For a long time in the music industry, the accepted wisdom was that albums must be promoted before their release so that they may succeed. Pop-albums that have charted for the longest on the billboard hot 100 such as 1989 by Taylor Swift have had some serious marketing and pre-album promotion to their credit. The marketing and promotion for 1989 included pre-booked interviews, pre-booked and sold-out shows where the artists played some of their newer records. In the case of Taylor Swift, an easter-egg hunt almost always precedes the album release which creates unparalleled hype among the fans because it involves them into the process of unveiling the album long before its actual release.
Let’s discuss what this does for the actual album sales?
Imagine having your album name or even just a proposed title such as ‘TS7’ trending on twitter for 4–6 months before the actual release of the album. The amount of pure copy sales this amounts to is a good reason why the music industry is not conducive to secret albums.
Another antic that Taylor Swift is known for is her Secret Sessions which are ‘secret’ album listening parties that she invites a select group of fans too. The secret sessions that she has conducted so far have not resulted in any of her albums getting leaked to the press before the release but instead catapulted her album success significantly. This is because the secret sessions do the same thing any other marketing campaign would do, get people talking.
But the alternative approach was coined by the secret release of Beyoncé self-titled album which hit the iTunes out of the blue and soon enough was dominating the charts. The album came with no prior promotion, marketing, or for that matter even an explanation. It made people wonder if she has scraped the age-old wisdom of the music industry and re-written it to fare nothing but the individual merits of the songs.
As she liked to explain it, she got bored with the traditional album promotion, release parties, and interviews. And that went very well for her because she was Beyoncé at that point and who was to question her decision? But it also went well for her because the industry had reached a point where newer and more innovative ways of selling music were taking over the big picture. Releasing an album in secret prior to digital streaming may not have been a good idea because to generate revenue from pure album sales it did require some degree of disclosure to the production, distribution, and retail units. Also, the speed at which people learned about an album if it hadn’t been digitally accessible would have negatively impacted even Beyoncé’s sales.
The album did end up being a massive success and despite having made no marketing investment whatsoever, it generated a ton of revenue. But then again, what else did you expect of Beyoncé?
It is safe to say that marketing is not a science. To ensure your album’s success there different ways to go about it. The success is determined largely by having an understanding of what the fans want, what the current trends are, and how to best diversify and remodel yourself as someone unique and confident in the industry.
