Proppa
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Wanna release a remix? Here's my guide.
🕑 Added 2023-06-10 20:32:33 +0000 UTCI have walked countless people through my step-by-step for releasing a remix for Free Download. Here I am sharing the goods with all of ya. There's a lot to unpack here so let's get started.
So you finished a remix and you wanna top the Hypeddit charts, huh? Well PAL, you came to the right place.
There are some things to keep in mind even during the production of your remix to give yourself a fair shot:
1. Art
- Color Scheme
- Graphical Component/Ambience Style
- BANNERS
- Bonus - Youtube
2. Social Media Strategy
- Promotional Video Ideas
- Your "Gimmick" and how it relates to the song
3. Your Network
- DJ/Soundcloud Homies
- Personal Friends
4. RELEASE
- Prep
- Upload
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1. Art Direction
Though many have told me they don't care about the artwork on their remixes, and some specific songs support the argument that it doesn't matter, I could confidently say that my consistency in branding on my early remixes REALLY helped my chances on the charts. For one, Hypeddit is kind of a shit UI. So when I'm making my quick dash through the charts for new music as if it's the perfume section at Nordstrom's Rack, tracks with mediocre artwork have a good chance of getting skipped. Subconsciously I think I just want to know that the producer on the other end of the song is actually making an effort towards what they're doing. We can talk shit about labels all day but if we can't even get our own artwork together, we really don't have a leg to stand on.
Nowadays with Canva, there's literally 0 excuse to not be able to make your own artwork. All of the elements are there; if you're serious about your career (excluding those who already know photoshop) then you should 1000% be paying for Canva pro. No questions. That or hiring a graphic designer, but that's a large bill for songs that don't pay up front.
So first up is Color Scheme. For your track, you're going to want to assign 2 or 3 colors. One will be your primary, and the others will be your Secondary. Having tertiary accent colors (4th, 5th, etc.) within your design is okay in the right situations, but I keep it simple. I don't know about ya'll, but I'm one of them synesthesia folk who is able to assign colors to sounds in their head. This has helped me immensely with branding but if you struggle with that, I highly suggest looking into how colors reflect moods. Luckily, sometimes the songs pretty much tell you what colors need to be present. With the art/song I'm using later as an example, that was the situation.
Next up is your graphical component/ambience style. This is where you decide if you maybe want your art around the track to use graphics rooted in realism, abstract, cartoon, etc. This not only pertains to the main subject of the cover, but also the background and the font style. Much like your music, it's important that a general theme is conveyed between all graphical elements. If your graphic looks hand drawn, maybe your font should be. If your graphic is 3D, maybe your text should be. If your background is dirty, maybe you should dirty up the whole design with an overlay. Let's look at an example.
This is for my Magnolia remix. As for color, it was obvious that I needed some Magnolia pink present in the art. The original song, the idea of a magnolia, the pink, all reflect more summery and positive feelings; but I felt that I brought a slightly darker, classier tone with my mix and wanted to offset the pink with black as my Primary color.
As for graphics, sometime's I don't know exactly what I want going into it. I try to set my general background color first, so that I could start visualizing a blend. I knew a magnolia flower would be included, so I started my search there on Canva. I came across this hand drawn flower, and it gave me the ideas for the rest of the design. I looked for a handwriting font that matched the kind of pencil-stroke feel of the graphic, and then searched through some pencil scribble overlays on Canva to get the final pink piece that goes over the flower. Overlays are HUGE for making a design not feel stale. Once I had everything on the foreground set, I looked through some "Dark Texture" options on canva to apply to the black background and bring it to life. The final piece was to find an overlay that brings the foreground and background together. I searched for a dusty overlay to mimic the little specs of ink you get from using an old office copier, you could see those very faintly in white and gray.
BEYOND THE ALBUM ART
Something I and many others do is create banners for our social media/streaming pages based on each song. Essentially, you need to use the same elements from the cover art, but rework them in a way that works as social media banners. Here's how I did the Magnolia release.
Soundcloud
Notice that my Twitter and Soundcloud banners lean heftily to the right, because your profile picture is generally covering the left side. It takes some trial and error to get it looking right, so be prepared to make multiple attempts on your first release day to line it up. Nobody will notice, it'll take 10 minutes tops, don't freak out like me lol.
It seems like this changes every fkn day at this point but here are the current recommended dimensions as they stand:
- Twitter: 1500x500 pixels
- Soundcloud: 2480 x 520 pixels (but I question this, you gotta play around)
- Facebook: 820 x 312 pixels
BONUS: YOUTUBE
For each of my remixes, I upload a video to my youtube channel to stream the track. I think it's really important to have your music on Youtube. It's up to you to decide how you want it presented at the end of the day, because many people just listen and don't watch.
