Attention DIY Arists: Windowing Won’t Work For You
While the practice of "windowing" releases has seen a lot of popularity among artists like Adele and Beyonce, the article explore why, for most DIY musicians, making it harder for fans to access your music is probably a mistake.
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Guest Post by Chris Robley on The DIY Musician
With this week’s semi-secret release of a Radiohead album that’s NOT available on Spotify, and recent exclusives by Beyoncé and Drake (on TIDAL and Apple Music respectively), there’s a lot of renewed interest in “windowing.”
Windowing is where you stagger your release across platforms, driving diehard fans first to the platform(s) that most benefits you (the artist), and then — maybe — broadening the availability of your music to other platforms or models over time.
For instance, let’s pretend you’re Adele and you know your latest record will sell like crazy. So for the first few weeks you make the album available only as a physical CD and traditional download to make the most money possible in the time when the music is getting the most attention. No streaming.
Then once those sales start to taper off, you introduce the music into the streaming environment.
If you’re a DIY artist, limiting your distribution is probably a mistake
But here’s the truth, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before: you’re not Adele.
Chances are, when you put out a new album, the hype it gets in its first 3 months will be the most attention that music ever sees. Which means you can’t afford to stall people in their possible interactions with your music.
Adele, Beyoncé, Drake, Radiohead — they’re superstars. They can command their audiences to go wherever they please. But if you’re trying to build your audience, you need to go to them, in the places they’re already consuming music. And that means: be everywhere. On iTunes, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, TIDAL. On YouTube. On CD. Even on vinyl (if you have it the budget).
Once you’ve grown your career to the point where you have a sizeable and loyal fanbase, then it might be time to toy with this model a bit. But until then, don’t make it hard for your fans to find your music. There are too many distractions and alternatives these days; if someone can’t find your song on their preferred platform, they’ll listen to the next artist’s song.
What do you think of windowing? Are you a lesser-known artist who’s had success with this strategy? Let me know in the comments.
Finally a sensible opinion on this topic. I agree that for indie artists like myself that Windowing is most likely NOT a good idea. But for Major artists , it is the right thing to do. What I have taken issue with in the past is soothsayers who decry windowing as bad for all artists and everytime a major artist has a success with windowing, they call it a fluke and warn the music industry not to take too much stock in it. They sound like plants for the streaming services that are afraid that more major players will follow suit…..Once again it’s good to hear a sensible opinion on this.
I totally disagree with these. I mean… Yes, if you are not a superstar then windowing ISN’T WORKING of course = it doesn’t bring you more money. BUT also it doesn’t hurt! Why would it be bad? In my experience there is no such thing as music discovery on Spotify (or anywhere else). You will NEVER have a fanbase if you just put up your music to Spotify, iTunes and wait to be discovered.
Only a very little number of music “discovered” by accident (just by being on iTunes or Spotify). I have a great fanbase and I can sell 500 tickets on a Monday night, but 99% of those people found me because of marketing = spending money on ads, and not by “discovering” me on Spotify. Less than 1% found me on iTunes or Spotify or whatever.
People ONLY listen to music what they already know, unless you push your music in their face. And you need a LOT OF MONEY for pushing. So yes, you need to find your potential fans AND DIRECT THEM to whatever platform you want. So if there is no such thing as “discovery” then IT DOESN’T MATTER if you are windowing or not.