The Power of the Waterfall Release Strategy

The waterfall release strategy is relatively simple and is all about increasing visibility. The strategy is characterized by the consecutive release of singles, each of which is gradually building into an EP or an album.

This approach can be continued single after single until the full album/EP is released or you can select just a few singles and release them this way. It’s essential to emphasize that the technique is based on adding one single to another (and then a third one to those too, etc.), not releasing the singles as standalone tracks.

It’s almost like an “extremely slow puzzle” – now and then you get a piece, and with the last one, your picture is finally complete. The only difference is that, unlike the puzzle pieces that can only make sense once they are put together, the singles are actually independent releases that can be enjoyed on their own as well as on the album.

Although it seems that the waterfall strategy has become a hot topic just recently, the release strategy has been widely used by artists for a couple of years now. For example, The Chainsmokers’ 2018 album Sick Boy was released by using the waterfall approach. Throughout the year, each month (apart from May and June), a new single was released, with the full album having come out in December 2018. The band is allegedly the first artist to ever implement the waterfall release strategy.

Before releasing her universally acclaimed album Punisher in 2020, Phoebe Bridgers implemented the waterfall release strategy to put out the first three singles of the album. The album’s first single, Garden Song, was released in February of that year, followed by Kyoto in April and, finally, I See You in May.

While all three songs then became part of the Punisher album, the plays acquired across each of those 4 versions increased each time. This is because the count-plays are linked and, particularly, in the case of Garden Song, each stream of the track on either of those 3 singles/LPs (or the final album) counts towards the overall number of the song’s streams.

What’s more, by releasing the tracks this way, Bridgers could secure more streams for the previously released singles, since they would play automatically after the most recent one. The same approach was also adopted by British musician RAYE before releasing her album My 21st Century Blues in February 2024, by Italian singer FIL BO RIVA for both his last album Modern Melancholia and the EP Songs of Solitude, and by American singer Kelly Clarkson on her last album chemistry. It's safe to say the waterfall strategy has become a go-to approach for many contemporary musicians.

We’ve already touched upon the benefits of the waterfall release strategy when mentioning Bridger’s work. However, there’s much more to the strategy, which makes it perfectly suitable for independent artists, too.

According to reports, there are, on average, 100,000 new songs per day released on Spotify. This suggests it may be extremely difficult not only to capture your audience's attention but also to maintain it. This puts musicians under a great deal of pressure to continuously release new music so as not to slip under people’s radar. This, of course, can then hurt the quality of artists’ music as well as their creative development.

The waterfall release strategy, therefore, comes in incredibly handy, allowing you to simply separate your new complete work into these individual pieces (songs) and release them one after the other. In the meantime, you can take the rest you need and/or work on something new without feeling the pressure to finalize it as soon as possible, and so rushing the process.

One of the key reasons the waterfall strategy may be commercially very successful for artists is that it is encouraged by streaming platforms, including Spotify. The streaming platform’s algorithm very much likes it when you’re sustaining exponential growth in streams and, on the contrary, hates both drops in streams and listeners.

For that reason, increasing listeners’ opportunities to play your songs and thus enabling continuous streaming of your work can eventually lead to greater visibility of your music among the streaming platform’s users (which, in turn, means even more streams).

This will, most importantly, be reflected in you being more likely to appear on Spotify’s algorithmic playlists, like Release Radar or Discover Weekly.

To be listed in Spotify’s editorial playlists, you have to pitch your songs via Spotify For Artists – or via a specialized service like iMusician's Editorial Playlist Pitching. However, either way, there’s a substantial limit – you can only submit one track from your release. The waterfall strategy is great at helping you “circumvent” this rule.

Imagine you have an LP with 3 tracks planned. You can either release the whole LP right away or release the tracks as singles, one after the other. The second approach will triple your chances of getting into editorial playlists – why not do it this way then, right?

This is rather an outcome of all the previous benefits combined. However, it’s important to note that the waterfall strategy is considered one of the most successful ways for artists to maximize their revenue on Spotify and other streaming platforms built on a “pro-rata” distribution model (you can learn more about this in our article on how to make money on Spotify).

An increase in streams due to the successive release of singles means greater visibility, which potentially means an even greater increase in streams, which means more money!

Putting theory into practice, the waterfall release strategy is pretty simple to implement. Let’s imagine that you, an independent musician, have written and recorded 6 new songs for your upcoming LP. You’re proud of your work, and you want the songs to do especially well on streaming platforms. You select three of these six songs that you like the most and decide to put them out as singles ahead of your album release.

However, to increase the visibility of your music, generate as many streams as possible, and potentially attract new listeners, it’s not enough to just release those songs as standalone singles. You therefore opt to release them using the waterfall method.

What comes next? Let’s go step by step:

• Select the three singles that you like the most or think have the greatest potential.

• Decide on the release date of each single. Preferably, the release dates should be at least one month apart.

• Decide on the order of the releases. Remember that the one you’ll put out first should be your absolute favorite (the one with the most potential), followed by a second with a bit less potential, and a third with the “least” potential. This is because every time a new single is released, it will be paired with the previous one(s) (added to the same entity on the streaming platform). In other words, the first single will be released individually, then paired with the second single, then with the second and third singles, and, finally, released as part of the LP. This brings the total to 4 entities/release versions where your audience can come across and listen to your first single from the LP.

• Set up the release of your singles with your distributor.

1. Pay attention to the order of the tracks. The order cannot be changed once the release is distributed. Usually, the new track goes on top.

2. Use a different title for your ‘single’ releases. If you use the same name for your releases, in the end, only one version/unit will be visible in your discography of the streaming platform.

3. The UPC/EAN code of every ‘single’ release should be different but the ISRC codes need to be the same to identify the tracks.