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INTRODUCTION

This Creative Management Portfolio will be centred around the artists ‘raffmw’ and will include a management release plan for his EP titled ‘grounded lark’ set to release on Friday August 14th 2026. The plan will include relevant detailed market research relevant that will influence certain management decision, as well as promotional asset examples with an online management strategy along with a detailed project timeline and relevant research into the financial implications of releasing an EP in todays music industry.

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ARTISTS BACKGROUND

‘raffmw’ is an alternative folk artists from London, studying music in Leeds. His main inspirations are other artists in the same space such as Flyte, Emma Harner, The Army, The Navy and Bon Iver. This EP stands to be his 5 official release since 2024, having previously released 2 singles and 2 albums. In his previously albums, ‘AMBIVALENT’ and ‘AMBIVALENT: The Sequel’, he established a distinct sound, utilising the honesty and raw emotion from folk music in his melancholic acoustic guitars and deeply personal lyricism, and has woven in electronic ambient synth sounds, to create a calming and familiar soundscape, taking inspiration from experimental electronic artists like Nils Frahm and Kieran Hebden. This style of music resonated with a small fanbase at the time of release, but didn’t gain much traction due to a lack of real promotion around the time of release, and a lack of marketing strategy/timeline.
With this new release, ‘grounded lark’, he plans to take a step into a more traditional direction, going further into the roots of folk music. This new EP stands to take inspiration from more band-led, traditional and acoustic folk artist’s like Fleet Foxes, The Staves and Ben Howard, replacing most of the synth elements with violins, harmoniums and pianos, and introducing bass and drums into the mix, most notably in his EP single ‘feel’. Although this slight switch in genre will be a little shock to his exsting audience, I see this as a positive. It allows ‘raffmw’ to keep his audience on their toes and give them something fresh, while also opening up the possibility of attracting a new and different audience.

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MANAGEMENT CONTRACT

Before any market research, I wanted to create a contractual partner ship with the artists, to ensure a security for the both of us in our partnership moving forward. The contract can be seen below:

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MARKET ANALYSIS

For my first piece of market research, I wanted to look into the industry as a whole before studying a specific artists as an example. I decided to look at different websites that offer advice to independent artists that try to navigate the new age of music promotion on social media. First, I read a music marketing article from Berklee, that contained a lot of useful insight, most notably when discussing audiences, suggesting that one should ‘prioritise engagement over reach’ and that ‘highly engaged fanbase is far more valuable than inflated follower counts’ (Wares, 2025). This informed me that my approach to marketing for ‘raffmw’ should be that of a fanbase focus, engaging with comments and messages, creating genuine interactions and building the loyalty of the audience rather than the size. Additionally, in a QMUSIC article in which they discuss tailoring music promotion to different genres, they state that ‘building a strong connection with your audience is crucial for long-term success’ (Gulati, 2023), suggesting that this can be achieved through social media groups/forums and through collaboration.

For further analysis, I simply wanted to look into the way in which certain artists’, predominantly ones that share a genre with my artist, promote and monetise their music, looking into various styles of social media promotional styles. Firstly, I needed to look into the artists that influenced raffmw’s music, to get a better idea at the way in which he may want to be promoted/to see if there is a pattern or correlation between the music created and the promotion strategy. Firstly, I went onto Flyte’s instagram page, a band that has heavily influenced raffmw, and the ‘grounded lark’ EP. They are very active on TikTok, and especially, of course, when they were promoting their new album ‘Between You and Me’ last year. Some of the earliest promotion for the album, was before the album was even announced. In April last year, they posted a TikTok, in a style I am going to call a ‘vertical performance’ style, in which someone or some people squeeze into the vertical phone frame and play their some live to camera, without any external mics or lighting or anything. This style of video has become massively popular recently, especially in the singer/songwriter genre. In Flyte’s video, they played an excerpt from their song ‘Hurt People’, the opening track of the album, that hadn’t even been named. This tactic allows them to create an anticipation for something, while encouraging the audience to get behind their music before the audiences knows its coming yet. This is a technique I was interested in trying to replicate.

Additionally, when it came to market research, I wanted to look outside of the given genre, and look at the commercial pop industry, to see the way promotion changes when everything is on a bigger scale, and whether, despite begin in completely different genres, there were any techniques or tools that I could utilise towards raffmw’s promotion. The best example I could find was Mk.gee, an alternative indie/pop artist who has skyrocketed to fame within the last few years, especially with a very specific and loyal audience. When promoting his latest album, Two Star and The Dream Police, him and the director of his visualizers favoured a more cinematic appoarch to promotion, rather than using the personal iPhone ‘vertical performance’. For example, his music video for the track ‘Are you looking up’ is a very simply shot video, that only consists of a single locked-off shot as he leans out of a train and performs the whole song live, guitar and vocals, along with the recorded version. Although a very simple shot, the framing and lighting, paired with the constant motion and change of the landscape behind him creates a very visually satisfying and equally unique music video that is another key behind why he became so popular so quickly. I wanted to take try this ‘cinematic’ approach to music promotion with raffmw’s EP release.

