# THE RELEASE CYCLE CHECKLIST
### From finished record to released record in eight weeks

**How to use this page:** pick your release day first. A Friday, six to eight weeks out. Write
it at the top. Every section below is dated backward from it. One week, one job.

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### 8 to 6 weeks out · Lock the record
- [ ] Record finished, mixed, mastered. Sequenced and named.
- [ ] Pick the focus track: the door in. One song a stranger hears first.
- [ ] Artwork done: cover plus a square crop that survives at thumbnail size.
- [ ] Decide what is sacred: what no tool, no editor, and no advisor touches. Write it down.

### 6 to 5 weeks out · Load the pipeline
- [ ] Upload to your distributor NOW, not release week. Stores and editorial pipelines run on weeks of lead, and this deadline is the one almost everyone learns too late.
- [ ] Write the press release. Lead with the story a stranger would stop for, never with "band releases single." Quotes are things you actually said.
- [ ] Gather three to five usable photos, horizontal and vertical, people fully in frame.
- [ ] One private streaming link for press. Test it in a browser where you are not logged in.

### 5 to 4 weeks out · Announce, and open the long-lead doors
- [ ] Announce the date to the world, in your own voice, everywhere you exist.
- [ ] Map your scene: ten named humans. The local paper's arts desk, the alt-weekly, the college radio music director, the venue booker, the neighboring act, the community calendar editor. A person with a name on every row. Role inboxes (info@, submissions@) are where releases go to die; in the campaign this checklist comes from, they produced zero replies and every bounce.
- [ ] Send the first hellos: short, personal, one real detail proving a human wrote it, one ask or none. Under 120 words. A few per day, from your own address.
- [ ] Pitch long-lead outlets now: podcasts and monthlies work four to eight weeks ahead. Never burn a long-lead contact on a this-week ask.

### 4 to 2 weeks out · Work the middle window
- [ ] Pitch weeklies, blogs, and local press: their window is two to four weeks.
- [ ] Verify every address the same day you use it. A bounce costs more than a delay.
- [ ] One polite follow-up per human, about a week after the first note. Two touches maximum, then rest with grace.
- [ ] If there is a release show: every free listing and community calendar, submitted. Sell tickets in advance, hard; advance commitments are the number that matters, and door walk-up is weather.
- [ ] Keep one outreach ledger: who, when, what happened, next touch. One queue. Never two batches in flight that cannot see each other; that is how the same writer gets hit four times in one week.

### Release week · Protect the day
- [ ] Confirm the release is actually live everywhere it should be.
- [ ] Write the day-of plan in advance: what posts, what sends, who gets thanked, so release day is for feeling it, not producing it.
- [ ] Tell your believers personally, by name, one at a time. Fifty personal messages outsell five hundred impressions.
- [ ] Nothing outbound late at night. Tired sends read tired.

### The week after · The part everyone skips (the part that compounds)
- [ ] Thank every human who covered, played, shared, or showed up. By name, individually.
- [ ] Sweep for coverage: search your name, the record title, and every song title. Coverage arrives without telling you; in the cycle behind this page, whole pieces appeared that were never pitched.
- [ ] Log everything: who answered, who covered, who went quiet. This file is why release two starts warm instead of from zero.
- [ ] Write yourself three honest lines: what worked, what did not, what the next release does differently.

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**The deep version:** this page names the what and the when. Behind every line on it is a full
SOP from the campaign it came from: the day-level timeline, the press-timing sheet by outlet
type, the outreach gate with its verification tiers and send ramp, the follow-up clock, and the
show-week runbook. That is The Release Cycle Kit, and it is the one thing that rides along with
Baby Blue at checkout.

**The truth this page cannot fix:** knowing the steps is not the hard part. Doing them, on the
calendar, in your own voice, while also being the musician, is the hard part. That is the job
Baby Blue was built to hold.

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*From the release cycle behind Baby Blue, the release operator for independent artists.*