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Private — Josh Holmes team.
Private — Josh Holmes team.
Four goals, twelve months, one date. Everything back-plans from Friday 10 September 2027 — the Skinny Dipping in Canggu EP and the Indonesian show, released and played as a single moment.
| # | Goal for the year |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1,000,000 Spotify streams (catalogue total) |
| 2 | 10,000 followers per platform |
| 3 | 500-seat Jakarta show, sold out |
| 4 | Support slot secured |
16 October 2026 proves the process. The proven process then runs at the anchor.
The Bali Sessions is not the big release — it is the rehearsal for the big release, eleven months early, while mistakes are still cheap. Everything released since January 2025 has totalled 10,201 streams; two singles landed under 200 each. The release machine is broken, and October is when it gets fixed under real conditions.
The plan window is September 2026 – August 2027, so month 12 ends ten days before the show. That is deliberate: the anchor is the terminus, not a milestone inside the year. Consolidation belongs to month 13 and beyond.
List and cost from the Laylo export and Meta ads reporting; watch time from TikTok Studio, ten videos, Dec 2025 – Apr 2026; save rate from Spotify for Artists. All pulled 4 September 2026.
Set by Josh, 4 September 2026. Each one below shows the gap, the multiple it implies, and the single lever that moves it. Where the arithmetic says a goal is in trouble, it says so.
| Goal | Today | Gap | The one lever | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1M Spotify streams catalogue total | 710,672 | +289,328 | Indonesian playlist placement, at volume | stretch |
| 10k followers per platform | 1,338 IG 3,109 TT 1,739 SP | +23,814 combined | Follow rate — not more views | blocked |
| 500-seat Jakarta sellout | 350 free | 500 paid | The size of the email list | reachable |
| Support slot secured | — | 1 | Proof you sell tickets | downstream |
Cumulative catalogue total. +289,328 needed in twelve months — against 11,868 in the last twelve months. That is a 24× step up, and it is the same size as You & Me's entire lifetime (296,688). The goal is, in effect, one more career-best track — or a lot of playlists.
One Indonesian user playlist — LAGU BUTTERFLY, added 11 Aug — produced 6,213 streams from 5,136 listeners in about three weeks. That is the only proven stream engine this project has.
289,328 ÷ 6,213 ≈ 47 placements of that size — about four a month. That is the target to steer by. One editorial add could do it alone, which is why the free pitch matters more than anything paid.
| Action | When | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Pitch every release through Spotify for Artists editorial, 4+ weeks out — free, and the only route to algorithmic surfaces | every release, no exceptions | Josh |
| Go back to the LAGU BUTTERFLY curator — they already chose to support the music | September | Josh |
| Build a list of 50 Indonesian pop-punk / galau playlist curators; pitch 10 a month | from September | Josh + social manager |
| Raise save rate 0.48% → 1%+ — saves are what open Release Radar and Discover Weekly | measured monthly | Josh |
| Test Spotify Showcase in Indonesia (Marquee is not available to us) | November | Josh |
Leading indicator: new playlist placements per month, and Spotify's own surfaces as a share of playlist streams — currently 4%. If that share does not move, there is no engine and the goal will not land, however many singles go out.
Instagram converts at 0.13 follows per 1,000 views. To add the 8,662 followers this goal needs, at that rate:
| Follow rate | Views required |
|---|---|
| 0.13 / 1k today | 66,600,000 |
| 1.0 / 1k 8× better | 8,662,000 |
| 3.0 / 1k 23× better | 2,887,000 |
| 5.0 / 1k 38× better | 1,732,000 |
For scale, every view this project earned in 2026 — paid and organic — was 1,773,221.
66 million views is not happening. So this goal cannot be reached by getting more views. It can only be reached by fixing the rate at which a view becomes a follow. At 5 follows per 1,000, the views you already get would be enough.
