Releasing a single in 2024 requires more than just having a track. Today, music-evolving chains and coming up with a single might be as thrilling for artists. If you’re an up-and-comer or a veteran in the music industry, it is essential to plan how the music is to be delivered and marketed to ensure your track reaches the right audience and makes the impact you are hoping for. Here’s a step-by-step guide with the best music distribution options, marketing tips, and everything you need to know about how to release single music in 2024.
Steps to Release a Single Music in 2024 for Artists
Choose Best Music Distribution Platform
Selecting the music distribution service is among the most crucial steps artists work on when planning to release their music in 2024. It may be tough to decide where among the many platforms to distribute your music, but doing so is important to get your music to the right audience.
Selecting a good music distributor helps you get track of leading streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. ST Digital is the world's fastest-growing, best music distributor and the first to provide free service in the digital economy.
When choosing the best music distributor:
Consider platforms, distribution reach, fees and royalties, cost, and other services and facilities like marketing aids, analytics and review, music monetization, licensing, and copyright protection, etc. If you take all these factors into account, you are well-placed to select the most appropriate distributor for your music as an artist or label.
Choose Right Release Date
Start creating your cover art or visuals. A single’s style can depend on a professional, eye-catching design. Ideally, the plan for the release is about 2-3 months; this will provide ample time for advertising and getting the CDs out to the public.
Do not choose your proposal during the holidays or when your industry most likely proposes many projects. Releases on Fridays because of market trends. However, you can change it based on the planned strategy (for example, midweek releases may be more effective).
Promote Your Release
Promotion is as vitally important as the other aspects of marketing that are applied to the single’s promotion. Some key strategies: Tease through Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. Countdown, sneak peek, and behind-the-scenes. Using some video form is incredibly beneficial in expanding the likelihood of your single going viral, whether a full music video or a lyric video.
The next marketing strategy involves contacting blogging sites, YouTube personalities, and podcasts targeting the genre of your single. Some websites, such as SubmitHub, can be used to submit your song to bloggers and playlist owners.
Submit Your Music to Playlists
This is good for promotion as your music gets to various playlists, adding to people who can listen to it and become fans. Generally, playlist placements benefit everybody from independent artists to labels since they open the artist’s music to new audiences. Not all of these playlists are the same. The place where one gets to place their music in a playlist is one of the best experiences to consider. Submit your single to curated playlists on platforms like:
Spotify for Artists: This is the most direct way of submitting to a Spotify playlist, although it involves a fee. It can be used to send tracks for editorial consideration, and the details must include information on the song and its story, inspiration, and genre.
Apple Music for Artists: As with Spotify, you can submit tracks directly to editorial playlists via Apple Music’s program interface.
SoundCloud: In third-party services, in SoundCloud, users can directly submit to the curators within its platform or through other services.
If you stick with these procedures and keep on trying, you will be able to submit your music to playlists that can help increase your visibility, but it is always important to look at the playlist submission guidelines before proceeding.
Create a Pre-Save campaign
When fans pre-save your song on streaming services, such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer, you will be sure that your streams will be boosted on the day of the release, making algorithms take note of your music and making your release a success upon release.
A pre-save campaign is among the best ways to generate hype and ensure your single gets streams.
Monetizing Your Music and Collecting Royalties
Putting out music is not just about sharing your songs—it's also about protecting yourself and getting paid for your work. For example, with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, royalties depend on the times the songs have been played. The more streams you get, the more royalties you will be making. Almost every free music distribution service provides licence-earning opportunities to make money from placements.
Conclusion
A single launch in 2024 should follow a pre-planned marketing plan to sell the music well because a single to be out in 2024 is an opportunity to share the music with people all across the globe to make the buzz in the first place for your single.