For huge musical acts with an album on the way, promotion is almost as important as the music itself. It connects them to the fans and consumers, sets the stage for the mood of the album and builds hype which in return, drive up sales and streams. The main goal, as we’ve looked at over the past several weeks, is to keep the fans attention before the music drops. In doing so, there are many things that can go wrong. These rollouts are very nuanced and planned out periods. With that being said, there are hiccups along the way that lead to changed plans.
These changing of plans however, is not entirely a bad thing. 2016 was a good example of that. Future announced a new mixtape titled “Purple Reign” would be dropping the same night he tweeted. However, when the time came, no music was out. The website he chose to release the music through even tweeted saying that Future was still in fact working on the project. What this did, was set twitter into a frenzy. Everyone was tweeting purple umbrella emojis. This hiccup in the release rollout created anticipation.
That same year, Rihanna partnered with Samsung and Tidal to promote her album “Anti.” The idea behind the collaboration was to let fans unlock eight virtual worlds through video in the week leading up to the album release. Due to technical difficulties, there was a system error and Tidal ended up accidentally leaking the album two hours before the actual release. But this did not hurt Rihanna at all. Fans who had signed up and participated received a free download code for the album anyway. This, coupled with the frenzy of the system error only boosted streaming and conversation around the album.
It was proof that rollouts don’t always go according to plan. But instead of fearing it, artists should embrace it. It’s an opportunity to connect with fans on the most human of levels and show how you execute crisis management. In the face of terror, do you handle it with ease and reassurance or do you start blaming people and go off the rails?
