Ep2: Album Launch Planning In Powerpoint & Using ChatGPT

Well, hello and welcome to the Food of a Musical Thoughts podcast with Elishema, the diary of a music artist.

I am that music artist and in this podcast, I document my activities, experiences and
creative processes as an indie music artist in hopes that some of it will serve as inspiration or fuel for your own creative endeavors or just Foo of musical thoughts.

So in today’s episode, I am sharing my process for planning out my 2024 album in PowerPoint. So let’s get into it.

Well, okay.

In episode one, I mentioned how this year, the one thing I am really focused on in my music life is putting out an album.

And so what I would normally do is plan out everything in a Word document that could actually extend to 15 pages or more, which would get so overwhelming after looking at it that I just like kind of abandon it.

So that was kind of like self-sabotage.

Anyway, this time around, I decided to plan it out in PowerPoint to make the plan more simple.

And let’s be honest, only so much can fit onto a PowerPoint page without it starting to get so small that you can’t even see it.

So PowerPoint is really good for breaking down complex topics into more manageable chunks and it’s been very helpful in this way for me.

So basically, what I did was map out the album as if I was mapping out a business plan.

And right now is only for me, but as people join my team, I’ll probably share a modified version of it with them so we can all be in sync.

And so I’ll go through some of the sections of that PowerPoint now.

So basically, I found a template that I liked it and it kind of sync with the vibe of
the album that I want to create.

And what I did was write out a leash in my 2024 album on the title page with a potential album name, which I’m not going to reveal right now until later on down the line because I’m not even sure if this is going to be the title is just a work in title for me inside my project.

All right.

So then I have a gender page and basically this came with a template, but I was like,
OK, I should have like a table of contents, but everything that’s within the PowerPoint.

And so basically I have a intro, artist description, target audience, products, market mates.

I call it market mates, but it’s really, you know, like in the business world competitors,
but I don’t like it.

Look at them as competitors because I mean, we collaborators.
That’s the way I see it.

And so I’m going to go through and kind of describe what is on each page.

So with the intro, basically, I gave an overview of what the album is about.

I give a little description about what the album genre is, how many songs I intend to have on it, a theme that is related to how much I would like to earn from it when I want to have it released by those type of things.

Actually I didn’t put the release date here.

I put basically I needed this project to be done by December 31st.

That’s what I put because if I if you go back to episode one, I mentioned like I reset
the goal for 2024 to just come up with an album for this year and it need to be done by December 31st.

That’s that’s the one requirement to make me feel proud that I accomplished something this year.

And then the artist section is just a little bit about me and I’m basically just mentioning like previous albums that I’ve released and put the release dates in the genre of the album, the name of the albums.

And then I ended with like this current album that I’m working on and the to be released 2024.

I even included a section that’s called what makes this launch different.
So since I’ve released albums before, I wanted to write out like what was I going to do different and I had to reflect back on what did I do when I released those albums, what would I do differently and what would make this album release better.

And so I kind of wrote out like three areas I could improve on for this album so I could have better success than the previous albums that I had because I mean we want to continue to grow and expand on the successes that we’ve had.

And I’ll probably go into what makes this album launch different in a later podcast episode.

So then I have the target audience who is this album for actually got some help with this from ChatGPT.

Actually, I put in some of the details of the album and I probably won’t go into details.
So I’ll do this as another episode too.

But I use ChatGPT to help me define my demographics.

And I don’t know if it’s 100% accurate, but I’m still going to do some more research on
this.

But it did give me some places to begin, some starting points, which I really, really like
and it kind of shortened that research process.

So anyway, I’m continuing on.

So I have a product section and basically the main product is the album.

However, some other things around the album that I would like to have is like create some t-shirts, some mugs with some of the lyrics from the album on it.

I wrote that in my product section and within the product section, I also have one like
an overview page where I list out all the different products, but then each product itself has its own like PowerPoint slide.

So the album has like a couple of slides and the album and basically just talking about the genre, how many songs I actually want to create to get to this.

I’m going to do like seven or nine songs, but I want to have a lot of songs that I can choose from and then have some album idea keywords just based around the theme of the album. I wanted to have some keywords. This is another potential episode because it’s a lot.

So I went through and again, I had ChatGPT help me with like I gave it the theme of the album and it gave me some sub themes within that theme that I can create songs about for the album, which I’ll go into in a later date.

Okay, the merch section, which is where I have a merch slide where like I said, I mentioned t-shirts, mugs and how I want to go about doing the strategy for creating those.

Okay, then I have the market makes section where I list out artists with similar products and basically artists with similar albums.

