Should You Release Albums or Singles?

[@AndrewSouthworth]

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[@jake.macadam]

For me, I have found that the best strategy is just being Taylor Swift

[@AndrewSouthworth]

I highly recommend this strategy.

[@officialWWM]

Or at the very least, the subject of one of her songs 😂😂

[@904LWorldClassSound]

Lmaoooo

[@AlanShoesmith]

For me, I have found ongoing singles leading up to an eventual album makes the most sense.

[@AndrewSouthworth]

That's exactly what I do and would recommend for most people too. Basically for a 12 song album, have 9 or so of the songs be released as singles. It allows you to crank out singles all the time, but still make your album have something new. Although some people will put out a 12 song album where 11 of the songs have been released already, and thats cool too.

[@FireF1y644]

yes, but won't it clutter up your portfolio? It's not looking clean

[@AndrewSouthworth]

Very few people look at your discography, so I don't personally care if its cluttered. You could clean it up later and pull the singles down, but I don't and most major artists i've seen do waterfall releases don't either. The 'top songs' section won't show the duplicates because they're linked by the ISRC. Generally people play your most popular, your most recent, or a specific album - they aren't combing through the discography page. Any potential negative impact you have from having a messy discography page is offset orders of magnitude by being able to release more music and link releases together in strategic ways.

[@AlanShoesmith]

My plan for the last few years has generally been 11 singles and then when I get to the 12th one I compile them into an album. At the same time I do aim for a collection that has a unified idea and theme. When it all comes together I sequence the music in a way that tells a story. And, of course, I’ll always back up an album release with ads.

[@LarsEspen]

​@@AndrewSouthworth Personally I would like most my songs in an album to be new so it's more fresh, but there is also the time factor and that might come back to bite me, i guess I'll try something like this for my first album release, whenever that is lom

[@OjanMusic]

When you’re independent, it’s difficult to produce just one track on a high level that can compete with industry level music.. let alone an album.. Better focus on singles!

[@Cynical_Finch]

the advice in this video is close to what I've been saying for a while now: Spotify is a radio station masquerading as a record store. As such, Indie artists who use spotify like it's their record store are severely handicapping themselves in terms of economic growth.

[@free_xero]

As an independent artist, I have found that quantity is just as important as quality. You need to put out as many songs as possible/as consistently as possible to increase not only chance of hitting algorithm but chances of your music being played. A playlist of 1,000 songs with 1 of your songs in it will have a lesser chance of your music being played than that same playlist with 50 of your songs in it. Realistically it comes down to consistent uploading once or twice a month vs putting it all out there together. I will say, with a fan mindset. Albums attract me a lot more than single releases do since there is more content to be had. I want to say that if you can realistically make a song every 1-3 weeks on average, should make an album every year. I haven't even been making music for a year yet but I am about to come out with my first album with 19 confirmed songs (hopefully raise it to 25) by march. Regardless, I feel if you are making good music. Your only way is up as long as you stay active with promoting it online, talking to possible fan base, and keeping up with releases. More music you have out, more songs that are saved and more chances of plays.

[@sujitmone3436]

I think singles with consistency are the best way. As it keeps the audience hooked.

[@LuxFlowz]

Great content as always bro I agree dropping singles into an album is definitely the best way to go. Another benefit of piecing together an album is you can get more out of ads and Spotify showcase campaigns by sending people to a 10+ track album instead of just one single.

[@anythingspossiblemusic]

I read recently that spotify curators like to see a progress of work ie an album when you pitch to them, Not sure if that is true but I've actaully got on an editorial playlist via a song from an album so sort of makes sense. All my pitches as singles never got on an editorial playlist.

[@iseesatanfalllikelightning]

The bandcamp album strategy is what Ive been doing, it has been working pretty well.

[@AndrewSouthworth]

My experience is that bandcamp is very genre dependent. Certain genres seem to thrive on there, while in other's most of the fanbase has never even heard of bandcamp.

[@iseesatanfalllikelightning]

@@AndrewSouthworth definitely, your single strategy for streaming has worked wonders, combining both has gotten me ahead faster than a lot of other similiar projects in my position, thanks for all the advice.

[@elephantprog]

10:24 Hey that's me! But seriously I'm doing exactly what you said. I just released a new single and have 3 more planned before dropping my album!