There's a spectrum here, you really can just upload a 1920 x 1080 still image of the reworked cover art with the HQ audio and call it a day. However, if you notice my videos, I take it a step further by putting together elements for a visualizer that closely resemble the artwork. I can go into depth on this some other day.
I USE MY FACEBOOK BANNER AS MY YOUTUBE THUMBNAIL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAacRIcKGwQ
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2. Social Media Strategy
So so so many are resentful of social media, I get it. I am too. But we HAVE to at least put in some effort. You don't have to make cringey content, but you have to show people in the industry that you care about what you do.
That does NOT mean just uploading a screen recording of the song once and calling it a day. That does not mean just posting a single picture and saying the song is out. My MINIMUM is 2 posts per song, I strive to make 3 or 4.
I need to make an entire other post about this so I'm not gonna go TOO in depth. But there are some really important things here. One of the best things I've learned from working with Dropgun is to HAVE CONTENT PREPARED. Having a large backstock of posts to make is gonna save your life. You need to have posts prepped for any situation, but let's focus on song releases. When I have a song coming out, I do not wait until it's out to start promoting it. If I'm gonna post 2 videos, those 2 videos are finished in advance, and their posting time, caption, hashtags are all planned out.
When Techno Lady came out, I had 7 fkn videos ready and it still wasn't enough. I have 5 ready for my single release in 2 weeks and I'm planning 5 more. That's how it really needs to be.
One more thing to note is that it's definitely beneficial to have a "direction" with your social media strategy. Work around the theme of your song to figure this out. If you go back to my prime remix days last year, you'll see I used tech bro to milk the themes of the songs as much as possible. Just make things make sense, even if it has to be simple. For my Snoop/Dre remix, I put the original music video on in the background of my studio while I greened out all the lights and gave off a smoker vibe. Just try to theme it to the best of your ability.
OF ALL THINGS, IT'S MOST IMPORTANT THAT YOU GET AT LEAST 1 REEL/TIKTOK UP WITH THE HQ AUDIO SO THAT OTHERS COULD POTENTIALLY USE THE AUDIO. THIS IS HOW SHIT GOES VIRAL
I will do an in depth post some day on how I make content, but while were on this topic I want to list out a bunch of ideas for you guys so you cant say "idk what to make"
- Studio breakdown of how you made it
- Video of you playing it in the studio WITH THE MUSIC OVERLAYED IN HQ
- A skit using wordplay or imagery from the song to make a situational joke (Sensual Seduction I had Tech bro getting drunk off mezcal and playing the bottle like a flute)
- A video of you djing the remix
- A selfie video with the HQ audio (record yourself with some text like "day __ of me trying to make my ___ remix blow up." OR you could tell a story about the song in text captions, etc.)
- A montage of clips from shows, travels, fun times, HQ audio overlayed
- A photo/video stack of things you experienced during the making of it (hangs with friends, nights out, stuff at home, travels, studio etc.)
- A live show/club video of you DJing the song
- Footage of other DJs playing it
- Footage from the original song's music video cut to fit your song
- A visualizer (these do meh on socials)
- A satirical skit (risky but could be funny)
- A video showing how you made a specific sound in the song
- A meme video that is centered around audio where you could dub in your song (one of my favorites is the family guy one where Peter is talking to the doctor about different music, if you know you know)
- Sneak it into a medly video (i hate these but they work) like "5 tracks that will blow up" and stuff
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3. Your Network
When people always say "it's all about who you know", I think they're missing the mark. At the end of the day, your music can get you to know who you need to know. But you have to catalyze that by using the network you have readily available.
First off, sharing your tunes with your other artist homies is really important. I can honestly say that a big chunk of fans have come from other DJ homies playing my tracks in their sets and just supporting my music. Not only that, but larger DJs have gone to find my tracks when they hear my DJ homies play it in their opening sets. When I have a remix coming out, I start thinking about who I'm gonna send it too. Not every track fits every DJ, and it's not good to send a new file to someone every week if you're not already in constant communication. If you start to talk to DJs that have a larger following, it's better to float them a package with multiple tunes. I started to talk to Tujamo when my Lumidee remix came out. At that time, I floated him a package of all of my remixes up to that point. He now plays my cassie remix all the time, we've built up a friendship and he's always asking me for new stuff! I can't even quantify how much he alone has helped promote my work without him even trying (hes also just a real cool fkn guy). To sum up all of this schlop, it's my opinion that the #1 STABLE form of promotion is getting your tracks in other DJs sets.