This is why the two-second problem is the highest-priority content work in the plan. It is not a content-quality nicety — it is the only arithmetic route to this goal. Buying followers would hit the number for a few hundred pounds and change nothing: last year's entire TikTok gain of 3,047 was bought, and organic growth was negative in every month without ad spend.
| Action | When | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Move average watch time 2.2s → 5s — payoff in the first frame, 12–18s cuts, visual openers | from September, measured monthly | social manager |
| Close out the April profile audit — profile photo, five highlights, pinned posts, TikTok bio, “Start Here” link. This is the layer that converts a viewer into a follower, and it has been open five months | September — 20 minutes | Josh |
| Report follows per 1,000 views every month, per platform. This is the goal's real metric | monthly | Josh |
| Track Indonesian share of new followers — a UK follower cannot buy a Jakarta ticket | monthly | Josh |
| Do not buy followers. It hits the number and moves nothing else | standing | all |
Leading indicator: follows per 1,000 views. If it is still under 1.0 by December, this goal should be renegotiated rather than chased.
The most reachable of the four, and the one the rest of the plan is built around. Break-even is now settled at ~£8 a head against £4,006 of costs. The 2026 show gave away 350 tickets in five days, so demand is not in doubt — paid demand is.
The email list is the ticket machine. Tickets sold = list size × conversion.
| List → ticket conversion | List needed for 500 |
|---|---|
| 5% cold | 10,000 |
| 10% warm, local, correctly priced | 5,000 |
| 20% exceptional | 2,500 |
The list is 871 today. At 10%, that is 87 tickets — short by 413. The 5,000-person list target is not an aspiration; it is the number that makes 500 sold arithmetically possible.
| Action | When | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Fix payment rails — QRIS and e-wallets, settling to a UK account. In 2026, 40 of 40 VIP baskets produced 4 payments | September | Josh |
| Email the 871 list. Never done; the list has been silent since May | September | Josh |
| Every ad, pre-save and link captures an email — the list grows continuously, not in campaigns | standing, from September | Josh + social manager |
| Grow the list to 2,500 (floor) / 5,000 (stretch), Indonesian-weighted | by May 2027 | Josh |
| Price test against the list — this produces the ticket price and the venue size, in that order | November | Josh |
| Confirm venue and pay deposit | 23 Apr 2027 (D-20) | Josh |
| Indonesia audience push begins in earnest | 7 May 2027 (D-18) | social manager |
| Ticket on-sale | 2 Jul 2027 (D-10) | Josh |
Leading indicator: Indonesian email addresses on the list, and the open rate. Everything else about this goal is downstream of those two numbers.
Territory left open — UK or Indonesia/SEA, whichever lands first (Josh, 4 Sep 2026). The outreach templates are the same either way, so working both costs little.
This goal is downstream of goal 3. Support slots are given to acts that demonstrably sell tickets. A 500-cap Jakarta sellout is the credential; nothing before it is. That means the real work here happens late, and the preparation happens early.
| Action | When | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Update the EPK — streams, the 107-outlet press run, the sellout, live photos. Open since April | September | Josh |
| SEA route: build a promoter/agent list through COMA, the band and the Jakarta promoter network. The DKMBA databases contain zero SEA contacts, so this is built from scratch | from January | Josh |
| UK route: the DKMBA A&R and agent databases (~1,600 contacts) finally apply here. Filter to pop-punk agents and support bookers | from January | Josh |
| 10 targeted approaches a month, tracked with replies — not a mailout | from March 2027 | Josh |
| Lead with the sellout the week it happens — the credential is freshest immediately after the show | Sep 2027 | Josh |
Leading indicator: replies per 10 approaches. Zero replies after 30 approaches means the pitch is wrong, not the market.
