Case Study: How to Promote Tracks Like Spinnin' Records

Spinnin’ Records has been well known for their ability to launch top track after top track.

How much of this is due to the quality of the releases?

How much of this is due to their marketing?

Don’t get me wrong, many of their tracks are great, BUT I think most of their success has much more to do with their marketing strategy.

Today, we’ll be looking at their marketing strategy, and what it takes to create a similar marketing campaign.

I’ve basically picked a track at random, but we’ll be looking at Sander Van Doorn’s 2017 release “The Rhythm”.

Materials Needed

To create the campaign, Spinnin’ Records used one of my favorite online content strategies: repurposing content.

They created almost a month worth of promotional content out of a piece of covert art, one video, and the track.

Based on those three items, they created several shorter promotional teaser videos, banner images, and more.

Their full list of promotional material was the following:

Album art
Full music video
2 music video previews
1 Soundcloud preview
1 Soundcloud full track
1 Facebook cover photo (quickly made out of the album art)
Miami music week recap video
Live video (Miami)
Live video (Tomorrowland)
Paid blog post
Podcast features

Many of the items can be created for free, and some can be done cheap if you have friends who are in graphic design.

Schedule

Several social media accounts were used to create the promotional strategy. They used Facebook, Instagram,Twitter, Youtube, and Soundcloud accounts of Spinnin’ Records, Sander Van Doorn, DOORN Records and some affiliates.

Below, you can find the full promotion schedule that was used. You can see that this was methodically planned and spaced out between all of the accounts.

Date	Account	Note	Example
July 25th, 2016	Random Youtube Account	First recorded live play at Tomorrowland 2016	Link
April 8th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Instagram	Miami Music week recap video	Link
April 8th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Miami Music week recap video	Link
April 10th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Youtube	Miami Music week recap video	Link
April 11th, 2017	DOORN Records Facebook	Miami Music week recap video	Link
April 11th, 2017	DOORN Records Twitter	Miami Music week recap video	Link
April 12th, 2017	Spinnin’ Records Twitter	Miami Music week recap video	Link
April 13th, 2017	DOORN Records Soundcloud	Track preview	Link
April 13th, 2017	Out Soon On Spinnn’ Records Soundcloud	Track preview added to playlist of parent label
April 13th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Posted DOORN Records Soundcloud track preview
April 13th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Twitter	Album art	Link
April 13th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Soundcloud	Identity podcast feature (25 minutes in)	Link
April 13th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Instagram	Album art	Link
April 15th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Soundcloud	Reposted DOORN Records track preview
April 15th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Music video preview	Link
April 16th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Instagram	Music video preview	Link
April 19th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Instagram	Different music video preview	Link
April 19th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Live video preview	Link
April 20th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Twitter	Live video preview	Link
April 22nd, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Music video preview	Link
April 22nd, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Music video preview	Link
April 22nd, 2017	DOORN Records Facebook	Music video preview	Link
April 22nd, 2017	DOORN Records Twitter	Music video preview	Link
April 23rd, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Music video preview	Link
April 23rd, 2017	DOORN Records Facebook	Music video preview	Link
April 23rd, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Twitter	Music video preview	Link
April 23rd, 2017	DOORN Records Twitter	Music video preview	Link
April 23rd, 2017	Spinnin Records Twitter	Music video preview	Link
April 24th, 2017 - Release Day
April 24th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Instagram	Album art with track	Link
April 24th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Link to track review blog post	Link
April 24th, 2017	WeRaveYou.Com	Track review blog post	Link
April 24th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Twitter	Link to track review blog post (with header image)	Link
April 24th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Twitter	Link to purchase links	Link
April 24th, 2017	DOORN Records Twitter	Link to purchase links	Link
April 24th, 2017	Spinnin’ Records Twitter	Link to purchase links	Link
April 24th, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Album art	Link
April 24th, 2017	DOORN Records Facebook	Link to track on Beatport	Link
April 24th, 2017	DOORN Records Twitter	Sander Van Doorn Instagram takeover announcement	Link
April 24th, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Sander Van Doorn Instagram takeover announcement	Link
April 24th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Link to track on Spotify	Link
April 24th, 2017	DOORN Records Facebook	Facebook cover photo made out of track album art	Link
April 24th, 2017	DOORN Records Soundcloud	Full track	Link
April 24th, 2017	Spinnin’ Records Soundcloud	Reposted full track from DOORN Records Soundcloud
April 24th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Soundcloud	Reposted full track from DOORN Records Soundcloud
April 25th, 2017	DOORN Records Facebook	Sander Van Doorn Instagram takeover announcement	Link
April 25th, 2017	Spinnin’ Records Youtube	Full music video	Link
April 25th, 2017	DOORN Records Twitter	Link to music video	Link
April 25th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Full music video	Link
April 25th, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Video with personal message and track	Link
April 25th, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	DOORN Records team with comment about the track	Link
April 25th, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Live video preview	Link
April 25th, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Music video preview	Link
April 25th, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Music video preview	Link
April 25th, 2017	DOORN Records Facebook	Link to music video	Link
April 28th, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Soundcloud	Identity podcast feature (21 minutes in)	Link
May 2nd, 2017	Spinnin’ Records Facebook	Parital music video	Link
May 2nd, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Facebook	Parital music video	Link
May 2nd, 2017	Sander Van Doorn Twitter	Parital music video	Link
May 2nd, 2017	Spinnin’ Records Twitter	Parital music video	Link
May 3rd, 2017	DOORN Records Instagram	Music video preview	Link
May 3rd, 2017	DOORN Records Twitter	Music video preview	Link

Final Notes

Some final notes that I had were the following:

When placed in a podcast, it was right in the middle, not at the beginning or end. This is a common spot where people skip to when listening to a mix.
The Tomorrowland video might be a random person, but I think it was an intentional sneak preview because they edited the video with the release date and track name.
Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites didn’t have “Stories” features at the time. Those should be integrated into any promotion strategy today.
I didn’t keep track of their Snapchat or email marketing. I’m assuming both of these were used for promotion and should be integrated into your promotion strategy.
While the schedule looks like the accounts are spamming the content, it's mixed in with other content that the accounts are sharing. This will help users stay engaged, without getting bored of the same content being shared.
The accounts were putting ads on the posts to boost views and engagement. I would recommend you do the same. The ad budget would depend on your goals and what you're comfortable with.