Should You Promote Your Song Before or After Release? What Charlie Puth Taught Me

When should you promote your song, before it comes out or after? And what does Charlie Puth have to do with it?

A friend asked me an important question that I think you're wondering about too. If you have a finished song and you believe in it, does it matter whether you promote it before it comes out, or put all the work in after?

My answer depends on your situation.

If you don't have time to plan and create content

This one has a simple solution.

Post 2 or 3 times before the release, then post as much as you can once the song is out. Focus on playlist promotion and ads after the release, and use social media to get your current audience excited about the new song.

A successful release campaign can take 10 or more quality videos, or 50 or more lower-effort ones. If you can't reach that level, promoting after the release is your strategy.

If you can plan a proper content strategy

A good pre-release campaign can make a big difference, for a few reasons.

• You can show Spotify's editors the song has potential. A good song isn't always enough. Sometimes they want to see that people already like it, and you can prove that with your promotion results when you pitch.
• Pre-saves help on release day. A pre-release campaign lets you collect pre-saves, so the song comes out with less stress. Knowing you'll have 1,000 saves on release day takes away the panic and sends Spotify's algorithm a good signal to push the song to more people.
• People like to feel exclusive. People love saying they knew an artist or a song before it was famous, and you can only give them that chance before the song is out.
• Anticipation makes people appreciate the song more. After waiting a few weeks for it, a listener might stream the song 10 times a day once it's out.

A good pre-release campaign can give a song a boost it can't get after release. So if you're choosing where to put your effort, put it before the release, and if you can, start as early as 6 months before.

And once the song is out, don't take your foot off the gas. Post even more, and remind people the song is out.

My free Release Checklist walks you through what to do before and after release day.

Option 1: involve your audience in making the song

My first example is Charlie Puth's song Light Switch.

Charlie teased the song months before it came out, and made it look like he was building it from scratch with his audience. It started with the first idea, "what if there was a song that started off like..." followed by some mouth noises.

Over time he posted more videos showing how the song was coming together, and asked his followers what they thought and whether they had suggestions.

Charlie already had a huge audience when he started, which is why I like my second example even more: Sadie Jean.

Sadie had zero fans when she started sharing her song "wyd now" months before it came out. It all started with an open verse challenge. She sang the first part of the song and asked her followers to sing the second part.

Thousands of people on TikTok made their own version, and the song blew up. She kept doing challenges like this until release day, and the song got 1 million streams in a very short time.

The lesson is that engagement pushes your content further. And when your audience is part of making the song, they're more invested in it and more likely to care.

Option 2: get it stuck in their head

If your song has a catchy part, sing it over and over again.

Once someone engages with one of your videos, they start seeing your other videos too. If you keep playing or singing that catchy part, it gets so stuck in their head that they'll beg you to release the song.

Imagine you tease the song for 90 days and post 90 videos. That's 90 chances for someone to hear that part of the song. You can't do this after the release, because you can't build anticipation for something that's already out, and after a few weeks the release momentum is gone.

A good example is the band Father Of Peace, who I also mentioned in my 3 secrets for Meta ads. They played a very catchy part of their song over and over again, it got stuck in my head, and I had to pre-save the song and stream it on release day.

What both options need

Both methods only work with a good song, quality content and consistency. If one of those is missing, that's why you're not seeing results.

Don't give up too soon. And if you don't have time to promote your music properly, don't be surprised when it doesn't reach people.

My advice is to pick one approach based on the time and energy you have, then commit to it fully. Half-hearted promotion in either direction won't get you the results you want.

And if you want the whole release planned and run with you the way a label would do it, that's what Release Like a Label is for.

A content idea to try: your own open verse challenge

Since Sadie Jean's open verse challenge worked so well, here's your version. Sing the last line of your chorus, then let the instrumental verse play, and ask your audience to duet the video and add their own verse.