Inception/ Plan
Below is the assignment proposal which I had set prior to following through with the campaign for any reference which may be required.
| ass2_breif_-_steve_morrison_.pdf |
As a session player with prior experience in releasing albums and tour campaigns with artists and bands, I wanted to take the opportunity for this module to push myself out of my comfort zone and release my own material under my own name as a Singer-Songwriter for the first time. I have been writing my own material for a while though finally feel that I am at the point where I can release the material confidently.
Market Research
In regard to market research, I have been gigging full time for around 7 years and have built up around 2.5k facebook connections and 1.5k instagram followers on my personal accounts related to my session work and band projects. Over the past couple of years I have been playing a lot of acoustic solo gigs in clubs and pubs, as well as summer and winter festival village appearances playing covers. At these gigs I have noticed that there seems to be quite a high demand and number of people asking if I write my own music, which has made me realise that there is almost a gap in my own market that I could capitalise on. In regard to the releases we have put out with my other band projects in the past, the reach has been greater due to the fact that there are more people as part of the project, whereas with releasing my own material, I am going to have to rely fairly heavily on these connections I have made already and their engagement when I put out this first release, to then build upon this with a second release at some point in the near future.
With this in mind, I have in a way limited my market research to my own 'market' which I have been building over the past few years of local connections and gig goers, blog writers and fellow musicians around the UK and Ireland. With the aim of breaking the ice with my first solo release to make my current followers aware that I have now begun releasing my own material as an artist as well as my current work as a session player.
Strategy
My strategy in this sense is to create a short video teaser for the release and put this out to my social pages a few days before the release of the song goes live on Spotify/iTunes and other streaming services. The aim being to create a bit of traction and interest with the video as a pre-cursor to the release of the track. I feel that putting the track out completely out of the blue would limit it's reach without a small pre-cursor. Through past experiences, I have found that there is a certain time-span for this approach which works, if I was to put the teaser out too soon, people would lose interest fairly quickly after and when the song actually comes out it would get little reach anyway, and if I was to leave it too late, the video would not reach enough people to create any particular buzz prior to release. Speaking to one of the artists I am involved with - Kevin Mcguire, who recently put out a cover to market and managed to get it charted on the itunes country music chart - he suggested that no more than two days prior to release would be sufficient for the release of the teaser. He used a very similar tactic when releasing this cover of the 1975's "the sound" though through his social media pages he has around 10k likes and followers.
One main issue with facebook's current algorithm is that although Kevin has so many connections, without using facebook's 'boost post' feature, even Kevin has seen that a post will reach around or less than 5% of his followers unless the post has financial backing. The post will only reach its full potential with financial backing, otherwise his followers will have to actively seek out what has appeared on his page, which makes a budget even for social media releases a bit of a necessity as this relates directly back to how engaged your audience may be in either way.
Financial Plan
With this in mind, I have had to work out a financial plan for the release. Due to low production costs (as I have recorded/produced and mixed all the material in my own studio) I can afford to spend a bit more on the release. Registering for PRS has cost £100, though this should hopefully get brought back over the course of the song being out and hopefully getting play, as well as using their registering service for when I play the song live at my gigs to get some of this money back in coming months. As well as this cost, the distribution cost for release through EmuBands was £24.95 for the single, which includes all the digital distribution to spotify/iTunes etc. The teaser video will not cost me anything as Kevin has agreed to film and edit it for me. We used iphones to record a few tour documentaries in the past and they looked great, so we will use my phone and he will edit the video, which should only take a couple of hours to do.
Taking this into consideration, I have decided that I can put around £100 into the post boosts on facebook to try and generate a bit of interest prior to and after release, with the plan of posting the video pre-release and another post with the embedded clip from spotify post-release.
With regard to legal considerations, I own the rights to all the recordings and licences of the software etc used to record the track as well as the copyright of the track itself, with it being original material, there should be no issue in this regard.
