Lenses: One Month Later

Lenses, by Franklin Stone, was released on July 2, 2021, a terrible day to release due to the holiday, and as of today, a month later, it has allowed Stone to reach a few milestones. The first is his monthly listener count, rising from 6 to 1200. The second, and more important, milestone is his follower count, going from 40 to just shy of 200. While the numbers aren’t that high, we did it all with no social media or major roll out. In this article we will explain the ins and outs of our marketing campaign for him, including budget, strategies, and takeaways. 

We must start with a disclaimer, that we mainly focused our efforts on Spotify, as it is the easiest to gain a following with no budget. We will expand our priorities to YouTube in the upcoming releases. Now to the part of the article that brought you here.

As far as budget, there was none. We had to build his following the hard way. We used no ads and no payola, and we do all production (make beats and provide studio time) and post production (mixing and mastering) in-house, so we were able to focus resources, if we decided to, on marketing. We mainly tried three campaign strategies: grassroots, music sharing sites (BandLab and Slaps, and Reddit), and playlists. 

The only roll out, pre-release strategy we used was releasing the Ear Candy Sound Pack Vol. 1, where we gave away free beats and sample/drum loops. In that pack we snuck in a snippet of Lenses, but only 5 people to this day downloaded it. Long story short, it didn’t work, but of course we had more plans to put into action post-release.

Grassroots:

The grassroots strategy refers to sending out the music to people we knew personally. While getting good feedback, whether positive or negative, this strategy was destined to be limited because there was no way we could scale up to a vast number of listeners in the amount of time we invested. We weren’t expecting Stone’s stats to sky rocket off of this strategy, but every listen and follow counts. We weren’t expecting to get shared either, just listens from those specific people, and a potential fan or two. We covered this topic in our Value of One Fan article.

Music Sharing Sites:

Networking was a key part of our strategy, and music sharing sites were the best way to do so, especially with no social media. We began a follow for follow campaign with numerous artists on Slaps and BandLab, leading to a limited increase in followers and listens, up to about 15 listeners and 30 followers, but progress is progress. Since the demographic was other artists, we always had to offer something of value outside of the music. We detailed how to do this in the Marketing on Music Sharing Sites article.

Playlists:

By far the most successful campaign has been playlists. Within our playlist campaign, we focused on three strategies or types of playlists: Stoned Produce playlists, user playlists, and high traffic playlists. We at Stoned Produce curate three playlists with the goal to bring light to independent artists that deserve it, not any specific genre or mood. To this day, Stone has received 565 streams and 30 listeners from these playlists. 

To gain streams from user playlists, playlists that listeners make for their own personal consumption, we had to use sites like Reddit to pitch the song to playlists that were posted. This is similar to the grassroots campaign, where we weren’t expecting a huge leap in statistics, but it has helped Stone’s algorithm. We saw a five percent growth in his source of streams from algorithmic playlists. This strategy was explained in our Four More Ways to Get Playlist Placements article.

Finally, the biggest return came from high traffic playlists, playlists that are curated by users for other users’ consumption. These are the playlists that accept submissions and can be used to extend artists’ reach to new listeners in the same way a radio station would. We used the strategy laid out in our How to Find Playlist Curatorsarticle, as well as our Curator Contact List to find and pitch his song. Of course, there were many more denials than approvals, but the curators that liked the song helped boost Franklin Stone to his current standings. All of the playlists that have helped his growth are on his Spotify profile.

Future Plans:

Of course, none of this is possible if we didn’t put time and effort into the mixing and mastering process, Stone’s aesthetics, and the overall quality of the song. It was a song made for summer so we maximized his chances for him to build buzz and pitched to playlists with a similar vibe, mood, and tempo. We will continue and expand to new strategies with Lenses, growing Stone’s following until his next release. He is set to drop his new single, Rain, on August 27, 2021.