 So before the holidays, I released a video that got a huge response on my release strategy for how to most effectively release music in 2021. And I'm going to be honest with you, this video you're presently watching will give you some knowledge, but you really should watch that first video. So it's linked to the description or on the screen right now. But if you want to hear more details of the pan, wait till this theme song plays and we'll get started. 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. So the first thing I heard from a few viewers is that they don't hear of anyone really doing this, and I must be insane. When I think of the artist who really broke out in 2020, I think of the artist Youngblood, who releases a song every six to eight weeks, just like I said. And to be honest, nearly everyone who said this is someone who is rock music obsessed and doesn't realize this is the norm in hip hop now. And that nearly every busy hip hop artist is already doing this release strategy. And then the next pushback I get is that they aren't hip hop or a pop artist, which I say you have to remember that innovation comes from different sources. In fact, most of the time, the innovations in marketing have come from porn and punk rock, but I have seen pop stars rise to prominence on getting hip to punk's promotion strategies and vice versa. The fact is you want to embrace the smart marketing from whatever source is happening in. And instead of saying, well, no one in my genre is doing this, you need to see that as the big green light, which means you should start doing it before everyone else does. And the technique stops working lead, don't follow as by the time everyone is doing it, it'll stop being effective. And this next question follows up on that works of iron asked, does this work only for short pop rock songs, etc. Our single is 13 minutes long do metal song, we can tell stories about the song and lyrics no problem. But are people really interested in Ice Age landscapes and ancient humans, the song subject, it seems even more niche than the style we play. I actually think it works well for niche genres and may even work better there. I think consistent sustained promotion works really well in metal. But I do get your concern as metal is often a genre where innovation moves slow. And truthfully, those sound like subjects all the dudes I know who go to metal shows are pretty into the next question comes from Ficus. Love your videos. What's the thought behind the new plan of doing a song every eight weeks instead of every four weeks. And with this answer, I'll also answer this one from Ken Davis Jr. I think the strategy is great, but what if I want to upload more than 12 singles. And as well, let's also hit this one from Alex Schecter. What if we want more content to release, but want to keep releasing singles instead of albums? For example, 20 songs mixed and mastered. How would you suggest we go about using a similar release strategy to what you've posted about here? Well, the plan was six to eight weeks before. So that hasn't really changed. But let's embrace this for the question. I feel like four weeks is inundating people with a lot of singles per year. And most people can't devote the time to that anyway. But if you can put out 12 high quality singles a year, you can spread this release plan over each month and do it. And if they really are as high quality, as you say, you're going to do great. I do think if you have 20 songs, you may need to put some of them out only on SoundCloud and Bandcamp and see what your crowd reacts to. Because as I discussed in my video on Russ releasing a song every week, it can get to be a bit too much. And if you haven't seen that video, it's linked on the screen or in the description now. I don't think it's a crime to do song every 28 days since you can get on release radar, but I often wonder if it starts to not feel special to your audience if you do release songs that often. If you should be concentrating on releasing your best songs every six to eight weeks, instead of just everyone that comes out of you every four weeks, I think you got to really think about the balance of quality versus quantity. In that Russ video, we really went deep on that. Someone I can't find on Reddit asked, does it have to be the exact order of single screen, then lyric video, then music video? The reason I like that order is the single screen gets the attention of your most passionate fans engaged with little effort. You have more time to make the content and it keeps upping the ante in how eventful the content you're making is, meaning that a music video is more enticing to click. And if you're releasing the single screen video last, people who watch the music video are never going to click it because, uh, why? So releasing that order from least appealing to most appealing keeps giving your audience more incentive to click. Antonio Langola asked, Jesse been wondering about when to start putting the content out. Is it as soon as the song is released or should I let it breathe a bit and start releasing the videos after a week or two? Yes, do not tease your content or do countdowns. And if you haven't watched my video on that, it is linked now or in the description below. But to get to the heart of your question, don't breathe. You need to start to make a big splash in the pond. Once your song is out, you should announce that midnight for the night owls and then make sure you're online all day telling stories each day or at a minimum every other day. More on that in the future, but truly lean into making your release day always as big as possible. I love this question from Jason Pilling music behind the scenes. I struggle with the video part. I can get behind the lyric videos. I'm strong on backstory and information type content. My lyrics are like an onion. So the effort payoff ratio seems good, but the live-action visual story videos, I don't see the same ratio. Huge effort to produce good ones. I already produced performance videos via the routine live streams that I curate a best of playlist. I'm just more of a words intellect artist than a visual product. Is it insane to think I could