In this instructional video, Wendy Day critiques the typical, fragmented promotional approaches that many emerging music artists use—such as dumping mixtapes on free distribution sites, over‑posting on social media, chasing one‑off video placements, or hiring street teams without a coordinated plan. She argues that the core problem is mistimed, unsequenced marketing: efforts are launched haphazardly, causing audience fatigue and minimal impact. Using a dinner‑service analogy, she illustrates how a successful release requires a pre‑planned rollout where all promotional elements (video, street team, internet campaign, radio, live shows) converge at the same moment, counted backwards from the release date. She then walks through a fan‑journey scenario, showing how repeated, low‑key exposures across trusted touchpoints (radio alarm, van billboard, magazine article, barbershop video, live show) gradually build awareness and spark word‑of‑mouth conversation. The key takeaway is that timing, repetition, and coordinated multi‑channel exposure—especially through sources the target audience respects—are essential for turning a single listener into a fan and for sustaining a music career.
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Hi guys, welcome back. Today I want to talk about timing. It's one of the most important aspects of your project. It's getting the timing right. I've noticed that when most people people put out projects or they start marketing and promoting their career in the music business, it seems like they don't quite know what to do. Um, and that's certainly not their fault because this industry doesn't really give information that's helpful. It's not easy to find out what to do. You kind of got to struggle on your own and figure it out. And most people tend to look around at what other people are doing and repeat their process. It sometimes seems like when an artist is getting ready to market and promote themselves, they will kind of take the obvious path and they will put their mixtape up on DatPiff Live Mixtape um, on the My Mixtape app, Spinrilla. They'll use the free mixtape distribution sites as distribution and give out the music for free once they have the excitement of getting it up onto those sites. And sometimes they pay for the packages, the marketing packages that those sites offer. Sometimes they don't, but it seems like after they put the music up on those sites, they'll let a couple of weeks pass, and once the excitement kind of dies down in their own circle, they wonder what to do next to promote. So they kind of ask around, um, somewhere they discover that they need to create a social media campaign So they'll go on to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram and they'll start posting, um, links to the DatPiff or the Live Mixtapes link. They'll start talking about what they're working on and blast it out to their followers. And the problem with doing that is when your social media feed becomes too promotion-y, people tend to disengage from you. Either they'll ignore your posts and skip over them because they're tired of constantly seeing the, the salesy ad for your release, or they'll unfollow you. And either answer sucks because you need your social media engaged with you. You need them following you so that you can keep them posted on what you're doing in your career in a very engaging way, in a non-promotion-y way. And then it seems like once the artist realizes that that's not working, they try to figure out what else they can do. To, um, promote their release. You know, maybe somebody suggests to them that they should have a video, so they go shoot a video and they put that out on their social media. They put that up on YouTube. They start spamming links to their video so that everybody can see what they've accomplished. Um, if they're a little bit more advanced and they have a budget, they might hire somebody to take their video to Fuse, to Revolt TV, to get it onto BET Jams, um, without a budget. They might start reaching out to people that work at those companies trying to get on to those video sites because they don't know how it works. They might even buy, um, a spot at WorldStarHipHop thinking that that's going to help their career. You know, and all of that stuff may work for 10 minutes, but it's not something that's very lasting for your career. When time passes and they realize that the video isn't really working and bringing in enough attention, um, they might start trying to book shows and realize that they don't have enough of a buzz to book shows. So they either hire a promotional team or a street team, or they go out and start passing out flyers and music and information about themselves. After a few months of doing that, they realize that it's really hard work. Actually, most people last about 2 weeks doing that. They realize what hard work that is, and they want to find an easier way. So they start asking around to people that are in the industry, and somebody might suggest radio is a great way to reach a large amount of people. And— and it is, you can reach millions of people through radio. So a lot of folks will go find an independent radio promoter. And by the way, this is the area where most people in the music industry get screwed because either it's too soon to go for radio or they give money to the wrong people to get on radio or they'll start reaching out to the program director and spamming them with their music And when that doesn't work, they'll go on a tirade complaining about how local radio doesn't support them. And it's not that local radio doesn't support them, it's that there's a way to do this and you haven't quite learned how to do it yet. So after you get frustrated with that, then you come back to the starting point and say, okay, you know, a couple months have passed since I released my mixtape, it's old now, so I guess I'll make another one and put that up. And you spend a couple months recording and mixing and mastering. Some of you don't mix and master, you just spend time recording, and you put out another release and you're kind of back at square one. The promotional efforts that you made on the first mixtape didn't work, and you don't realize that it was your timing that was off and your efforts that were off because you didn't really know what you were doing. You just kind of put stuff together piecemeal. And the best analogy that I can give you is that it's sort of like if I invited you to my house for dinner, and as soon as you walked in the door, I handed you a dinner roll, and then 30 minutes later I handed you a piece of pie, and then an hour later I handed you some green beans, and then a minute later I gave you some soup, and then a minute after that I gave you a steak, and then an hour after that I gave you a baked potato or some mashed potatoes or some rice or whatever. Not only was that a very unsuccessful meal, but the timing was off. In order for a meal to be successful, there's a certain order that you serve food. Um, you serve the super salad first, and then you allow enough time for the people to kind consume that, and then you serve the meal and you make sure that the meat, the potato, and the vegetable are all cooked properly and land at the same time on the plate, even though it takes longer to cook a roast beef than it does to cook some vegetables. Or maybe the rice takes 30 minutes and you're serving a steak that takes, you know, 10 minutes to grill. You need