Your friends and family also play an important role in this. Now let me get this straight, you do NOT want to spam your circle to share your stuff every time you make a new beat. That's not how this works. I think an issue is that a lot of artists are secluded. They don't let people in on their mindset, their moves, their daily struggles of their career, or they're at least not honest about it. You have to cultivate supportive relationships in your life. This is a much broader topic, but it's really important to get your friends excited about your music. Be open and honest about yourself with your people. Don't oversell yourself, and don't undersell yourself. Overselling yourself causes your friends to lose interest. But homies LOVE supporting homies that are clearly grinding and aware of where they are/what they need to do. Start including your friends and family in your music life more, they might just share your work without you even asking.
Beyond your immediate connections, I think it's important to analyze the entities that support you and utilize them to the best of your ability. If you see that a big playlister on Soundcloud supported one of your songs, send them your new one. If you see that a social media influencer used your song in a video, send them the new one. Radio shows, podcasts, Youtube channel, etc. The only thing I will tell you is to keep in mind to not spam people, use promo emails, demo emails, manager/agent contacts, etc.
4. RELEASE
Alright here we are, everything is ready to go, finally time to release. When I release a remix, I prepare a folder with all of the necessary elements for the song. It has the .mp3 and .wav audio in a folder/zip, a folder filled with all of the artwork, the Youtube video, a folder with all of the social media videos, and a text document with information about the track. The text document has all of titles, descriptions, hashtags, linkpaths, # color codes, etc. I attached the package for my Magnolia remix as a sample for you guys to reference.
Keep in mind that I and 99% of the producers releasing out there are using Hypeddit for our free download gate, because it brings the most exposure.
One last thing to note is that you should have a landing page for your social medias if you don't already. I made my landing page with Toneden and I constantly update it with new music, content, tickets, etc.
https://proppa.biglink.to/landing
Okay, here are the steps I take while uploading
- Upload to Youtube as a private video as soon as the video is finished. Flipping to Public will publish it as a new video which is a great feature of Youtube. It also takes a while to upload AND it takes FOREVER for Youtube to process HD and HQ audio in your video, so the sooner you get that done the better. Make sure all the description, hashtags, thumbnail, everything is locked.
- Upload to Soundcloud. Feel free to make sure all of the description, tags, everything looks perfect.
- Press Publish on both Youtube and Soundcloud
- Create Download Gate on Hypeddit
- Paste Soundcloud Link, choose genre, upload file
- USE YOUR ARTIST NAME IN TITLE, NOT ORIGINAL
- (paid account) use color codes from album art to match gate design, go to one of my download gates to see what I mean
- GATE STEPS: Not a bad idea to capture emails once or twice, but some people don't like that. I always make sure they are liking, reposting, commenting, and following on Soundcloud.
- GATE STEPS CONT: There are many many many debates on whether or not using the download gate for any social media platform or streaming service tanks your engagement. The concept is that they create dead followers, people who never go to look at your account or interact with anything so they never get into the algorithm. I would do your own research on this. I got a chunk of my insta following from those downloads but my engagemnt isn't great, I will say the Twitter gate did not hurt my engagement. I currently am only doing Soundcloud.
- For the Link URL it's not toooo important but I do like to keep it short and making sense with the song. For my Always On Time remix i just put "/ashantiDL". I then paste it in the descriptions.
- Release Settings: YES you want it featured in New Releases, YES you want it considered for the charts, the scarcity option is new and i'm gonna play with it soon to funnel people to Patreon
- Email Promotion/Tracking Pixels: This is where you lose me, idk about this stuff. I just step over it like that pair of pants that's been sitting on my floor since last Wednesday
- COPY THE LINK AND PASTE IT INTO YOUR SOUNDCLOUD BUY-LINK, I DON'T TRUST NO ROBOT TO DO IT FOR ME
- ALSO PASTE THAT LINK INTO THE DESCRIPTION ON YOUTUBE AND SOUNDCLOUD
- WAIT YOU'RE NOT DONE, THAT'S NOT THE LINK THAT GOES ON SOCIAL MEDIA!
- Go back to your Hypeddit dash and create a new smartlink
- Add your soundcloud link
- Genre/Title are the same, get the design as closely to the download gate as possible
- Add your Youtube and Hypeddit links
- Link URL: This is the one that's more important to me because people will potentially see it on social media. Keep it simple
- The rest on Hypeddit is straightforward
- Add the smartlink to your landing page
- Make sure you change all of your profile banners to match artwork
Every single topic and subtopic here I could take into 1000 paragraphs of detail. There's a lot to unpack, but if you want to get started and haven't been doing any of this yet, I hope it helps.
Love ya'll!
HERE'S THAT SAMPLE RELEASE PACKAGE, WAS TOO LARGE OF A FILE TO UPLOAD
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y3bdsz608b2c532/AACBT3lLio4tX59_gp3bt14Qa?dl=0
