Self-releasing in 2024

A guide designed to anyone releasing their own music or running a small record label. The things I learned, how each release did, different way of promoting music, sales figures and more.

At the start of the year, I launched A State of Flo records with this Substack page and the promise to do the following:

Release music on traditional formats and streaming platforms where appropriate, but also explore new ways to do this via new technology.

The music released will centre around the ‘ecological’ and ‘biological’ basis for songs - we’ll explore biosonification, mycelium networks, acoustic ecologies, sonic worlds, psychedelics, environmental sounds and dance rituals.

Everything will be communicated via newsletters on Substack and direct to your email inbox. Think of these as extended liner notes, with free music, mixes, podcasts, videos and interviews. I’m hopeful that repurposing a platform designed mostly for written content will lend itself well to releasing music, allowing the all-to-important context to be delivered.

If your listening experience of this music amount to even a fraction of the enjoyment I had making it - if it makes you think or feel something, then it has been the right choice. I am not releasing this music to make money - I am happy to be transparent with how the financials work and perhaps I’ll do a post about this at some point. I’ll also use it to give back to the environment, partnering with Earth Percent to donate 10% of all revenue to environmental causes.

Read the full post here:

Releasing Music in 2024

Reflecting back on this opening mission statement, I’m happy to share my insights from this year and be transparent as promised with the financials and other elements of releasing music you often won’t hear about. I’m writing this to serve anyone interested in following a similar pathway.

I’ve broken it down as follows:

1. Release formats

2. Promotion

3. Metrics and Financials

4. Things I learned in 2024

Release Formats

One often forgets - the release format is the primary driver in defining how a piece of music is presented. Understanding the format of the release is so crucial, but something we don’t spend enough time in thinking about. The approach across the board from new labels to established ones is basically: release on everything, all at once. That means a song will appear on all streaming services and simultaneously on at least one traditional physical format such as vinyl, CD and tape.

The song versions tend to be identical, so if you are listening on to an album on vinyl it will most likely be the same as the album on Spotify (obviously there are some exceptions - some labels remove tracks from the vinyl due to limitations on space, for example).

This year, I’ve basically followed this ‘traditional’ way of doing things, with small adjustments per release. The Auntie Flo album ‘In My Dreams (I’m a Bird and I’m Free)’ was released on every streaming platform via DistroKid, including a range of their download partners (i.e. Beatport). Distrokid is a fantastically efficient and cost-effective service but it has limitations - they don’t work with niche stores such as Boomkat and Juno download, for example.

The album was released on vinyl and we experimented with having a limited edition bonus poster + sticker pack for purchases via Bandcamp. If you can stomach semi-regular trips to the post office (drop and go has been my saviour this year!), then you can basically double your money by selling direct.

The caveat is this only really works in the UK for me due to super high postage costs overseas (over £20 to post to the USA means the album cost double!). There are still a lot of merits to working with a distributor, despite the margins being much tighter. However, I can’t deny it has been hard.

Successes and Failures

The biggest success was Green City - which we pressed as a single sided green vinyl. It basically sold out on the day of the release and shifted 300 copies in total, 65 from my Bandcamp and 235 via the record shops.

Reality check: we are a long way away from where we were even 6/7 years ago when we could easily sell 500 copies of a white labelled Highlife record. I’m deeply dubious on the headlines around the ‘vinyl resurgence’ - the people making new and adventurous music are definitely not finding it easy to sell records in 2024.

As much as I hate following the bandwagon, Bandcamp Day was a big success - we sold around 30 records in one day last time, more than the entire month combined. It’s a shame that such a push is needed to sell music but it does demonstrate there is a willing audience out there.

Mycorrhizal Fungi and Genius Loci were two other vinyl releases we did and were much harder to sell than the two Auntie Flo releases. In some ways this was obvious, Auntie Flo has a ten year track record of releasing music and around 2000+ followers on Bandcamp. I released these two under the name Brian d’Souza, using that name for the first time. The music itself was super experimental and as extreme as anything I’ve heard this year too, so was hardly going to fly out the door. We purchased two ads in The Wire Magazine, as we thought that would be the most willing audience for this music, but this turned out to be a complete waste of money.

The result was that I’ve got a few boxes of unsold copies of these records that were returned to me from the distributor. I believe Mycorrhizal will sell out, but it is much better sold at real life events - i.e. on the merch stand of any bioelectrical modular live gig or talks I’ve been doing.

Genius Loci may sell more, but I’ve added it at a super low price on Bandcamp to make some space in my house!

Neither were released on streaming platforms as I didn’t think either would hit the 1000 play numbers that are now required by Spotify to qualify as a ‘song’. To me, these are pieces of art that should be experienced with the artwork, or in the real world, not on a playlist.

