How to Self-Release an Album
My scores of followers have no doubt noticed that I haven’t published an essay lately. This is because I have been BUSY, OK???
I’m putting out an album of new original music called Sad Songs That Suck on 10/21/22.
It takes a lot of work to put out an album as an independent artist and very little of that work has anything to do with writing/recording music. To that point, I thought some people might be interested in learning a bit more about this process in the event that they hope to do the same.
Here is a handy checklist for aspiring indie musicians out there.
- Choose a distributor. In this modern age, it is exceptionally easy to self-record and release an album. But if you want that album to show up in places where people might actually want to listen to it (Spotify, Apple Music, etc…) you need to use some kind of distribution service. I use Distrokid for the reason that it is inexpensive and they submit your music to Tik Tok (and obviously my music belongs on Tik Tok). There are other distros that provide more hearty services but I make -$10000000 on music annually, so I’m sticking with the cheap one.
- Choose a release date. Apparently, most new music comes out on Fridays — although it used to come out on Tuesdays. But also, so much new music is being made and released every single day that yours will inevitably get lost in an endless barrage of content. So feel free to release it whenever the heck you want.
- Make a music video (at least one). For some reason, getting anyone to LISTEN to your music is incredibly difficult without having a visual for it. This is entirely my personal experience, but people are WAAAYYY less likely to listen to your song if there isn’t a video (bonus points if you or whoever is in this video are attractive). Maybe this says something about our attention spans or some deep fundamental social issue but it probably doesn’t. Don’t worry about it.
- Write a press release and contact blogs for coverage. This step is extremely important if your goal is to make yourself feel like total shit. If you contact 100 blogs/podcasts/journalists/YouTube reviewers* and 1 gets back to you then you are #crushingit. If that 1 that gets back to you with a tiered pricing list about services they can provide for you then run.
*Important note: Submithub sucks so much. Don’t use it. Unless you want to. I don’t care. If Submithub is reading this, give me $1000 and I’ll delete this part. I literally don’t care.
- Create #CONTENT: Be incredibly annoying on social media. Post constantly about your upcoming release. Share clips from your video and live shows, photoshoots where you are inexplicably naked*, memes that have nothing to do with your art but you have hijacked to get more #engagement.
*Look, I’m not a prude. Take off all your clothes if you want, but don’t act like it’s solely an integral part of your art and not also a marketing strategy. Embrace that shit.
- Hope. that Instagram randomly decides, 4 hours after you post a reel, that they want to start showing it to a LOT of people even though your last 5 posts got ~11 likes. I’m certainly not going to complain about when one of my posts inexplicably does well but it feels entirely arbitrary when it happens. When posting on social media it is important to use hashtags that fit best for your project and then realize that those don’t actually work and use whatever spammy/trending ones are popular that day (#fitfluencer #mondaymotivation #ButHerEmails)
- Order physical media (CDs/Tapes/Vinyl): Don’t. Please no.
- Make sure you stay up until Midnight on release night to set your Bandcamp page to “Published” because for some reason this is not an automatic feature. Even though you can set the “release date” in advance that doesn’t actually do anything*. You still need to manually press the button to release it.
*You might be able to do this automatically if you have a “premium” account but, again, I make -$1000000 per annum on music already.
- Write good music: I forgot to mention this step first. I usually skip this one anyway because no one is going to hear it. Let’s just edit it down to write music or write “music.”