I have set the release for 20.4.18 as this allows time for EmuBands to process the release to each of the music services that it will be going out on. The EmuBands processing was started on 6.4.18 as pictured below
Market Research
In regard to market research, I have been gigging full time for around 7 years and have built up around 2.5k facebook connections and 1.5k instagram followers on my personal accounts related to my session work and band projects. Over the past couple of years I have been playing a lot of acoustic solo gigs in clubs and pubs, as well as summer and winter festival village appearances playing covers. At these gigs I have noticed that there seems to be quite a high demand and number of people asking if I write my own music, which has made me realise that there is almost a gap in my own market that I could capitalise on. In regard to the releases we have put out with my other band projects in the past, the reach has been greater due to the fact that there are more people as part of the project, whereas with releasing my own material, I am going to have to rely fairly heavily on these connections I have made already and their engagement when I put out this first release, to then build upon this with a second release at some point in the near future.
With this in mind, I have in a way limited my market research to my own 'market' which I have been building over the past few years of local connections and gig goers, blog writers and fellow musicians around the UK and Ireland. With the aim of breaking the ice with my first solo release to make my current followers aware that I have now begun releasing my own material as an artist as well as my current work as a session player.
Strategy
My strategy in this sense is to create a short video teaser for the release and put this out to my social pages a few days before the release of the song goes live on Spotify/iTunes and other streaming services. The aim being to create a bit of traction and interest with the video as a pre-cursor to the release of the track. I feel that putting the track out completely out of the blue would limit it's reach without a small pre-cursor. Through past experiences, I have found that there is a certain time-span for this approach which works, if I was to put the teaser out too soon, people would lose interest fairly quickly after and when the song actually comes out it would get little reach anyway, and if I was to leave it too late, the video would not reach enough people to create any particular buzz prior to release. Speaking to one of the artists I am involved with - Kevin Mcguire, who recently put out a cover to market and managed to get it charted on the itunes country music chart - he suggested that no more than two days prior to release would be sufficient for the release of the teaser. He used a very similar tactic when releasing this cover of the 1975's "the sound" though through his social media pages he has around 10k likes and followers.
One main issue with facebook's current algorithm is that although Kevin has so many connections, without using facebook's 'boost post' feature, even Kevin has seen that a post will reach around or less than 5% of his followers unless the post has financial backing. The post will only reach its full potential with financial backing, otherwise his followers will have to actively seek out what has appeared on his page, which makes a budget even for social media releases a bit of a necessity as this relates directly back to how engaged your audience may be in either way.
Financial Plan
With this in mind, I have had to work out a financial plan for the release. Due to low production costs (as I have recorded/produced and mixed all the material in my own studio) I can afford to spend a bit more on the release. Registering for PRS has cost £100, though this should hopefully get brought back over the course of the song being out and hopefully getting play, as well as using their registering service for when I play the song live at my gigs to get some of this money back in coming months. As well as this cost, the distribution cost for release through EmuBands was £24.95 for the single, which includes all the digital distribution to spotify/iTunes etc. The teaser video will not cost me anything as Kevin has agreed to film and edit it for me. We used iphones to record a few tour documentaries in the past and they looked great, so we will use my phone and he will edit the video, which should only take a couple of hours to do.
Taking this into consideration, I have decided that I can put around £100 into the post boosts on facebook to try and generate a bit of interest prior to and after release, with the plan of posting the video pre-release and another post with the embedded clip from spotify post-release.
With regard to legal considerations, I own the rights to all the recordings and licences of the software etc used to record the track as well as the copyright of the track itself, with it being original material, there should be no issue in this regard.
I have set the release for 20.4.18 as this allows time for EmuBands to process the release to each of the music services that it will be going out on. The EmuBands processing was started on 6.4.18 as pictured below
Development
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When choosing the target audience I tried to be fairly specific with the interests to make sure it related to the release, though still keeping it broad enough that I can hopefully expand my audience out with my current connections on facebook and within the facebook page itself. This post will be shared to my personal page as well as being boosted on my more specific music page.
