BUSINESS PLAN OVERVIEW
The music industry as we know it is constantly shifting; shaped by the tastes of listeners and the platforms in which they stream music on. This leads to audiences no longer being confined to a single genre, but rather being exposed to a wide range of musical styles through AI-generated playlists (e.g. Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’.) This business plan attempts to capitalise on that fact, through the development of a single EP with music that crosses a wide variety of different musical genres. The reasoning for this is that I struggle with keeping consistency in terms of genres, often using lots of different instruments and synths. After some thinking, I figured that a good way to combat this would be through leaning into this ‘limitation’ and making it a core concept of a musical project. This creates a unique brand that widely appeals to modern listeners.
As a part of this business plan, I also want to make content advertising the release this EP, particularly on Instagram. I will do this by recording short visual snippets with my music in the background, editing them through the use of video-editing softwares like Cap-Cut and Da Vinci Resolve.
I think that a cool idea to incorporate would be having a single recurring motif/theme throughout the entire EP, which could help remind an audience that all of the different genres of music are all under the same name. Regarding branding and my online presence, I think having a singular little detail that stays the same throughout advertisements that I will do could be an interesting exploration to match this. This avoids me having to over-explain the project, letting it speak for itself. My hopes are that in embracing my creative weakness of not being able to stick to a genre, I will be able to position myself nicely with a myriad of listeners, essentially having something for everyone.
PRODUCT / SERVICE DESCRIPTION
I wish for the end-result of my product to be a listenable EP, released on streaming sites like Spotify and Apple Music. Having at least 5 tracks would be ideal, as that way I am able to showcase more genes of music that I am interested in making. As well as this, it works as a way to capture a wider audience by having songs that a larger group of people would be interested in. I plan to pre-release one song from the EP early, as that way I am able to build anticipation for the album. I got this idea from Lucky Daye’s “Algorithm”, in which he pre-releases the track “That’s You”. This is shown to have worked, as that song later went on to win a grammy.
As a bi-product of this, I also want to start promoting this project across social media platforms like TikTok and (mainly) Instagram. I plan to do this by releasing snippets of each song, and using different editing techniques/filters on each advert (depending on which genre they are). I believe that this will aid me in pushing out my music to wider audiences, whilst also making each genre feel that much more distinct from one another. I also think that having a recurring theme throughout the adverts, like a logo, would be a cool idea to incorperate within this project.
MARKET ANALYSIS
Due to the nature of this project, I believe there is a varying target audience, as many people from many different backgrounds will be able to listen to this album and find at least one piece of music that they are interested in. While some would argue that this is counter-productive due to the fact that someone might only like one song because of their taste in genres, genre-bending songs and albums that seem to be a complete switch in an artist’s character have proved to be amazingly popular throughout the music industry. Examples of this include Tyler the Creator’s “Flower Boy” and Justin Beiber’s “SWAG”, and Michael Jackson’s rapid changing of genres from “Off The Wall” to “Invincible”.
MARKET RESEARCH
Some would argue the idea of a genre-mixing album is counter-productive due to the fact that someone might only like one song because of their taste in genres. However, I would argue that genre-bending songs and albums that seem to be a complete switch in an artist’s character have proved to be amazingly popular throughout the music industry for decades. Examples of this through recent albums include Tyler the Creator’s “Flower Boy” (2016) and Justin Beiber’s “SWAG” (2025), in which the 2 musicians experiment with making music very different to the genres they are used to making. This worked especially well in Tyler’s case, with “See You Again” (a track off of Flower Boy) being one of his most commercially successful songs, having over a billion streams on Spotify alone. For examples of this within older generations, look towards Michael Jackson’s rapid changing of genres throughout the time periods between “Off The Wall” (1979) to “Invincible” (2001). This showed to have worked, as within this time period was Thriller, which to this day is considered the best-selling and most popular album of all time.
To even further provide evidence, Post Malone being able to completely pivot from melodic, trippy hip-hop tracks to country music with major success show that general audiences do not mind changes in an artist’s genres, regardless of how contrasting the changes may be.
RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS
To create a high-quality EP, I will need lots of resources. Thankfully, I am able to access everything I need through the facilities around me. Most important to me are my personal laptop and the DAWs I choose to work in, those being FL Studio and Logic Pro X. I will be using lots of different microphones and instruments, namely the Neumann TLM 102 and lots of different types of guitars, with my end goal being to achieve as many different sounds and voices as possible, which in turn will help me make lots of different genres.
I also would like to collaborate with lots of different musicians that will help me with making different genres. This is including but not limited to session musicians and songwriters when it comes to the production aspect of making music, as well as potential videographers and editors when it comes to recording content to promote my new releases.
Digitally, I plan to use social media services such as Instagram and Tik Tok to help advertise my music to the public, as well as distribution sites like DistroKid to make my music publically streamable.
MARKETING & PROMOTION STRATEGY
Learning how to properly market your work is a key principle for any industry, but with the inherently random nature of an EP with songs in multiple different genres, creating content to advertise it can be more challenging. This is as I would have to find a balance in-between catering to lots of different audiences, whilst still being genre-specific.
This is why I believe a way to market this EP is to turn the genre-bending into a narrative instead of just a gimmick. By framing my EP as a story, I can make each genre seem like a chapter of a book, with lyrics and visuals to match. For example, the hip-hop section of my EP could portray highs of the album, with themes of confidence, growth and self-worth, whilst the indie section could portray an array of emotions with themes of anxiety, emotional exposure, vulnerability and courage.
I could also tease upcoming genres without fully revealing them, giving some sense of security to my viewers. I believe that doing this would avoid mass confusion with my audience, as they would have a general idea of what to expect for the songs in the EP. For example, I could make it into a game with prompts on sites like Instagram, boosting my audience’s interactivity and engagement with my page.
FINANCIAL/LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS
I plan to use a mix of the facilities within Leeds Conservatoire and equipment that I already own (laptop, DAW, etc.) to make my EP, meaning I don’t need to worry about the costs of studio spaces and instruments within this project.
I have chosen to use CDBaby as my distributor for this project, as it I feel it is suits my tastes and workflow very well. I especially like the fact that it is a one-time payment instead of a monthly/annual payment, because I am not someone who releases music consistently. I can be a perfectionist with my music, and that affects my workflow greatly because I often make things that I do not deem ‘good enough’ for a release. Because of this, if I was to use a different distributor with monthly/annual payments, I feel like I would not get as much value in it due to me having long periods of time in which I am not putting my music on streaming services.
Legally, I plan to collaborate with lots of different artists. Because I do not expect to financially profit from this EP due to my low following, I do not mind equally splitting profits regardless of the contribution to my work, so long as there is one. Instead, I want the EP to pay me back in exposure, as now I will have actually streamable content out for people to listen to.
TIMELINE/SETUP
To set up an idea of this scale, I plan to first contact connections that I have within the film industry in order to collaborate with them. I plan to contact friends that I went to the same college with that were doing degrees in film studies, as I have already collaborated with them before and I know we would work well together (e.g. I would make stock music for their film projects). I would let them know in advance that I want to start shooting promotional content with their help within the next few months, to give them enough time to prepare for what I would like to do. This also goes for musicians I have connections with, as I would like for each genre to have a different person that I collaborate with that specialises in said genre.
Once these filming sessions have been done, I will take the material and start posting promotional material so that I can prepare my audience and build up hype for my upcoming EP. This will also be a growth phase for me, as posting this much promotional material would garner me a lot of new followers that I didn’t have before, as lots of new content would be popping up on my account for people to engage with.
A couple of weeks after I post adverts, I will release the EP as I don’t want people to be waiting too long. I am thinking about potentially releasing one of the tracks early (whichever does best in terms of promotion) as part of a marketing technique, giving a ‘teaser’ to the EP, however I am not fully set on this idea as with the nature of the EP I want to make, I don’t want people to go in expecting all of the tracks to be a similar sound or style of their favourite track that was released prior, which would lead to disappointment and poor engagement for future projects in the end.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
I do only plan for this to be a showcase of what I am capable of music-wise and do not expect it to garner a mass viewing right off the bat, however I think that long-term this EP will prove as a good stepping stone, and an important strong first step for me to take as a content creator (especially marketing-wise).
