Melanie Martinez’s ‘K-12’ Vision Is A Perfect Conceptual Album In The Streaming Age

For her debut album Cry Baby, Melanie Martinez slowly but surely solidified a world of colorful music videos to accompany the 13-track LP over more than three-and-a-half years. For her sophomore project, K-12, the singer-songwriter-director unleashed a full-fledged conceptual album that not only uses her years of experience to stick to her artistic guns but also deliver something that becomes all the more artistically and commercially brilliant in 2019.

With no singles released in full and fans only able to hear songs snippets or view teases of her upcoming visuals, Martinez made sure the anticipation was high for K-12 when it came to her fans. With the release of a new, full album alongside a 90-minute movie (shown in theaters, on streaming services and, now, available on YouTube), the singer brought a vision that allowed her quirky, colorfully dark pop world to live and breathe on its own, consumed as such by audiences whether they be dedicated and new. While the 24-year-old has talked about her vision for the Cry Baby album, the video-by-video rollout allowed people to get to know the artist and her stories piecemeal through its different releases. That was ultimately a smart strategy for a developing artist in 2015, but Melanie is now at a different place as is the music industry.

After years of touring and promotions for Cry Baby, Martinez’s vision, look and craft are known in the pop scene. She has concept and a message with her music that is fully cooked that doesn’t need further tending or development—seen by Cry Baby eventually going platinum, and nearly every song on it certified gold or platinum. She’s figured out her complete the picture.

Having K-12 released via a full-length album reveal and feature film, as well as the conceptualized merchandize and package bundles shows Melanie living and thriving in the pop-world she’s created. No doubt, her core following will jump into this next step with her as already early numbers indicate that the album will have a very healthy debut on the charts and very possibly land Martinez her first Top 5 album on the Billboard 200.

But of course there’s the commercial side that would like to see the project have longevity and, ideally, a breakout hit. That’s where streaming can play a large part in rolling out an entire album with no single. Martinez and team can look at listener trends and audience feedback to see access points in spreading the music further and what parts of the album and story listeners are drawn towards. If one song or video begins to take off by the listener’s choice, it can indicate potential success in a larger campaign. Sonically, “Lunchbox Friends” and “Wheels on the Bus” sound like early contenders for potential singles while the most-listened to tracks on YouTube are “Nurse’s Office” and “Show & Tell” with more than two million streams each. Depending on which songs take off early, a separate music video can be prioritized as each of the 13 songs from K-12 will also get their own individual video released, one every two weeks, and each song can be further studied to see if it can connect in a larger way.

With a full artistic unleash of everything that makes up Melanie Martinez—the music, the visuals, the acting, the film, the clothes, the hair, the colors, the messages—her eagerly waiting fanbase can consume it all and explore it in full. But the K-12 concept also has many ways to secure its longevity and use strategies to make it succeed as a viably successful album from all traditional standpoints by using modern-day technology to find ways to keep engagement going and recruit new fans into the Melanie’s schoolyard.