How to release an album, part 6: Look what I’m plannin’ edition

A key for releasing an album is organization and planning, and WordPlay T. Jay is here to show you his strategy for how to plan a release over a 22-week period.
The best way to do this, or at least T. Jay’s method, is to use a spreadsheet, with weeks in the rows section and goals in the columns section. An example of how to set this u pis in the video at the end of this article.
While this is how T. Jay does it, this may not work for you, so do it however you feel is best. The most important thing is to be organized!
T. Jay’s planning is for 22 weeks, which includes four weeks before his first of 12 singles is released, then four more weeks after. It’s key to start your planning a few weeks before anything is released, as it helps you be more prepared when you start dropping tracks.
At four weeks out, you should have everything mixed, mastered and set up with your distributor to be released when you wish. Because music nowadays is such a singles-driven market, T. Jay has chosen a strategy for his next album to release one song per week for 12 weeks, then to combine those into a playlist as a full album release in week 13.
To make this as successful as possible, he plans to start promotions a couple weeks out, so people know what’s coming. He is also gathering material and designs for merchandise at the same time.
The four weeks prior to the first single release should also be a time to shoot music videos, do promos and finish up any editing that needs to be done.
Once the releases start, T. Jay plans to stagger music video releases every three to four weeks, and for songs that he has already released.
While all this is going on, he is adding each new song and video to ad campaigns on social media, and maybe adding other promotional items like a blog or vlog to talk about what’s happened and what’s coming up.
Podcast interviews at the start and end of a release run are also a good idea. There are ways to reach out to podcasters and request interviews, and T. Jay suggests doing at least one before any releases to let people know what’s coming, then one after everything is out to talk about how it did.
T. Jay also wants to do some YouTube collaborations, which he wants to shoot before the release and put up later.
After the full album release comes the merchandise. T. Jay plans to also advertise this at an expense of at least $20 per day for about three weeks.
On Pandora, you can also do promotions of songs for 8 weeks at a time of a year-long period. That allows for 6 of the 12 songs to be promoted. T. Jay plans to start with his strongest song with the most potential.
Spotify takes care of its on promotion with the playlist creation.
You can also explore other promotional ideas like traditional media or press, and you can do Instagram promotions with each song.
For a more broken down look of how T. Jay created and uses his spreadsheet, check out the video below!