The Ultimate Guide To Keeping Your Music Current

It’s hard to push music out regularly over long periods. It’s even harder to push out constant quality over long periods.

It’s a battle in and of itself to stay current, providing enough material to quench the almost insatiable thirst of fans—especially in a day and age when we all want everything RIGHT NOW—as well as providing quality. Some fans will see quality as your sound — they want your trademark sounds and flow, but other fans will—presumably—grow tired of the same
beats/themes over and over and over, so where’s the sweet spot?

Surely a perfect, albeit metaphorical, place that exists in which you can have your cake and eat it, too, then buy the bakery. In other words, there’s surely an overlap that’s just overlooked between being current and being true to yourself as an artist, and here’s how to find it.

Output

A good step in the metaphorical right direction is to, ever so slightly, adjust the rate at which you put out material: periods of silence punctuated by blasts of originality will always be more powerful than a massive pool of mediocre.

Get it right — get it to where you’d want to listen to it as a music fan.

Ego

 
Your ego has GOT TO GO.
 
Ego is what will have you wondering just how many people are thinking about your latest drop and how much they are going to love it, how long for, and how their children will react in 10 years when introduced to it.
 
Ego is a distraction. Most artists, no matter how famous or successful, are immediately in the cupboard three months after their latest release, but that’s okay… because it’s a space in their life they’re creating, and you can aim to fill it with music you love. When you make something fresh and polished and mood-altering, then you’re on your way to being thought about for long periods of time.

If the writer expected to be remembered for this post in 10 days, never mind 10 years, do you think that would mount to longevity insofar as her career as a writer? Of course not!

Pump out quality and in good quantities, but if you have to choose, go with just quality.

Genre

 
So you’re more of a Celine Dion and less of an Avenged Sevenfold – got it. But what about a little give and take, and not on all songs? No one likes an artist who just can’t pick a career path, but try different genres and incorporate your favorites—that is, the ones that make you feel something (good) and that elicit a reaction from you—into your own music. It doesn’t have to be heavily influenced, but it could be peppered enough to give you a new, exciting, viable vibe.