What Aspiring Musicians Can Learn From Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” Release
When listening to Taylor Swift, does your heart often feel like it’s ready to break into 100 tiny little pieces and all you want to do is sit in your bed and cry? Well, congrats that makes two of us and most likely everyone on the planet. Swift has successfully managed to catch us all in our feels yet again with the release of her new album “Folklore”. This surprise album touches upon imperfect relationships, love triangles, and emotional scars left behind from past lovers. Her ability to transport her listeners to a new dimension is truly amazing. New and upcoming singer-songwriters should not only look to Taylor as inspiration for her songwriting skills but they should also take note of her incredible marketing strategies to further promote this beautiful piece of work by emphasizing components such as:
Making Sure The Visuals Appropriately Represent The Main Themes Of Folklore
Adding Personal Touches To The Album Covers
Gifting Fans An Original Voice Memo For The Song “Cardigan”
1. Making Sure The Visuals Appropriately Represent The Main Themes Of Folklore
Once Taylor Swift announced that she was releasing her surprise album “Folklore” on July 24th 2020, she slowly began to post visuals on all her social media accounts of black and white photos that represented the overall main themes of Folklore such as: landscape shots of forests, posing in a big cardigan in a meadow, and sitting on a rock sporting a stripe sweater. Swift stated that this album was heavily influenced by components like trees, cardigans, whiskey, wine, etc; therefore, she centered her photos around it. The music video for “Cardigan” was released the same night as “Folklore” and it contained the same themes that her promotional photos had. Inspiring musicians should make sure their visuals properly display the main themes that are discussed on their albums, EP’s, etc.
2. Adding Personal Touches To The Album Covers
To further increase the amount of physical copies sold of Folklore, Swift released eight rare and special covers for the album. It should be noted that she only gave her fans a week which motivated them to buy the actual piece of work. In addition, some die-hard swifties actually made the point to purchase more than one copy because they were aware of the fact that this was possibly a one time deal. This was a smart marketing tactic from Swift and her marketing team because they knew her fans would flock to get this collectable and special item. Upcoming musicians should use this idea as inspiration in regards to their own projects by either having different album covers, signing the album, etc.
3. Gifting Fans An Original Voice Memo For The Song “Cardigan”
Some artists are secretive about their creative process when making new projects, however Taylor Swift is not one of them. It should be noted that she always makes sure to add notes from songwriting sessions as gifts to her fans when releasing new albums because she knows her supporters truly love to hear about her method when creating songs. To further promote “Folklore”, Swift and her team made the decision to not only add the original voice memo for the song “Cardigan” but also different lyrics for the album as well. Fans are appreciative when artists release voice memos, videos of the behind the scenes, etc that reveal their process when making that project. Therefore, I think new and upcoming musicians should take note of this and upload more content to their social media accounts that display the method that was done when making their album, EP, etc.
If inspiring musicians are struggling to think of active and innovative marketing strategies to strengthen the traffic for their new project, they should take notes from Swift and her team in regard to the “Folklore” release.