Next year:

I promised above to experiment with new release formats but that is still to come in 2025. We’re building an app for the label that will house the releases but also deliver a new way of listening and experiencing them using Gen-AI and some visualisations. If you’d like to be one of the first to experience this - please do get in touch.

Promotion

AKA the thing that causes the most fear and dread in this whole process. In my mission statement post, I asked the question - why even release this music in the first place? This was mainly due to the gauntlet one must run when wishing to properly send the word out that a new release is available.

Firstly, there is the build up - sending to scene ‘gatekeepers’ such as DJs, journalists, blogs etc. This can be a soul destroying process, as most of the time you are left getting no response and spend endless hours chasing, to which you may receive - ‘thanks, can’t wait to listen’ - which leaves you chasing again to ask if they actually did…

I got this nice message from NTS Dj John Gomez, which sums it up (thanks for your honesty John!):

You fundamentally have to armour yourself so you are fully prepared for silence not celebration. Hence why my mantra has been to remind myself that nothing that happens will adequately match the experience of making the song in the first place, this is the ultimate high and should not be forgotten.

Here’s some things about music promotion in 2024:

• Everyone is ridiculously busy

• There is more new music being released than ever before

• There are more options to listen to any music than ever before

• More people are making music than ever before, which shifts the balance of fans > creators

• We are all at the mercy of the social media algorithms which makes it trickier than it should be to present a new song to your followers

• Music journalists are overworked and underpaid, often very young and with their own agenda which you may or may not fit into

• People generally want functional music, not music that has depth, meaning or requires more effort than a casual background play

• Playlists > Albums

Despite all this, I’ve persevered by doing as much promotion as I’ve been able to to try to get the releases we’ve done to cut through. I’ve worked with PR agencies, Radio Pluggers, Dj pluggers, done IRL events, radio shows, mixes and basically tried to create as much noise as possible.

Keep The Faith

It’s really hard to judge as you are in the maelstrom of it all. I had lots of people come to me and say ‘it looks like your album is doing well’ referring to ‘In My Dreams’. But what are they basing it on - perhaps a play on 6 Music followed with a social media post they’ve seen from me?

Sometimes all it takes is one person to believe.

Luke Una was the one. I had been sending Green City to various DJs who I’m friends with or have met at gigs or whatever. I wasn’t really getting much response. I’d met Luke once before, but he wouldn’t remember me. I thought “fuck it, I think he’ll like this” so I sent it to him on instagram. It took him a while but then he got back with this stream of messages whilst listening in real time!

At this point, everything made sense. One person got it. Job done.

Last week, I was speaking to a friend who said he’d been down at his 75 year old father-in-laws for a pre-Christmas lunch at his home. He heard Green City playing in the background and was shocked to learn that his relative was a new fan! He’d discovered me through 6 Music and had added the album to his Spotify. Now he loves my music.

This is also what it is about - demonstrating the value of Spotify (and radio) to help me break out of the ‘fan/friend bubble’. How many individuals are out there listening and enjoying this music who I will never come across?

Press and Socials

I’ve worked with HYPE, Nightswim and YourArmy this year. HYPE is def a good option to get dance tracks out to DJs. The live feedback is addictive (perhaps not in a good way) so you can read what DJs think in realtime…

Becca and the team at Nightswim did a great job of the Auntie Flo album PR. It was Guardian’s Global album of the Month, one of Disco Pogo’s albums of the year (with Green City getting track of the year), it was reviewed and featured in Electronic Sound Magazine, the singles were featured and premiered in DJ Mag, Mixmag, Ransome Note and a variety of smaller blogs, substacks (such as Noise Narrative) etc.

When the Guardian article dropped, I thought I’d see a rush of sales but guess what - absolutely zero came in on that day and in subsequent days. Does anyone read it? Or care?

I was featured several times on 6 Music recording the esteemed ICONS mix for Mary Anne Hobbs and being featured on her Sustainability in Sound feature with the mushroom music (which got 5000+ likes).

6 Music remains the most powerful tool for exposure there is for this type of music. Airplay on there meant that sales went up, people became aware of me for the first time.

It’s so difficult to quantify the power of online and print media. I’d like to think that the press exposure has helped drive sales, followers and listeners but I do think that impact has diminished from what it used to be.

Metrics-wise: I added 1500-odd new instagram followers, hitting almost 11k this year. It remains the best platform for regular engagement although it can be painful at times. I’ve tried to do more reels, talking to camera, stories and video content as that seems to be what is required. Other platforms seem totally dead - I have 22k facebook followers and get around 5-10 likes for each post. Twitter is dead. I’ve not braved TikTok as yet…

Next year

I’d love to get to the point where I could release anything on the label and have a core audience who would listen to it, outside of the need to promote it endlessly on social media and elsewhere. This would make for a richer and more enjoyable process - but perhaps, given all the challenges outlined above - is wishful thinking. Let’s see what we can do in 2025 to build on this year.

