Working on new music is amazing, especially since it helps you keep your creative flow going smoothly. However, sometimes you’ll need to rush into them to be able to meet your release schedule and put more music out to the world, which is what will actually make a difference to your music career.
4 THOUGHTS FROM ME
1. Aim to release one song every 1-2 months, but ideally every month to month and a half. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ solution for how often you should release, but you should release music almost every month to always keep yourself and your art in the listener’s mind. The best guide is to check how often the artists you look up to in your industry release music and be as active as or a little bit more active than them since you still have to make a name for yourself. In any case, aim to have a release every month and you’ll keep yourself present to your listeners.
2. Prepare yourself to be able to achieve a ‘one song per month’ release schedule. The task is not only to release a song per month, but to fit a release every month into a label’s schedule, which can be an arduous task. Even if self-releasing, you’re probably working now on the song you’ll release in three to four months, and this can get even worse with label releases, so you gotta make sure to work ahead of time. As mentioned in this post about having a buffer of songs, which was confirmed by A&R advice also mentioned in this post, make sure to NOT work right now on your next release, or you won’t be able to make this schedule. One song per month equals 12 songs per year, and let’s assume 80% of your music gets released… that is 15 finished songs per year. Therefore, prepare yourself, or it will be tough to keep on with releasing every month.
3. Avoid having releases too close to each other. Let’s say you have a release in a month with label XXX and label BBB wants to release a song of yours the week after your release with label XXX… If so, ask the label BBB if you can postpone the release for a week or two to avoid cannibalizing the marketing efforts. In addition to having too many marketing tasks to do, which can be overwhelming and already would be enough to ‘raise a NO-GO flag’, it’s always better when you focus your efforts on one song. Focusing on one song means you’ll do the best you can for that one, which often can maximize your results. Therefore, if you can plan this out yourself or if you are willing to ask the label, leave AT LEAST 2 weeks of distance, 3-4 weeks being more ideal though
4. Focus on one song at a time. Sometimes, you’ll release 2-3 songs at once with an EP, which is perfectly fine and normal these days, and you’ll have to market 2-3 songs at a time. However, for you to make sure that you’ll be able to maximize your releases, make sure to consider the following: (1) Plan 2 weeks of pre-release work for each song, so that when the time comes you have all the material prepared, (2) Don’t try to push all at once! Consider pushing one song at a time for efforts that are ‘song-based’ such as livestreams, pitching songs to playlists (ask if you can place one song per week instead of all three for one week), etc. (3) For ‘EP-based’ promo, take advantage of your multiple songs and pitch them as a group since an EP is normally bigger news for a magazine to cover than just a single.
3 QUESTIONS FOR YOU
1. How often do you like to hear new music from your favorite artists?
2. How are your favorite artists planning their releases (Label vs. Self Release)
3. How far apart are the releases from your favorite artists?
These three questions can tell a lot about what you can do and how you can plan your own releases!
