 You may have noticed lately, I've been making more and more videos from the actual questions you leave in the comments as I try to answer each and every single one. And the number one question I've yet to answer that you all ask so often is how you can effectively market your old songs that you really believe in. But unfortunately for most of the last decade, there's not been very good answers on how to reignite streams on your old music, but that has changed. So in this video, I'm going to tell you how to reignite interest in your back catalog of songs you already released. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to 10,000 fans, and this is Muse Formation. There's countless reasons you could want your old songs to get more streams. But when I talk to a lot of you, it's less often the belief in how strong the material is. Instead, it's because you don't have funds or material to record new songs. Now, we should understand the main obstacle that makes old songs are old and hard to market is because the greatest chance for growth in a song is the Spotify playlist placement from editorial. And the fact that they only allow you to pitch a song that is unreleased makes it a little difficult. And since you're unable to pitch it unless you change it enough that the detection that Spotify uses sees the song as new, it's just not going to be able to be considered for playlists that are editorial, and you'll also have to give up any plays it had before. So all this is to say between this fact and that your existing fans just don't get why you're pushing an old song they've already rinsed or, in worst case, decided it's not your best music makes promoting old material a little weird and not always so good. But there's an interesting thing happening in music today. Obviously, one of the coolest things about music is with the democratization of what's listened to through streaming music. You may have noticed one of the things about it that you see headlines every single day about is that some big artists sold their back catalog for big money. And that's because there's big money in old songs, because people form bonds to songs and they can still feel amazing to them. But if you're the type of person who keeps up on what everyone's talking about online, you may remember this extremely concussed article to the side of me right now where a boomer did what boomers love to do and talk as if we're not in the greatest era of music. Anyway, this cursed article really made the rounds of the Internet. And it was mainly based on a study that called old music catalog releases. But the problem is the criteria they used to categorize what is a catalog released was that it was older than 18 months. And this is ridiculous for a handful of reasons, such as take one of the most popular artists right now, Dua Lipa. Now, as an Uber riding city type, I hear Dua nearly every time I get in an Uber or walk in a bagel shop. So that's playing top 40 music as I have for the past few years. But here's the thing. Her record was released two years ago. And if you spent any time listening to popular radio, you will know multi-year-old songs are regularly consumed and released as singles way more than 18 months after the album's been out. So for the past six months, every time you've heard any of her numerous songs that are in the top 40 that play on the radio all day from her current record, that they're still releasing singles from. Well, that's considered a catalog release. So the study is a little flawed there just from the start. The long tales of albums is really long these days. And that means that these singles that were released and then brought new into the public that only listens to radio or playlists have never known them to be new. And they're now fresh new songs that are catalog releases. I say all this to say that music is a lot like our Kelly's backstage area and that no one's checking the date of birth on any song that they like. All they care about is if it makes them feel a way they'd rather feel. I think this is a good thing about music. Since as long as it's new to you, well, it can be emotionally powerful. And the thing about nearly all of you who watch this channel is a lot of people have yet to hear your old music. So the great news is if your old material is strong, it can be welcomed with open arms by people who haven't yet heard it. There's another lesson from this extremely cursed article. I was just talking about that's important. Tiktok has changed everything in that it is often introducing old songs to a new audience and Big Shock at the elite moron who wrote this article ignores that whole fact older songs that were never popular are constantly getting popular from Tiktok and have been for long enough that this pundit and his editors definitely should know that. At the time of this writing, the number one song for the past few weeks is Two Years Old, but was never popular till recently when Tiktok made it a trend. And I'm, of course, talking about glass animals, heat waves. And then there's Bastille, who have a nine year old song on the charts getting played on top 40 radio every day because it was a Tiktok trend. And those are just the biggest hits. I have a friend that had a song that was a few years old, go from 100,000 listens to millions because of a Tiktok trend. And it took him about four million of the 28 million streams it presently has for him to even notice it. All this is to say, if you want to try to reignite your back catalog, Tiktok influencer marketing has been proven more effective for doing this than anything that has ever existed where you can learn how to do it. And as long as you can find a song lyric or a musical moment that may work for a Tiktok trend, there's never been anything that you can pay to turn an old song into a song that people presently care about like this. And that keeps getting proved more and more each day. And every day, it doesn't even take that big a budget to have it turn into hundreds of thousands of streams. If you can find a memorable moment in that back catalog, that would work well on Tiktok. And lucky for you, I'm about to make a video on it. So if you want to make sure you don't miss that video when I put it out, you should really get subscribed and notified when I drop new videos. And if I've already put it out, it'll be linked in the description now and on the