How to plan your next release 2024 [Jay Gilbert]

Veteran music marketer Jay Gilbert offers an updated how-to guide for every musician, label, and music marketer on planning your next release.

by Jay Gilbert of Label Logic, Your Morning Coffee, The Music Biz Weekly Podcast, and more.

Years ago, while attending a marketing meeting at a major label, the Product Manager walked us through a beautiful PowerPoint marketing plan for an upcoming release. It was thorough and covered everything you’d expect: release cadence, team roles, goals, narrative, target audience, marketing, publicity, advertising, creative, tour dates, etc. It was amazing. There was only one problem: It was largely theater and was never referred to again. Ever.

How did we do? Did we hit our targets? Did we execute the plan?

So I gathered up as many past marketing plans as I could find and asked friends for examples they had held onto. I grabbed a pen, a yellow note pad, went through them page by page and made a list of the items they covered. I used that list as the foundation for what became the “MARKETING PLANNER.”

Plan Your Next Release

It looks like a form that’s just begging to be filled out. It’s really not. It’s simply a guide to help you with planning and weekly calls to keep everyone on the same page with action items, deadlines, roles and responsibilities.

It’s broken out by SETUP, DRIVERS, PLANNING 120 DAYS OUT to RELEASE DATE (and beyond) including a section on crucial metadata for distribution setup. It’s been revised many times (it’s currently on version 30!) and will continue to evolve.

With the help of Bruce and the team at Hypebot, we’re offering it to you here, for free, to use as you see fit. Feel free to make it your own.

Download a free pdf of this updated music Release Planner here.