The Truth About Going Viral (Artists BEWARE)

Viral has just become it's just become this weighted word. Like something that a lot of artists just constantly are thinking about. They lose sleep over it, right? And it's really not that deep, in my opinion. Like you have to be willing to experiment. You have to be willing to get outside of your comfort zone. The amount of times that like we've tried something and it's completely flopped, there's also been times where we've tried something and it's fing worked. It was a format that I saw someone do, and I tried it and it worked really, really well. Oh my god. God, we it was like we couldn't not crack a million. Definitely high six figures. All right. We just had our viral moment. We're reacting. We're literally in it right now. How the f can we react to this properly to make the most out of this moment? It's been a good thing. All right, so I just ChatGPT. An intro that I want to try out. Because all the cool channels have like a tagline.

They say something that, you know, sums up what we do for the new people and kind of reminds the people that already know who we are. So you haven't you haven't even heard this yet. Is this not the one I liked? Okay, I'm not co-signing this yet. This is the new one. Well, it's slightly. It's the same. That's right. All right. Welcome back to another episode of the One More Time Podcast where we dig into the story, strategies, and lessons that help indie musicians make a career out of doing what they love. Is that good? How do you feel about that? I don't know. Well, what do you guys think? Leave a comment. Leave a comment. It's not bad. It's not bad. It's not terrible. I'm not, maybe we tweak it. We gotta add some human. Yeah to it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But all right, so on today's episode, we are digging into kind of like the truth behind going viral. Um I think it's one of the most uh talked about subjects in all of music marketing. Um lot of misinformation about there, I would say about virality in general. I don't even know if it's misinformation. I think it's just like the jury is out. Okay. Right? Like there just seems to be a very split uh vote, right, on whether or not you should be uh obsessing and focusing and like putting all of your effort into viral marketing, right?

Or whether there's also like half of the people out there that kind of have this stance around like fuck it, like you don't need to care about it at all, like it's overrated, don't worry about it. You can build an audience with tiny amounts of views on all of your posts, right? And honestly, There's some validity to that. And I think it's our guy Ruff that even doesn't use the word. He's banned the word from his vocabulary. Which is so bizarre to me because it's what he does is basically helping people go viral, honestly. Quote unquote. I think we need to define viral to even like make that assumption. So how do you think people should like frame the term viral in their minds? I would say the average person has this thought that viral means it's like penetrated the culture and the whole world. knows me now. Yeah, like if you're not the ocean spray skateboard guy, you're not viral yet. If you're not bad baby, catch me outside, you're not viral yet. But that's not how I think you guys need to be thinking about the word. I think there's a phrase that we've used before, viral for you, is way more helpful to be thinking about.

And so I would like the definition, at least the working definition for us to be, you know, if you typically get 250 views on a post and you got 25,000, 250,000 views on this post, right? That's like that's viral. It's an outlier, right? It's something that clearly stood out or people were more interested in by a large margin. That's how I think we need to be thinking about viral. For sure. But then I guess on the flip side, though, if you are a creator who consistently gets X amount of views. Right. The rock could get 250,000 views, and that's a horrible thing. Yeah. Sure. So I do think it is helpful to kind of have that like that working definition always be in the back of your mind, right? Because I think it's important for a lot of reasons that we're going to dive into in this episode. Because viral has just become, it's just become this weighted word that like just bogs people down. It's like something that a lot of artists just constantly are thinking about.

They lose sleep over it, right? And it's really not that deep, in my opinion. Um, but I do think it's worth noting, like you said, when you do see kind of these anomalies, right, in your performance of your social media, that is something that you should look at as viral for you. I think you should be able to. And it's worth unpacking. And you should be shooting for that every time. Why wouldn't you? You need to not kill yourself when you don't, because usually you're not gonna do it. There's no formula. There's things you can do maybe to increase your chances, but there's no, you know. So when it happens, yes, you need to be taking full advantage, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, like, where do you sit? Right? Because I I I kind of alluded to the fact that like I feel like there's a split camp, right? There's half the people that are like, that's all that matters. Go viral, go viral. There's even positions now at record labels that are literally manager of viral marketing. So they think it's clearly important enough to give a person the whole job for it, right? Yeah. But then there's the other half, like I said, that really downplay its its importance and its place in marketing. It's so simple, bro.

