How To Release an Independent Album (for Pro Music Guide)

Once your music has been mastered, it’s always tempting to immediately release it into the world so that it can be heard.  But having an album release strategy can monumentally increase the amount of people who actually end up listening to your music.  There are so many options for releasing music,  depending on your budget and goals, and there is no one size fits all method.  This guide will walk you through some of the key steps and decisions you’ll have to make in releasing your music. 

By Rachel Baiman

Plan far in Advance

Many people releasing a record for the first time don’t realize how much lead time you need to give between finishing the music and putting it out in the world.  Here are some guidelines for how much time you might need to allow for each element:

• Booking a publicist 4-6 months in advance of release date

• Physical copies, pressed and in hand: up to 12 weeks before release date to send out advance copies

• Creating artwork: 4 weeks from start to finish

• Photography edits: Up to 2 weeks. 

• Vinyl Production: 4-6 months or more if you make changes to the master recording and depending on the pressing plant 

All of these things will vary, but the main point is that you shouldn’t plan to release your music too soon after it’s finished.  Rushing your release date will be stressful and will limit your opportunities for the best release. 

Create a Story around your album and album title.  

In order to get the most out of the next potential decisions; publicity, artwork, photos and design, you need to have a cohesive and interesting story about yourself and the music that you are releasing.  This will help people connect with your music, generate blog, magazine, and news stories, and drive your social media campaigns.  If you don’t feel super comfortable with writing about your own music, you can hire a bio writer to help craft the messaging around the album.  If you are working with a publicist, they will probably be able to direct you to someone good for this job or they can work with you on writing it.  

The longform biography that you use on your website should reflect your most recent album, and tell the story of your life in regards to that particular musical project.  So even if you already have a general biography, it’s a good idea to give it a revamp when you release a new recording.  

Consider Publicity

Publicity is a vital part of a record release.  If nobody knows that you have a new album out, they won’t know that they should listen to it or purchase it.  Getting positive reviews of your music can help you take big career steps, gather new team members or get hired for better gigs.  That being said, hiring publicity can be a cost-prohibitive expense.  For a full album release you generally want about 3-4 months of publicity, and hiring a firm can cost between $1,000-$10,000 for every month! This is when you really want to ask yourself what your goals are for the project, and how much you are able to spend. There are no guarantees with publicity, so even if you spend a ton of money, it doesn’t mean that you will get featured in NPR or The Rolling Stone.  However, it’s very hard to achieve these things without hiring a publicist, so it can be a ticket into those exclusive media sites. 

There are a few different realms of publicity, so before you hire a PR firm, make sure you’re clear on which kinds of PR they are doing.  For example, some firms will do digital PR such as social media and youtube advertising, some will just do print and online versions of print media, like newspapers and physical and online magazines and some will do radio.  Some firms will do all of the above. 

If you simply have no money for publicity at all, or feel that it’s not a good use of your money, you can still do your own publicity for your project:  

• Reach out to friends personally and invite them to your album release show, or send out free copies to anybody who you think might be well connected in the music world.  

• You can use your own social media outlets to let everyone know about your release.  You can use targeted advertising on your social media pages to get your music in front of people who you think might like it.  For example, you can target your advertising towards those people who like the local indie music festival, or who are fans of some of your favorite bands.  Social media advertising is a relatively cheap way of doing PR, in comparison to hiring a publicist. 

• You can send your album to media outlets yourself, via physical copies or emails.  

• You can look for blogs, radio shows or podcasts that might be interested in your music genre and drop them a line! Although publicists might have better relationships with these media outlets, they are simply doing the same thing, sending emails and hoping for the best!

Decide on your Digital Distribution Partner  

These days, most musicians want to have their music available for download or streaming on digital music platforms such as iTunes, Tidal, Spotify, YouTube and AppleMusic.  You can do this by uploading your album assets to a digital distribution site such as CD Baby or Tunecore.  These sites do the work of sending your music to all digital platforms for a small, flat rate fee. 