Yeah, just so I can use them as, you know, like it’s the same thing with a business plan.
They say, who are your competitors so that you can go see what your competitors are doing and get some inspiration, even find out like where they’re being placed or like what magazines are covering them and those things.

So I make it easier for you to compile a list, a pitch list and all that good stuff.

So anyway, and then you can also see, you know, like commercially what you’re competing with.

Okay, continuing on, I got pricing and the pricing strategy for each item, the song, the
t-shirts and stuff like that, place where and how the products will be distributed and sold.

I have a place section where I listed out each item, the albums, the merch, where they’re going to be sold and what is the strategy for that section on promotion, how I intend
to spread the word.

And then I wrote down like general keys to being successful with the promotion.
I wrote down my promotional plan in my strategy for that one.

I’m going to be pitching to influencers and magazines and things like that.
So I will probably put a link to a database in my PowerPoint.

So when it comes time for me to like actually start doing the pitching work, I can just click the link inside the slide and then go from there.

And I have my PR strategy written out, which actually had GPT chat.
Help me with that.

It just, this is, this is really a wonderful tool.

Like I’ve had it help me identify a potential PR angle.

I really had no idea what a PR angle would be for this album, but I gave it all the details about my album and it was, it gave me like eight different ways in which I can pitch my album and myself.

So I was like, okay, this is cool.
What else?

Content strategy.

So I have a content strategy.

So for the album, there’s quite a bit of content to go around it to help build up the hype around the album before it comes out.

And so I have a section where I’ll list out exactly what those content pieces will be and
have album launch strategy process.

So that’s basically the process section is the phases of the plan.

And I have like the planning phase, which is what I’m in now.

I have the writing and production phase, while I’ll be creating the album and getting feedback. I have a writing and designing phase and some other phases, which I will go into depth on in another episode.

And then I have Malstone’s, a Malstone’s timeline where I call it Malstone timeline, but
it’s really just a timeline, listing out points where I want to be at different dates.

And then people’s section, which just has me right now.

And then I have financials, money, low basically.

I have revenue projections and even when you do a business plan for the most part of
me, if it’s start up, it’s all a fictitious, like you just make enough stuff.

But these are just numbers that I would like to see for my album launch and numbers for like all the different products that album sales, the t-shirt, the mugs, maybe tote bags, hats, and then a total amount for the release.

And then I have one for project budget.

So yeah, for the project, I put together a budget of like musicians, how much I want to
pay them, the mixer, the master, branding, promotion.

And then I have a section for metrics, measurements of success.

And I wrote down metrics in terms of the different things I wanted to keep track of, in business, keep performance indicators.

And here, I’m calling it like, what is it that I really desire?

And I put down some numbers that I desire to see, like for album sales, how many albums I want to sell, how many emails to subscribe is what I like to have from this launch, how much revenue and other things.

So basically, that is that.

And then I can close my PowerPoint for the album.

So I just gave you a quick overview.

And it’s still a work in progress.

I mean, I plan to update it often as new ideas come up and as I’m like planning things out and I’ll continue to add to it.

Because I mentioned earlier, I chose a template that has colors and fonts that reflect the vibe of the album.

And as I mentioned, I’ll be linking to external documents.

For example, once I have like my media list, I’ll add a link to a Excel spreadsheet for some other database that I’m using to store that information and put it inside the PowerPoint.

So to wrap up, basically, this is how I’m keeping track of my album’s direction, objectives, strategies, etc.

And so far, I like it.

I haven’t printed it out because I probably lose it somewhere, but it’s easily accessible
on my computer and I basically open it up every day because I want to stay focused on my goals.

And I like how everything is just kind of sectioned off into the slide and it’s colorful.
It’s pretty.

I like colors.

And it keeps me inspired to work on it as opposed to just like a black and white document, you know, just text on a page and all pictures and stuff like that.

So to see the show notes for this episode, you can visit foodfrommusicalthoughts.com/ep2.

If this episode sparked any questions, you would like to ask me, you can do so by submitting a question.

You can do it on the website as well.

The link for this is on the show notes page and I’ll do my best to answer it in an upcoming episode.

Also if you’re enjoying this podcast, please subscribe and I’ll leave a review.

It’ll help this podcast reach new listeners and I would also very much appreciate it.

And if you know anybody who is a music artist or you feel would be entertained by this, please feel free to share it.

In the next episode coming up, I’ll be sharing why I created a Trello board as part of my album planning.

So stay tuned for that.

And I want to say thank you for tuning in.

I hope this episode inspires some musical thoughts or helpful ideas and I’m wishing you a great date, evening or night.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)