Clair has a large passive streaming audience and genuine audiophile credibility, but no infrastructure of her own to sell to it. Every stream currently ends at a platform she doesn't control. This roadmap builds the platform first, then drives traffic into it — so the vinyl re-release becomes the launch event for a permanent direct-to-fan business rather than a one-time campaign.
These are planning ranges, not a quote. The scope below is deliberately lean — it builds the smallest version of each phase that still works, and leaves room to scale up once pre-order revenue proves the model. Once Clair tells us where in each range she wants to sit, we'll convert this into a detailed scope and fixed fee schedule.
Where the money goes
MRA fees and software across six months. Advertising spend goes directly to the platforms and is shown separately in Phase 2, so the bars below stay comparable.
Platform & StorePhase 1
$11.5K – $17.5K
Paid MediaPhase 2
$6K – $10K
Hi-Fi & Music PRPhase 3
$10.5K – $16.5K
Social & ArchivePhase 4
$9K – $16K
Phase detail
Phases 1 and 2 are sequential — the store has to exist before we buy traffic to it. Phases 3 and 4 begin alongside the build and run continuously.
Phase 1
Platform & E-Commerce Foundation
$11,500 – $17,500
One-time build · Months 1–2
- clairmarlo.com — Wix to WordPress. Rebuild on a premium WordPress theme, customized to her brand, with content and SEO equity migrated off Wix.
- Invisible Hand Production◆ — label site. A focused five-page property that establishes the label as its own entity, sharing the artist site's design system to keep the build efficient.
- WooCommerce storefront. Pre-orders, three product tiers (standard pressing, signed/numbered, digital bundle), shipping and tax rules, payment processing.
- Klaviyo email platform. Installed on both sites with four core automations: welcome, abandoned cart, pre-order status, post-purchase. This is how a streaming listener becomes a contact she owns.
Range breakdown
Artist site rebuild$5.5K – $8K
Label site build$3.5K – $5.5K
Klaviyo setup & flows$1.5K – $2.5K
Hosting, licenses, apps$1K – $1.5K
Six months of hosting and software included. Klaviyo cost grows with list size after launch.
What moves the range
Page count and customization. The low end is a theme-based build with standard layouts; the high end adds custom product page design, richer media handling, and a deeper Wix content migration.
Phase 2
Paid Media & Conversion
$6,000 – $10,000
Setup + 6 months management · Ad spend billed separately
- Account architecture, in the label's name. Meta Business Manager, Google Ads, GA4, conversion tracking, and product catalog — created under Invisible Hand Production◆ so the label owns the data and history permanently.
- Retargeting before prospecting. The budget concentrates on people already streaming her — the cheapest conversions available — rather than buying broad awareness.
- Platform real estate, at no media cost. Pre-order links placed in Spotify Artist Pick, YouTube channel banners and cards, and every profile that currently dead-ends.
- Monthly optimization and reporting against pre-orders and cost per acquisition — not impressions.
Range breakdown
Account setup & tracking$1.5K – $2.5K
Management, $750–$1.25K/mo$4.5K – $7.5K
Ad spend (client-direct): $750 – $2,000/mo, or $4,500 – $12,000 over six months. Paid to the platforms, not to MRA.
What moves the range
Platform count. The low end runs Meta only with monthly creative refreshes; the high end adds Google Ads and more frequent creative testing. Management scales with spend.
Phase 3
Hi-Fi & Audiophile PR
$10,500 – $16,500
Retainer · Months 1–6, continuous
- A focused reviewer list. We pitch the outlets that actually move audiophile buyers rather than blanketing the category — Stereophile, Hi-Fi News & Record Review, The Absolute Sound, Steve Guttenberg, Part-Time Audiophile, Darko.Audio.
- Provenance as the story. Sheffield Lab analog lineage, Bill Schnee Studios, and the 1989 session players are the pitch. This is a record the hi-fi press has a real reason to cover.
- Community seeding. Steve Hoffman Forums, Discogs, and relevant subreddits — participation, not press releases.
- Demo-record positioning. Pitching the pressing to audio manufacturers as room demo material, which puts it in front of buyers at listening volume for almost nothing.
Range breakdown
PR retainer, $1.75K–$2.75K/mo$10.5K – $16.5K
Test pressings and review-unit shipping are client-direct costs. Trade show presence is not included and would be quoted separately.
What moves the range
List size and follow-through. The low end is a tight list of high-probability outlets worked thoroughly; the high end widens into broader music press and podcast bookings.
Phase 4
Social Channels & Archive Content
$9,000 – $16,000
Channel build + 6 months production · Months 1–6
- Build the channels properly. Her Facebook presence currently routes to a personal profile. We create a public artist page plus label-owned Instagram and YouTube, with consistent handles, art, bios, and links.
- Produce from the archive. Clair supplies raw photos, session audio, and video; MRA edits and produces it into publishable short-form content. The 1989 sessions are an asset almost no contemporary artist can match.
- Two recurring formats. Rather than chasing volume, we build a small number of repeatable series from the material — session photographs with the story behind them, and isolated track moments.
- Scheduled publishing and monitoring across all channels, with audience response handled in a set weekly window.
Range breakdown
Channel build & setup$1.5K – $2.5K
Production, $1.25K–$2.25K/mo$7.5K – $13.5K
Requires from Clair: raw photo, audio, and video archive delivered in month 1. Volume depends on what exists and its condition.
What moves the range
Output volume. The low end is 6 pieces monthly across two channels; the high end is 12 including restored archival material and captioned edits, published across three.
Six-month investment
Planning range
MRA fees, all four phases Build, management, PR, and content production$37,000 – $60,000
Average monthly MRA investment$6,200 – $10,000
Plus advertising spend, paid directly to the platforms$4,500 – $12,000
Boundaries & next steps
Held for a later phase
- Vinyl manufacturing — pressing, jackets, freight, and fulfillment are handled client-direct and are not part of MRA scope.
- Sync licensing infrastructure — the TV, film, and sports licensing area is a real opportunity, but it needs metadata, stems, cue sheets, and clearance documentation to work. Better built properly later than half-built now.
- TikTok advertising, trade show presence, and any paid placement or sponsorship fees.
- Scaling up. The scope above is intentionally lean. Once pre-orders establish a return, media spend and content volume are the first things worth increasing.
To move this forward
- Confirm the label name and entity. Three names have come up; every account, domain, and payment processor gets built under whichever one is correct.
- Pick a position in each range. Phases don't have to sit at the same level — a stronger store with leaner paid media is a perfectly sound configuration.
- Set the street date. PR lead times for the hi-fi print titles run long and work backward from it.
- Inventory the archive. What Clair actually has on hand determines Phase 4 more than anything else in this document.