Following a similiar theme to the last newsletter about playing the long game, I thought it’d be worth sharing another mindset related post. This time I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea and power of building momentum…

The idea is important in all areas of life and artists, creators, and those working in music are no different…despite that, I think the idea gets lost and overlooked in many cases.

This newsletter highlights:

• Building momentum in music

Let’s dive in ⬇️

Cambridge defines the non physics definition of momentum as “the quality that keeps an event developing or making progress after it has started”. It’s essentially building velocity or intensity of an action, task, event, behavior, etc.

Building momentum is crucial for achieving success, especially over a long period of time and is especially important for something that’s exceptionally challenging or difficult.

That said, I see so many artists, their teams, creators, and even music industry executives executing in a way that makes it very challenging to build momentum.

A caveat to this is that people can play whatever “game” they’re playing anyway they’d like. You don’t HAVE to build momentum. You don’t have to follow best practices. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to or that doesn’t align with your goals.

However…if you’re trying to find success in a given area, sometimes it’s important to play by the rules and when those rules call for needing momentum to achieve success, it’s even more important. The current music landscape (and content space in general) calls for momentum.

For example, I see artists all the time who drop music whenever they feel like it without a schedule, release cadence, or plan. There’s no rhyme, reason, or structured cadence to when and how they release. Now…there’s absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that (everyone should have the freedom to do as they please without feeling pressure) but if those artists want to find success, build a fanbase, and do as much as they can to ensure that their music connects, that strategy becomes very challenging.

With how oversatured the landscape is today and how short people’s attention spans are, releasing consistently has never been more important to building momentum. Not just for fans but also for the algorithms of streaming platforms - releasing often is favorable to the algorithm and helps build momentum over sporadic releases.

Take this tweet by independent artist Katori Walker who released a new song every week for 20 weeks. Consistency and momentum.

The same concept applies to creators with uploading content. A YouTuber uploading content once every 4 weeks has a harder time building momentum than the YouTuber who uploads weekly.

Artists and creators shouldn’t feel pressured to inherently do this, however it’s important to think about what’s required to build momentum based on your goals.

Let’s look at a few examples…

Artists

While the creative process is different for everyone, artists can build momentum by:

• Writing often

• Recording often

• Creating content often

• Releasing often (when in rollout mode)

The more you do something, many times the easier it becomes. The artist who releases a song every 3 weeks with a structured cadence that’s mapped out will build momentum much faster than the artist who drops sporadically whenever they feel like it.

Producers

Producers can build momentum by:

• Making beats often

• Collaborating with others often

• Dedicating time often to send beats to artists or do outreach

Depending on the person, it can be as simple as establishing a goal of making 1 beat per day or blocking 30 minutes every morning to do outreach. That framework or system helps keep you accountable to doing the action that repeatedly over time helps build momentum.

Executives

An artist manager can build momentum by:

• Dedicating time daily or weekly to do outreach on behalf of their artist

Some managers do that outreach whenever they feel like it - others create a specific goal and by sticking to it, that behavior over time creates momentum.

Momentum over time does a few things:

• Increases the likelihood that one of those specific actions (for example a specific email from cold outreach, a song, a release, a beat, etc) finds success

• Limits the friction between actually starting whatever “the thing” is since you’re doing it consistently

• Increase the quality of whatever “the thing” is as it progresses (for example, for some creators the 50th video they make might be better than the 1st because they’re more comfortable, are warmed up, and in a good flow)

• Help reduce any self limiting beliefs since the repeated action and accompanying result prove it’s possible

Momentum can apply even to the smallest of things for everyone - for example, take an executive working in music. Sometime it’s easy to push off a specific reoccuring task or do it sporadically.

Let’s say that task is doing outreach to market a song. Doing that outreach once every 2 weeks can feel inherently harder to start in the midst of doing other tasks or projects but if you make it a point to spend 15 minutes per day doing it, over the course of a few weeks momentum will carry you and that action becomes easier (and your results compound by increasing the odds people respond since you do more outreach)

A key factor in building momentum is having a system in place to create consistency and reduce the friction of whatever it is.

The next time you’re looking at a successful album rollout, in many cases (most but not all), the artist is building some type of momentum. Consistent releases, press, shows, social media moments, etc all compound over time to help that artist raise awareness as they head into release.

Hopefully this helps.

Thanks for reading, until next time.