Before the release cycle started they created a marketing plan, got a budget and found the people they needed to help them pull it off.
This meant that throughout the whole year of 2024 they didn’t really have to rush to write any music or film any content, they could almost 100% focus on marketing and growth. Any music they wrote throughout 2024 was material that would be released in 2025 and onwards.
Because we already had the full list of songs and content, we were able to test song performance with ads before releasing the songs. The entire year was largely mapped out so you knew which songs were coming out in which order, and we were even able to time certain songs to certain dates and holidays.
The bad situation
Unfortunately most artists aren’t in this ideal situation. They’re mostly ‘living song to song’. Meaning they finish a song, put it out, and then immediately have to start working on the next song.
This can be exhausting. With the chaos of everything trying to finish music and videos between every release, you can’t really formulate a solid strategy. You can’t really take a break because if you do you won’t hit your goals. If anything goes wrong you’re going to miss your goals.
The solution
You need to spend a period of time focused on creating so you can create a batch of material, and this often means taking a time off before you get back into your release cycle. If you’re a new artist this is easy because you don’t have any expectations on yourself yet.
After that, try to always create in multiples when possible. For example, don’t go to the studio to record one song. Wait to go to the studio until you’re ready to record several songs. Don’t record content for one song. Wait until you have several songs ready and record content for all of them at the same time.
The hardest part of any creative endeavor is starting. Once you start the fun kicks in, and it’s easy to keep going. For example, creating 30 pieces of social media content in one day is much easier than trying to create 1 every day for 30 days.
I try to create YouTube videos in stages. I have a list of video ideas that I can pull from, so that when I get the inspiration to film a video I can just film 2 or 3 at a time. It’s great when I have 5 or so videos done, because that means I don’t have to worry about videos for several weeks and can focus on other aspects of my business.
My band Every Waking Moment hasn’t released anything in a while, just because life got in the way. But since we were already on such a long break we decided to make that break even longer and just batch finish a bunch of songs. This way when we start releasing again we know we have the first 5+ releases ready and can focus more on execution and marketing than rushing to get the next one done.
If you have your own system that is better for you, keep doing it. But this is what works for me and what i’ve seen work for many others.
New Content
This artist gets 87 MILLION streams on Spotify per month and has 14 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Let's take a look at their Spotify for Artists!
Is your Spotify growth campaign getting results on Facebook ads, but not generating any streams on Spotify? Here are 7 things that could be causing this problem.
TikTok is very likely getting banned on January 19th. Here's how music artists should prepare.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.
My ad agency specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.
Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels is the best all-in-one platform for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels and build their mailing list.
1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or my team here.
My Links:
🌍 MusicFunnels - Best website / store / funnels for music artists (get your 14-day FREE trial!)
🧑💻 Consultations
🎬 Get 15% off Melodist music distribution with code ANDREW15 here
Discount / Affiliate Links:
►► FeatureFM - use code ASOUTH30 for 30% off annual plans!
If you’d rather just purchase the e-book, or physical book or audiobook you can do so here.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Music Marketing Monday! Please give your feedback using the poll below.
** There are affiliate links on this site, meaning I may receive a kickback when you purchase a product or service using my links at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I’d recommend to friends, but i’m obligated to inform you that these affiliate links are present. Overall affiliate income is not my focus and is a relatively small part of my income.
In case you’re curious what platform i’m using to run this newsletter, it’s called beehiiv.
Grow your music with a proven ad system
Learn the Meta ads and streaming growth playbooks Andrew uses across artists, labels, and agency campaigns.