Metrics and Financials

Substack

I started this Substack by importing contacts from two mail lists I had previously - Auntie Flo and Ambient Flo. This gave me roughly 1000 emails to send the first newsletter to. Over the course of the year, this has grown to 1350.

I made a bigger play of paid at the beginning and currently have 25 paid supporters paying £5 per month and one super supporter paying £200 per year. Subscribing to paid means you get a physical copy of the Ambient Flo ‘zine, all the digital releases on the label for free and pre-release. Super supporters get the vinyl releases sent to them for free.

Bandcamp

I’ve talked about some of the sales numbers above, but here is a more detailed breakdown:

1. Mycorrhizal Fungi

   PRESSED: 300

   SOLD: ~150

   BANDCAMP DOWNLOADS: 28

   P/L: ~-£500

2. Ceibo

   PRESSED: None

   BANDCAMP DOWNLOADS: 127

   P/L: £449-£510=-£61

3. Praise Him

   PRESSED: None

   BANDCAMP DOWNLOADS: 148

   P/L: 197.40-£310=-£112.60

4. Genius Loci

   PRESSED: 200

   SOLD: 50

   BANDCAMP DOWNLOADS: 7

   P/L: ~+£4000 (costs were covered by Het Hem Gallery, who commissioned the recordings and paid for the work)

5. Green City

   PRESSED: 300

   SOLD: 300

   BANDCAMP DOWNLOADS: 86

   P/L: ~-£200.24 (we sold it to the distributor too cheaply (£6 per record) which made it impossible to break even on. Like the album, the costs to make this music was super high, with session fees, studio costs etc)

6. In My Dreams (I’m a Bird and I’m Free)

   PRESSED: 300

   SOLD: TBC (75 so far direct)

   BANDCAMP DOWNLOADS: 23

   P/L: ~-£7536.40 (Awaiting figures from record shop sales but likely the project will cost £5000 if the vinyl sells out. The costs to make and promote this album were super high! The hope is to recoup some of that from streaming, publishing and gigs).

Sales via A State Of Flo bandcamp:

Sales via Auntie Flo Bandcamp here:

Pay What You Want

We released two digital EPs this year too, Ceibo and Praise Him. Both were designed for DJs and the dancefloor audience. For Praise Him, I set the pricing as ‘Name Your Price’, meaning the purchaser could decide how much it was worth.

Overall, Praise Him sold a little better than Ceibo (148 vs 127 bandcamp downloads), perhaps as a result of this offer, but Ceibo brought in more revenue (£449 vs £197.40). There are obviously several other variables that affect this, not least the strength of each track and the timing of the release but it is an interesting comparison.

So perhaps this dispels the myth that if you offer people the chance to choose the amount they pay, you can make more money. However, if you are trying to drive more downloads overall, NYP is a good option.

Spotify

I’ve never checked my ‘Spotify Wrapped’ and it fills me with dread seeing others post their yearly stats online. However, for the purposes of this article here they are:

Breaking this down, I’m 5% up from last year, which seems small due to the amount of activity I’ve been doing. My most streamed tracks are none of the I’ve released this year, which I put down to certain tracks of mine such (i.e Mother Theresa) maintaining itself on a variety of different playlists that get continual plays.

My average monthly listeners at the start of the year were around 39,000 but now they have gone up to 53,000 - a good sign!

What about the money?

It’s def too early to tell as streaming sites pay a few months late. But my DistroKid account tells me I’m owed a grand total of $103.13 woohoo!

Earth Percent

Despite making significant loses from the label this year, I’ve been dedicated to pay 10% of revenue to Earth Percent. So far (up to Q3) A State Of Flo will have paid £1143.99 to E/P to distribute across their climate action charity partners. I’m happy to continue with this pledge and hope you can help support to by buying the music or signing up as a paid supporter!

Things I Learned in 2024

• Running a label should be fuelled by passion for the music as it is not for financial gain

• Breaking even should be the first target for any release (and even that is difficult)

• People enjoy limited formats, artwork and interesting packages, but not as much as I had thought

• I’m glad I only released my music as I can’t see a way a signed artist would get paid in year one

• Always be working on the ‘next thing’ to protect yourself against the stress of the promotional campaign for your current release.

• Push sales on Bandcamp Day’s, it seems to work

• There is still a place for traditional press but it’s diminishing

• Do as many IRL events as possible, build your community from the ground up.

Thanks for reading, supporting, listening, sharing, commenting in 2024! Lot’s more to come in 2025.

Feel free to share this article with anyone wanting to release their own music or start a record label…