 The music business is always changing, and for the past eight years I've been telling artists they need to move towards releasing more singles and sustaining attention with their release strategies. Yet until the last two years, everyone told me I was an idiot for saying this. It's almost like I've been proven right about these things. Okay, enough bragging. You saw this title and you're intrigued, and the question this video is looking to answer is whether you should put out a song every single week like Breakout Artist Rust famously did and now has an army of people doing one takes on the mic and uploading it to all the streaming services thinking this is their ticket to fame. Is this where music's going? Should you release a song like Rust every week? The answer is complicated. We should discuss it for a few minutes, so sit back and enjoy the jokes and let's talk about what's right for you. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fanbase from zero to 10,000 fans, and this is music formation. So while some of you are here because you know Rust's story, others of you are here just wondering if you should put out every song you can and pump all of them out for a total of around 48 to 52 songs a year each week. And really there's no wonder people are wondering this. Rust is everywhere. He's had three songs on the Billboard top 200, top 10, and his story has commanded a ton of attention as he evangelizes how he avoided the major label system and did this his own way. So with good reason, anytime there's a success story like that, people rightly should wonder how they can replicate it. But so many people think this route will surely bring them success and think making songs is like a numbers game and if you play enough of them your lottery ticket will surely come up. Unfortunately if you have half a brain you realize that part of it is kind of stupid. To illustrate this, let's talk about the first concept we need to discuss, which is quantity versus quality in your musical output. So with music we have to remember the biggest problem with the amount of music out today is there is so much terrible music that no effort was put into. Like, let's be honest, if you're the type of person like me who's always listening to do ours regularly, it's astounding how little thought effort and work is put into so much of the music out right now. It's clear the lyrics are barely a first draft, the mix was not labored over, the instrumental track is derivative of a better song, and let's not even talk about the performances so we don't need to be going off for 10 extra minutes in this fucking video. The fact is no one wants to hear music that's playing a numbers game by just trying to put it out fast. They want songs that have unique emotions that excel at what they do. Not more shitty music that we have to sort through and be annoyed by. There's already plenty of that and it's not going to help you. Now let's talk about this though. What many great artists do is make a great song every single week but they withhold a lot of it from the public or don't fully record or mix it. If you remember the video I made on Rick Rubin, which you know is linked in the screen now or below in the description, Rick is without a doubt the most esteemed producer in multiple genres of the last few decades. And part of his technique is to have artists write 2.5 albums for every album they put out. This ensures they put out as good music as possible and vet their songs so that they get listeners' attention, they don't waste their time, and they listeners only hear the artist's most potent work. Now let's do some quick math. The average album is 12 songs, so times that by 2.5 and you get 30 songs. So in Rubin's method he is saying to write a song good enough to be recorded every 2 weeks. But here is the key. He says the way you get exceptional artistic output is to put out only half of that and throw the rest away or keep working until it's right for your next record. He tries to increase the quality by vetting the best songs and then develop them even further in the studio. He feels the audience only wants to hear your best work and then once these songs are chosen he labors over the performances till they are as emotional as possible like most artists do. And even when we hear an artist wrote a song fast, the performances and nuance are often what is labored over since thousands of people can make a song almost good enough to be loved by a large audience but only a few hundred or so can hear the details and the emotional potency that hits the level that it connects with a big audience. Let's think about this too. We all know how annoyed we are when an artist we love puts out mostly bad material. We get annoyed and then stop flowing the most closely. This is why artists' careers die. And yes, some artists do have superfans that would be happy if the artist farted into a microphone over a ukulele. But if you're putting the effort into putting out a song every week, I imagine you're trying to appeal to more than these people with really, really low standards. So I would argue that having the mandate to putting out a song every week for most artists isn't going to go well since it's too much to handle to make enough material each week that it will be good enough to make listeners be compelled by it. So many people think this number escape works and it's easy to believe that we see so many artists that randomly get big on TikTok these days and have a viral moment. You figure that might be your ticket to success. If you just flood the market maybe something will happen. But the thing we all overlook with this is how most of those artists in this new emerging viral method never have a moment past that one song because they don't have the talent and the goods to back it up and in a second we'll discuss why that wasn't the case for us. The fact is most of the time the catalog that runs deep on these people who go viral on TikTok is not deep. No one wants to hear the rest of it. Most jodgers there's a rule. People want to hear exceptional work and that doesn't come from a numbers game. It comes from learning to develop your most potent songs by refining what you do over and over and experimenting and releasing those experiments each week will often fatigue listeners. I know some of you were saying Jesse you're the guy who's always talking about consistent sustained promotion. What could be more consistent sustained than releasing a song every week? Checkmate, bitch. I feel you dog but like most things too much or too little isn't right. The right amount is the recipe is what makes the gumbo right. Damn I'm kind of hungry. Straight up I may quit this channel to make a lobster roll restaurant since I'm the king. Damn. Anyway back to music promotion. So if you put out a song every week yes you are constantly maintaining attention but if most of these songs aren't vetted enough to be good you are gaining attention to songs that aren't as good as they should be. If you follow my release strategy of putting out a new song every eight weeks you can take the time that you would put into seven different songs and put all that energy into one single song which means it's probably gonna come out a little bit better. Oh yeah and if you don't know about my release strategy the link is below or in the cards now. As well when you put out that many songs releasing a song stops being eventful. I mean if every week there's a new song it's just not that exciting. It seems fine to just miss one and if that one was one of your best then the next three or mediocre you probably lost that fan. Instead focusing on consistent good songs every time you release one is way more sustainable. Plus you lose the chance to even tell stories around your songs if you put out music as often as every week and as I've told you before telling stories