[@RelicLabzEntertainment]

Joyner released his songs of his album one after another untill the album was eventually half way out. Then the final release 2 Years later was the final album and it was honestly a decent roll out that got him talked about all over

[@SouhailEntertainment]

Introduction - 00:00 The Case for Singles - 00:12 The Case for Albums - 02:38 What I Do Not Recommend - 04:56 What I Recommend (Strategy) - 06:29 Alternative Approach for Artistic Vision - 09:05 Addressing the Elephant in the Room - 10:13 Conclusion and Call to Action - 12:02

[@luiszapiola355]

Great video Andrew. In my opinion Albums or EPs.( with a few singles first) -You can make physical with an album and actually make some money. -More streams, people might stream from the first song to the last - You have freedom to write experimental songs and create a cohesive concept piece of art -You can create your own sound with an album - An album is a step forward in a music career, looks more professional. Its like a new chapter. - You can make an album release party, and also pitch it better than singles - You can perform the album when touring/playing shows I think you should release 5 or 6 singles first though. Im almost done with my album, cant wait to release it 🥳🎵

[@florentintise]

Question for you: when one starts releasing the first 7-8 singles from an album, and then they release the entire album later, what happens to the singles they released earlier? Do they stay as singles, and are also part of the album? Thanks for the video.

[@Evenstar-musicstudios]

I would like to know the answer to this as well!

[@RelicLabzEntertainment]

7:10 exactly

[@hiderpnw]

My next album I'm going to waterfall release every song from the album every 3 weeks until it's all out with the last track.. Going to keep the hype going and content extremely consistent while giving my time to work on the next album in the meantime. If I can keep this up, the steady flow of music and content could do miracles. Excited for 2024. I'm really trying to go hard this year, no more slacking. (Also that idea to release physical media as an early access is genius. Definitely adding this to my to do list!)

[@EdRodMusicEnt]

What has worked for me until this day is releasing 1 song every 3 months and your 4th release should be your album. Make sure that those 3 songs are power songs to leave your audience hungry to want to listen to more of the good quality material you're putting out. A lot of songs may take time over others to develope. Thats why is always good to give space for your song to create a buzz and develope for the next single off that first song you dropped.

[@yasumu3960]

Hey Andrew, I‘ve never found out if you should use different pixels for different genres. No one talked about that yet! Maybe an idea for a video :) ? Thanks for all the ads advices!

[@DannyHauger]

Appreciate the top 8 and the content that you provide with the conversations about independent music production. But nothing that I seem to do is working. So I try different things every year. This year I finally decided to ignore the marketing side and just focus on what I want to do as a song writer So I recorded an album at Abbey road studios in London. And whatever happens from a lister perspective will happen

[@AndrewSouthworth]

Unfortunately 99% of the time, having amazing music alone won't grow your audience. With 100k+ songs being uploaded per day it's impossible for someone to stumble across it unless you market it in some way. Meaning, all that time and money invested into creating the song is effectively wasted (from a business perspective, it might be great from an artistic perspective). I've met so many artists with amazing music that have effectively zero fans. Stuff i'd consider better than most commercially successful music. Amazing talent, amazing songs and amazing production. They just never spent the time and/or money to promote it. If you want to ignore the marketing side I would team up with an indie label. Many labels offer shorter term deals, even song by song deals, for a 50% cut of revenue. It's hard to find good ones, but this would be your best bet in my opinion outside of hiring a marketing person to help. Nothing wrong with making music and recording it at amazing studios for fun. But if you want fan growth some form of marketing is required. Even doing something small like documenting your songwriting and recording, and performing on social media would be miles better than doing nothing at all. If you're recording at Abbey Road Studios, you could likely turn that into hundreds of social media posts just by setting up cameras that film everything while you're there.

[@Ashishsinhaofficial]

Watching from Kathmandu Nepal. Bit of a challenge for non-US artists such as us, trying to scour through promotion strategies, etc. I will go for singles and consider bandcamp for the album. Thank you for the video.

[@AndrewSouthworth]

Yeah paid marketing methods are also very tough if you're from your part of the world. Due to the differences in cost of living, all the US priced marketing options often price you guys out. Hope the videos help!

[@Ashishsinhaofficial]

@@AndrewSouthworth apparently tunecore has a physical presence in neighboring India. Will try approach them and see how that goes. Thanks again.

[@Witherfall]

This is about us. 🍷

[@AndrewSouthworth]

haha. it looks like you guys are using waterfall releases which is cool! A lot of progressive genre artists really cling to the album model. Here's a new thing i'm trying... I was writing a song for alt metal band, and it ended up being a 10 minute track. So what we're doing is splitting it into a 5 song EP. - Song 1 - Intro - Song 2 - Full Song - Song 3 - Interlude - Song 4 - Full Song - Song 5 - All four songs combined We're likely going to release each of the full songs as singles, then drop the full 5 song EP. Then when we release an album, the EP will be included on that as well. No idea how it will perform. But the goal is it allows for more streams per person, the tracks should perform better in playlists because they aren't as long and don't have long intros. However, we're putting all 4 songs together for the final song, for people that want to experience the song in 1 piece. Or add the entire thing to their own playlists more easily. Won't work for every long song, but in our case it naturally cut into four separate sections.