It's just it's like basically everything in life, bro. It's somewhere in the middle. Like it's a hundred percent in the middle. There's no red and blue. There is only purple, Ben. There's only purple. That's a bar. That's a bar. People are out here red and blue in it up, bro. No, like, listen to both sides. As he's wearing red. Well, fuck big blue. Go buckeyes. We literally lost all of our Michigan audience the second the cameras cut on, dude. Fuck them. I don't want them anyway. You look like a mascot, bro. I don't want any Wolverines. It's insane. Whatever, man. I didn't want to mention it, but I was like, holy fuck. Like, this is crazy. Lost my train. You're gonna get me on sports. It's purple. Purple. We're purple. We have to have balance. You're completely insane if you think that like a post that does huge numbers and a bunch of people see you and are exposed to your music and your brand and your just what you look like, even and your mannerisms is not gonna be beneficial to your career. Like, obviously. Yeah. That is going to help you. But the problem is that when you get obsessed over that, or if you go viral for the wrong reasons, or if you're reacting to going viral incorrectly, this is how we end up with all these one hit wonder people that are here today, gone tomorrow, and you know, wondering what happened.

If I'm gonna be honest, the reason why I think half of the people really downplay the importance of it, I'm gonna be honest. It might sound blunt, but it's like it's because you've never done it. They're not doing you've never, there's no one that's gone viral that's like, yeah, no, I think I'm good with that. That wasn't even fun. I didn't do anything. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to do that again. No, absolutely. Like, no, you might have gone viral to your point for not necessarily the best reason, but like there's no one that's gone viral that's like, nah, like I don't want to do that. I'm good. So I do think that's where I feel like a lot of the um the camp over here that's kind of like downplaying the importance of it. See, but then the camp that's obsessing over it maybe has caught a few, and now they're like itching for their next one. You know what I mean? and something to really point out that I want to make sure is clear that we understand that I hope y'all know we understand is that we get that going viral does not equate to a successful business. Absolutely.

So there are a ton of people popping on social media that are broke as fuck. Oh. All right. Most of them. And so I want to just be clear about that. That nothing that we say on this episode has to do with going viral automatically equates to profit. And I also want to I also want to empathize with the people that haven't gone viral because what kind of mindset does it take to be able to just fail and fail and post to the void and 20 views, 25 views over and over, and you're looking silly and you wonder why you're even trying. I mean, I feel it, guys. I feel it. We really do empathize. But that kind of is what it takes to some degree, right? To end up getting there. Look, here's what I'll say about that. You have to be willing to um endure that pain and that suffering that exists when you just are posting and posting and posting and not seeing anything hit. But you also need to be able to uh be self-aware enough and be okay with analyzing maybe what's not working. Yes.

Because look, you could be posting like solid content that maybe, yeah, you're just not breaking through, and maybe there's just like minor tweaks here and there that you need to be making to kind of break through. But also, you're likely not getting views because the content isn't where it needs to be. So I do think there's it's kind of like again, everything's a balance and kind of a happy medium because like I don't want you to just forever be posting and nothing work and just continue posting the same shit over and over again, because that's the definition of insanity, right? So I don't want you to do that, but I do think that A, this shit takes time, but B, um, it takes time and also experimentation. Like you have to be willing to experiment, you have to be willing to get outside of your comfort zone, right? Because the amount of times that like we've tried something and it's completely flopped, there's also been times where we've tried something and it's fucking worked. That we did not expect to work. Exactly. So many times. Exactly. I mean, I'll I'll give an I'll give a couple of examples where we went viral for the right reason, right? And it's a piece of content and a format that I really think works and I think is helpful, and I think it's uh, you know, it actually like directly connects with our audience.

