When it’s time to release your song, we often let some things go by that can eventually harm it will perform. For your song, make sure to avoid these issues to avoid ruining your release from the start:
4 THOUGHTS FROM ME
1. You can’t release too many songs at once or in a similar time frame. If you have multiple songs being released at the same time, you’ll have to do a lot to promote these songs simultaneously, which can lead your audience to be a little fatigued of you only ‘promoting’ all the time on your socials. In addition to that, by having multiple releases close to each other, you’re wasting the opportunity to have more releases spread out in a more consistent manner that will give people time to want more from you. Lastly, you may not have time to do all you can, and end up not doing marketing efforts that could benefit your release. When big artists release albums, they don’t promote all the songs at once since it’s impossible to do even with a huge marketing team, and that’s why they release an album, but promote each song at a time over the course of months or a year. Therefore, make sure to organize your releases in a way that you can avoid releasing multiple songs at once so you can maximize your promotion efforts for every song. For example, if a label sets you for a release date that is close to another release, ask them to change the date to something at least 3 weeks apart.
2. You need to release songs more often than you are. At the same time that you can’t release too many songs at once, you have to keep a consistent flow of songs being released, or promoted, to stay relevant on streaming platforms and also to your followers. If you were Spotify, would you rather push an artist that sends content to your platform consistently every month or one that unpredictably sends content every 4-5 months? The first one, right? In addition, as a fan, you’ll be much more eager to listen to a new song if an artist has been consistently releasing music you like as you’ll feel much more connected to that artist. For example, I love Jon Hopkins and Madeon, but I barely know when there’s new music from them, so I don’t check their Spotify that often. At the same time, I like ANYMA, and I know that almost every month there will be new music there, so I check their Spotify a lot more often and end up listening to them a lot more. Therefore, if you want your release to be relevant, you have to consistently stay relevant, and that happens when consistently release new music. My suggestion is to plan to release something every 4-6 weeks.
3. You need to put more effort into marketing and your release strategy. When you just release song after song without thinking about what you are pursuing with the release and why you’re choosing label A rather than a self-release, you can end up with a lot of releases that don’t really satisfy your goal. For example, if you’re focusing on Spotify plays, but the label you’re releasing is not doing much to this goal, you have to change your approach with the release, or change your label and try a new one. At the same time, knowing that you’re ‘focusing on Spotify Plays’ will already give you a headstart on what you have to do next to achieve a better result in the future since you already have ‘something you’re looking for’ from that release. Therefore, after every release, analyze what went right, and what went wrong based on what you were looking for on your release and correct/adapt what you can do better the next time. If you don’t have a goal for your releases, it’s time to set one for your next release, go and do that now. Failure to plan is planning to fail.
4. You need to level up your music production game and differentiate yourself. It’s not only necessary to be consistent with your releases, and marketing efforts, but you also have to make sure you’re doing the best music you can. If you keep on releasing the same music you’ve been doing in the past, people can get bored of it and move on to a new artist who is trying something you are not. Often when artists find a hit song, they copy that formula by only doing the same sound over and over, but that gets old really quickly, so you have to keep on looking for new ways to differentiate yourself to keep on achieving better results. Different sound design, vocals, unusual collabs, amazing remixes of old songs, and trying different genres are all ways that you can develop. One might say that trying different genres might piss off your current followers, but, as said, doing the same will bore them in the long run. If you don’t risk sounding like trash, you’ll never end up being a hit.
1 QUESTION FOR YOU
What else can you do to avoid ruining a release?
1. Make sure your release assets and promotional efforts are ready ahead of time. Always try to prepare everything ahead of time to avoid missing out on posting something because your busy life didn’t leave you as much time;
2. Show yourself, not only a cover photo. From my experience, only posting cover photos and promotional videos given by the label won’t get you so far. Especially when promoting via Instagram, try to include a photo of yourself djing along with the song to maximize your results.
3. Producing only thinking about the results. When you focus on the results and not the process of creating the song, you can EASILY overthink everything and end up frustrated. Enjoy the music, enjoy the process and do your best to make the best release, but don’t overthink it.