Alternatively, you can work with a digital distribution company, who will promote your music on these platforms in exchange for a percentage of your earnings.  Companies such as Tone Tree Music, or AntiFragile Music will try to get your songs onto Spotify playlists or apple music collections.  If you feel that your songs may have a good chance of earning a place on a playlist, this can be a lucrative choice, as it’s hard to get on these types of editorial playlists without a company pitching your work.  The nice thing about working with a digital distribution company is that it doesn’t require an upfront investment the way that publicity does, so it’s not a high risk choice. 

Commission great Artwork and Design 

Finding the right visual artist and designer for your music can be one of the most enjoyable parts of the release process.  It’s an opportunity to create a visual manifestation of your musical message, and it really makes the record feel like something you could hold in your hands, versus flies flying around the internet.  You want the artwork to reflect the finished sound of your project, which can evolve greatly through the recording process, so don’t start the process too early, or you may end up with imagery that feels irrelevant.  The Artwork and design can make use of the aforementioned photography, or not, it totally depends on what you want to say with your album cover. 

Your artwork needs will vary depending on the formats you plan to release your music in, so make sure you communicate with your designer about this when contracting the job. Creating a cover for a digital release is a very different job in size and scope than designing the entire layout for a vinyl album, and the cost will vary substantially.  Make sure the artwork will stand the test of time, and that it’s something you will be proud to look at for years to come.  It’s going to be a long term part of your brand and the way that people visualize your music and the experience of listening to it.

If you are creating anything more than a digital album cover, your design should include credits for everyone involved in the making of the album, photography, artwork and design.  Don’t forget to credit all the musicians, songwriters, and engineers on the record, and check for the correct spelling of names. 

Sometimes people want to create their own artwork.  If you are a visual artist and have created professional artwork before, this can be a great idea.  But it’s not the time to try your hand at designing for the first time.  There will be resolution, text visibility, and layout issues which should be tackled by an experienced designer for a truly professional looking product. 

Get professional Photos  

No matter how you end up releasing your music, you need professional photos of yourself or your band.  Anyone who is part of the artist title should be included in the photos.  So if you’re calling your album Daisies by Joe Johnson, then you only need photos of Joe.  But if it’s Daisies by Joe Johnson and the Johnsonette Crew, then you should have photos of the entire “Crew”.   Photos should clearly show your face, be high resolution, and reflect the mood that you want your music to create.  Make sure you have both vertical and horizontal options.

Photos will be vital to any magazine, blog, or even social media post promoting your music.  It’s a good idea to choose a handful of images for use with each record release cycle, and stick to just those photos for any album related promo.  That way you will maintain a consistent visual brand for your specific recording project. 

If you feel lost with this process, take a look at some music photography, see what draws you in, and check out who took the photos.  Music photography is generally very different from family, wedding or lifestyle photography, so it’s not the time to go to your local senior portrait studio, unless you’re going for something ironic.  You don’t want it to be too shiny and touched up, or look like your grandmother’s wall of family portraits.  It is not a bad idea, though, to hire someone to do your hair/makeup/styling if that’s an area in which you don’t feel totally comfortable. Photos are a big investment and will make a big difference to how your album is perceived.  

Planning a Tour 

Playing live shows, or live-streams is a great way to get the word out about your music.  If you can, plan to do as many performances as you can around or in the six months following your album release date. If you have friends who perform regularly, creating joint bills will help you share audiences and grow your fan base. 

Remember to register your work. 

Make sure that your original music, whether it’s instrumental or vocal, is registered with a Performing Rights Organization, or PRO. such as ASCAP, BMI or SESAC.  

There are pros and cons to the different PROs (Performing Rights Organizations), but all of them will protect your music from being used without compensation, and will ensure that you get paid when your music is played publicly.  It’s a good idea to register your work as soon as you are performing it publicly, but recording and releasing your music only makes it that much more publicly accessible.  Someone may hear your song and want to cover it, or use it for a commercial, and you want to make sure that your work is legally protected so that you get properly compensated for the use of your material. 

