My business plan is to release my album of 12 tracks, ‘Broken China‘, written last year and currently in development.
Broken China is far more grounded than my previous album, ‘Europa, Tomorrow‘, which explored vast and expansive spaces. This is an earthy, emotional concept album, inspired by folk themes and old tales passed from mothers to daughters. It has themes of love, death, childhood, and womanhood, through detailed lyricism, brought together with an acoustic band and string quartet.
My Unique Selling Points are the intricate string arrangements, poetic lyrics, passionate vocals, and an album written on the stories, lives, and deaths of women and girls. Each song is as tactile and visual in lyricism as possible, and every woman can see herself in the events and discussions.
The audience for this is more specific than albums which generally target the fans of a certain genre such as pop, rock, or jazz. While I’m catering towards folk enjoyers, I’m making this album for women, mothers, and daughters. It is experience-based and made to be understood by those who have had these experiences.
I’ve done market research on my audience, specifically looking into gender specific listening and the likelihood of my music appealing to people in an industry which is typically male led.
“A 2019 statistic from Spotify shows that male-identifying users listened to 94% male artists and around 3% female artists, with the rest made up by mixed groups. Female identifying users, by contrast, listened to 31% female artists and around 55% male artists.” – Clark (2023); Still Listening Magazine. Based on this, as a female artist, I’m more likely to attract my ideal female audience than a male audience. Even though these themes and intentions are not those you can find within male music, men will generally always be more likely to obtain higher streaming numbers and recognition.
This brings me onto the competition between artists in general.
Leeds Music Scene has an archived list of more than 500 bands from between 1998 and 2017, and with the establishment of hundreds of new bands every year since, the number will have increased drastically, making for very dense competition and low odds of success.
However, the area I’ll be playing and advertising in is much smaller than the whole of Leeds. The folk scene is very close and supportive, there are open mic nights at pubs such as The Chemic and The Ship, and then intimate venues for gigs such as Northern Guitars, The Wardrobe, Belgrave Music Hall, & Hyde Park Book Club. The opportunities are vast, especially in the social and supportive community at Leeds Conservatoire where bands have plenty of opportunities to be support acts for one another.
My current marketing and promotional strategies begin with how I use my Social Media. I post videos of rehearsals and sneak peaks regularly on my instagram account, as well as photos to add to the visuals of my account and appeal to algorithms. I have also made short music videos compiling camera footage for nostalgic appeal and to further build an aesthetic. Additionally, my instagram is the place to advertise for upcoming gigs and events, as well as sharing any information on music releases.
I design all my own posters using my own photography and editing, I’ll be able to post this online and print physical posters for displaying around Leeds Conservatoire and local venues, to advertise both the album release and gigs.
I’m going to do what I did with my last album and burn CD’s to sell at my album launch party with self designed covers and tracklists. Vinyl is somewhat over my budget until I can get a good income from CD sales and potential paid gigs, where I may then be able to reinvest the money into Vinyl releases.
The operational requirements for this album release have been in place since my previous album. I have a CDbaby account, which I will use to release my album the same way I did for the first one. I also have my Spotify for artists set up to be able to manage tracks and display on my Spotify, which is the most relevant platform currently among streaming services – According to Newman (2025); RouteNote.com.
For distributing through CDbaby, I need to ensure my Audio files are in the correct format ‘high-quality audio files in WAV format with a minimum of 16-bit depth and 44.1 kHz sample rate’ – guidance from Promoly.com.
I’m going to need a sophisticated collection of equipment and crew to successfully record this album. I need my regular band of Guitarist Woody Lander and Double bassist Jonah Selwood to accompany me on each track. For 5 tracks however, I’ve put together a string quartet of Violinists Lauren Askew, Itabaza Irwin, Violist Georgie Rix, and Cellist Albert Chinn. Recording crew wise, I have Aidan Steele on sound engineering, with Jonah Selwood and Woody Lander assisting on equipment setup.
The equipment I’ll need includes close mics, likely an SM57 for the guitar and a SM58 for vocals, then condenser mics – MXL R77’s – placed both near and far from the double bass and strings to capture both the close sound and the reverb from various points in the room. These will be hooked up to a mixing desk and then recorded into Logic Pro on my macbook.
I recorded and produced my previous album myself using Logic, so will do the same this time, especially since my studies at the conservatoire have taught me more about mixing than when I did my previous album.
Marketing Resources include posters, stickers, badges, and online promotional material. It would also be beneficial to do a photoshoot for this material of myself, the band, and string quartet, as well as themed photography matching the individual tracks, which is also something I did with the last album.
Distribution Resources are currently the CD’s themselves, along with the CD cases. The majority of distribution will be online however, through the streaming services CDbaby releases onto, including Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, Deezer, Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, the list goes on.