September 2026. If nothing else happens, these do.
| # | Action | Serves | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Submit the Spotify editorial pitch for The Bali Sessions. Free, and the window closes in about two weeks | Goal 1 | Josh |
| 2 | Email the 871-person list. Acknowledge the silence, give them the acoustic EP | Goals 1 & 3 | Josh |
| 3 | Register one QRIS ticketing platform and buy a test ticket on an Indonesian phone | Goal 3 | Josh |
| 4 | Close out the April profile audit — 20 minutes, and add the “Start Here” email link | Goals 2 & 3 | Josh |
| 5 | Run the five-opening hook test; record average watch time for each | Goal 2 | social manager |
None of them are content. All three are cheap. Until they are done, every goal above is theoretical.
| # | Gate | Why it gates everything | By when |
|---|---|---|---|
| P0 | Ticketing that takes QRIS and e-wallets, settling to a UK account | In 2026, 40 of 40 VIP tickets reached baskets and 4 payments completed. The demand was real; the checkout was card-only in an e-wallet market. A bigger audience through a broken till still yields nothing | Tested end to end on an Indonesian phone before the price test |
| P0 | Email the 871-person list | 870 of 871 records have an email address and the list has never been emailed — it was being reached by paid Instagram DMs until that got too expensive. Email costs nothing at this size. It is 97% Indonesian and 66% Jakarta: this is the ticket-buying audience for 2027 | September 2026 |
| P0 | Fix the first two seconds | TikTok is distributing the content hard — For You traffic runs 78–96%. Viewers leave at second two. Reach is not the constraint and never was; retention is | Measured monthly from September |
These windows were provisional until the anchor date existed. It exists now, so they have been re-cut against 10 September 2027 — and one of them changes meaning entirely.
| Phase | Window | Purpose | Exit test |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Prove | Sep–Nov 2026 | Clear the three gates and run the Bali Sessions as a full-process release | Did the EP beat 10,201 streams — everything released since Jan 2025 combined? |
| 2 · Build | Dec 2026–Feb 2027 | Quiet months. Finish recording the 2027 EP; grow the list; apply what October taught | EP recording done by 29 Jan, and the list past 1,800 |
| 3 · Commit | Mar–May 2027 | Master, deliver, book the venue, pay the deposit, start the Indonesian audience push | Venue confirmed and the audience push measurably running by 7 May |
| 4 · Sell | Jun–Aug 2027 | The ticket-selling sprint. Lead single, press, on-sale, travel, rehearsals | Tickets sold at a price that clears break-even |
Phase 4 was called Consolidate, on the assumption the big moment landed mid-year. It does not — it lands on the last day. Phase 4 is not consolidation, it is the ticket-selling sprint, and it is the highest-pressure quarter of the year. Real consolidation — converting the spike into a durable base — starts in month 13.
| # | Month | Anchor | The one thing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sep 2026 | Last First Kiss (Acoustic), 25 Sep | Clear the three gates. Email the list, test a QRIS checkout, start the hook test |
| 2 | Oct 2026 | The Bali Sessions EP, 16 Oct | Run the full release process, properly, once. This is the rehearsal for 2027 |
| 3 | Nov 2026 | Bali Sessions retrospective | Write down what the process actually produced, and what changes for next time |
| 4 | Dec 2026 | — quiet month | Warm the list through the holidays; keep the catalogue alive; do not release into Christmas |
| 5 | Jan 2027 | EP recording complete, 29 Jan (D-32wks) | Lock the creative deadline early. If this slips, the show slips |
| 6 | Feb 2027 | Georgia, 5 Feb | First single of the build. Apply the October learnings to a live release |
| 7 | Mar 2027 | EP mastered, artwork and metadata locked, 26 Mar (D-24wks) | Everything creative is finished. From here it is distribution and audience |
| 8 | Apr 2027 | I Like The Way Ya, 2 Apr · venue confirmed and deposit paid, 23 Apr (D-20wks) | Size the room from listener data and the price test — not from optimism |
| 9 | May 2027 | Indonesia audience push begins, 7 May (D-18wks) · Spotify editorial pitch, 21 May | The months before the on-sale sell the tickets. The show does not |
| 10 | Jun 2027 | Skinny Dipping in Canggu lead single, 4 Jun · Indonesian press begins, 18 Jun (D-12wks) | Press and single land together, pointed at an on-sale two weeks out |
| 11 | Jul 2027 | TICKET ON-SALE, 2 Jul (D-10wks) — the same day “27” releases | The year's real test. Can this audience be sold to at all? |
| 12 | Aug 2027 | In Another Life, 6 Aug · press run, 13 Aug · final push, 27 Aug | Sell the remaining tickets; confirm travel, visas and rehearsals |
| — | 10 Sep 2027 | THE SHOW + Skinny Dipping in Canggu EP | The EP releases on show day — the show is the launch. Four singles will already be out |
Release dates are fixed and were decided by Josh on 4 September 2026. Week offsets are calculated from 10 September 2027; the intervals themselves come from the release playbook and should be tightened once venue terms and the real distribution lead time are known. Full release schedule, ticketing options and risk register are on the Plan tab.
