Can't believe it's been almost a year. Figure I'd share my experience promoting this self produced album on a small budget. Maybe someone will get something beneficial from my experience.
I'm not new to doing album releases under my own (small) private label BrOkEn ReCoRdS, but this was the first time I considered the release serious enough (and produced well enough) to warrant consideration for a more earnest attempt at reaching some listeners. This was mostly alternative rock, but incorporating a fairly wide variety of styles. This will be discussed a bit later in my post.
For promotion I initially sent out a ZIP of the album as MP3s and a playlist to family and friends. My collaborator, Scott [vocals, lyrics, decent amount of song writing input], did the same. Of the few who took the time to listen, it was all positive feedback. Several of these people I had done other music projects with, so they also had the benefit of hearing prior works by me as a solo artist and also occasionally with Scott as a collaborator. We had stayed mostly quiet about what we were working on over those ~3 years, only leaking out 2 of the tracks prior to release. One of my friends even said one of the songs made them cry.
The next step was to get strangers interested. Being that we could only get a fraction of family and friends to even listen set the expectations pretty low for random internet peeps to latch onto it, but we had to try. I started a GoFundMe which raised just under $200 of the $500 we were hoping to raise for copyrighting, distributing, and advertising. Most of what was raised went towards copyrighting and distribution [we used Catapult and Bandcamp]. Whatever was left reimbursed for some Kunaki CDs being made (2 needed for the copyright) and some Facebook targeted advertising. I tried a lot of various demographics over a few months time, and while I generated some activity using Facebook's advertising platform I did not manage a single sale on our bandcamp page as a result of it.
While all this was taking place I tried a few suggestions like mjb's submithub, as well as a couple dozen review sites I found online. Two of the review sites listed the album as a new release with a brief description, but none of them did a review. Submithub was a dead end.
I even ended up creating instrumental versions of the songs later on (for a different purpose) and uploaded them to Pond5, a music warehouse for content creators. No bites there either, but figure that's more chance than my other attempts.
When looking at the 45 bandcamp codes I generated for a free download of the album, only 3 were ever redeemed. This included the people who contributed to the gofundme, who were eligible for the free bandcamp download. Some of them may have taken advantage of the free ZIP I had sent, I never breached the subject only provided thanks.
All-in-all the experience was a let down. We never set out to sell copies of the album, and we're proud of the album as a work of art.
In retrospect we determined there are a few factors holding the album back from any chance at mass appeal... 1) The length of the album, 2) Concept albums need to be heard in their entirety, and 3) Too many styles of music. #3 I feel is probably the biggest drawback, which became apparent when looking at the first two causes separately. If someone encountered a song in a style of music they didn't like their first time through, would they skip the song? Turn off the music? Suffer until that song finishes? One reason we tried to market this as an alternative rock album is the stylistic variations from song to song are a hallmark of that genre. But that genre's audience and buying power isn't particularly big, depending on how you classify "alt rock". If anything the mainstream trends seem to be slowly shifting away from all forms of rock music and not coming back.
In the past year I've focused entirely on a few small side projects and have worked very little on any of my own personal music. This experience hasn't entirely soured me to home recording, but the process of making and distributing music has been unsatisfying of late. I've been turning my focus to other things in the meantime, thinking I'll find the desire to get back to song writing. It just hasn't come.