skip the official moving picture story videos? It's not at all about being lazy. I'll produce multiple pieces of other good content with the same effort, but I'll be missing this one check in a box. Listen, I think it's way more about playing the strengths. Not everyone's strength is going to be a music video compared to lyric explanations or a live performance. The music video should be the piece of content that is the strongest. And for some, that actually will be lyric videos or even live performances. I just consider how you're doing the strongest iteration of this. If you know you're an amazing live band or people are going to be say really impressed with your freestyle rap ability, maybe you release new freestyles of your songs and then just use the same hookover in there and show people how many ways you can flip it. Like I'm saying in these videos constantly, play to your strengths and feel free to alter this to do so. Ryan Hamid says, great info as always, Jesse, would you say this only works if you have a reservoir of songs ready to go? Or if you're fast enough at writing songs in that six to eight week timeframe? The challenge I have is that at the moment, I just can't write songs fast enough. So it makes me wonder if the strategy is mute for me until I get better. I'm working with the coach on this so it's a work in progress. Yes, one of the reasons I focus on having a surplus of content and always tell everyone you should start releasing songs till you have at least two others lined up and hopefully six in best case scenario is you want to be able to have options. Like if the next song you write sucks, not having to release it can help you if you have a backlog. If the newest song you wrote rules, you can then move it to the right place in the order of singles to release and potentially drop the weakest one and never release it or put it out as a B side or like I said on SoundCloud and Bandcamp and see what happens. It's good to have options and always be able to release your next best option next while you're writing more. Kat Higelty says, hey Jesse, a question. Speaking of attention spans, I worry that as a small arse, people aren't going to want to sit through a single screen video with no lyrics or visuals for a song. I wonder if that first video is necessary versus going to a lyric video and then music video. Basically, I just get nervous that people won't stay unless there's actually visual action happening. Is the first video just so people can hear the song in the same way they'd stream it? Do you do this same video promotion and cross it over onto Instagram? I'm going to pair this question with the lighthouse asked, one reservation I have is when hearing the strategy is that I myself would not be interested in being plugged the same song with three videos. Maybe it works the first time, but by the third song in this carousel, this would feel like spam to me. Do you think you can keep get people interested with non-moving single screen videos if you will be following it up with better videos? Or am I overthinking this and would 75% of my audience never pay attention to every post video anyway? And I guess in the fan building stage, we shouldn't worry about videos cannibalizing each other or spreading the numbers views too thin. Or is this whole point to work into the algorithm and get discovery through there? I guess I'm just worried about putting off the fans that are already connected. One of the things I discuss all the time is we often think that the audience is as picky or as jaded as us. Most people who are actively consuming music are bored and the videos are just there as a further serving vessel, but truly the type of person who clicks on a lyric video will also click on a single screen. I know when I lay around my apartment at night, I often search songs and just hit play and then YouTube starts serving me more songs from the algorithm of that artist. I don't really care whether they play me the music video or the lyric video as I'm just vibing out and hanging out in my apartment. When we make music, we're often rewarded for us following our own unique personal emotions. But then on the business side, what makes us unique is we are often far more sophisticated than our audience. Hence why they enjoy us. You're usually five steps ahead of your audience. And I would have similar reservations, but we forget the audience is one, excited and understanding you have a new song and two, often bored and grateful for any crumb you can give them and three, not paying enough attention to the marketing to care. I want to reiterate this point because musicians focus on the comments of the four people who pay way too much attention to their music. Instead of the average listener who is not psychotically obsessed with all the things they do, all but your biggest fans who are happy you're releasing anything will notice this and think about that. You always release three videos for each song. And if they love you anyway, they're going to be psyched for more content and that they keep getting things to consume from you. Music is in box checking. It's a mood altering drug and people can take it for that. And they don't care about the prescription bottle, as long as the song gives them their fix. My fourth point is there's data that this works. And while I never use data to write a song for marketing, it's gold. You're totally right to question this in this fashion, but I'm afraid you're falling into that smarter than the audience category. And lastly, a lot of people ask me, what the fuck are you talking about with this telling stories thing? Well, the video that I made before this went deep on storytelling. It's going to be linked on a playlist I made on everything you want to know about storytelling that's linked on the end screen. Thanks so much for watching this. If you liked me doing this type of video where I answer your questions, let me know below. And if there's something that's giving you value, be sure to like, subscribe and share it as I'm really trying to build this channel this year as well. If you still have questions, leave them below, as I'll answer them in the comments. Thanks for watching.