Um, but then I'll also give an example. I know the one, the second one. Yeah, maybe I'll let you give that one then. But so something that has uh proven to work time and time again is a format where basically we use a number, right? So we might say, hey, code, y'all might want to try it by. the way. like, hey, here's a thousand dollars to roll out a single, how would you spend it, right? That video, along with, hey, if you have a hundred dollars a month to spend on subscriptions as an independent artist, how would you spend it? Hey, you know, if you have 250 to roll out a single, how would you spend it, right? Like literally just changing the fucking number borderline, then talking about the same thing, but giving yourself different monetary constraints. We've seen that format to work time and time and time again. And we've debated why it works, but it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. You know, like maybe just people, you know, want to get to the end and see what the full like, okay, hasn't spent the whole thousand yet, and so they end up watching the whole thing. But it does it doesn't really matter if you see something work, just keep trying versions of it and use it and extract the value out of it. For sure.

But hey, like, comment, and subscribe to our channel because we forgot to say that. I'm I'm gonna, if we make enough money off this episode by by you guys viewing it, I'm gonna buy a neon sign in the studio that says like and subscribe that will remind us to say it enough. But that's kind of a catch 22, because then how do we get the money to do that until we get the views by reminding them to like and subscribe? Absolutely. But no, if you do want us to do a whole episode kind of breaking down um why certain videos work, I think that would be an interesting topic, right? Because we, you know, we released that Hundred Viral Content Ideas ebook. Yep. Go to Hundred Viral Content Ideas.com. It's still getting downloads, even though we haven't talked about it in forever. Completely free. But it still is a viable resource for you guys. If you'd like us to uh do a whole separate episode kind of breaking down the psychology of why we think some of those videos work, because as much as you say it doesn't matter, it kind of matters to like try and understand what is working with certain formats. It's you can't guarantee anything.

So like the reason, just real quickly that I think the number, the kind of like monetary shit works, is that you want to see how we spend all of the money. Yeah. You're going to be able to do that. You're gonna stick around until the budget is spent. You're going to wait until the end, right? Which is our best guess. It's called the payoff, right? Yeah. You want to see how this video pays off. What are these jokers gonna say to spend the thousand dollars on? And then you want to uh, you know, debate, oh you why the fuck would you spend it on this? Why wouldn't you spend it on that, right? It's it's it's by nature highly engaging. Um, so that's kind of a format that I've seen work for us. And I think that we're gonna continue to double down on that. When have we gone viral for maybe the wrong reasons? And what are your thoughts on like what that did for us and just our philosophy on going viral for the wrong reason? We just wanted to try some fun shit on TikTok one time. It was so fun, and it was fun and it worked. And so I don't know. I want to talk to talk about it. Should we do more of that? Well, we'll talk about it after this. But what do we do? This is a you know, mostly like business and marketing podcast, but we were just kind of having fun, goofing around, like drafting our favorite artists, our favorite rappers from different cities.

Top five, this, top five rappers from Atlanta. yeah, you know, whatever, like very opinion-based, um, but in a fun draft format with the overlays and people could follow along, and maybe they're waiting to the payoff for like the last pick. They want to see how the teams get rounded out because there's clearly going to be five on each team. So it was a format that I saw someone do, and I tried it, and it worked really, really well. Oh my god, how many times we would crack a million views to so many. It was like we couldn't not crack a million, definitely high six figures. But this show is clearly for you know, particularly mostly independent artists, some a lot of other people in the music industry also, but the people I guess watching those weren't necessarily maybe more general music fans and not like in the industry. We just saw no impact to our core business. Almost none of them came to watch episodes. Literally, if anything, it was completely stagnant. And if not, we might have like seen some episodes and like not get as many, right? I mean, just well, you would just think like, hey, they're getting millions, yeah, millions of views, and followers, and followers, but they're following for more drafts.

Yeah, I mean, they just weren't converting, yeah, right. So there is something, and this is why I think that we go back to that kind of happy medium of just not obsessing over this shit, because you can go viral for the wrong reasons. 100%, right? So I do think that where we want to go next in this episode is really just kind of like unpacking um how to like react properly to going viral, right? Best practices, if you will. Because I think that, you know, there's there's a lot of things that you can make sure you do and are doing, so that if and when hopefully that viral moment happens for you, you make the most out of it. Yes. Right? Because that shit can come and go, right? You might only get one of these in, you know, the next year, two years. You might only get one of these in your fucking career, right? But it can be a launching pad, bro. It really can be a jump off point for you artists if you react properly and if you have your shit in order. Which are things that you can control.

