AAA studios release the soundtrack after the game. Movie studios release the soundtrack after the movie. If you’re a small indie team or solo indie developer, I think you should do the opposite: release the original soundtrack before the game comes out.
Here’s my reasoning.
The indie reality
In the small indie world, you have developers who generally don’t have a lot of marketing experience, and there’s not a lot of money to be made even with world-class marketing.
Sometimes an indie game hits and makes a whole lot of money, but that’s the exception.
In my opinion, if you sell 100 copies of the game that is a success. If you sell 1,000, that’s a smashing success. Anything past 1,000 and you’re in dreamland.
Because of the likely small sales numbers, you want as many people as possible aware of the game so they buy it on release day, push it up in sales, and create moments you can keep talking about.
If 1,000 people purchased your game on day one, that’s a story. You can run with it, talk about it, and extend the marketing window for the game.
What defines the marketing window is the period of time during which people will care that this new thing is out. In marketing, “new” is the biggest word you have. People care about new things. They don’t care about old things.
Why AAA and movies wait, and why you’re not AAA
When you look at AAA releases and movie releases, you’ll see they extend the marketing window by releasing the soundtrack later. They can do that partially because they have the luxuries of time, finances, and the built-in audiences. They get to just focus on hype, then drop the soundtrack as a second, smaller wave later for die-hard fans.
The amount of money, time, and effort it takes to run a solid marketing campaign is not to be underestimated. Picture one person without much marketing experience building a campaign from scratch. That’s dozens of hours of work, on top of what is likely a full-time job.
Social posts, videos, blogs, ads all created by hand with full-on brain engagement…after a long development sprint.
From the devs I’ve talked to and worked with, their real passion is creating the game and understanding how the game works, not marketing it.
A note on AI
Some will say you could use AI to cut the time the marketing campaign takes. I don’t recommend anyone doing that in the indie game scene.
A lot of developers, composers, and the people who buy indie games are firmly, and intensely anti-AI.
Being in the indie space has become more and more about not using AI, publicly declaring your non-use of AI, and actually being able to prove it.
That’s one of the reasons I livestream all of my music creation: you can watch the whole process and see there is no AI in it.
Release first and make your composer win as hard as possible
When you release the soundtrack before the game you get to leverage your composer…and give them incentives to talk about the game more than they would have otherwise.
After all you don’t want to tell your composer to share the news of the game release and they just reshare a Bluesky post or hit like on your YouTube announcement video…it seems like they could do more.
And if you think the composer could do more, you are right.
Here’s what I do.
- I livestream the creation of the soundtrack.
- I talk about it in unrelated social content.
- I create dedicated short form video about the soundtrack.
- I create dedicated long form video about the soundtrack.
- I create blog posts about the soundtrack.
- I include a link to the game/mailing list for the game in my video descriptions and pinned comments.
- I send updates to my email list letting them know about the soundtrack.
As a game developer, you want every possible advantage to get your message out there, and using your composer and your composer’s network is a highly valuable thing to do.
For that to work, it has to be in your composer’s interest to promote your game hard. So make the composer win as hard as possible. How does the composer win?
- A moment to talk. Releasing the soundtrack before the game comes out gives a composer a moment to really talk about what they’ve done. It lets the composer use the marketing skills they have built over years of owning a business and releasing music to create interest and drive awareness. What is marketing, after all? Marketing is making something known. “Hey, this game is coming out. You should know about this game.”
- A head start on more work. The composer is done with the soundtrack while you’re still finishing the last touches on the game, getting marketing together, and getting packaging together. All that time, the composer can use the fact that they composed for your game as leverage to get themselves more work.
- A launch day that takes one note. When the day comes that the game actually releases, the composer’s job is one message: “Hey guys, that game I composed for is out now. Go check it out.” The awareness work already happened.
- A rev share plus payment deal. The composer has a stake in the outcome of the marketing so they WANT to contribute to the marketing (if the rev-share is high enough to incentivize the marketing behavior).
- An absolutely amazing game that crushes the launch. Your success is the composer’s success.
- No AI in your game. If the game ends up using AI, the composer’s reputation in the indie scene is tarnished by the fact that they composed for it.
- Coverage on your socials. Talk about your composer everywhere you post. Push it out.
- Credit the composer everywhere. Not just in the game. On the sales pages, on Steam, on the Apple App Store, on Google Play, and on your website. Wherever possible, give the composer a maximum search engine boost in visibility so their work helps them get more work.
When to do it the AAA way instead
I can see an argument for doing it the way AAA studios and movie studios do, but only if you have a substantial marketing budget. Substantial, for me, starts at about $10,000 set aside just for marketing. That’s my starting point.
If you have anything less than $10,000 to spend on marketing, I would 100% leverage your composer before the fact. Release the soundtrack first.
Your composer is done with their part while you’re still finishing yours. They have a network, a reason to talk, and something finished to point at. Put that to work before launch day, not after.