end screen. Back to the subject at hand, since I really could do a whole hour long comedy special called Rage Against the Boomer Opinions, especially when it comes to modern music. One of the things so many people ask me about is whether making a music video will do the trick of reigniting that back catalog. And here's the thing, if it's a video, that's the type of thing where people are going to see it and they can't resist sending their friends to say, oh, my God, you absolutely have to see this, you should absolutely make that music video. But it's just going to be you walking down the railroad tracks. Well, I got bad news. Those tracks probably lead to a hobo somewhere who mugs you. And to be honest, that will be a more effective way to spend the money since that will at least make someone happy since no one's going to be happy seeing that video. But most of the time, the music video is not going to be an effective, unless it's in the midst of consistent sustained promotion. Since a music video is largely a big event that tells your fans to check in with you and gives you a chance to reignite human attention and algorithms. But unless the video is highly shareable, it's probably not going to be what breaks the song again. Now, while it isn't necessarily your old material, another effective way to get excitement for your old song is to put a new spin on it. Yes, an acoustic or alternate version is great, but what really actually does real work on this is to get someone to do a feature on it or to do a remix and be sure to tag them as a primary artist on the track when you upload it. As it will be a way, your fans will see it as a new release. It will also go into the algorithm for all the other artist followers and live on their artist page for all of time, which can really help you bring up streams. If you add the feature and put some small intro of the song or outro, so the length is different and you change the title to include the featured artist, you could submit it and hopefully if it gets past Spotify's AI to say it's new, it can get on all the algorithmic Spotify plays and maybe some others with your fresh new code of paint on an old song. So if you have your files from your mixes and can drop in this feature and change the bridge or whatever you want to do or send out stems for a remix, it never matters how old the material is. If you want to give it a new light, if you don't get this, it's probably because you haven't watched my video on how remixes, features and collaborations are now the most effective marketing in music today, which is linked to the description. And now is probably a good time to talk about one of the pitfalls of this. So many of you worry about your existing fans thinking this is a real loser move and you'll be seen as Napoleon Dynamite's Uncle Rico and living in the past of his high school football days. Back in 82, I used to be able to throw a picture and pour them out. But here's the thing, all you need to do is spin the story a little. If you say by popular demand, we're putting up this song again or talk about how you always hear how much people love this song. Even if you have 20 monthly listeners, it basically absolves you of the shame of living in the past, since it's entirely possible. All eight people have ever not run screaming when they've heard your insufferable polka scoff fusion song. I've asked for a remix with the local jungle DJ. OK, maybe not that. Just spin this story and make it sound important when you rerelease it and like it was something people wanted. This also brings me to another way to tell stories to boost back catalog streams. Every time you release a song or an album or a music video, put that date in your calendar and set a reminder in your calendar to remind you yearly that this is when you posted it and remind your fans that they can revisit that song, AKA a mood altering drug of a song and make them feel the way they used to enjoy feeling. And lastly, I also have to say this, since it's not obvious, but something Spotify themselves say all the time. The best way to promote old music is to release new material. Think of it this way. The more people who hear you, especially if the song gets attention and you stimulate the algorithm, what happens is people hear the emotion you put in your new song and they are addicted. They want more of it and inevitably they hit up your profile looking for a hit like an addict does. And they see if you can provide the mood altering drug and song form to them. And if you have older material that does the trick. Well, it's going to get streams. I've seen tons of groups get popular in the streaming era. And some of the songs from the record before they blew up actually become the songs that stay high on their most popular, even though almost no one had heard those songs at the time. The audience goes back and hears those gems from the group having received newfound attention. And while this is more apparent in the streaming era and easier than ever for fans to make those songs beloved, this really goes back further than even streaming. Under 40,000 people had ever heard Nirvana's first record before Nevermind Bleach. And once Nevermind was selling 50,000 copies a week. Well, guess what? Bleach is a double platinum record today. And this all goes to say, let's remember, one of the worst problems you could have building a fan base is for your first, second, third or fourth song to be the one that blows up. Since there's so little material for fans to build a relationship with. And when your new fan loves your songs and looks for more hits of that addictive material and they come up with an empty bag that they can't feed their addiction with. Well, they go to someone else to feed that addiction. And like I said, it's not the worst problem. But if you don't have back catalog, it will slow down growth. So having back catalog that is high quality will always be a win for you when it comes to building a fan base. If you regularly draw attention to yourself with consistent sustained promotion and make new fans. OK, on the screen now is that video I talked about about how remixes, collaborations and features are the biggest marketing move of all time. If I've made that video on TikTok influencer marketing, it'll be up here now. Otherwise, there's one on how to blow up on Spotify. Click and keep learning. Thanks for watching.