Unlike making the viral moment happen, these things, there's it's objective, you can do it. For sure, for sure. So, like, what can they be doing while they're working towards hopefully seeing a viral moment, right? Because there's some things they could be doing before it happens to make sure that when it does happen, it's as impactful as possible. So, what can they be doing now? Hey, Henry here. Sorry to interrupt this podcast, but there's something I have to address. As many of you know here at one more time, we love doing live music reviews. We love hearing the music from our community and providing helpful feedback that is hopefully helping you further your career. But if there's one piece of advice that we are tired of giving, it's that your master is too quiet. We shouldn't have to turn up the volume for your song just to have to turn it back down for the next song. That's not good. But Henry, good mastering engineers are so hard to find and so expensive. Enter DistroKid's newest tool called Mixia. I master music myself. And while I don't think AI mastering will ever replace the quality you get from an experienced human mastering engineer, it's pretty damn good. And if you already distribute through DistroKid, you can now master unlimited tracks using Mixia.

And if you don't, we have a link right here. You can sign up for DistroKid with 30% off. Upload unlimited music yearly for an insanely cheap price. Humans perceive louder as better. It's dumb, but it's true. Use Mixia for a clean master and you won't sound weak on that playlist. Let's get back to the episode. I'll put the nail in what you said a second ago about for the right reasons. So, like, I think you need to be very intentional about who you are attracting with every post, right? Who is the type of person that I think that if this does go viral, these are the type of people that are watching. Are those the type of people that will like my music, that will like me, that will maybe come to a show or buy my hoodie, whatever. Posting for your goals, not your views. I just sides, man. I just I always go back to that that's phrase. Because I think it should click with everyone, right? Because again, of course we all want views, right? But if we're posting for the the right reasons and we're we're posting shit that's gonna hopefully connect with our our end goals here, right? If I'm trying to get books for a show, post live show footage and you know, post shit that like suggests that you want to be booked, right?

Um if you're trying to get sync license opportunities, post something that's like, hey, wouldn't this song be great in the Spider-Man trailer? Whatever, like post for the the end goal and don't necessarily just try and go viral. And that may make the journey to getting a couple posts popping off longer, but it's worth it because like you could probably go viral a lot quicker if you didn't give a shit why you went viral. But what happens is like us with the drafts, you get all these people following you, and you're kind of the algorithm is kind of like, okay, it's this type of person, I guess, that wants to see content from this page. So now our music marketing videos are getting recommended to these like Chicago rap fans, and they are don't give a shit about this and they're scrolling immediately, and that's killing our engagement. So you're actually maybe doing yourself a disservice and going backwards if you're not posting for your goals. I do think a lot of that's changing though now. So, like back when we were going viral for the drafts, it was still a little bit more like profile specific. So I do think again, like still post for the right reasons.

Maybe we're moving toward where you can have different buckets within one profile. Maybe which is why I want to talk to you about doing the drafts again. Because I do wonder if, like, you know, there's still an audience for that, and then there's the audience for this type of stuff, et cetera. Um, but yeah, so like that's a good suggestion. More things they can be doing. Yeah, I think a couple things else that you could be doing. It's just posting more content, right? Think about your uh social media just like you think about your um discography of songs, right? It's it's a catalog, right? You want someone who stumbles across your page to be able to dive deeper. Like you want them to be able to be able to scroll for a bit, right? And figure out a little bit more about this person that they might have just seen the first post from, right? Um, give them something that they can scroll through and really like resonate with who you are, connect with you on a deeper level, um, both on the social media side and then I think on the streaming side, again, catalog, right? Like, we gotta have more music out there as much as possible, quality music that you believe in, right?

Even if it doesn't have hundreds of thousands of streams, like it's it's your chance. It's there forever, guys. It's there forever. It could catch a wave anytime. I look at us again, like sometimes we're not that dissimilar from you all, um, right, as as podcasts and content creators, because we also have a catalog. We've got 240 plus episodes of this podcast where if someone found us today, if you found us on this episode, you can literally work backwards, work from the beginning, work forwards, whatever. Like there's tons of content to then be able to consume, right? Um, versus if we were to just have done like one episode every month or one episode every couple months, we'd be we'd be at like 60 episodes or something, right? It wouldn't give people damn near as much of a chance to like truly connect with us and just binge through all the stuff that we have out there. Um, and then just have like your profiles correct, right? Like just simple shit like your Spotify uh for artists, like profile photo. Uh have the photos at the bottom, have a bio, have your links to your socials in your Spotify profiles, right? So your pinned posts on your social media need to be very like important to assume that someone's seeing your profile for the first time.