Facebook also allows the promotion to be extended to run on instagram, which again broadens the reach and links potential listeners back to your facebook page. |
Starting with the video upload, the process of choosing relevant tags and the targeted audience being UK and Ireland left it defined though still a sizeable potential reach, though the amount of budget put behind the video then determines what number of this potential reach the video actually goes out to. Choosing the tags and associated interests defines the parameters of the social media users that the post reaches on facebook.
Similarly, with instagram, choosing the right hashtags allows avenues into a more specific audience, though you do not have quite as much control over this as you do with facebook. |
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Setting the budget on facebook allows you to see how far the reach will go, this allowed me to define exactly how much seemed feasible to spend prior to release, I decided to run each of the posts for 7 days, so that there would be an overlap with the video and the song actually coming out, again through past experiences, it seems that videos get much more engagement than just simple posts or photos, so if the video was still gaining traction, it would link the listener back to the song which will have already been released and listened to.
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After a few days of processing through EmuBands, I was able to claim my artist profile on spotify and start the process of editing and uploading photos to make it look a bit more professional. These can be updated in the future to suit further releases - due to the fact that Promise is a solo acoustic track, I decided to stick with promo photos featuring me on my own and my acoustic, my next single will feature more instruments so I may update these to suit. I also created simple album artwork which was sent to EmuBands along with the track. iTunes and apple music artists profiles are updated through the distributor on request.
Using the set up page I was also able to verify myself and get the little blue tick on the profile which makes it look much more professional. |
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Teaser Video Release
Within the first few hours, the video seemed to create quite a strong response within my followers, with a good portion of very positive feedback coming in fairly quickly. Another aspect of instagram which is very useful is the "story" feature, particularly the ability to tag a location, which then shares this with anyone in the area who may watch that locations "story". For example, if I tag Edinburgh as a location, you will see that there will be people who see your post through the "Edinburgh Story" and also as far as "Scotland Story". This feature is also a way of reaching people who may miss your video on their feed if they follow a lot of people, they are more likely to see the story if they are clicking through other peoples posts within this feature, which will then lead them to your feed and the actual post itself.
Single Release Day
On the release day of the single, I put out a couple of new posts as planned as well as sharing the spotify link on my instagram story and placing the link within my bio section on insagram to allow followers a direct link to the track on spotify. This again all seemed to run smoothy aside from the fact that my track seemed to link to another "Steve Morrison" artist page within itunes, though on getting in touch with my artist manager at Emu Bands, this is a relatively easy fix and should be fixed within a few days. This tends to happen if by chance there is another artist under the same name. Investigating the other profile, it looks like he has been inactive for a few years and as such, should not cause too much friction.
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The First 24 Hours after release - did the campaign work?
Looking at the analytics through Spotify, I can see that the track has reached much further than I expected and has gained around 100 plays within the first 24 hours or so. The teaser video has reached almost 6k views with just under 10k reach and the spotify link on facebook has reached over 1k within the first 24 hours. Looking at the cities, where the track has been streamed, I did not expect this to be quite as far reaching within the first 24 hours. The gender split is almost half and half, and as expected due to my 'market' as mentioned earlier, the age group of listeners is mainly around the same age as me with most of my followers being peers who are all of a similar age bracket. It is interesting to see that the track has also been playlisted on 3 seperate playlists, though I may not find out who has playlisted the song due to the fact that spotify will only show you these playlists if each reaches 25 separate listeners.
Track Release Leading to More Work Early On
Within a very short space of time after the video release, I saw that there had been responses from a few booking agents and bars where I play using it as promo for gigs that I play regularly, as well as receiving contact from two new booking agents who have since added me to their roster of artists, an approach from someone who would like to manage me as an artist and also other artists responding by posting and sharing about the release on their own social media to share it further.
