Filthy Music Videos

Los Campesinos! Reveal Minimal Marketing Spend Behind Hit DIY Release All Hell

Posted by
image

Last week, Los Campesinos! made a grand return with their excellent new album All Hell. It’s the first Los Campesinos! LP in seven years, and it’s a full-on DIY release. These days, Los Campesinos! are managing themselves. They produced, released, and funded All Hell on their own. This week, All Hell makes its debut at #14 on the UK album chart. Los Campesinos! had never charted in the Top 40 before, so this is a real triumph of the little guy.

On Twitter, Los Campesinos! Talk about the success of All Hell as a rejection of “music biz hegemony” and a “people’s movement,” and I can’t argue with either of those lines. They also note that All Hell is the #1 most downloaded album in the UK, largely thanks to all the people who bought the deluxe edition that came out earlier this week.

Amidst all that fully justified fist-pumping, Los Campesinos! also offer some insight into how they were able to do this on their own, sharing the spreadsheet that notes their UK marketing expenses. Those expenses are not very high. To get All Hell out to the masses, the band spent a total of £190.86, or about $246. That money went entirely to alert fans of the album’s release on Spotify and Meta. They note that they paid nothing for online and print press PR, contacting writers on their own rather than hiring a publicist. They also paid nothing for pitching the album to radio, figuring that they’ve never gotten radio play anyway. Check out their thread below.

There’s no doubt that it’s easier to pull all this off if you’ve got years of accumulated goodwill working for you, as well as the excitement that naturally comes with a comeback record. It also helps if you make really good music. None of that makes this result any less impressive.