What do you want them to see? Exactly. It makes sense. Just look at this shit as like your resume, right? And just be as like professional as possible. Um, if you look at all the biggest artists in the world, all that shit is taken care of. Like it's it's buttoned up, it's it's it's neat, right? You need to, you're competing with them. So let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by not having any of our social media, right? Because let's say your song gets added to some huge playlist. They're lazy, they're not gonna go fucking type in your name in social media. They want to click the Instagram link from your Spotify profile, right? So let's make it as easy as possible for when people hopefully do find your your pages, right? Social media or streaming, to then be able to like take the next step. Um, so that's kind of like some other thing. I got another one. Yeah, what? So making the most out of that video that went viral, right? There's a lot of things similar with a song, right? If a song it pops off for an artist, the good ones you'll see them drop maybe like a lot of versions of the song, a remix of the song. Okay, so this is like now.

So now that you've gone viral, yes. Okay, so okay, so that's kind of some shit you can do, honestly, if you haven't even gone viral yet. Okay, so now now I because you're cooking. Sure. Now I want us to move into all right. We just had our viral moment. We're reacting, we're literally in it right now. How the fuck can we react to this properly to make the most out of this moment? Yep. So I mean, first of all, you could just post the video again, by the way. You just fucking post it again. There's no stop you you can do trials on Instagram. Just post it again. Um, number two, like you can tweak it a little bit and post it again, right? Maybe you forgot to say, Hey, go stream this song in the post. You can add a call to action into it, post it again. You can make, I'm definitely gonna make like 10 more versions that are very similar, trying to recreate why I think that post did well. I'm gonna do everything to take as full advantage of this moment as possible. Absolutely.

And so then go back to what you were saying about like with regards to the song itself, right? Because obviously similar. Yeah, you're having a social media, you know, moment, right? We're starting to see the streams come in, the songs popping off. What should they be doing like with the music side of things? And I've seen this work time and time and time and time and time again. So I feel like you're thinking about something in particular, so maybe you go ahead. Okay, so I have a buddy John Wilde, super talented artist. Now I love you, John. Okay, all right. John J O N W I I L D E. We'll pop him up here on the screen. He had a song called Home is You going absolutely bananas, right? And the way that he reacted to that from a music perspective, I thought was really dope. And I think it's it's a strategy that a lot of other artists have used. And I think, like, again, if you have your moment, like what seriously consider this. So he had the home is you original version. Single. Right? Versions. That's the one that that popped off. Yep. Then he released a whole remix EP, right? He had a lo-fi remix.

He had a remix with an artist called Yves V, Y V E S V, I don't know. And then another one with a uh kind of like folk acoustic female artist, Rosie uh Darling. Okay. So that's what he did right there. Then he had home is you on another EP, right? So that's part of just another EP. Um, I think he also had some like EDM or like dance remixes as well. I might be confusing this one uh with uh you know with another artist, but point is like really just create new versions and products within the same like family, right, of the song that that that was going viral. Um I think that it's just and you have you have all this traffic of people coming to this one thing, but if there's like seven other things around it, all of a sudden they have options to grab three or four or five things. Just go back to your your days, right? Like, you know, you and I are in our mid-30s. It's like, bro, the remixes were huge back in the day, right? Well, first that's a whole separate why don't we do remixes anymore? Drop a comment if you want us to do a whole

episode? Dude, I missed the remix. Just like crying about there's no remixes. Or like not as many. Um but if you liked the original song, you were almost guaranteed to listen to the remix. Of course. It was almost just a hundred percent guaranteed. Especially if you liked the you know, typically like a new artist or a feature artist or something on it. Sure. Even if not. But yeah, exactly. But just in general, if you like that original song, I'm getting a new verse at least. The chances that you wanted the chances you wanted to at least like it just piqued your your interest, right? You were curious about like, hey, what's this remix of this song that I really really liked already? So it's the same thing with the content. Yeah, the exact same strategy is basically the same remixing the content, just do some versions and remixing the the music, right? Because what the hell do y'all think we did when we posted uh when we our first draft went viral? Atlanta rapper draft, Chicago rapper draft, New York rapper draft, LA rapper draft, San Francisco rapper draft, female rapper draft, male rapper draft, fat rapper draft, skinny rapper draft, little rapper draft, big rapper draft. We did some versions, and guess what?