Two dates fall out of this that are worth noticing. The on-sale lands on 2 July 2027 — the same day “27” releases, so the ticket announcement has a new song carrying it. And by on-sale, buyers will have heard four singles from the record. The same-day EP release does not leave the on-sale unsupported.
| When | Date | Milestone | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| D-32 | Fri 29 Jan 2027 | EP recording complete | Josh + producer |
| D-24 | Fri 26 Mar 2027 | Mastered, artwork done, metadata locked | Josh + producer |
| D-20 | Fri 23 Apr 2027 | Delivered to distributor · venue confirmed and deposit paid | Josh |
| D-18 | Fri 7 May 2027 | Indonesia audience push begins in earnest | social media manager |
| D-16 | Fri 21 May 2027 | Spotify editorial pitch for the EP lead track | Josh |
| D-12 | Fri 18 Jun 2027 | Indonesian press campaign begins | PR |
| D-10 | Fri 2 Jul 2027 | Ticket on-sale | Josh |
| D-8 | Fri 16 Jul 2027 | Flights, accommodation and visas confirmed | Josh |
| D-6 | Fri 30 Jul 2027 | Band rehearsals scheduled | band |
| D-4 | Fri 13 Aug 2027 | Press run and interviews in Indonesian media | PR |
| D-2 | Fri 27 Aug 2027 | Final ticket push; email-capture plan for the venue | Josh |
| D | Fri 10 Sep 2027 | Show + EP release | all |
The 2026 show sold out in five days, which argues for a shorter on-sale window than the ten weeks above, not a longer one. Revisit once the venue is chosen — ten weeks of slow selling is worse for momentum than four weeks of fast selling.
These are the numbers underneath the four goals: the ones that have to move for the goals to be reachable. Floor means the year was not wasted; stretch means it changed something. Every target has a named mechanism, because a target without one is a wish.
| Metric | Today | Floor | Stretch | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email list | 871 | 2,500 | 5,000 | “Start Here” button as the permanent top-of-funnel · email capture on every pre-save · list-building ads to Indonesia |
| Avg watch time, TikTok | 2.2s | 4.0s | 5.0s | Payoff in the first frame · visual openers · cut to 12–18s from 24–37s |
| Spotify save rate | 0.48% | 1.0% | 1.5% | The release process itself — pre-saves, editorial pitch, playlist outreach |
| The Bali Sessions EP, 90 days | — | 10,000 | 25,000 | Floor = the EP alone matches everything released since Jan 2025 |
| Largest single playlist, share of playlist streams | 71% | <50% | <35% | Independent Indonesian playlist outreach — reduce dependence on one curator |
| Paid tickets, 2027 show | 0 | set by the November price test | Deliberately unset — see below | |
The 2026 show was free, so willingness to pay has never been tested. Picking a number now would be invention. The November price test against the 871-person list produces the number, and the venue is then sized from it — in that order, not the reverse.
What is known, and now settled: the 2026 show cost ≈£4,006. The balance of the earlier £8,000 figure was personal Bali holiday spend and does not count against the show. So break-even for a comparable show is ~£11 a head at 350 capacity, ~£8 at 500 — a real number to price against, not a range.
