Releasing an EP? Here's how to use Instagram to crush your first week sales and streams numbers and generate momentum for your music career. For more details on hashtags, image sizes, video limits, and strategy visit
For an entire release strategy for your EP or full-length designed for you visit
Of all the social media platforms, Instagram has become the go-to for independent musicians presenting their music visually. Knowing how to release an EP with Instagram is a crucial skill for artists. In this video, we talk about how to create a great strategy for your EP release rollout on Instagram.
Planning Ahead For a Great EP Release Rollout on Instagram
Nothing Happens in a Vacuum - Planning Instagram With Your Overall Release Rollout
A great release rollout coordinates every task and platform to build the most anticipation possible. Although Instagram is a great vehicle for reaching millions of potential and current fans, it's not the only one. And you'll have other tasks you need to coordinate, like getting your ISRC codes, coordinating with your digital distributor, and booking your release parties. You need to coordinate all of these tasks to happen at the right times. You want your timing to be perfect.
Your goal is to build the most anticipation possible for your EP release week. This generates momentum you will be able to carry with you to drive sales and streams for a longer period of time. And statistics matter. If you're looking to get signed to a record label, management company, or booking agency, you want to acquire verifiable numbers.
The biggest of these is soundscan sales and stream counts on platforms like Spotify and YouTube. As these numbers decay over time, having the "pop" of a large number during your release week is where you'll get the numbers that will go in your email subject line to get your emails read.
Timing Your Instagram Posts
Your EP release rollout will be driven by events over time building anticipation and excitement among new and old fans. Since it is your music you are trying to promote, there is no better way to generate excitement than with singles. Your EP release rollout should be between eight and twelve weeks, but longer rollouts are not unheard of. You'll want to release two or three singles during that timespan. Your Instagram posts will often, but not always, support these singles.
Other events your Instagram posts will support can include contests, release party announcements, playlist additions, and media coverage. Each of these "minor" events deserve two or three posts. Single releases deserve many more posts, first leading to the single release and then subsequently. Timed correctly, you'll easily have more than enough content for daily posts for weeks to come.
Create Your Graphics and Teaser Videos In Advance
During your release rollout you will be exceptionally busy. If you're not, you're doing something wrong. You should anticipate this busy-ness by preparing as much in advance as possible. You know what your singles will be. You should have your cover art done or at least almost done. The "theme" of your EP should definitely be established. Use this information to pre-build as many graphics and teaser videos as you can.
You should already have taken a ton of pictures while in the studio, while performing, and while rehearsing. Organize these images on a shared drive in a folder built for this EP. You can have folders for live shots, photos of fans, studio shots, songwriting shots, official photos, and so on. Make sure the file names are descriptive and use a free tool like Gimp to create graphics and photos in various sizes.
Here are details on Instagram image sizing properly:
You can build show announcement and playlist add graphic templates in advance. Make templates of the Instagram images so you can edit the details later and the heavy lifting is already done.
Here is Peter Diamandis's video on Launching Above the Line of Super-Credibility:
Check out these tools for animating your Instagram images:
Here is great advice on engaging with potential fans on Instagram:
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