[@Witherfall]

Totally 💯 lol

[@officialWWM]

How do you feel about releasing an album and then going back and releasing all the songs off the album as singles? Every time someone discovers one of your singles, it drives them back to your album. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@jayssandri]

Ive been releasing a song every 6 weeks for the last year and a half or so. I released my second EP a couple of days ago using the singles that i released. I am planning on releasing one more EP in the fall and then an album Early in 2025 using the songs that performed the best as well as new songs. What do you think of that idea? 🙏 Thank you sir!

[@3saintsmusic]

Loving this channel! Slightly unrelated to this specific video, is there any way to know how many people are saving a song through tik tok? I've been diligently posting on tik tok for months now and i would love to know if its having any effect at all. I have the tik tok for artists thing, but i can't find any way to see data related to song saves from the platform. Anyone have any insights?

[@kyoshiroryuken]

This is good information. I just release singles as i still try to get my music good enough. But might change for future releases. Does a Album release with already released singles count as re-release for the category in Distrokid if let's say 5 already released + 2 unreleased?

[@AuntieG]

Great tips! Thank you!

[@Plagger]

Hey Andrew, do u think Nov/Dec are bad months to release for small artists too? I mean fb ads are doing well for me atm, CPConv=$0.19, PI 25, but weirdly enough no love from RR. Do u think it could possibly be that ppl may not listen to their RR & DW during Xmas? Cheers

[@frankiebq5604]

Im thinking about dropping a 25 minutes album first month, promote it and then start releasing singles for the second one for the following 5 months and then releasing the second one. Is that a good balance? I think it brings the advantage of having a catalog right from the beginning but without losing the momentum of singles

[@12sMadNatz]

I have only just started whats the best way to build a fan base on a small budget

[@warcued2044]

Hi Andrew! I wanted to know what you think abt life time pre saves :) I even emailed feature fm and they said they were working on adding that, but I see companies like soundnoise adding that, you think that could be a future topic? :D

[@AndrewSouthworth]

I've actually been talking with Giovanni from Smart Noise a bit recently, and his platform offers this. I'll be testing it out a bit and making a video on it in the near future. Currently I think its a cool idea, especially where Smart Noise sends out an email reminding people about pre-saves. However i'd probably only recommend running ads on it if the artist is going to use the emails they collect from the pre-saves, since that's often the biggest value you get from a pre-save campaign. Promoting pre-saves for free on social media is always cool, but running ads on it is just so expensive. The lifetime aspect makes it MUCH better. However not utilizing the emails collected is a massive waste.

[@warcued2044]

@@AndrewSouthworth tysm for your insight :) rn im trying feature fm because of the deeplink that lets you pre save without logging into spotify, but I'd like to try smart noise too later on.

[@FatTonyTheSkipper]

Let's say I have 6 tracks I want to release, via DistroKid, Waterfall stratedgy. Can I upload 1 single then 2 singles (including first) then 3 singles (inicluding first two) and so on But each time I stack up a new upload lets say if its every month, I delete the old one, so the first single dissapears as a standalone but its now paired with the duo release, then the duo release dissapears but it appears in the triple release, and so on? Just so I don't have them all uploaded many times, keep a cleaner aesthetic of just one release

[@AndrewSouthworth]

Yeah you can pull the old versions if you want. I never do partially because I don't care about the aesthetics since nobody checks the discography page anyways, and i'm always worried if it will impact the playlists those songs are on.

[@willemxeno]

Question: If I reléase singles beforehand and then the album, do I link the singles to the album using their ISRC code? Or should it be completely independently uploaded?? And do I take the old singles off or how? Thanks!!

[@MilkInTheBowl]

Hey Andrew, I’ve got an abundance of material I’m finalising now (2 EPs that lead up to an LP) and a bunch content / marketing strategies I’ve developed that covers the entire of 2024. Do you do one on one sessions? I’d love to talk you through it all, show you examples and see if my approach is as tight and well thought out as I think it is. Thanks for the great content, it’s invaluable.

[@edoardocertelli2212]

I have a question: I saw a few artist reach noticeable success with past releases, giving them new life with a dedicated strategy on Tik Tok for example. If let's say I have an album of 12 tracks, release 4-5 as a single and then the whole album, but then dedicate one month of promotion for every song would that be bad? As a fan of music and as someone who looks regularly for new music, I can't say that I really see a difference. If I find something interesting, I'm not going to look up when it was released but I could probably be missing something. What do you think about it? P.S. : thanks for the amazing work, you are really a gem I wish I had discovered before!

[@Fullyniko]

I released a single and got 79M streams here on yt. Since then I am only releasing singles lol

[@roba1562]

Very interesting content, thanks!

