What you'll be able to do
- Choose between simultaneous and staggered on-sales with the actual tradeoffs in view
- Run an announce-wave morning across N markets without a single improvised minute
- Use presale registration as the tour's demand-reading instrument
The short version: The tour announce is DAS 201 Module 4's on-sale run sheet × N, executed as a wave: the announce moment (all markets, one post, the roll-call begins), a registration window (the demand instrument - Module 5's alert stack does the capturing), then the on-sale morning(s). Simultaneous on-sales concentrate the moment and the press story; staggered on-sales let the team execute each market properly and let early sellouts fuel later markets. The honest default for teams without an army: stagger in 2-3 waves, anchors first. And the wave's data - registration density per market - is the first read on where the tour is actually wanted, available BEFORE a single ticket is sold.
The wave, in sequence
T-minus: the quiet build. Backbone assets finished (Module 7), matrix populated (Module 2), per-market ad sets staged paused (Module 3), registration/drop page live but unannounced (Module 5), all launch ads submitted for review DAYS early - the DAS 201 M4 rule with N markets of consequences.
The announce moment. One tour announce on the canon (THE post ID - the roll-call's home for the whole cycle), the node network firing in register (DAS 202 M1's matrix: HQ wires the dates, fan node loses its mind, scene nodes per market contextualize), every market's paused announce ads going live against it, and the registration window opening: "sign up for your city's presale."
The registration window (48h-2 weeks by scale). The tour's demand instrument runs: fans pick their city, the per-market alert lists build, and the team reads registration density per market - the earliest honest signal of which rooms are hot, which are soft, and where the second-wave date belongs. This number reaches the routing conversation before the first on-sale (Module 6 formalizes it).
On-sale morning(s). Per market, DAS 201 M4's run sheet verbatim: presale to the registered list first (the alert fires + email + warm ads, same hour), public on-sale behind it, cold behind that. Staggered waves repeat the morning per wave - anchors week one, growth markets week two, experiments with the momentum story week three.
›Go deeper: simultaneous vs staggered, the actual tradeoffs
Simultaneous: one press moment, one coordinated surge, maximum roll-call ignition - and N on-sale mornings happening AT ONCE, which means nobody human is watching any of them properly, and a broken link in market twelve burns its best hour unnoticed. Staggered: each morning gets real attention, early anchors' sellouts become later waves' creative ("six cities gone"), soft-market reads arrive early enough to act on - at the cost of a diluted press moment and fans in wave-three cities feeling like the B-list (mitigated by honest framing: "more cities [date]"). The team-size rule: simultaneous is earned by headcount; below that, stagger and execute. The hybrid most tours actually want: simultaneous ANNOUNCE (one moment, one post ID, full ignition), staggered ON-SALES (execution sanity). The announce is a broadcast; the on-sale is an operation. Split them.
›Go deeper: the second-wave play
Hold routing flexibility where the booking allows, and let the wave's data spend it: registration density and wave-one sellthrough identify the underserved market (the city whose numbers scream for a date it didn't get) and the second-night candidate (the anchor that sold out in an hour). "Second show added" is the strongest ad copy in touring - demand-proof as an announcement - and the only way to run the play is having held the option and built the instrument that tells you where. This is Module 6's routing-intelligence thesis paying out mid-cycle instead of next year.
From the field
A 12-date run split the difference exactly as doctrine suggests: one simultaneous announce (single post ID, network in full register, registration open) then three on-sale waves. The registration window did its quiet work - one growth market's density ran triple its tier expectation, and the second-wave option got spent there: a second night, announced with wave two, sold on "you did this" framing to the registered list first. It outsold the first night. The press moment stayed singular, no on-sale morning ran unwatched, and the roll-call post carried every wave's comments into the next. The instrument, not the instinct, picked the city - instinct had wanted the hometown.
Common mistakes
- Simultaneous on-sales without simultaneous staffing (N mornings, zero watched properly)
- The announce and the on-sale treated as one event (broadcast vs operation - split them)
- Fresh announce posts per wave (the roll-call has ONE home)
- The registration window run as a formality instead of read as an instrument
- Second-wave dates picked by instinct with the density data sitting right there
Take-home
The Rolling Announce Run Sheet - the wave sequence as a dated checklist, the simultaneous/staggered/hybrid decision card, the registration-density reading guide, and the second-wave decision worksheet.
Sources & dates
DAS 201 M4 run-sheet doctrine + DAS 202 M1/M8 as cited · wave system is Darkroom practice, presented as such
Learn more
Optional extra credit. Nothing below is required for the quiz, the certificate, or the job - the full lesson is above. This is for the sickos who want more.
- DAS 201 Module 4 - the single-market on-sale morning this module runs on a conveyor belt