How often should I release new music?

How often should I release music?

I get this question a lot. 

The short answer? 

As often as you can. 

But not everyone has all the time in the world to create and release new material at light speed. Most of us have full-time jobs, families, and a slew of other stuff that vies for our time. 

So what’s an artist to do? How can we stick to a regular release schedule without burning out and still maintain a life outside of music?

The way I see it, there are sort of three distinct options for a release cadence. Which one you choose will depend on your goals and your bandwidth. 

Every two weeks 

I would argue that the most successful artists of today—those who are rapidly growing across Spotify and social media—are releasing music every two weeks. 

Now, no doubt, this is a high level of output, but there’s no denying it works. 

Given enough time, of course. 

This release cycle is ideal for artists who have dialed in a system of sharing the workload, not necessarily for those who are doing everything themselves. 

If you’re buying beats, hitting record on a few vocal takes, then handing over the reins to someone else for editing, mixing, and mastering, you can fly. 

If you’re like me and you’re crafting every single sound in your track, editing vocals, and mixing and mastering each track yourself, releasing music every two weeks will sound next to impossible. 

It certainly does for me. 

Don’t feel obligated to move this quickly, but if you’re interested in “playing the game” and have the capacity to turn out a high volume of music (see what I did there?), then I say do it. 

Every 4-8 weeks 

You’ll hear most people say that releasing music every six weeks is the sweet spot, and there’s a lot of truth in that. 

Spotify’s “official” release window is four weeks long. When you drop a track, it can appear on Spotify’s Release Radar playlist for four consecutive Fridays following the release date. 

After that, it’s on to the next one. 

Releasing every six weeks allows you to maximize that four-week window, give yourself a two-week buffer, and then hit it again. 

Now, if you want to move a little bit faster than that (and have the capacity to do so), releasing every four weeks is like hitting the gas on this schedule. 

Conversely, if you can’t quite stick to the every-six-week thing, slowing that pace to every eight weeks is still highly effective. 

Whether four, six, or eight weeks though, this is the ideal release cycle for someone with a decent bandwidth for churning out music and content but who doesn’t yet have the capacity to do it full-time. 

Once per quarter

Releasing music every three months is about the slowest I would recommend an artist move while still maintaining the ability to “play the game” to a certain extent. 

Any slower than that and you’re not likely to see any meaningful growth over the long term. 

But getting music out every quarter allows you to keep new content coming for your fans and use new material to find new ones regularly. 

It also gives you four opportunities per year to maximize Spotify’s algorithm for your benefit. 

I find this strategy is especially attractive for those of us with other obligations and demands for our time—it allows you to stay in the game without getting lost in it. 

No matter the release cadence you choose though, remember, the most important thing is that you’re telling people about your work. 

Create content, run ads, and release as frequently as you can and you’ll find that not only will your results increase, but the quality of your work will inevitably improve along the way.