Critical Evaluation
On evaluation, I feel that the release of this material has gone fairly well as I have seen a growth in the responses on my social media pages and have had very strong, positive feedback and response to the actual track itself. It seems that putting the track out has benefited my social media following in general as well as generating interest for the track as a stand alone output.
Although I have been involved in releasing a wealth of material in the past, I have never really gone through the nitty gritty of the process on my own. Getting everything right without really having a ‘test’ release was quite time consuming and possibly could be considered as a bit of a gamble, though it seemed to pay off due to the fact that I was constantly trailing and taking notes of errors to do with the mix of the track and how the process works with releasing through distributors, setting up spotify/iTunes releases as an artist, as well as speaking to my band mates who have dealt with this process in the past to try and get it all right first time. While all the time worrying whether the song was even of any standard to release.
Due to the fact that I have written, recorded, mixed, mastered, promoted and released the track on my own from start to finish, I have had each part of this to really evaluate along the way - this was definitely a tough process as I feel that I am by far my harshest critic. Deciding that the track is ‘finished’ and ready to go was possibly the hardest decision to make throughout the entire process. It definitely feels that within a social media context, if something isn't perfect on the first attempt, it’s very hard to then re-gain the attention of any followers should you release anything which may be sub-par - therefore the whole process in way ties in, if the product isn't ready to go in the first place, in my opinion no amount of social media campaigning would make any difference.
With regard to the actual campaign itself, I feel that making the time between the teaser video release and the actual release of the track quite short actually worked quite well. The reason being that I believe that there seems to be a fairly short length of time that material you post is of any interest to the general users on social media. Everything is available instantly, meaning that the attention of users moves on very quickly. In this sense, I was aware that I wouldn’t have any fans desperately hanging on for my release - for example, Eminem could tease at a release with a months notice and it would drive people into a frenzy, I feel that if I was to tease at a release with that much notice, it would lose traction very quickly and possibly end up being detrimental, whereas almost taking people my surprise seemed to work. Having a fairly good social following for my session playing and gigging work, it worked to almost surprise the followers with my own release coming in two days, giving the video enough time to reach as far as it could while still being quick enough that users would have it fairly fresh in their mind.
Evaluating the two separate boosted posts, I feel that the teaser video was the most beneficial, though I may have made the audience too broad. In hindsight, I should have made the audience very focussed, possibly even just within scotland rather than the UK to possibly create a bit more of a local buzz about it, though if I had done this I’m not sure if the track would have been as far reaching within it’s first few days as it has been listened to in the US, Portugal and all over the UK.
The second post I feel is the one I have learned the most from, Facebook seems to block the growth of photo posts which it believes have too much ‘text’ in them. On investigation, I believe that Facebook sees the single artwork as too much text and therefore possibly as partially as spam, or that it would not be as aesthetically pleasing as a video or photo post. So in regard to a future release, I believe that I will possibly have to re-think the artwork to make sure Facebook doesn't block the post from reaching as many users. I will look to set up the post in a slightly different way, potentially with either a video or a photo to aid the post with a condensed link to the track on spotify or embedded play which will still allow users to find the content easily.
The most beneficial part of the campaign definitely proved to be the instagram ‘story’ feature. It seems to have a very broad reach for such a simple tool, particularly with the location linking and option for user engagement tools such as polls and hashtag feature. I feel that it was this posting with the spotify link in my instagram biography that linked most of the listeners to the track on spotify, whereas possibly the Facebook post may not have worked in any way as well, and potentially a bit of a waste of money aside from the numbers it produced. Though the video has as many plays, this hasn’t really translated onto the spotify plays.
For future releases, I will definitely keep the short time scale teaser in mind, I will also now not have the same issue with the releases linking to another artists page on iTunes or Spotify as this should all be up and running by that point. Overall I feel that the release was a success, even with a few little hiccups, I do believe that really defining the audience on Facebook posts should have much more beneficial effect on how the post then attributes the release on the music platforms and also knowing how Facebook reacts to simple text artwork, I can now work around this in the future to be able to push the embedded players with the artwork further and not be limited due to the algorithms on Facebook.