You can find a quick summary of the different PROs here. 

Note: If you have recorded songs or music written by someone else, you will have to take out a mechanical license, usually from the Harry Fox Agency, and pay the writers for their work based on how many physical copies you intend to create, or how many digital copies you sell. 

Enjoy!

Finishing a record is a great feeling.  When you listen back to your masters for the first time, you can think back on all of that hard work and focused time in the studio, agonizing over every small musical detail, and be proud of your final outcome!

How To Be A Feminist Musician (For No Depression Magazine)

This month, with the celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we all take some extra time to celebrate the female experience and the amazing women around us who support and inspire. The Nashville music community is full of such women, and I have been lucky to befriend many talented and generous female collaborators and colleagues who have been a constant source of support and troubleshooting over the years. It’s no secret that the music industry is incredibly male dominated, and being a woman-identifying musician comes with a unique set of challenges and experiences, made easier among friends who can understand what you may be dealing with.

In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion of female representation in music, on the radio, on festival bills, etc., and some promoters and DJs have taken it upon themselves to try to play or book at least 50 percent female or female-fronted acts (imagine that!). As women make up more than half the population, this doesn’t seem like it should be a huge stretch, but it has taken until now for this discussion to even take hold. If you’d like to see some glaring examples of this problem, you can simply peruse Instagram accounts such as @bookmorewomen and @linesupswithoutmales that show festival posters without all-male acts listed.

This is an important issue, and I truly appreciate everyone who is working on representation, but I want to take a bit of a deeper dive into the nitty-gritty of the female musician’s experience and suggest some ways that musicians, not just promoters, can be better feminists for their own community.

1. Hire sidewomen, female engineers, producers, and crew. The term “sideman” says it all! In my experience, the focus on female representation often leans heavily on female singers. For example, a female singer-songwriter booked at a festival might, and often does, show up with a band of four or five males. As a result, festivals that attempt to book at least 50% female-fronted acts often end up still having 80-90% males on stage over the course of the weekend. I think this is a problem that is seldom addressed in these conversations about representation, and musicians, this responsibility is on us!

If you’re a bandleader (female or male!) who has been vocal about the gender imbalance in the industry, and you’ve never hired female musicians, sound engineers, or crew, then you are part of the problem!

As somebody who works as both a side person and a bandleader, I know it is much harder to get work and be taken seriously as a female instrumentalist than as a vocalist. As a society, we accept that females can be great singers, despite not giving them equal airplay. Female and male singers even have their own categories in the Grammys. (Why? No idea.) But the point is that nobody really questions if women can sing. But female instrumentalists pose a direct challenge to society’s patriarchal ideas. When’s the last time you saw a female soloist slay in a male-led band? It’s a rare thing to witness, and I’d love to see that change. With growing awareness, and more female-fronted bands being booked, let’s make sure that those sidewomen are getting more work, too!

Some of the worst sexism that female musicians experience comes from condescending, predatory, and controlling producers who make women feel that they can’t accomplish anything on their own, and sound engineers who assume females can’t use their own gear. There’s an easy fix for this: Look for and support female engineers and producers. Female producers and sound engineers are even less common than female musicians, and if we, as musicians, support these amazing women, we can not only help to fix this imbalance, we can also make our experience that much more comfortable by working in a mixed-gender environment where our ideas and skills will be respected and empowered.

2. Female musicians, tackle your own gender bias. Let me preface this by saying that there are tons of male “musicians” who have no idea what they are doing, no idea how to play their instrument, be in a band, or use their gear. But there are so many fewer female instrumentalists that we are always going to be judged as representation of our entire gender.

As women, we are brought up to think asserting ourselves is the same as being full of ourselves, and that taking a solo is showing off. We aren’t taught to use gear and to get comfortable fixing things that break. We need to expect the same things of ourselves as we do our best male counterparts just to be seen as equal to our worst male counterparts.

