Pre vs Post Promotion: Make Sure Your Track Gets Heard
2024 is the year of teasing your track. With songs landing on short-form platforms well ahead of the actual release date, many artists are promoting their upcoming release much earlier, and neglecting “out now” promotion. Dig in with this post, and learn why your “out now” push is just as, if not more, important as teasing your track.
The Problem with Building Hype
A lot of artists tease their upcoming tracks for weeks before they’re available. They post clips and respond to the excited commenters with the upcoming release date, all with the hopes of building anticipation that will overflow into a volcano of enthusiasm on release day.
It’s not quite that easy, though. Enthusiasm doesn’t always build, sometimes it ebbs and flows. In all likelihood, that excited commenter is probably going to forget about your song until the next time it comes across their feed. Which is why, when the song does come out, you need to switch from tease mode to promote mode. If you post “out now” once or twice and then start teasing your next track, you’re leaving all of your hype on the table. The tease is the buildup to the promotional push, not the push itself.
The Pre-Save Paradox
Pre-save campaigns are undeniably powerful. Pre-saves help artists collect valuable data from their most passionate fans, boost day-1 plays, and can sometimes even be used to leverage post-release opportunities. And because it’s so powerful, many artists consider it to be their most important marketing objective.
But from a fan perspective, a pre-save is actually a lot of work. You’re asking a fan to type in their email address, connect their Spotify account, and then open your email on release day and click through to Spotify. It’s a lot to ask for when they don’t even know if they’re going to like the song.
Marketers have a concept that the number of clicks it takes for your customers (or in this case, listeners) to get to your desired objective should be kept as low as possible. This is because every step you ask a potential listener to take is a chance for them to get bored, change their mind, or decide they don’t want to go through all the trouble. For someone to go from clicking your pre-save link to actually listening to your track on release day, they need to go through a lot of steps. It’s far easier for a user to accomplish your objective when the song is actually out, and all they have to do is go from your smart link to their preferred streaming service.
Pre-saves are great for your existing fans, but you’re not going to create new fans until the song is out. For most independent artists, your focus should be on post-release.
The Bottom Line
Promoting your song or album before it releases is great, but it can’t be your main focus. The best way to get new fans, grow your audience, and get more streams is to promote your music when it’s out and easily accessible.
