The art and science of virtual album-release parties

“Bryson Tiller Invites You To A Zoom Meeting.”

For an artist like Tiller — the renowned singer and rapper who released not one, but two albums in the span of one week this year (his third studio album Anniversary, and a deluxe edition of his 2015 debut album Trapsoul) — this greeting seems unusually corporate and buttoned-up. But in this case, Tiller wasn’t asking for a business meeting with his manager or producer; instead, he was inviting fans to a surprise listening party.

After having built up hype for Anniversary in the previous weeks through mysterious posts on social media, Tiller dropped the Zoom invite for his listening party on September 30, 2020 with just three hours of advance notice for fans. During the virtual party, the artist played through Anniversary in full, generating organic buzz ahead of the album’s official release date and merch drop on October 2.

A few weeks later, on October 22, independent R&B artist Xavier Omär held an early virtual listening party for fans around his new album if You Feel, which was released publicly the following day. Instead of turning to Zoom, Omär instead opted for a popup server in Discord, an audio- and text-centric chat platform that several artists and producers now use to engage with their fan communities. To keep the event organized, fans’ mics were automatically turned off in the live channel, but they could chat with each other and ask Omär questions about the album via real-time text chat. (The server is no longer active.)

The music livestreaming landscape is becoming increasingly crowded and fragmented, leading some artists to feel a sense of mental and financial fatigue with the format. But as the pandemic continues to drag on — and as it increasingly sinks in for artists that the music industry will be in this challenging position for the long haul — the trend of album listening parties in virtual spaces has only accelerated, not declined.

Aside from the above examples with Tiller and Omär, countless other artists have used a mix of audio and video platforms to stage their listening experiences for new releases — from Ava Max and Lil Nas X in Roblox, to Logic and Disclosure on Twitch, to Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes on YouTube, to Trippie Redd and Keshi on Storyboard, to a variety of artist- and fan-run listening sessions on the buzzy social audio app Clubhouse.

Bringing listening parties online offers a more holistic, affordable and scalable way to connect artists and fans, in a way that keeps the focus on the music itself. Hosting these parties on social and videoconferencing platforms also helps to make albums more conversational, rather than simply releasing the album top-down or leaving the fan guessing about its interpretation.

“When it comes to things like listening sessions where a large group is supposed to focus on one thing, people tuning in from their own spaces makes it easier for them to really tap in,” says Chris Hearn, who raps under the name Ceezar and also works as a Community Engagement Manager at Streamlytics. “They’re not worried about looking cool, sitting next to so-and-so or worrying about how to react.”

Hearn hosted an online listening session on Zoom in May 2020 for his album In Real Life., which was released one month prior. “I noticed that people were hearing new lines and connecting to songs that had already been out for weeks at that point,” he says. “The change in medium allows people the chance to change their approach.”

What are the ingredients of an effective virtual listening party?

With so many options out there for hosting online listening parties, how do artists ensure that the experience goes as smoothly and delightfully as possible, both for themselves and for their fans? The decision-making process can be broken down into the following four categories:

1. The platform

One of the most fundamental and important decisions to make in this context is which platform to use. On a higher level, there are three paths you can take with this decision: A) Partner with a major platform, B) use a self-serve tool in a more DIY manner or C) build your own platform from scratch. Each of these options comes with its own set of pros and cons and key features to look out for; regardless of which path you take, the platform you choose ideally aligns well with where your fans are already active, and/or how your fans already behave online.

As for official partnerships, several major platforms like Roblox and Apple Music have held exclusive listening party-type events for artists, fronting production costs while also seeing the artist partnership as an opportunity to acquire more long-term users for their core business. In these scenarios, it’s important to keep in mind that the platform, not the artist, usually has more control over the user experience and ultimately owns the user relationship. This may not be ideal from a data perspective, but there could still be a tradeoff advantage in terms of wider brand recognition for the artist.

For the DIY approach, as mentioned above, there are dozens of different video and livestreaming platforms available at artists’ disposal to host their own online events, the most popular of which include Zoom, Instagram Live, YouTube, Discord and increasingly apps like Clubhouse. The perfect platforms in this scenario have a combination of wide audience reach and fan accessibility, direct or indirect revenue opportunities and built-in moderation tools.

For instance, on Clubhouse, listeners can either be in the “audience” or a member of the “stage” where they can speak with moderators and other stage participants. The startup recently rolled out more detailed community moderation tools and policies to ensure safer and smoother discussions in rooms with larger groups of people.

The third, build-your-own-platform approach is not as common due to the resources required, but some major labels are already hinting at this tactic as a major component of their marketing strategies going into 2021. For instance, Universal Music Group artists Brasstracks and Fletcher hosted their respective listening parties this year on a new platform called Tunecast, which has surprisingly little information about it online. The privacy policy for Tunecast redirects to UMG’s website, implying that the platform is proprietary to the label and gives the company more control over fan data and the overall listening experience.

2. The production

The second decision, which follows naturally from the choice of platform, is how you actually conduct the virtual party itself.

