6 ways to promote your new album on Instagram
You’ve poured a lot of blood, sweat and tears into making your album. So it can be heartbreaking to release it…only to be met with the sound of crickets because no one’s interested.
*chirp chirp*
This is where many newbie artists mess up: they work on the album in secret, and expect people to go nuts when they announce their new album out of the blue.
Unfortunately, things don’t work like that.
Even while you’re still working on your album, you need to start sharing about it on all your socials to generate some buzz—especially on Instagram, if that’s where your fans are at.
But if you’re not sure how to do so, don’t worry. In this guide, I’ll cover (pun not intended) five strategies for promoting your new album on Instagram.
I’ll also share examples of how famous musicians are using these strategies and sites like Growthoid. After all, you can’t go wrong if you follow what the pros are doing!
1. Reveal the album cover
Apart from the quality of your music, don’t overlook your album’s cover art. Beautiful, meaningful cover art gets people talking—which is exactly what you want as you promote your album.
So even before your album is launched, release its cover on Instagram!
This will delight your followers, who are probably dying to know how your album will look like. It might also just invite conversations on the meanings behind the cover (and your album in general).
For example, check out how singer Justin Bieber dropped the cover art for his new album, Justice, on his Instagram account:
View this post on Instagram
Bieber also provided more background on why he chose “Justice” as the name of his album in the caption (together with the all-important release date).
And his fans lapped things up. As of writing, the post has close to 2.4 million likes and over 43,300 comments!
2. Release the tracklist
Apart from revealing your album cover, here’s something else you can release in advance on Instagram to promote your album: your tracklist.
In other words, what are the names of the songs that your new album will include, and how will your songs be ordered in it?
Singer Taylor Swift pulled this strategy off beautifully when promoting her album evermore:
View this post on Instagram
Using the album’s cover art (see previous point) as the backdrop for the post, she listed the songs in evermore, including its bonus tracks.
She also tagged her collaborating artists and penned a personal note in the caption on what fans can expect when they listen to evermore.
And although she decided to disable comments for the post, it still got close to 2.5 million likes as of writing. This is definitely nothing to sneeze at!
3. Give a sneak peek of your new songs
You’ve promoted your album’s cover and tracklist on Instagram. Next up is to promote the songs themselves!
But you don’t have to release the full song on Instagram. Heck, you don’t even need to share their names.
Here’s what I mean:
Singer Billie Eilish is releasing her second album, Happier Than Ever, on July 30, 2021. And to promote it, she teased this song snippet on her Instagram account in April:
View this post on Instagram
While she captioned the post with “Happier Than Ever”, she didn’t actually say what song from the album this was.
So even though it’s been about two months since her post went up, it is still getting new comments like “What song is this?” and “Is this a song that is not out yet? I’m waiting for it..”
Is keeping her songs under such close wraps helping to stir up hype for her new album? Totally, yes.
4. Do a countdown to the launch
You can’t announce the release date of your album just once and leave it as that. You need to keep promoting it over, and over, so that your followers don’t forget it.
But of course, just repeatedly posting the release date by itself on Instagram is lame. Instead, share about your release date in a way that excites your fans to follow along to the launch—and doing a countdown fits the bill perfectly.
Here’s how the band Barenaked Ladies has done a countdown for its new album, Detour de Force:
View this post on Instagram
As you can see, the band didn’t state the release date in its post.
But by telling people that it’s “THREE WEEKS” to launch, the band’s followers can easily do the math to know when they can start buying the album (if they haven’t already preordered it, that is!)
5. Share reviews of your album
You may have diehard fans who will buy practically everything that you put out. On the other hand, you may have some fans who aren’t as hardcore, and need more persuading that your new album is worth buying.
This is where sharing early reviews of your album on Instagram comes in.
When you post the good things that others are saying about your album, this can help convince people who are on the fence that:
- Your album is awesome, and
- They should get it.
The reviews can come from individual fans or even music reviewers. And you don’t have to stop at posting one review!
You can post a whole bunch of them at once, like what musician John Grant has done:
View this post on Instagram
6. Tour with fellow musicians
For effective album promotion, try getting a leg-up from more established musicians.
As an example, you could work on getting a shout-out on their Instagram accounts. But for something bigger (and more effective), try to snag an invite to tour with them.
This way, you’ll be promoted to multiple segments of their fanbases—giving you even more opportunity to grow your own.
Singer LØLØ has struck gold in this regard:
This summer, she will be joining bands Simple Plan and New Found Glory for their “Pop Punk’s Still Not Dead” tour as a special guest.
View this post on Instagram
These bands are legends in the pop-punk space, with massive followings. So this is an awesome chance for her to be promoted to a huge audience!
Get ready for the big drop
Making an album takes a lot of hard work, so it can be tempting to skimp on its promotion to cut yourself some slack. But the extent of your promotional efforts can make or break your album sales, so don’t skip this step!
Even if you aren’t a graphic design expert, using a free online graphic design tool such as PosterMyWall can help you create eye-catching graphics for your album and your promo posts.
For example, you can use one of the available album cover templates to package your music into a beautiful album. Then, design stunning Instagram posts to promote your album and get your followers’ attention (and dollars). All the best!