To develop the ideas I’ve stated, I could contact other more established bands to collaborate with on some tracks for further exposure. There are many successful artists at Leeds conservatoire who are open to artistic endeavors and unique projects. I could also attempt some sort of viral marketing towards the album, such as a hashtag or trend. But the success of this method is very unreliable, as social media is often biased towards follower count and general online popularity.
In terms of costs and pricing strategy, It can be £9.99 to release an album through CDbaby, however with the added benefits of CDbaby Boost, which includes registering with the Mechanical Licensing Collective, the price increases to £49.98 (According to CDbaby.com) I made the CDs by buying CD cases for about 20p each at charity shops, printing my covers for free at college, burning the CDs at a friend’s house, and putting them together myself. This didn’t cost more than £10 total. There are no ongoing costs as CDbaby is a one-time release payment rather than a subscription.
With my last album I sold CDs for £5 each, and made over £80 in sales at my album launch party. This meant that with the cost of the album (£50) and the CDs (£10) I broke even and profited by more than £20, which is what my plan will be for this album too.
The money I’ll use to do all of this will be money from part time work and gigs.
In the WITCI seminars every two weeks we brought ideas for our business plans and discussed them with each other. These involved deciding whether to do an EPK or a business plan, marketing strategies, examples of successful artists, and methods to go towards the business plan. Most people in the seminar chose the EPK as it is generally more beneficial to us as artists, and you can show and describe your promotional material in a way which can carry over to your own personal website and portfolio, however as I have been planning to produce and release this album for about a year now, I came to the decision to turn this into a business plan. Not only because I have been able to go into detail about my intentions and aims, but describing the process through a written essay means I’ve carefully considered everything I need to do, and feel much more confident in this album release.
I was encouraged by my peers Lauren and Ben to not stray too far plan-wise from my first album process, as it had been successful the first time, only that I should increase the effort to give the album more reach. They had agreed CDBaby was the best distributor based on elements such as available streaming services, licensing, and customer service, although some said distrokid was decent in the same ways from their own experiences, the only downside being the subscription fee.
Lauren gave me really good examples of other students from the conservatoire who had successfully released and promoted music, such as Romy Taylor who’s most recent release Nectarine became well known around uni and had a great turnout at the headlining gig
There were some great industry insights from discussions with the group. We concluded through research, experience from the people we know, and our own experiences that the most successful small artists are those who know their way around social media well and post regularly. You need to put as much effort into self promotion as you do in the music itself.
Tiktok is the best place for getting your music to trend, because people want something to interact with or be gripped by. Everything has to be trendy, syncable, and most of all relatable.
Also, the volume of your posting should remain high, the more people see of you online, the more likely they are to follow and interact.
Exposure is vital too, collaborate with and support fellow artists as much as possible, and having these projects posted on social media from both you and them, and your music will thrive.
To conclude and reflect;
I’m going to work more on collaboration with other artists in the industry, especially women who want to appeal to a female audience in the way I do. This will help in exposure, experience, and give me a solid place in the music industry as a woman.
What I’d like to improve on moving forward is my social media work, by getting promotional material out more regularly on instagram, working the material and my music in with current trends, and building an aesthetic.
To reflect on my previous album, I didn’t post super regularly, and previews were sparse. I tended to use photos with the music layered over the top, and I didn’t make any music videos. The album was also mostly electronic, so there wasn’t any actual rehearsal footage to post, and I didn’t have many live performances. However having a live band for this upcoming album will make promotional material far easier to create.
Justifying brand decisions, messages, and aesthetic, my album is very earthy, grounded, and female, so all promotional material will support that message and aesthetic. I’m also going to stay true to the content of the album thematically, and advertise it as a concept album, highlighting the stories and messages through images and videos.
Bibliography:
Clark, I. (2023). Girls Need Love Too! [online] Still Listening. Available at: https://www.stilllisteningmagazine.com/features/girls-need-love-too.
Leedsmusicscene.net. (2017). Leeds Bands | Bands from Leeds – Leeds Music Scene. [online] Available at: https://www.leedsmusicscene.net/bands/ [Accessed 12 May 2025].
Promoly®. (2024). How To Upload Your Music To Spotify: A Step-by-Step Guide. [online] Available at: https://promo.ly/how-to-upload-music-to-spotify/ [Accessed 12 May 2025].
CD Baby Help Center. (2024). How much does CD Baby cost? [online] Available at: https://support.cdbaby.com/hc/en-us/articles/213125406-How-much-does-CD-Baby-cost.
CD Baby. (2024). Collect Mechanical Royalties, Sync Licensing & More | CDB Boost. [online] Available at: https://cdbaby.com/cdb-boost/.
