 On this channel we've extensively talked about that because of algorithms of streaming services like Spotify and YouTube, along with the way people's attention spans work, you need to release as many singles as possible while telling stories around them and creating content around them to get eyes on your music that builds bonds with fans. But we want to package these singles as an album since we want fans to build these deep bonds with the music we release and the album experience is what keeps listeners locked in and developing a deeper relationship with your music. So in this video I'm going to talk about how you use the waterfall method to take advantage of the benefits of both singles and albums. Hi I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's on YouTube teaching musicians how to go from zero to 10,000 fans and this is Museformation. Now some of you may be thinking right now did this dude really just drop the term waterfall method without explaining it? What the hell is that some sort of Brooklyn child birthing method? The term comes from the startup world like so many things I seem to have to discuss here as it means that you are constantly stacking new features on top of old ones for your app. Okay and for those of you who don't spend your life reading artist management message boards all day, the waterfall method is the busiest release strategy of the past few years. A couple of years ago it was popularized by the, oh fuck I got an awful taste in my mouth again, the chain smokers where you essentially release a single and then when you hit the second single you title or release and keep adding to it. So the first single you release becomes track two and your newest singles track one on the album and you continue pushing the older tracks down like a waterfall going down your Spotify page. You see that? At some point you call this release done and you can either add a bunch of tracks that didn't make sense as singles to it and put it in an order you want people to consume it until the aliens come down and take us away. This method is particularly important as it makes it easy to get to know your music and build a deeper bond with it so that when a fan comes upon your music since as I always tell you you should be sharing a playlist or an album on social media because you don't want Spotify or YouTube to play a fan another artist song after yours. This approach allows you to strategically release singles you can build momentum to get on more playlists and have algorithms do you the favors. If you want to learn more about that watch the video that's linked in the corner or in the description I made on how you build momentum with each single but I know you probably have a lot of questions. The first one I usually get is what should I do with the songs that aren't worthy of being singles but you want to put them on your album. Very big shock to watchers of this channel but I'm going to use the 1975 as an example as they have numerous tracks that aren't fit for single consumption since they are ambient or experimental artist expressions that go alongside their pop songs. You can easily discern which of these to do this with and you all you have to do is add them to the album when you decide to call it done and quote unquote release it. After all if this has worked out for you you now have tons of new fans who are going to be happy to get a big dose of music from you to add to this record and be happy to go deeper on your musical output. But yes some of these songs may not be the best to promote for eight weeks and pitch for playlist opportunities as singles. Another thing people ask me is what's the difference between the thing you always talk about Jesse where you just put all the songs together on an album at the end. This is building that album as you go instead you're stacking each single on but when the album is done you may reorder all the songs. So the next question inevitably is how in the hell do I do this? So we need to use your aggregator dash distributor to do this. Most of them allow you to edit your release and add to it while others will make you delete the release for a day or two and the release may not exist on streaming platforms. But don't worry the songs still just exist just not in the order they are in on an album. Some people get around this by having two releases up for a day and adding a period to the end of the name or another small distinction. Every distributor has fielded a question of how to do this by now so you can consult their FAQ or write to customer support if you can't figure it out. In the streaming world we really need to think of albums as just artist preferred playlist experiences of the album as you the artist envision it. But but why lose my streams counts? As long as you don't delete your songs your plays will be intact as long as you don't put up the song with a new ISRC or change the length of it and just delete the album not the song itself. Also make sure the album UPC stays the same. But but but why lose my album done? Do I just do this forever? Well if you want to sure I've seen some artists do this for 20 songs and some for an entire year and others for six songs. This is a common technique artists are doing now until they really break then once they feel they have solidified themselves in their genre then they move on to releasing singles or more traditional releases or you could keep doing this for as long as it makes algorithmic sense. The fact is this method is going to keep getting more popular since it really helps artists with marketing. I think it makes a lot of sense and can pay off for artists in a big way so make sure to keep it in mind for your next release plan. Thanks for watching. Am I missing anything? Is there any other way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them so leave them in the comments since I answer every comment in every post. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like subscribe and get notified and I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with how to promote your music and how to make songs you're happy with in the future. I have a Facebook group linked below that is only helpful information no playlist or con artists only artists having helpful discussions allowed. If you want to learn more about me work on a record with me or check out any of my books podcasts or anything else I do go to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon on all the socials. One last thing there's two playlists here one is on how to grow your fan base from zero to ten thousand fans and the other is on how you promote your music with Spotify or you can hit the subscribe button below and stay tuned as I have tons of tips for musicians