[@coreydigiovanni3924]

is there a way to have it both ways? like drop full album but then publish individual songs after the drop with promo behind them as singles? know it's backwards but in sort of a limited time project so we'd rather have our stuff as easily accessible off the bat but still leave the option to promote individual songs w stuff like meta ads after dropping. in that unique case of knowing our group has an expiration date and not in it for the long haul assuming it's fine to just drop and tinker w ads but please tell me if im being stupid lol

[@AndrewSouthworth]

Unfortunately if you release the album first Spotify won’t consider the singles released afterwards as new, meaning you can’t pitch them and they aren’t eligible for release radar. The singles have to be released first. For most people the waterfall release strategy is the best happy medium.

[@StbrnSal]

I think there is a way. You have to create the if that’s the case. Drop the full body then promote each song as a single after so ppl keep coming back to it

[@Revontuletband]

Hey, Andrew! What are your thoughts on releasing an album in early November? We're planning to release 5-6 singles before the album (4 other songs from it were already released as an EP a couple of years ago). I want to records and mix the whole thing before we begin releasing the singles, and, realistically, it won't be finished before March or April. And depending on all the moving parts during production, it may very well turn out that the time to drop the album will be right about November. Would you release and album at that time, or release one less single (or even push the album to the next year, which I really don't want to do)? I'm also thinking about releasing a couple of singles after the album (with videos + different versions of the songs) to keep more interest in the release.

[@raveisalltherage]

If you have a 2-4k budget and you’re trying to release a waterfall strategy album how quickly would you release each updated version of the ep?

[@Kaiifan2910]

How do you release the same songs twice, If you already released most of the songs as singles?

[@AndrewSouthworth]

If you re-use the same ISRC, audio file and track name you can rerelease the same song in as many releases as you want. Such as releasing a single on an album, or doing a waterfall release strategy with multiple EPs.

[@Kaiifan2910]

Thanks for the gems🙂 I will try this.

[@Kaiifan2910]

Could you do a video on waterfall release strategy if you haven't already? Thanks a bunch!

[@lisapaschallmusic]

Hi Andrew, Thanks for all the great info. I want to try a waterfall approach for my first album release. But i have a question. You said that you released "over" as a single titled: "over" then released a 2nd single title: "over" (this one with two versions of the song) You said the result was that the second release absorbed the first single "over" the result removing that from your discography. So i was wondering could you release a single with your album title and the keep adding songs with that same album title until you have the whole record released. Would this work? it seems like it would solve the clutter problem. Would this have a negatively effect on tik tok, Instagram, Facebook releases? Look forward to your thoughts. Thanks

[@RelicLabzEntertainment]

Yeah just release your album as singles that way you can not hold you creativity captive.

[@orendjohnsonjr]

Hey is there anyway I can contact you to talk about my Facebook ads issues.

[@Mafhuwa]

Eps still works

[@tycoon10222]

Looks like I made the biggest mistake by releasing my whole album last month with zero following lmao

[@Themistertaco]

Release an album every month then

[@AndrewSouthworth]

Even if you could release a high quality album every month, this would likely just be wasted effort. People wouldn't be able to keep up with that much music coming out every month.

[@BeastsOfDread]

i boost my music throw my tiktok channel. good way to get streams:P

[@garethde-witt6433]

It gets boring doing singles and streaming is useless and pays sweetfa

[@JevonMusicGroup]

I know you're the Spotify Guy... but releasing physical albums/EPs is an option too.

[@AndrewSouthworth]

I release my music on physical CD's as well, sold 800 CD's last year actually! That's why I brought up the strategy in this video for trickling out singles on streaming sites, but making your physical album be available from day 1 to incentivize physical sales which pay much better. The only reason I make more content about Spotify than other platforms is thats the content people want the most of. I did a 3 part video series on physical merch and music, shipping, production and funnels etc - the interest was not there. Same for content i've done on FB ads for selling tickets to shows / tours.

[@ampstudios]

the downside of having physical copies, the younger generation wouldn't know what a cd player is or what a record player is unfortunately.

[@AndrewSouthworth]

While most people won't buy physical music anymore, there are something like 40 million CD's and 40 million Vinyls sold every year. In a lot of cases people aren't even playing the physical music, but collecting it or looking at the artwork. But many young people have gotten into the experience of actually playing vinyl. Definitely a niche. However for many things in life, the largest income opportunities are hidden in the niches.

[@JevonMusicGroup]

@@ampstudios I have a friend who does hip hop and makes the majority of his money with vinyl.

[@JevonMusicGroup]

@@AndrewSouthworth You're absolutely right. I posted my original comment while I was still watching the video... and before I got to the part where you mentioned CDs and vinyl. I love your videos by the way... very helpful... not just abstract ideas. I'm very interested in seeing that 3 part series on selling merch... gonna look for it now.

[@22rapper]

how should i apply this with no ad campaign i dont work disabled so how can apply this with free marketing placements unless someone will to get paid by royalties ? @andrewsouthworth