 So I've been asked multiple times a day whether to release music right now. A lot of the clowns who do music promotion YouTube channels are doing what they do best and handing out bullshit advice. So in this episode, I'm gonna explain why it's absolutely stupid to give a blanket answer to the question whether you should release music during this time, but instead I'm gonna give you all the knowledge you need to make the right decision for yourself since the answer is not one size fits all. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon and this is Muse Formation. And today I'm coming to you from my quarantine office instead of my usual studio, as you can see. So anybody who knows me will tell you I'm an extremely optimistic person. In fact, the fact that I'm even a little bit pessimistic and cautious right now in this video tells you everything you need to know. Since I'm usually a happy go luckily reckless type of person and I'm actually taking the time to do this post because I feel the need to warn people since I'm allergic to causing alarm and clickbait bullshit content but I feel like I have something to say that's unique here. So let's get right to the question. Should you be releasing music during the coronavirus outbreak-the COVID outbreak? So let's first talk about where the stupid answer I see from all sorts of people that are not paying a lot of attention every time I see this question on a message board. What they say is everybody's at home and waiting for you to release music. Well, not so much. Let's start off by pointing out first off that streaming music is down but let's also remember that many establishments like bars and restaurants that play Spotify all day are no longer streaming. There's also people not commuting to work and there's probably people streaming a little bit less. But we are hearing from YouTube and Netflix that their numbers are up immensely but this seems to be that everybody's taking a chill-out time right now. Let's remember, you can listen to music every day. You don't have eight hours to binge the Tiger King guys documentary every day. But what you really wanna know is are people ready to hear from new artists? The answer is no one knows but there is a lesson I can tell you I learned firsthand during September 11th when there was a crisis like this. On September 4th, 2001, a song I had done a bunch of production work on was Burning Up the Top 40. Though a song was a white boy hip hop song that had some questionable lyrics about a girl who'd moved out of a house and now the MC kept getting her phone calls. Well, the next week when 9-11 happened, no one had any interest in this cute little joke anymore and the song and the band disappeared and they were dropped from Atlantic Records pretty fast. So what I can tell you from this story is if your song is a bunch of club bangers about going out and partying, it may be good to wait. And if your song is about falling in love and all the fun you've been having in the summer, well, unless that's all been happening over a computer or your song's about being apart from someone and you in love and it's like love in the time of Corona or something, it may be good to wait as well. But if your music is more niche and it's like metal or like weird indie stuff, you can give it a try releasing it. But I will say with the caveat is that you should make sure you have all that content made and everything should be as planned as effective as possible. Since everything's kind of on pause and you wanna make sure you get this right right now. And if it's not gonna be right, you can always wait on it. And I do wanna say that there's great content you can make indoors right now. My buddies in Lake Cambrian did a quarantine edition of their latest video. Kalani shot a really intimate video in her bedroom on a phone. You can make content that is themed around what's happening right now, but it's also probably not best to compromise plans if you had really good ideas on what you were gonna do previously. Since who knows if music fans are responding to new music right now. So if you do decide to wait though, let's also remember it may not be so smart to do this right when it's over. What I'm gonna tell you is there's gonna be an insane flood of content when all the established artists who push back their ideas are gonna start doing everything all at once and releases will flood the market and then everybody's gonna be listening to their favorite bands records instead of new music. So with that said, maybe you do wanna go sometime soon. Let's also talk about another lesson I learned from 9-11. I lived in New York City at the time. We have to remember at that time New York City was not known for breaking bands that became big. In fact, if anything was the opposite, it was known as a dead zone where no A&R would scout even though they were all here. And yes, some influential bands came out of it of the time that were overlooked, but for the most part it was seen as a dead zone. But what happened to change it was a record came out right about the weeks of 9-11, the Strokes First record. And we have to remember all the live music venues below 14th Street where all of them are were locked down. And people were grateful for live music again and it made a huge, huge scene pop up. I was a part of that scene. And the notoriously jaded New York City audiences were all of a sudden having fun again and being grateful for shows. But trust me, it didn't last. So I do think while the Touringland release market will be flooded, I do