Many artists miss the ability to interact with fans in physical, live performance settings. “In a real-life listening party, I can control the sound to ensure my album is crisp and knocking. Who knows how folks are hearing you at an online listening party?” says rapper Fat Tony, who held an audio-only listening party in Clubhouse for his latest album Exotica on October 23. “Also, nothing beats looking around the room and seeing people react to the music as it hits their ears for the very first time.”

That said, as with in-person listening parties, the best virtual listening events combine good audio quality, candid storytelling and mechanisms for real-time, two-directional feedback with fans, in a way that makes smart use of the platform’s native features. How can you make the “heart” button, emojis and cheers on platforms like Zoom, Discord and Twitch not just feel like crowd applause, but also go beyond that into a whole other kind of experience, uniquely possible thanks to the internet?

For Tony’s listening party in Clubhouse, “I played the record, introduced each song and spoke about the songwriting and overall creative process of the project,” he says. “I told stories about driving across Jamaica to record with Bun B, writing the album in Brooklyn with my longtime producer, GLDNEYE, our storytelling approach and our respect for the listener by not spoon-feeding the songs’ meanings. It was great, because I could take feedback and questions in real-time. One of the Exotica engineers, Steel Tipped Dove, popped in unexpectedly and spoke about our writing sessions from his perspective.”

Clubhouse is still in invite-only mode; while this may have been a hindrance in terms of reach, the resulting intimacy allowed Fat Tony to host a more interactive, open and engaging conversation with a diverse, lean-in audience, encompassing new fans, Exotica collaborators and entertainment marketing executives. This strategy is reminiscent of how pop artist Charli XCX invited a mix of fans, journalists and celebrity friends to her weekly Zoom calls during the making of her quarantine album how i’m feeling now. The series inspired much of the industry in how she leveled the playing field of engagement “by reprioritizing and celebrating the forms of connection that are within reach,” as Olivia Horn wrote for The Nation.

3. The marketing strategy

The third kind of decision around online release parties concerns marketing and audience development.

The harsh reality of the music industry in a pandemic is that persistent social-media usage, engagement and appeal are necessary for artists to rise above the online noise, maintain fans’ attention and stay culturally relevant. With that said, online listening parties can be a low-cost (or even no-cost) method for artists to observe how their music is being perceived in real time. Moreover, hosting these parties online makes it easier to cut out the middleman of a venue booking or label support, while extending an artist’s potential reach to multiple cities at once in a single night.

In part due to the enduring challenge around livestreaming discovery, most of these listening parties are advertised on artists’ social pages to their existing fan bases with short notice, around zero to two days in advance of the official release date. This strategy might be less sound for emerging acts, for whom taking advantage of more established artists’ or platforms’ built-in fan bases could be especially effective.

The aforementioned Fat Tony accomplished this by tapping into existing and curious audiences on Clubhouse. In July 2020, Liv.e, an experimental R&B artist also based in Houston, hosted the interactive listening party for her debut album Couldn’t Wait to Tell You… on Erykah Badu’s website Badu World Market, as part of the latter’s “Quarantine Concert Series.” The site’s ecommerce shop also features an exclusive branded tee to commemorate the stream.

“I’ve witnessed talent go from 6,000 to 20,000 followers in one hour because a major artist gave them an opportunity to perform,” says Mereb Gebremariam, who manages Bronx-based R&B singer Lexxy and has been involved in several online performance events with organizations like The Digilogue. “Usually, [traditional] marketing outlets take consistency to see those numbers build over time.”

4. The business model (direct or indirect)

Last but not least, the fourth decision in planning an album release party has to do with business models.

Traditionally, in-person album release parties have not charged admission and have not been treated as a revenue driver for the artist. Rather, they tend to be framed first and foremost as an opportunity to build fan loyalty and strengthen the artist-fan relationship as a whole. That said, the integrative capabilities of the Internet allow artists to build bespoke online listening-party experiences that can drive revenue in a more direct and seamless way.

For instance, Bandcamp’s new livestreaming feature allows artists to display their existing music and merch alongside their streams in a virtual merch-table layout, and fans are called out and commemorated in the live chat if they purchase music or merch from the artist in real time. Similarly, Single Music allows artists to sell tickets to private livestreamed events on their existing Shopify merch store.

Fat Tony plans to hold his first ticketed livestream concert on December 10 using the platform Sessions, which is invite-only and recently announced a $75 million commitment to advertise each of its livestreams to music listeners who are most likely to be interested, at no additional cost to the artist.

With the aforementioned platform Tunecast, which is developed by UMG, fans have to log in by syncing their paid Spotify or Apple Music accounts. This suggests that the listening experience on Tunecast has a direct impact on driving more fan streams and engagement with the artist’s catalog on DSPs (similar to how social listening apps like Stationhead and Roadtrip.fm work, where 100,000 fans in attendance generate 100,000 streams for a given song).

With that said, some in the industry think that artists should not be focused merely on upselling fans to more expensive products during their listening sessions, as that can take away from the more organic feel of the experience. The listening events themselves “should aim to make fans go from interested to invested” instead of asking for money right away, says Gebremariam. “In the long run, that will prove to be much more fulfilling than a temporary increase in profit.”