One of my favorite examples of marketing upon completion comes from the great artist D’Angelo.
For those of you familiar with his music, he released his third album just a few years ago. I recommend his “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” and “Really Love.”
I think he released the album in 2014. One thing that was previously very frustrating for his fans was that he waited about 13 or 14 years after he debuted his second album to debut his third one. He released a second album in 2000 and then waited until 2014. That’s a really big gap of time.
Many people wondered if the fans were still going to be around to even check out album number three. Would a new generation of fans even know who this artist is when his other album finally dropped? There were all of these questions, right? But regardless of the concerns, the album just came out. There was no announcement. It just appeared one day in December 2014.
The Luck Factor
The third album was quickly both a critical and commercial success. But, when we do a postgame analysis of his success, it’s like, wow, that was really risky. How did D’Angelo even know the fans were still going to be around? I can’t even attribute this win to a specific strategy. The songs are really good, and his fans just happened to be around.
Relatable Content Plays a Role
Where am I going with this story? Even though D’Angelo hasn’t made a record in four years, this fact doesn’t mean that he’s living in another world. Obviously, there are topics in his third album that seem very current because of what’s happening across this country in the streets.
I was listening to it after marching yesterday, and all I could think was that this is the soundtrack to the revolution that I thought I was walking in. It makes us more powerful and more vocal and gives us a presence at a time when we are having an identity crisis in this country.
Music Education
Marketing after the completion of a work is obviously a risky decision. I don’t know many artists who have enough understanding of the music and the culture and how to do it. It’s interesting to think, “OK, he was just putting it out and hoping for the best.” Few artists in the music industry have been able to reproduce this type of success without extensive pre-release marketing campaigns.
An online music education can help you learn more about this and other marketing topics and help you to make more sense of your goals and the type of marketing you want to focus on when you are the musical artist trying to draw interest to your work.
