Metal music is counted among the oldest and most enduring genres of music. Originating back in the 60s, the genre has evolved and expanded into hundreds of sub-genres. From heavy metal that will have the listener headbanging with the rhythm to the musically complex progressive metal, it enjoys a dedicated fanbase spanning the whole globe.
Despite its enduring fanbase, metal music has a smaller piece of the figurative pie in the music industry and progressive metal even more so. As a progressive metal band, you will need an extra edge to promote your album and boost sales. Thanks to the internet and the power of social media, you can easily do so.
Choosing the Right Platform
Selecting the right platform for the job will make all the difference in your promotional strategy and make your job a whole lot easier. Some platforms are better suited than others to promote your progressive metal album. As such, you will need to target Facebook and Instagram, in particular, to promote your musical content.
Instagram is optimal for this, as you can post both images and video content. You can create teasers with snippets of your music and build hype for your album release. The teaser will whet your fans’ appetite and will make them hungry for your music. You can also share progress images from the studio to let fans know that you’re working on new content, building anticipation over multiple months.
Engaging Album Covers
They say never judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to musical albums, the case is a bit different. An engaging album cover that captures the attention of anyone who looks at it. A fan might buy your album simply because it was made by you, their favorite band. But for non-fans, or more accurately, people who you’d want to convert into fans, you need to gain their attention.
Fortunately, there are ways through which you can create such an album cover for yourself that don’t even require you to install graphics designing software. Through the use of many online graphics designing and album-making services, such as PosterMyWall, you can do everything easily with a fraction of the effort.
By taking advantage of the tens of thousands of album cover templates available, you can cut down the designing time and effort in half, as the basic structure would already be there. Then you just edit, tweak and modify according to your requirements, and your cover will be done in a few minutes.
One of the biggest names in the progressive metal scene, Dream Theater, posted an album cover on their Instagram as part of their promotional strategy. In this particular instance, the band was celebrating the anniversary of its latest release. But you can also use this strategy for your fresh release as well.
Tease the Album Release
Movies and films typically tease their upcoming releases via trailers and teasers, and the like. But for musical groups, this teasing is done via singles. This gives your audience a taste of what’s to come and builds anticipation leading up to its release.
Choose the best song from your album and release it a few weeks before the album does. People will listen to it and get excited about the album’s full release. So by the time it does, you will have a large number of people quickly buying and listening to it.
Progressive metal band Tesseract did something similar for their release, Altered State. They released a single from their album along with a music video. The song built hype among the audience who listened to the single and eagerly awaited the full release of the album. The single was released via the band’s record label, but you can also do that from your band’s own YouTube channel. This can be done for both EPs and full-length albums.
Go Live
Instagram and other social media these days allow people to go live on their accounts and broadcast themselves to their followers. People talk about a plethora of topics during these sessions and interact with their audience via live chat. As a progressive metal band, there are a number of things you can do here.
You can hold a simple Q&A session where you answer questions regarding your upcoming release, writing process, and other related topics; you can perform a song or two for your audience; you can also tease some demos and the like, etc. As long as you manage to build anticipation for your album, the strategy will be a success.
Forums, Subreddits, and Groups
A great way to promote your album is to share it on dedicated forums, subreddits, and groups on social media dedicated to metal communities. That way, you’ll be targeting your audience directly among the most passionate fans of the genre and get heard.
Subreddits are more open in the sense that people who haven’t followed them can browse through them. Here you have a chance of reaching people who aren’t metal fans but may be considering listening. Groups, particularly the ones on Facebook, are closed and exclusive, but here your chances of getting heard are the greatest.
As a best practice, you should be active in these communities and regularly interact with the members there. This will build good standing, and your posts have a greater chance of being boosted.
Promotion and advertisement can only work so much. At the end of the day, it is the quality of the music that will get you listened to. It is good music that will determine the success of your album and ensure that your album will sell like hotcakes. Metal music may not be as popular or have a big presence in the music industry compared to pop music, but it has a passionate fan base which means you have to bring your A-game. By following the techniques given in this article, you can give yourself the edge to get your album out there and heard.