hope by summer we're gonna see a lot of people who are grateful for music again. And they're also gonna want songs to soundtrack their lives while they're finally enjoying themselves again and making new bonds with the friends they haven't seen in forever or new friends they've made through this on the internet. I think there's gonna be a window maybe in about two weeks before this all ends where it will be smart to get some content out. And it will be smart to launch things if you are prepared because all these artists are gonna wait till they can really do the promotion they wanna do. Not everybody's gonna be like the 1975 and plan an immersive event to promote their music that's gonna shift all their plans that they had for a record release. While everybody's on their Netflix thing, the content farm is gonna run dry at some point. So let's remember you can take advantage of that. So the next question I keep getting is, should I live stream my whole entire life? The answer is unless you're gonna make this really entertaining don't bother doing it since you're competing with the biggest artists right now. As I'm taping this Dave Grohl and Ben Gibbard are doing theirs right now, all my favorite electronic artists are doing Twitch DJ streams. I wanted you to remember the question isn't should I live stream or do nothing? There's much more other things that are more effective to do with your time. I'd argue working on your songs, doing some other smart things are way more effective than just grabbing an acoustic guitar and vibing out on camera. Though I will say going live on Instagram or Twitch right now is the amazing thing you could do to bond with the fans that you do have. Doing movie watch parties or music video watch parties or Q and A's is working for tons of artists to build bonds with their fans. And we always wanna be doing that and social media is pretty flooded right now and this is a more effective way to do it since everybody's home. The biggest problem with these things usually are that people aren't home at the same time. Well, everybody's home all the fucking time now. Also discord chats are insanely hot right now and you can set those up for your fans or if you have no most no fans, make one for your local scene or your micro-genre and post them on Facebook groups or reddits about your genre or micro-genre and hang out with people and develop the community you should be developing. I also I feel like if you're gonna be great at TikTok you'd already be on there but for some reason you think be great at TikTok and you're not already there, it's surging right now so get over there and do that as soon as possible. Which leads me to what I would be doing there in this time. In a previous video linked below in the description and here on a card in this video I talk about how I build community and all the people I reach out to whenever I release a new song. If you're gonna wait to release your music you can ensure it goes way further and do simple work each day to find all the people you should be getting your music out to. This is the most effective practice you can do to make sure that this time is spent wisely and effective and we'll make it so when you come out of this it can be way bigger. Lastly I should say for those of you in musical groups that are separated from one another I just made a video about how to do this time effectively that's linked here as well with your band mates and without them. Let's remember science and the early every big songwriting team these days shows working on improving ideas on your own is more effective than doing it with a group all the time. Past ideas back and forth between computers get on FaceTime discuss ideas but you don't need to be in the same room to get things done. Take this time to work on your songs get better at what you're weak at. For many of us being forced to be alone can give us the time to do amazing things right now so take advantage of it and use the hub and spoke method that I talk about in this video. So to British things out the short answer is if you're unsure about releasing your song right now use this time effectively by finding targets and building up your community and doing other things to bond with fans. Work on your music and make sure that this time sets you up for a better future and don't get depressed and wow in it. I hope you all keep your heads up and stay healthy through this best of luck. That's it am I missing anything? Is there any 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. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like and subscribe and get notified for my future videos since I'm gonna be breaking down the concepts in this video along with tons of others on promoting your music and how to make music you're more happy with. As well, I have a Facebook group that's linked below that has only helpful information. No one tried to sell you anything, playlist or con artist only helpful information for musicians looking to be better themselves. If you want to learn more about me make a record with me or check out any of my books, podcasts or anything else I do head to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on any of the socials. Thanks for watching. One last thing, if you liked this video there's two playlists here with tons more videos that you'll probably enjoy. One's about how you promote your music and the other's about how you make songs you're happy with. Otherwise you can hit the subscribe button here to see the rest of my videos. Thanks so much for watching.