Guide To Planning Your Next Release: Jay Gilbert shares a free update

Releasing music is easy; some would say it’s too easy. But doing it right takes planning. Fortunately, industry veteran and master music marketer Jay Gilbert has created – and just updated with the latest tools and strategies – a step-by-step Release Planner.

Regular Hypebot readers know Jay as the cohost of the Your Morning Coffee and Music Biz Weekly podcasts, but he’s so much more, including a Music Industry Consultant and the Co-founder and head of Digital Strategy and Analytics at Label Logic.

I’ll let Jay take it from here…

“A few years ago I was at a label meeting where the Product Manager unveiled a marketing plan for an upcoming album release. It was beautiful, thorough and innovative. It was also largely theater. After that team meeting, it was never referred to again. Not once.”

“So I gathered up as many marketing plans as I could get my hands on from major labels, Indies and even a few DIY friends. I found that, regardless of genre or career level, they were all surprisingly similar. All of them had the required things like Release Cadence, Goals, Narrative, Creative, PR, Tour etc. Some were a bit more cutting edge. But new tools, tactics and platforms have changed since you began reading this paragraph.”

“I decided to break down the elements of those Marketing Plans into a high level document I simply call a “Release Planner.” It looks like a form, begging to be filled out, but it’s not. It’s simply a guide for team meetings and calls, so the conversation takes place, everyone is clear on roles & responsibilities and (literally) on the same page.”

“Feel free to take from it, add to it, and make it your own.”

View and download a PDF of Jay Gilbert’s updated Release Planner here.

Bruce Houghton