“There’s a tremendous difference in what social media has done for me in {the past} couple of years,” said Kyle Albano, who has taken a different approach to promoting his music since dropping his second album Kings with Queens in June.
Albano is a student of the internet as much as he is a graduate of The College of Saint Rose’s prestigious music program, where he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. By day, he’s a music teacher at Albany High School, teaching sound production and music composition. At night, he’s working on his own music from his one-bedroom apartment in Guilderland.
Kings with Queens dropped in June. To promote it, Albano hit the keyboard. His computer keyboard. Like most musicians, he’s a one-man show composing music with one hand and shooting out emails to people throughout the music industry with the other. However, the level of his multitasking is not that simple. He is consciously taking steps promoting a brand — #kylealbano — and doing so through multiple channels outside the norm.
“I don’t really gig out too much anymore, because it wasn’t doing me well,” said Albano. For his 2012 release Poor Love, Albano released a video on YouTube and hit the stage several times a week. Despite his efforts, he said he wasn’t getting the results. The video received 800 hits. When sometimes looking at playing a local venue on a Wednesday evening, promising the potential for small turnouts, he said, “It wasn’t worth my time.”
Time is a concept Albano is conscious of, but not beholden to, while he works on his music. He gets to work whenever the inspiration hits him. For one track on Kings with Queens, Albano was struck with an epiphany and went to work at the personal studio he converted from his apartment’s dining room. The sound from his Yamaha HS-7 speakers reverberated throughout the apartment complex. “Sometimes I turned them up too high and they rumble,” he said. It was 10 p.m.
“So, I got a nasty [complaint],” said Albano. He answered a knock on the door to find his neighbor, in his pajamas, with a copy of the lease in his hand, reminding the musician he was breaking the rules. “And, then, I kept doing it,” he said. “Now that the album is done, we’re in a better part. But, yes. I’ve gotten some complaints.”
Outside from his neighbors, the pop-punk sounds of Kings with Queens has been well received. He’s not getting on stage just yet. (Though, he said, there are plans for a show in October.) Nonetheless, Albano’s pop-punk sound is played across local radio on WEQX and WEXT.
“Someone once told me that every song [on Kings with Queens] is different, but inclusive,” said Albano, who is receptive to people interpreting his music for themselves. “Whenever I write a song, it’s however I feel. Any artist is going to write like that. What they’re feeling that day. Hopefully, I try to shed light within the songs. You do your dark times and high times. But, if someone just listens to the song and interprets it in their way, and it helps them… When I listen to a song, I [may] not know what they’re talking about, but I know what that song means to me. Sometimes, it gets me through certain days. … I want somebody to listen. And, if someone listens to that, and it helps them in any fashion, I did my job.”
In the five years between albums, Albano said he plotted out a plan to increase exposure. The end result is a layered strategy that includes hooking up with Made in Truth Clothing. As he models the Albany-based company’s clothing line he shares its brand on social media. On Albano’s home computer, he has a word document with several of his most effective hashtags for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In August, just two months after dropping Kings with Queens, Albano doubled the amount of hits on his promotional video, compared to that from “Poor Love.” He’s also started making connections with people from larger record companies.
“There’s a tremendous difference in what social media has done for me in [the past] couple of years,” said Albano.
The students Albano teaches even catch him on the internet and ask him how they can follow in his footsteps. He tells them to keep on working. Build a fanbase. Read. Watch interviews of artists on YouTube and see how they did it. Just learn as much as you can, and apply it. But how it all will end, the teacher has no answers.
“Right now, this social media thing has kept me up above and on the flow,” he said. “I think I’m just doing it the right way this time.”
This article was originally published by The Spot 518 and is the property of Spotlight Newspapers in Albany, N.Y., and appears as a special to NYS Music. TheSpot518 and NYS Music work in partnership to provide readers with in-depth coverage on the local music scene in the Capital District and New York state, respectively. For more, visit TheSpot518.com.
They’ll be in New York on November 17 for a performance at Arlene’s Grocery with Youth Yamada and supporting Maradeen.
The lineup on the night’s gig consisted of Rich Bomzer on tenor sax, Eric Frost and Christian Crawford (trumpet), Annie Mclean (vocals), Tj Adorno (guitar/rap), Colin Dooman (bass), Evan Sundquist (keyboard, vocals, computerized sound effects), Angel Lau (percussion) and Alex Aitken (drums).
