The Music PR Campaign Timeline: What Happens and When
23 June 2026 · 6 min read
Most missed coverage is not a taste failure, it is a calendar failure. Monthly print closes eight weeks out; by the time an artist calls with a two-week runway, half the campaign is already impossible.
Weeks 10 to 8: positioning
Angle, bio, press kit, photography, and the target list. Nothing is pitched yet. This is the phase artists want to skip and the phase that determines the ceiling of everything after it.
Weeks 8 to 5: long-lead
Embargoed pitching to monthlies, major online features desks, and premiere partners. Premieres are negotiated here — an exclusive is only valuable if it is offered before everyone has heard the track.
Weeks 4 to 1: short-lead and radio
Reviews, news desks, specialist radio servicing, and podcast bookings. Radio needs the finished master and clean edits in hand, not promises.
Release week and after
Reactive pitching around the moment itself, then the part almost everyone drops: packaging the coverage. Pull quotes into socials, add them to the EPK, and use them as the credibility layer for the next single's pitch.
A campaign that ends on release day throws away the asset it just spent ten weeks building.