Planned release
- 199four
- May 24, 2020
- 2 min read
Currently, the album has a planned release on Bandcamp and Spotify.
Bandcamp allows artists to upload independently, taking 15% of all digital revenue from sales (Pricing | Bandcamp, n.d.). The plan is to have Bandcamp as the main revenue earning medium for the album, with pricing at £7 for the album or £1 for individual tracks.
In terms of promotion, I've found that with a past release (The Isolation Tapes https://theisolationtapes.bandcamp.com/) that the majority of site traffic came about as a result of Facebook posts and direct messages.

This shows that Bandcamp itself, without a prior following, is somewhat ineffective as a way of promoting your music.
That is why I have also taken the decision to also release on Spotify, as this is one of the most used streaming services (Field, 2020). Unfortunately, Spotify doesn't allow artists to upload independently and as such, the service CD Baby (https://cdbaby.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=cd%20baby&utm_content=421014424735&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlamU3KvM6QIViLbtCh3HzwweEAAYAiAAEgKE6PD_BwE) will be used.

CD Baby has both advantages and drawbacks. The advantages include having your music released across multiple platforms (Youtube music, Apple Music, Spotify, Itunes, etc) however the service is not free and can take up to six weeks to release.
It is my hope that having my music on Spotify will allow me to submit it to various playlists, bringing my music to a larger audience and hopefully bringing traffic to my Bandcamp page where I will be able to earn revenue.
Post-release I will be looking into (as mentioned previously) submitting tracks to Spotify playlists and radio stations. I will, for the time being, be avoiding contacting record labels as it is my plan to stay independent. Although, I have recently been invited into the Hip Hop collaborative Urban Linkz (https://www.facebook.com/UrbanLinkzInternational/) where some of the tracks from the album may be released to vocalists to use in their future projects.

References
Field, M., 2020.The Best Music Streaming Services: Apple Music, Spotify, Youtube Music And Amazon Music Compared. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/best-music-streaming-services-apple-music-spotify-amazon-music/> [Accessed 24 May 2020].
Bandcamp.com. n.d.Pricing | Bandcamp. [online] Available at: <https://bandcamp.com/pricing> [Accessed 24 May 2020].
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