More than three and you cannot attribute a result to a cause. Named for the months where the evidence is fresh; later months get slots, filled at the monthly close from what the previous month actually showed.
| Month | The three | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2026 | Email the 871-person list for the first time | Is this audience still warm after four months of silence? Open rate is the number. |
| Five openings of one video, compared on average watch time | Which opening style holds attention past two seconds? | |
| Register one QRIS platform and buy a test ticket on an Indonesian phone | Can this project actually take money in Indonesia? | |
| Oct 2026 | The Bali Sessions release, run to the full playbook | Does a deliberate process beat the current one? Save rate in the first 72 hours. |
| Pre-save link with email capture attached | Does a release convert strangers into owned audience, or only into streams? | |
| Instagram Trial Reels for hook variants | Can hooks be tested without cluttering the feed? (Instagram-only — verify the feature still exists) | |
| Nov 2026 | Price test against the list | What will this audience actually pay? Everything about the venue depends on it |
| Spotify Showcase in Indonesia | Does a Spotify-native ad reach listeners better than a social ad? (Eligibility needs checking in-platform) | |
| The winning opener as paid ad creative, against current creative | Does a hook proven organically also win when paid? | |
| Dec–Aug | 3 slots per month, chosen at the monthly close | Filled from what the previous month showed, not planned nine months out |
| Not this | Why not |
|---|---|
| Working through the 100 Hooks list | Those hooks are already in use — “who is your first dance going to be with”, “for fans of Simple Plan”, “the person you thought you'd marry” are all on it. They have been measured across 342,000 views at 2.1–3.2 seconds. This is the thing being fixed, not the fix |
| A UK / US / EU press and radio push | The acquired press, radio and A&R databases contain zero Indonesian, Singaporean or Malaysian contacts. The audience is 97% Indonesian. Those lists serve a different strategy, and that strategy has not been chosen |
| Spotify Marquee ads | Needs 5k streams and >1,000 followers in the target market. Followers are 1,739 globally, +1 in August, and the Indonesian audience only arrived in August 2026 |
| Follower and profile-visit ad objectives | £52.93 bought 2,244 profile visits against 1,338 followers; on TikTok the claimed and actual follower counts do not even reconcile. The objective buys a number, not a relationship |
| Posting 14× a week | Not because volume is punished — For You traffic proves it is not — but because fixing the first two seconds is per-post work, and fourteen posts cannot each get it. Seven well-cut posts beat fourteen quick ones |
| Buying streams | Expensive, does not retain, and it poisons the data this plan depends on |
Real unit costs from 2026 invoices, converted at roughly IDR 20,500 to £1. This is what is known, not a complete budget — travel and the larger venue are still open.
| Item | Cost | Note |
|---|---|---|
| List-building ads, to floor of 2,500 | ~£800 | 1,629 contacts at £0.49. Treat £0.49 as a floor — it was earned Feb–Apr 2026 with a sold-out show to announce. With nothing to announce it will cost more |
| List-building ads, to stretch of 5,000 | ~£2,000 | Same caveat, larger volume |
| Indonesian PR, per campaign | £390 | 66–107 outlets, documented. Budget two: the Bali EP and the 2027 EP |
| Venue, 350-cap (COMA Jakarta, 2026 price) | £878 | A bigger room costs more — unpriced until the venue is chosen |
| Full band + MD + playback + 3 studio days | £451 | 2026 actual |
| Lighting rig, operator and crew | £234 | 2026 actual |
| Mixing and mastering, per session | £64 | 2026 actual |
| Spotify Showcase test | £100–300 | Minimum spend varies by region — confirm in-platform |
| Flights, accommodation, visas | unknown | Open. The largest uncosted item in the year |
| 2026 show, total cost | £4,006 | Settled 4 Sep 2026. The benchmark for costing 2027 — break-even ~£11/head at 350, ~£8 at 500. Personal Bali holiday spend is excluded |
| Cadence | What happens | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | 20 minutes: what shipped, what is blocked, what is next | The current month note |
| Monthly | Actuals against targets. Pick next month's three experiments. Stop something | Month review + updated targets |
| Quarterly | Phase review against its exit test. Is the strategy working? | Phase note + decision log |
| Per release | Run the release playbook end to end, and record where it broke | Release retrospective |
Numbers come from exports, never from memory. If a figure has no source, it gets marked unverified. Every claim about what works gets a date and a source. Anything we stop doing gets written down with the reason, so it does not get relitigated in March.