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ONLINE MARKETING STRATERGY/EXAMPLE ASSETS

Firstly, I decided that a solid ‘shop window’ press kit could be crucial to making the artist and the release seem much more professional and serious. Additionally, from a marketing standpoint, it makes everything so much simpler. This one link will take anyone to this page, containing everything they need to know about raffmw and his career, a link that can be easily shared everywhere online. I decided to use the same artists bio that I had created for the EPK last year, instead having it as a click through, taking up less space. I then created a more genre-led homepage and compressed it into one more accessible page, with a link to raffmw’s Spotify profile, followed by social media links. A screenshot of the page can be seen below:

I additionally knew that a good striking and stylistically-clear album cover was crucial to this EP’s marketability. A bad cover and make any music sound bad. I decided to work closely with the artist to find something that was both simple enough to coincide with the stripped back feeling of the music, while still being visually interesting enough to match up with the lyrics heard on the EP. The cover can be seen below:

Finally, the final and arguably most crucial piece to the marketing strategy was the social media side. For social media, to best establish the brand, I knew that repetition has power, and if each video has a similar vibe/format that is easily digestible, then they could be repeated. For example, I wanted to recreate the ‘Vertical Performance’ video format that I discussed earlier, but with raffmw and his original music, so we created a few different videos showing off his original music, in this simplistic popular format, all of which were songs that stand to feature on the EP in this simplistic popular format. Examples can be seen below:

I also wanted to change it up and create a promo video in the ‘cinematic’ style of Mk.gee’s music video that I discussed earlier, so I created one for the EP single ‘busy summer’:

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PROJECT TIMELINE

My rationale behind having a full week by week project timeline comes from a planning perspective. Not only is it important to have everything in order prior to releasing any musical project, getting the right timing between announcements and each piece of promotion and the eventual release is paramount. Attempting to get the perfect amount of ‘momentum’ behind a release is crucial to how it ends up begin received, and keeping the audiences engagement throughout the release rollout is very difficult but makes a huge difference once the project materialises. My release plan is as follows:

Week 1 (9 weeks until release): Finalise everything. Ensure all video assets (like the ones above) are all recorded and edited. Ensure all music is finished (or at least in the mix/master stage.

Week 2 (8 weeks until release): Tease music. Post 10-15 second clip of music, alluding to a release on the horizon.

Week 3 (7 weeks until release): Post one or two videos in the above format, two different tracks from the EP. However, don’t title the tracks yet, to build a suspense.

Week 4 (6 weeks until release): Officially announce release with date and EP title, again using a longer music snippet.

Week 5 (5 weeks until release): Increase fan engagement by releasing a countdown/calendar link, along with a pre-save link.

Week 6 (4 weeks until release): Release EP single (‘busy summer’ in this case) making clear that the track is part of the upcoming EP

Week 7 (3 weeks until release): Release album cover and release more ‘cinematic video’ assets to withhold engagment

Week 8 (2 weeks until release): Content becomes daily, countdown reminders on instagram stories/reposting own videos to remind audience

Week 9 (1 week until release): Prep for the release week, scheduling all release day posts, engage with comments promising free sneak peak to first few patrons

Week 10 (Release week): Post on every social platform, send to friends and peers who are likely to repost/send to others

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FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS/ROYALTY COLLECTION

Releasing an EP can have many financial implications, such as paying for recording, producing, mixing and mastering, as well as distribution and marketing costs. However, in this instance, due to being an independant artists, the story is slightly different for raffmw. Although he doesn’t have to outsource any producing or mix/mastering, doing these things himself, he still needs to self-sustain his subscription to DistroKid, the music distribution service that we’ll be using. Although, at around £80 per year, it is relatively well valued, DistroKid is just another cost. However, to combat this loss, the idea is, that the mass of free promotional work around this EP will make that money back, by growing and strengthening raffmw’s audience, causing his streams to fluctuate.
Once this theory materialises, raffmw will be eligible to collect royalties from his streams, through PRS and PPL. The difference between the both, according to BackgroundSounds, is that PRS ‘collects royalties for songwriters, composers, and music publishers’, whereas, PPL ‘collects royalties for record labels and performers’ (BackgroundSounds, 2023). For raffmw, this means that by acting as both his own label (using Distrokid to distribute) and by creating 100% of the music himself, he is entitled to 100% of the profit that the music makes, ultimately giving him more and more control, which is finite in todays industry.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Wares, Christopher. “Music Marketing: 5 Proven Strategies to Engage and Grow Your Fanbase.” Berklee.edu, 21 May 2025, www.berklee.edu/berklee-now/news/music-marketing-strategies
• Gulati, Kunal. “Tailoring Music Promotion Techniques to Different Genres (Tips Included).” Q Music Promotions, 29 Nov. 2023, qmusicpromotions.com/blogs/news/tailoring-music-promotion-techniques-to-different-genres-tips-included.
• BackgroundSounds, and bgs-admin. “Difference between PRS and PPL – a Beginners Guide.” Background Sounds, 20 Mar. 2023, www.backgroundsounds.co.uk/what-is-the-difference-between-prs-and-ppl/.