Although I have been involved in releasing a wealth of material in the past, I have never really gone through the nitty gritty of the process on my own. Getting everything right without really having a ‘test’ release was quite time consuming and possibly could be considered as a bit of a gamble, though it seemed to pay off due to the fact that I was constantly trailing and taking notes of errors to do with the mix of the track and how the process works with releasing through distributors, setting up spotify/iTunes releases as an artist, as well as speaking to my band mates who have dealt with this process in the past to try and get it all right first time. While all the time worrying whether the song was even of any standard to release.
Due to the fact that I have written, recorded, mixed, mastered, promoted and released the track on my own from start to finish, I have had each part of this to really evaluate along the way - this was definitely a tough process as I feel that I am by far my harshest critic. Deciding that the track is ‘finished’ and ready to go was possibly the hardest decision to make throughout the entire process. It definitely feels that within a social media context, if something isn't perfect on the first attempt, it’s very hard to then re-gain the attention of any followers should you release anything which may be sub-par - therefore the whole process in way ties in, if the product isn't ready to go in the first place, in my opinion no amount of social media campaigning would make any difference.
With regard to the actual campaign itself, I feel that making the time between the teaser video release and the actual release of the track quite short actually worked quite well. The reason being that I believe that there seems to be a fairly short length of time that material you post is of any interest to the general users on social media. Everything is available instantly, meaning that the attention of users moves on very quickly. In this sense, I was aware that I wouldn’t have any fans desperately hanging on for my release - for example, Eminem could tease at a release with a months notice and it would drive people into a frenzy, I feel that if I was to tease at a release with that much notice, it would lose traction very quickly and possibly end up being detrimental, whereas almost taking people my surprise seemed to work. Having a fairly good social following for my session playing and gigging work, it worked to almost surprise the followers with my own release coming in two days, giving the video enough time to reach as far as it could while still being quick enough that users would have it fairly fresh in their mind.
Evaluating the two separate boosted posts, I feel that the teaser video was the most beneficial, though I may have made the audience too broad. In hindsight, I should have made the audience very focussed, possibly even just within scotland rather than the UK to possibly create a bit more of a local buzz about it, though if I had done this I’m not sure if the track would have been as far reaching within it’s first few days as it has been listened to in the US, Portugal and all over the UK.
The second post I feel is the one I have learned the most from, Facebook seems to block the growth of photo posts which it believes have too much ‘text’ in them. On investigation, I believe that Facebook sees the single artwork as too much text and therefore possibly as partially as spam, or that it would not be as aesthetically pleasing as a video or photo post. So in regard to a future release, I believe that I will possibly have to re-think the artwork to make sure Facebook doesn't block the post from reaching as many users. I will look to set up the post in a slightly different way, potentially with either a video or a photo to aid the post with a condensed link to the track on spotify or embedded play which will still allow users to find the content easily.
The most beneficial part of the campaign definitely proved to be the instagram ‘story’ feature. It seems to have a very broad reach for such a simple tool, particularly with the location linking and option for user engagement tools such as polls and hashtag feature. I feel that it was this posting with the spotify link in my instagram biography that linked most of the listeners to the track on spotify, whereas possibly the Facebook post may not have worked in any way as well, and potentially a bit of a waste of money aside from the numbers it produced. Though the video has as many plays, this hasn’t really translated onto the spotify plays.
For future releases, I will definitely keep the short time scale teaser in mind, I will also now not have the same issue with the releases linking to another artists page on iTunes or Spotify as this should all be up and running by that point. Overall I feel that the release was a success, even with a few little hiccups, I do believe that really defining the audience on Facebook posts should have much more beneficial effect on how the post then attributes the release on the music platforms and also knowing how Facebook reacts to simple text artwork, I can now work around this in the future to be able to push the embedded players with the artwork further and not be limited due to the algorithms on Facebook.
