Why Does It Take SO Long To Release An Album? Part 2 (Patreon)

OHHHHH now guess who’s back with a brand new track, got everyone in the club going wilddddd! Nah, it’s me, back with Part 2 of last week’s ‘Why Does It Take So Long To Release An Album?’ “blog” post. But to quickly revert back, that Cascada song was a bop and I’ll give 10 (imaginary) points to whoever names the song in the comments.

So, I believe we should be at step number - dun dun dunnnn *drum roll please* - thirteen.

13. Pick the singles.

That was definitely far too big of a build up for this step but ultimately it is one of the more interesting steps. All hell breaks loose within the band when we pick singles because usually there's only 1 or 2 tracks we all agree should be singles, with Join The Club those tracks were Mayday and Carousel, but trying to decide the others is an impossible task because we all have different music tastes, and we all connect to different songs on the album. This time around, we sent the tracks to a couple of different members of our team and asked what they thought, and they are the tracks we ultimately ended up deciding on simply because we had no idea. (It’s also another factor of why we had SO many singles on this last album.)

14. Artwork.

Artwork for albums and singles need to be cohesive to make it obvious it’s all going to be a part of one collection. We were super lucky this time around with our artwork as Ande’s best friend is an incredible graphic designer, but for a corporate company. So whenever he gets the chance to actually unleash his creative juices he takes it! Fun fact: He also designed our debut album artwork, and has done loads of merch designs for us, he is an angel basically. We were discussing the album, what the message was behind it, and what the album title should be, and Phil was super inspired and messaged us a day later saying, ‘hey guys you don’t have to use these but I’ve came up with a lot of different album artwork ideas for you just purely for fun and I thought you should see them’ - we loved the designs and thought it was the perfect combo of pop-punk and emo and I could just see it in the stores.

15. Set release schedule.

We are definitely now getting to the more boring parts of releasing an album, and it starts with the release schedule. This is discussed between us, our press, our distributors, everyone who even vaguely has to do something to get the album out is involved and that’s because each task has to be done by a specific time in order for the album to be out on time. If an album is delayed, it’s because someone involved has f***ed up. The release schedule is super detailed including details on when each single should be released, when they will be pitched for press and radio, when the music video needs to be completed, when we are doing promo both interviews and photos, everything leading to the ultimate goal of releasing an album.

16. Record music videos.

When I say record music videos, I mean coming up with the concept, finding and booking locations, finding and building props, finding and hiring any equipment like lighting extra cameras, do we need actors? Do we need additional crew for the day? Actually scheduling a day to shoot it that’s actually free on everybody's calendars. We worked with an amazing videographer called Justin Griffiths on the last album and honestly he makes recording videos a dream. He keeps the shoots fun, is super organised, and knows what he wants! Filming music videos has notoriously been a tedious and tiring task that all the band members have grown to dread, but since working with Justin I have a new love for filming videos and I love seeing the results, I’m pretty sure he’s already got a load of ideas brewing for our next album.

17. Video editing.

It’s a waiting game until we get the video back and then we have to let Justin know all the video edits we want ready for the final edit. We seem to always leave our videos until the last possible minute so usually we have less than a day to sort this out before it has to go back.

18. Release single.

Okay so within the album schedule, each single has a single schedule, and each single schedule contains press/radio/playlisting/distributing schedule. Yepp, it’s literally like one of those Russian dolls, every time you think it’s done there’s just more.

*repeat steps 16-18 for each single*

19. Pre-Order campaign.

This is mainly Ande’s domain and in all honesty, I don’t know that much about it. BUT, it’s sorting all of the marketing in order to actually sell our album. So it’s dealing with all the different ads that go literally everywhere, the emails, social posts, the millions of spreadsheets he has to make sure things are working. And that’s really all I’ve got on this one. 🤷🏻‍♀️

20. Press.

This is my territory as whenever we release anything I usually end up living on zoom calls doing interviews, podcasts, radio plugs, social media takeovers, all sorts. I still find it hilarious because I’m so awkward and I trip over my own sentences a strong 80% of the time, but it comes with the job so here I am! Press also includes a meeting where I have to break down what every song is about. It's one of the parts I love best as I get to go super deep into each song so that both myself and everyone promoting our album knows what we want to achieve and what our message is, I just think that’s SO important when releasing anything! Then there’s our photoshoots, we get tossed into a lot of different photo shoots as all publications want their own photos specifically for their publication, which also means we have the fun of booking locations, travelling everywhere and my favourite part, getting lots of new clothes. Complete side note but Disturbia recently gave me an influencer account and I am STOKED for all my new tour outfits!

21. Fulfilment.

This is where we spend days signing everything we have sold, not so fun fun fact: I actually got carpal tunnel when we signed everything for Join The Club, I could not grip anything for weeks afterwards so that made for an interesting time. But yes, it’s where we sign everything that the warehouse is going to be sending out. We have a different warehouse that fulfils our album pre-orders up to the week of release due to the large volume, but they are great and have an amazing golden retriever who keeps you company and begs for snacks all day, and that ladies and gentlemen clearly makes the hand cramps worth it.

22. Chart Registration.

To be chart registered you have to use a chart registered fulfilment company for it to count, so the warehouse we used was chart registered, and all our in store sales were also chart registered. I’ve definitely said the phrase chart registered far too much in that last sentence but we live and we (don’t) learn. Streaming services are also chart registered but the way it figures out how many listens is worth 1 album sale is a little ridiculous and I think you’d have to listen to every song a million times for it to count as 1 sale, (that was a tad dramatic on my part,) but this is why we push physical sales so much for anyone that wants to support us. We know that streaming is much more convenient for everybody, but unless you’re Taylor Swift it’s just not an effective way to chart.

23. In-stores / touring / promotion.

All these things require their own sub-section of planning, but, they are a crucial part of releasing an album, this is your chance to show the world what you’ve created either in an intimate in-store setting, or on a huge extravaganza tour, or in our case, both!

24. THE ALBUM IS RELEASED FOREVER YOU’RE DONE CONGRATULATIONS!

And now all we have to do, is ALL of that… again.

Honestly why does it take so long to write a blog post about how long it takes to release an album? Well now you know, I know, we all know. So I guess now we listen to Cascada and have a dance party, it really seems fair after ALL of that ^

Until next time my angels!