Negotiating Oxytocin Album Launch

The social media and mobile first campaign for the album, Negotiating Oxytocin, by 16-year-old Indian musician Upamanyu Mukherjee ran from August to December 2023. It used a wide array of content assets from digital art, AI-assisted animated videos based on real-life footage, performance videos, press and user review content, blogs, graphic novella and DIY blogs to engage a niche audience in the 15-35 age group.The album was released on 11 August 2023, and it debuted at No 1 on the iTunes India Top Album. It stayed on the chart over the weekend, slipping to No 3, then to No 4 before sliding off into oblivion. But for those three days, it was the only English language, alternative-pop album by an Indian independent artist in the Top 10 on iTunes in India. It also hit No 2 on the KingsofSpins charts.

As a result of the social media campaign, the album had been heard in 90 countries, the artist followership had increased by 407% (67% of the artist’s listeners were in the 15-35 campaign target market segment), playlisting had gone up by 912%, stream by 479%.

The communication campaign focused on creating a bridge between the audience and the artist’s music, the process of making music, and stories behind the songs. The campaign also focused on reaching out to the music fraternity, to music journalists, curators and influencers. The campaign focused on album sales (value) instead of streams (consumption). The campaign concentrated on iTunes pre-release, and on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music post-release, allocating the bulk of the budget to PR and Press, and promotion budget on Instagram where the artist’s GenZ audience was, and the bulk of promotion/PR budget on specialised industry platforms focused on unknown artists such as SubmitHub and Kings of Spins. We are submitting this campaign case study as an example of a small budget campaign in a highly competitive industry environment that gave an unknown independent artist’s work a fighting chance to gain listeners, sales, and visibility.