The strategy of creating music inspired by a particular concept is increasingly becoming difficult to market. Does this mean the death of the music Album? Not necessarily. Through innovative music marketing, concept albums will continue to make an impact on listeners. Thus, each song of the album has to have a marketing strategy of its own. That strategy acts as a sub-strategy to the concept album’s overall marketing plan. Simultaneously, the rest of the album serves as a restrictive agent for the single not to digress away from the album concept by overshadowing other songs from the album — thus avoiding the result of a very successful single from an unsuccessful album. What is different today is the idea that a successful single will attract listeners to discover more music from the concept album containing that successful single. This idea is no longer sustainable in today’s music market. The challenges facing music albums today are the speedy high levels of music consumption, the diversity of music released both independently and by majors labels, and the reality that everyone and their grandmother want to be a famous sensational music star. Add to all of this the speed at which world events are taking place and music competing with other artforms and entertainment. All these make it challenging to sustain listeners’ interests in a particular music album for a long time. Maintaining recurring streams for an album is particularly difficult as streamers speedily move onto the next release list, for example, #newmusicfriday. As has been proven by many of today’s artists, Fordism and the assembly line approach to music production can help artists succeed in a market dominated by high-speed music consumption. That success is in the shape of increasing artist visibility and popularity. However, the nightmare begins when artists realize that fame and popularity do not equate to financial success. In the music business, financial success is in music sync opportunities and publishing.
The recent releases of remastered tracks of Deluxe music compilation albums from many established musicians attest to the fact that profitability is in music albums in the long-run. For example, American singer Cyndi Lauper’s album “She’s So Unusual,” released in the ’80s, was rebranded and released as Cyndi Lauper She’s So Unusual A 30th Anniversary Celebration Deluxe Ed Signed CD Priced at around $149.99. The repackaging of such a product indicates that fans pay attention to details, and every bit of an artist’s memorabilia matters.
UnitedMasters singer-songwriter/musician Ali Hugo is not one to walk away from the challenges of the modern music industry. Hugo started releasing singles from his successful spiritual pop-rock album “Hope For the Meek” in 2019. The album contains 12 songs written and produced by Ali Hugo. The experience of marketing an album with perseverance in a global music market where the music singles rule is a challenge. Still, Hugo took a multidimensional approach to release music in 2020. while wrapping up the hope for the meek project, Hugo wrote and produced music for his Christmas instrumental playlist, including tracks such as “Teleportation,” a song written after Hugo developed the formula for the macroeconomics of a wormhole [LARC=U= Diseconomies of scale].
Hugo also wrote and performed on his spoken word release titled “Despair.”
By releasing singles in between promoting the Hope for the Meek album, Hugo managed to retain the audience’s interest with music unrelated to hope for the meek while sustaining listeners’ curiosity & attraction to the album’s content. At the same time, Hugo managed to attend his record labels music conference UnitedMasters #selectcon2
When asked about his music’s future, Hugo stated, “The bottom line is; I understand that profitability is in my music publishing and music sync opportunities. When I make business decisions related to adding new music to my catalogue, the basis of those decisions is what’s best for the Ali Hugo estate in the long run? Today I know that what’s best is having the right kind of music catalogue which can generate further profitability to the Ali Hugo estate in the form of the Ali Hugo Deluxe Music box planned for release in 2028.”
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