Marketing Strategies

Strategy: Releasing an EP (extended play)
Example: Cults

Cults is a fairly new indie-pop band based in New York whose name started to rise in fame around mid 2010. After beginning to record their first album the band released an EP which consists of releasing one or two singles which would appear on the album. Cults released two singles, 'Go Outside' and 'Most Wanted.'
This type of strategy would give the audience a taste of what would be in the album. The singles give a glimpse of what the album would have to offer and encourage a larger group of the audience to buy the album when it is released.

Strategy: Early album release + 'Pay what you want'
Example: Radiohead

Radiohead's newest album 'King of Limbs' had an official release date of February 19th 2011. However, the album was released 24 hours earlier on the 18th of February, being released on Itunes and teasers being released on social networking sites. Apparently the early release of the album was purposely done with the reason being that everything was ready so there was no reason to wait.
But the outbreak of the early album release was big and was not limited to just social networking sites, tabloids and online publications were also making noise about the news. Of course the reason why they choose to do this was to incite this noise. It is unlikely that the buzz for the album would have been this high if the band had released the album on release date.

Radiohead are no strangers to marketing strategies, especially when the strategy for their last album was offering it to the audience for any price they deemed worthy. This type of strategy would definitely cause fans to swarm for the album as well as many other people who usually wouldn't buy the album, to buy it. It is a great innovation for artists/bands who get a royalty for every album they sell and make most of their money from concerts.