So, learn how to be a solid instrumentalist, learn how to solo, learn how to use your gear so you can communicate effectively with a sound engineer. Don’t lean on a male colleague to do something rather than learning to do it yourself. And don’t listen to the voice in your head that tells you that you aren’t good enough or that the guys in the room know better. They only learned by doing, and you can too.

3. Female musicians, put yourself forward for jobs that you want, and ask for the money that you believe you deserve. As a bandleader, I’ve been able to witness some interesting differences between hiring men and women. Almost every man that I’ve hired for a gig has negotiated with me on money, asked for more per gig or if it could just be a bit more for the whole tour. Not a single woman that I’ve hired has done that. And you know what? When those men ask me for more, they often get more. The other interesting thing is that I’ve had numerous men put themselves forward for jobs that they wanted out of nowhere: “Hey, I’d love to play drums with you sometime,” etc. Women, who live with a constant fear of being seen as rude or arrogant, seldom say things like that. I would love to see my female colleagues asking for more and better paid jobs. The experience of being a bandleader has definitely made me more confident in this regard. You will be respected all the more for it, and you will pull all of us women up with you!

Zephaniah OHora Biography

A meticulous student of American popular culture, Zephaniah OHora’s musical path began in a high end salon in New York City. Styling hair for the New York Fashion Week and the big city elite might not be the most common route to a career in country music, but when you hear OHora discuss the subtle trends of different decades, it all seems to make sense. “I think to be a good hairdresser, to give someone a really specific look for a photoshoot or for their personally desired aesthetic, you need to really understand the era that you’re drawing from. It’s the same way if you want to make great music.” he says.

OHora’s almost encyclopedic decennary knowledge glows triumphantly throughout his new album “This Highway”, which frames his original songs right in the crossroads of a golden era in country music; the meeting of the Bakersfield and Nashville Sounds in the late 70’s, laced with subtle 80’s countrypolitan production. From the New York City subject matter of “I Do Believe I’ve Had Enough” and “High Class City Girl From The Country” to the Porter Wagoner inspired “I Can’t Let You Go (Even Though I Set You Free)”, OHora’s songwriting feels immensely personal even while presented through the smooth, crooning sound of a bygone era. Perhaps it’s a credit to his ability to imagine himself in any place or time. “I did a lot of psychedelic drugs in my 20s, and once you take that life-changing trip, everything seems surreal in a way”. Listening to the Ayahuasca inspired “Way Down in my Soul”, you can almost envision OHora floating through a late-70’s country love affair.

OHora is originally from New Hampshire, where he grew up leading the music for worship meetings as part of a new-age Christian group. “It was kind of like a cult, although I didn’t realize it at the time”, he says with a laugh. It was through his hair salon job that OHora first found the New York City country scene that has now become his home. Already an avid record collector and DJ, he befriended a salon co-worker and guitar player on “This Highway”, John Shannon. Through Shannon he met numerous musicians including Jim Campilongo, who eventually became a close collaborator and the producer for “This Highway”.

When OHora was hired through his DJ work to book music at a newly opened NYC club, he wanted to curate a music scene for the late 70’s and early 80’s country music that he loved. That club, Skinny Dennis, soon became a gathering place for some of New York’s top country musicians, such as Alex Hargreaves, Roy Williams, and Jon Graboff, who appear on OHora’s album. “This record is a really beautiful culmination of all the amazing people who are involved in that scene” he says of This Highway, “it’s not that I’m special, I’m just a product of this amazing wealth of talent and all these hardworking musicians that exist in one place here in NYC. I think the community really made this album”.

It is clear, however, that OHora is something special. At a time when “throwback” artists are a dime a dozen, he has captured a beautiful, specific, and lesser known moment in the history of country music, and brought it to life through his own voice. Back in the 80’s, country music decided it needed to try appealing to an urban demographic, and maybe it’s some kind of beautiful irony that New York’s OHora is now creating some of the best countrypolitan music around.