around your music is the key ingredient with making good music. If you don't know what I'm talking about watch my video on that which is linked below or in the cards now. But since I'm an honest guy I do want to say there is an exception which brings me to know your genre. So let's get back to Russ. One of the hidden aspects of him is his songs are often and I'm not kidding you a dozen tracks in the instrumental track and a loop that barely changes. Psycho part two is not the type of song that takes long to write and if you put 40 hours a week into making beats within a year I'm sure you could pump out a beat as good even if you're minimally talented. Now this is not to mean Russ since he's an exceptionally talented top line writer. In fact his talent is that he is a good enough vocalist that he could keep a song worth listening to when the instrumental barely changes since his command of the vocal is superb. I mean truly it's the thing I think is most impressive about him is he seems to be able to command vocal attention better than 99% of the people out there right now. I'm sure a lot of effort is put into that and it's clear the number of songs he has that have tons of listens. His exceptional talent allows this to happen but we should understand that this does take a lot of skill as well. But let's clarify this there's certain jotters say we're putting out music fast and not putting a lot of effort into it is more acceptable. Let's be honest this just isn't possible if you're making Prog Rock or Porter Robinson influenced in electronic music. Those songs are about crafting an odyssey of details since that's what the genre's listeners appreciate are those details and those take time to incubate and form. Sub-jotters are all about developing a perfect way to optimize details and some are much more about a vibe or a raw motion that happens in a moment and you need to acknowledge which is which. Folk songs and trap are much more about doing a little lyric writing and finding how to present that vocal over the instrumental and it can be far easily done to great effect than say your average death metal track. So now some of you nerds who know my background are saying Jesse you used to manage man overboard and I read in your book one of the ways they got so huge is they put out like 70 songs in a year and a half and since I passed fifth grade that tolls about a song every week the fuck gives bro solid point my guy man overboard when they started came to me with just shy of 50 solid demos before they ever set foot in a studio most of which those songs are the popular ones with millions of streams that everybody knows from the band today and we recorded the five ones we felt best about for their debut EP and kept bringing songs up to the level that they should be heard by the world by vetting them and preproducing them and then recording and developing them and all while that happened they were also wrote many new ones and one of the reasons we were able to do this is they had a high quality catalog of tons of songs had two songwriters in the band and we're lucky enough that their manager me was also a producer with a recording studio where I could take time to make their songs great if you have the means to actually put out high quality output this often can do it but this brings us back to genre a lot of genres need highly produced music to be acknowledged man overboard had to access that which allowed us to use an exploit that allows to excel if you learn how to spot those exploits in yourself you can do that too to learn that watch my video on how to do a swat analysis which is linked below or in the cards which brings us to the work ethic of putting out a song every single week I actually love the idea of this for young artists who are trying to find themselves since the coolest part of this is it mandates yourself to be accountable to put out a song every single week and grow at your craft especially if you're writing three songs every week at that time and only bring the best of them to fruition each week you can really get good and become a far more impressive artist very fast and learn a ton about creating I mean a big part of Russ's story is that he made 11 albums and only had 1000 followers in like four years and still kept out it in a short period of time so from 2011 December 2011 so basically 2012 to the end of 2014 I put out 11 projects and you know when I say none of them worked I mean that none of them made me blow up none of them I didn't drop any of them and get like followers or anything at the end of that 11 the project I had a thousand followers on Twitter I think the hidden thing here is the marketing part of putting out 52 songs in a year is not what did it for him the work ethic of doing that every single day till he was talented is what got him here and makes him so that he can put out songs so fast and be so good at it we've all heard the quote from Malcolm Gladwell's book outliers that you need 10 000 hours of practice to be an expert something and while that's been disputed this is neither the time or place for that what Russ's illustrator of is not that he won the lottery of songs but instead that he practiced publicly till one of them started to work and then he was prepared to build off the success of his break since he had so many songs that he had the talent to back up the breaks that happened so often these days so what you're saying is maybe I can do this sure dog if you do want to do the strategy I do have a tweak put the songs that you're going to put out every week on what we call a la carte dsp's which are soundcloud youtube and bandcamp what's good about the a la carte dsp's is the most avid music fans are on those platforms and they reward putting out tons of content but curate what you push the other dsp's a little bit better and what i'm talking about spotify and apple music here since you don't want to drive down your engagement on them and you can only push one song to editorial playlists once a month so use the a la carte platforms that reward this constant stream of content to see what you should be doing and which songs should be pushed to playlists and save the songs that get the best reaction or that you believe in to push on the dsp's especially if you are unconfident in direction or being able to tell which of your songs is good the a la carte upload sites allow you to get some perspective they can allow songs you are unconfident in to get the attention or be seen for what they are especially if you are some sort of extrovert who needs validation let's remember the a la carte ones alert people you put out new songs in the subscription stream and as you put out music with tags you could be in the music in those tags when people search so you get rewarded but on apple music and spotify you're no way rewarded for this so the short answer of if you should put out a song every single week is first acknowledge if this will even work in your genre of music second acknowledge if you become proficient enough as an artist you can handle how challenging it is to put out a banger single every single week and third if you're going to do it make sure to use the a la carte dsp's as a minor league and only keep your songs up that really bang to the big leagues this is a complex subject so if i missed anything let's discuss it in the comments 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 like 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 jesse can on all the socials one last thing there's two playlists here one is on how to grow your fan base from zero to 10 000 fans and the other is on how you make songs you're more happy with and the other is on how you promote your music with spotify and the other is specially chosen to match this video or you can hit the subscribe button below and stay tuned as i have tons of tips for musicians