to figure out what your, your finish time, your table time is, and then count backwards with the food so that it all hits the plate at the same time. And then after you've had enough time to consume your meal, that's when you want to eat dessert. You want to have a piece of pie or a scoop of ice cream after you finished your meal and, and had, you know, a little time for it to settle, right? Well, the music industry is no different. You have to do things in a certain order. You have to figure out what your release date is and then count backwards from that release date. So you're going to have everything hit at one time. You want to have your video hit at the same time as the street team efforts hit. You want to make sure that your internet campaign and your social media campaign all hit at the same time. It's sort of like, um, if, if there was one perfect fan for you, let's just say there's one, and I'm going to say it's a guy because it's just easier for me to make this point. There's one guy and he is your ultimate fan. He is your perfect fan. And obviously you need many of him, and you need many, um, version— female versions of him as well in order to have a fan base. You need tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of this perfect fan. But let's just say, for example, there's one fan and he wakes up in the morning and he hears your song on the radio as his alarm clock's going off, but he doesn't really notice it because he's never heard it before. So it's not, it's not registering in his brain. He's hearing it, but it's just not registering because he doesn't care. It's background noise at this point. So he gets dressed and he goes out his front door, and a wrapped van goes by with your face and your logo and your album cover, your single cover, whatever. It goes by He doesn't really notice it. He may notice that it's a rap band, but he's not— it's not really registering because he doesn't know who you are yet. But in his subconscious, he has seen it. He gets in his car, your song is playing on his car radio or on the Spotify playlist that he's streaming in his car. It's not a song that he recognizes yet. He hears it, but he doesn't hear it, you know what I mean? And he's headed to his girlfriend's house. When he gets to his girlfriend's house, she's not quite ready yet. So he's sitting on the, on the, on the couch. She has a magazine sitting on the coffee table. He's going through the magazine, and in that magazine there's an article about you. He might stop and look at it, he might not, but he sees it. It's there in his subconscious. He just, he keeps paging through the magazine. Or maybe he's playing on his phone and he's on Twitter, or he's on Facebook, or he's on Instagram, and he sees a post about you, not from you because he doesn't follow you, but he sees a post from somebody that he knows talking about this new artist that he's just heard or discovered. And maybe he makes a note, you know, hey, when I have some time, I'll come back and check that out. Or maybe he presses play and he starts to check it out, but he gets sidetracked because he wants to answer an email, or he wants to check his Facebook feed, or he wants to check his Instagram, or maybe his girl is ready and they're ready to go. So it's not something that he got all the way through. They decide to go have lunch. They go over to the local Chicken Shack, and as they walk in, there's a giant poster on the wall. And that they may notice because it's big and it's out of place. It's at the Chicken Shack and they're not used to seeing a giant poster on the wall at the Chicken Shack, you know. So maybe they look and they see the name of the artist. It's the album cover, but they don't recognize the artist. It's not Jay-Z, it's not Lil Wayne, it's not Drake. So they don't really pay attention to it. They go up to the counter, they get their food. On the counter, there may be a stack of postcards, you know, 4x6 postcards with the same artwork as on the poster, but they don't really take one because they don't know who it is. They're just like, wow, this guy's out here grinding. They eat their food and then they decide to go their separate ways. You know, maybe the chick decides to go shopping, or she's going to get her hair done, or she's going to school, or whatever. And your number one fan, potential fan, is headed to the barbershop to get a lineup, right? So he goes into the barbershop and your video plays on one of the TVs, and everybody in the barbershop starts commenting. Well, the barbershop is a place where people go and they get believable information. They have conversations that matter. It's a place that's kind of revered, right? So as the folks in the barbershop are talking about your music, your number one fan is kind of taking it all in. And he may not realize that it was your van that he saw go by. He may not realize that he was just checking out your song when he was waiting for his girl to get ready. Or maybe he does realize. Maybe, you know, he's part of the conversation. It says, oh man, I just You know, I listened to the first verse of that, but I haven't really checked it out yet. You know, and as everybody's watching the video, or maybe as the music's playing in the background in the barbershop, it spurs a conversation. So now he has interest in checking out your music, even though he saw all those different promotional efforts towards him. It was the conversation in the barbershop that made him want to seek you out. So maybe he goes to the club that night and he sees you perform live, he sees your show, you know. Now he's really going to check out your music. As he's leaving the club, he goes to get in his car and there's a download card stuck on the window at the driver's side door. Maybe it's a CD if you live in an area where CDs still have some relevance. My whole point of this is you're not going to reach somebody all in one day. It's not realistic. But you want to get as close to that as possible. It's those repeated views, it's the repetition that is helping to promote your music and, and spread the word. It is what is spurring the conversation that's in the barbershop. And when people discover new music, it doesn't usually come from sources they don't recognize. It doesn't usually come from advertising messages. It comes from sources they respect, either their boys at the barbershop or their girlfriends who tell them about a new artist, or they're in somebody's car that they respect and they hear the music, or they're on Spotify and they're listening to a playlist and there's a new song on there by an artist that people around them are also consuming, people they know are talking about this artist. Your goal as an artist in a promotional campaign is to get people talking about you. It's the word of mouth that's going to spread your music, and you get them talking about you through a multitude of different efforts. And that's what these videos are here to help you do. We're going to talk about all of the different promotional methods that you can use as we go forward. But just know that at the point where you're at right now, you're learning that timing is what matters. The, the amount of repetitions that somebody receives for your music from many different resources, preferably resources that they admire and listen to. Thanks for tuning in. Keep, keep it coming. I'm gonna keep it coming as long as you're here. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. Bye.