Izzy Heltai Biograghy

With brutal honesty towards himself and forgiveness for those around him, Izzy Heltai’s music walks the elusive line between confessional and relatable. On his debut album, “Father,” the 23-year-old singer/songwriter dives deep into his fascination with human relationships, and specifically the way that those relationships change and reorganize themselves over time, employing a raw roots rock sound reminiscent of Josh Ritter or Elliot Smith.

Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, Heltai is the child of two mathematicians and first-generation European immigrants. “My parents worked really hard in very secure jobs, and I think they always wanted us to be able to do whatever we wanted with our lives,” he says. Heltai started on classical piano, but soon became fascinated by folk singers, and picked up the guitar. Inspired by Joan Baez and Simon and Garfunkel, he started obsessing over songwriting as a teenager, and soon realized that it was “the only thing I really wanted to do with myself... You know how a lot of musicians say ‘I listen to tons of different music’?, Well, I really only like listening to sad songs” he laughs.

Heltai moved from Boston to the small town of North Adams, Massachusetts at the age of eighteen, and took up residence in his friend’s closet for one hundred dollars a month rent. “I really fell in love with the small-town lifestyle. In North Adams there is a lot of space both physically and mentally to slow down and create, and you don’t need to be working all the time to get by financially, so people have time to freelance, and be outside, to get to know one another.”

Now, at twenty- three years old, Heltai sees his own coming of age reflected in the album, which includes songs written over the past four years. “A lot of this record is about seeing memories and situations turn to grey, where black and white previously existed” says Heltai, “finding myself as an adult has largely been about how the people who have always been there for me can fit into my life in a new way”. On the title track, “Father”, he sings “It’s been a long time / since I felt like I was worth much/ more than any other/ reflected in my father’s eyes... And I could use a good touch/ and maybe even your love/ to help me figure out / what I’ve been trying to tell you for years”

On the album’s opening track “To Talk About Yourself”, Heltai, who is trans, looks back at the way society fixates on his identity as the only story that he has to tell. The song’s opening melodic riff rings out with slow-burning, subtle tension as he sings “I’ve been thinking there’s a new way that I’d like / to be living free talking explaining all the things I survived” he sings “it’s got me fucked up I don’t know where I can go from here...it doesn’t pay the bills to talk about yourself”.

“Being trans is a part of me that is worth talking about” he explains, “It’s a really cool thing that happened in my life, and informed a lot of how I see the world and how I know myself, and how I reflect on things... but as a marginalized individual, there comes a point where you feel commodified and exploited for your identity, and I’ve always had a fear, as an artist with many stories to tell, that my being trans is the only aspect of my work that people would take interest in”.

Throughout the record, Heltai braves the exploration of not only interpersonal and societal relationships, but also his own relationship to himself. On “Marching Song” Heltai recons with the ways that periods of depression have caused him to abandon those he loves. “I couldn’t tell you through the telephone / when you picked up I put it down / I don’t know why / I

couldn’t tell you through the telephone / that I’m not myself, I’m not myself” he sings. “I think as I’ve grown up I’ve been able to realize that sometimes when your self worth is so low, you don’t think you can be worth anything to someone else, but that can actually cause you to hurt people that need you” Haltai explains.

Father was recorded by Heltai’s longtime friend Andy Cass and produced by Sophie Buskin, whom Heltai met at the legendary Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas. The production is raw and full, with subtle harmonies and guitar lines weaving their way unexpectedly through the mix almost as if they were grown in the song. There is no sign of musical overthought, allowing Heltai’s emotional vocals to shine organically.

At a time when any conversation with a stranger can quickly become a sociopolitical battle, Heltai’s introspective and thought out songs are a breath of fresh air. With an overwhelming empathy for humanity, and willingness to search for personal responsibility, Heltai’s “Father”, will not leave your heart or your ears unchanged.