Adapting your Music Release Strategy for COVID
At this point - everyone has had to deal with the effects of COVID. Our own Josie Francis, Director of Social Media & Marketing was forced to leave a full-time job earlier this year to pursue freelancing. This pandemic has harmed almost every industry around the world. But its impact on music has created a unique situation.
Traditional routes for promoting an artist or ‘breaking’ a new artist no longer work.
Taylor Swift’s album debuted at #1 with 846,000 units sold (including that ridiculous 8 CD/8 Vinyl Bundle). Her second week sales dropped to 135,000 units sold - an 84% decrease in sales week over week. This is one of the largest drops in unit sales ever - and almost unheard of for Taylor Swift or her most critically acclaimed release to-date.
Thanks to Henry Love for the illustrations!
The occasion for listening to music has changed for most consumers. The days of hour long commutes, house parties or live DJ sets are long gone. Thus, some of these key routes to reaching a new or existing listener are gone:
Touring - one of the best ways for large artists to promote an album & one of the best ways for an up-and-coming artist to gain new fans
Playlists - these are the ‘go-to’ way a lot of people believe that artists are discovered nowadays, but in reality, these platform still tend to favor major label artists
Radio - considered archaic by many - but still how a large swath of the United States hears music the first time, with more than 71.2mm adults (18-34) listening to the radio each month
Concerts will likely be on hiatus for the foreseeable future
While this seems like all bad news, we can find positives. This might benefit independent artists - giving us an opportunity to reach fans that would otherwise inundated with major label content.
Independent artists have the benefit of working with a bottoms-up perspective of the industry. It’s almost always an independent artist that pioneers music marketing - whether it’s Nipsey Hussle’s innovative $100 mixtape approach or Playboi Carti’s endless supply of snippets, people on the ground floor are coming up with unpredictable new ways to reach fans. Our previous article touches on ways you can work with content creators to stay on the cutting edge of digital media.
Artists aren’t alone in these efforts either - Steak Worldwide is being forced to shift & adapt in the same way. With the lack of live shows, in-person studio time & being able to meet in-person, our release calendar & our ability to partner with new artists has slowed down. The last couple weeks, we have focused on growing our internal brand, with the goals of creating
Continuity - when you work with or interact with anyone who works for Steak Worldwide, you know who you’re talking to
Finding more artists to work with through our online presence - trying to expand our reach and make sure that any artists looking for the resources we offer are able to connect with us
These things seem straightforward, but they’ve been in the works for month. In order to achieve our goals, we’ve taken three really big steps in the last month.
Bringing Josie Francis onto the Steak Worldwide team as the Director of Social Media & Marketing
Launching new media platforms - we’re launching our new podcast “The Main Course” this week, we have a Discord where we can chop it up & we plan on streaming on Twitch every week
Focusing on our brand recognition - very excited that we’re going to be launching a store for merchandise in the next week or two as well
Adapting to brand new social media platforms is a powerful way to remain relevant
By combining all these tools, Steak Worldwide will be ready to adapt to the changing landscape of the music industry for the foreseeable future.
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Have you come up with any disruptive ways to adapt your music, art, etc. to the COVID situation? Let us know contact@steakworldwide.com.
