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Release-Ready Campaign

Release-Ready Campaign

  • Intensive Course
  • 5 days

Take your artist career to the next level, as you learn to create, release and monetise your music. With guidance from music industry managers and professionals, you’ll discover how to grow your fan base, enhance your network and music business knowledge, and craft impactful campaigns to promote your music releases.

Explore Dates

Course Overview

The Artist Development course is part of ICMP’s range of Music Industry courses, spanning 1 week of intensive learning and development, this course is an alternative version of our three-month-long Artist Development Evening Course.

The Artist Development Intensive is part of ICMP’s range of Music Industry short courses, offering a focused week of hands-on learning for emerging artists preparing to release new music. Across five immersive days, you’ll move through every stage of a professional release campaign; from clarifying your artistic goals to building a strong brand, creating compelling content, and performing your track in a final showcase.

The week begins with Campaign Foundations, where you’ll define what you’re releasing, why you’re releasing it, and what success looks like for you. You’ll map out your audience, clarify your goals, and explore the bigger picture behind your music. In the afternoon, you’ll move on to Building the Assets, developing essential materials such as your artist bio, press photos, EPK, and artwork — learning how to present your project clearly and professionally.

On Tuesday, the focus shifts to Distribution and Promotion. You’ll explore how to choose the right distributor, understand metadata, plan timelines, and use checklists to manage your release. In the afternoon, you’ll learn to write a press release and craft pitches for blogs, playlists, and radio, discovering how to find media contacts and build your own outreach list.

Wednesday is dedicated to Content Strategy and Industry Insight. You’ll define your content pillars, plan videos and captions, and build a social media schedule that keeps you consistent without burnout. In the afternoon, you’ll take part in an interactive masterclass and Q&A with a guest artist or industry professional, gaining first-hand advice on navigating releases in today’s fast-moving landscape.

The final two days bring everything together. On Thursday, you’ll explore how to tell the story of your release through creative content ideas and hands-on social media content creation, shooting and editing real visuals to promote your music.

The week concludes on Friday with a Final Checks and Confidence Clinic, followed by a Showcase Performance, where you’ll present your release campaign and perform your track for peers and tutors in a supportive setting. By the end of the course, you’ll leave with a clear release plan, promotional assets, and the confidence to share your music with the world.

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Key Facts

  • Intensive 5-day course
  • Build and execute a music release campaign
  • Collaborate with industry professionals and fellow artists in a supportive environment

Course Progression

This course is a solid introduction to becoming or building your artistry. The knowledge you’ll have gained from this intensive course will put you in an ideal position to progress to ICMP’s degree or masters courses. 

Other ICMP courses you might like to consider include: 

  • BA Hons Creative Musicianship: This creative programme explores composition, performance and production in a collaborative environment. It will develop your artistic identity and help establish yourself as music professional.
  • BA Hons Songwriting: This degree will help you develop your expertise and creative identity as a songwriter, while equipping you with the industry knowledge and professional skillsets you need for a successful songwriting career.
  • BA (Hons) Creative Music Production: This is our all-round recording and production degree. As a creative artist or producer, you'll become proficient at using top industry-standard hardware and software to a professional level.

Entry Requirements

No previous experience is required to take this course, a desire to grow as an independent artist or understand the music industry further  is recommended. 

Course Details

Through a combination of engaging lectures, group discussions, songwriting sessions, and music production workshops, you’ll develop a strong understanding of key artist development principles—applied directly to your own artist project. Learning through hands-on experience, you’ll navigate the real challenges and opportunities that independent artists encounter in today’s music industry.

Throughout the course, you’ll explore your musical and sonic identity, define your goals and creative vision, and discover how your artistic voice connects to building a loyal fanbase. You’ll focus on the music you create and the development of your own body of work, supporting your evolution and growth as an artist.

Music is the foundation of all artist success stories. During this module, you’ll learn to understand and realise your artistic voice and discover how to create and use your sonic identity – a vital stage of artistic development. You’ll also examine professional strategies to develop your artistry and music, building an audience and career momentum as you go.

Across this module, you’ll explore how to develop a coherent body of work that supports your artistry and identity and the best strategies for selecting and releasing singles. You will develop your songwriting skills, including co-writing and writing to brief, and understand how to develop your personal style and your own song portfolio. In music production workshops you will gain a solid understanding of the entire production process including demos, producing, mixing, and mastering. You’ll learn how to record your own demos and arrangements, explore your sonic identity, and become capable and confident to get the best from your future productions.

During this module, you’ll gain a deep understanding of how to develop your brand, as you work on your music and artist project. You’ll use this to strategically promote and pitch your music, and we’ll show you how to seek out and find relevant industry contacts. Exploring your artistic community and discovering your audience is also covered.

If you’ve ever wondered how the music industry uses marketing assets for promotion, fanbase building and artist growth, this module will see you discover the strategy behind a successful music release campaign. From press shots, artist biographies and press releases, to electronic press kits, videos, websites and social media, you’ll learn how to create these marketing tools and use them to promote your own brand and artistic voice.

In this module, you’ll examine the strategic concepts and logistics involved in creating your own release strategy, as you plan a series of ongoing release campaigns. You’ll begin by exploring the music release options of distributors and labels, delving into how they operate and the main deals and contractual terms all independent artists need to know. You’ll also learn about spreading the word through third-party services such as plugging, PR and playlist pitching, plus how to ensure your campaigns are both on time and on budget.

Taking everything you’ve learned across the course to date,  you will next learn to execute your own release campaign! You’ll explore effective pre-release and post-release promotional activities and campaign management, and digest the logistics and timings involved. Your tutors will guide you in the ‘how’, ‘who’ and ‘when’ of pitching, and you’ll cover both effective communication skills and relationship-building tips. At the end, you’ll be in an ideal position to release and promote your own music, and amplify your artist project far and wide.

Upcoming Dates

No upcoming dates at the moment. Please check back soon.