A lot of them popped off. They all popped off, yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean, again, like some people are gonna be grumps about this and be like, ah, like I don't want to, you know, taint the original verse, whatever. Like, then you purists can. No, I get it. If you are like a you know, like a don't make a shitty remix, but like if you're like a lyrical old school rapper, you're probably not gonna do a dubstep fucking remix, you know what I mean? But like, you know, just try to have open mind and do stuff that makes sense with you and your brand. Yeah, I mean, but again, I almost challenge that with why the fuck not? Like you don't have to put it on your, you don't have to make it a huge deal for you, but it's like if that song resonated with some people, the chances are that that like dubstep, you know, whatever uh remix of your song is gonna at least resonate with some other people. I don't know, man. I just don't see the risk. Like, I still see the risk. I get it. I don't, man. Why some of you guys would not? It's not like you're making a dubstep song, you know. It's being remixed. You're releasing it though.

It's in your world, it's your ecosystem. Again, like you have to like the song. What if you don't? Well, then choose shit you like. Like, are you that holier than thou that you think you're the only one that can make good music? I if I don't like EDM, I'm probably not dropping an EDM remix too much. Well, then okay, you probably like other types of music. Probably. And if you don't, then do one, do a remix in your own fucking genre. Get another artist that you like in your space. Like, again, don't be closed off to this shit, right? Because you unless you're an asshole, like someone else can hopefully improve your you know, chances of her getting more earballs, right? Like, earballs was crazy. But yeah, sure. What just a crazy like word. Is that not what they're called. I don't think so. All right, so um, what are some like examples of you know, artists that we all know and love? What are some examples of like them doing this? What'd you say?

Case studies? Yeah. The first one definitely that comes to mind for me would be our favorite, Mrs. Doja Cat. Ooh. Ooh. Okay. You guys remember when her emergence happened, it was from Bitch I'm a cow. Um and her dancing around in a cow suit being absolutely ridiculous, right? Which is something that it doesn't represent who she is anymore. That's what I think is really unique about her situation, right? Is that it was kind of a she is silly, first of all, but she clearly has gone on to make like music that I think she wanted to make more so. Not that I'm sure she still likes that song, but like there was a greater goal in mind when I think when she dropped Bitch I'm a cow, Wow. right? So why do you think that worked for her? Well, I just think she was she was clearly prepared, right? Um she followed it up with you know other music to your point that was a little more serious, that like had people take her more seriously as an artist. Um, but I think it was also just the authenticity thing, man. Like she is a wild girl.

You know what I mean? Like she's straight goofball. She's a goofball. I love it. This is the same girl that like shaved her head and eyebrows, right? I mean, like it does. it's yeah, she's evolved, you know, musically and sonically, but like that core thing that like we all love about Doja just being kind of out of pocket. It connected with people, it connected, right? Like this wasn't some like serious lyrical miracle rapper that like was stoic and dressing up as a cow and having a meme type song, right? This is bitch, I'm a cow. Yeah, this was, you know, I think perfect Doja. Um, you know, it's like as far as authenticity goes. Do you have another example? Yeah, I mean, I you know, I also look at like a Steve Lacey, right? He was working his ass off, like producing a lot of dope records. Um before yeah, exactly. Like, but well, you know, before his um artistry blew up, and I think that, you know, he did kind of what we talked about as far as like, you know, again, reacting. These are more like examples of you know how they reacted. It's like as soon as he had the song going, you know, super crazy, he had the full-length project ready to go, right?

It wasn't like I see way too many artists, unfortunately. They're scrambling to even release the next single. Like, not even a project, bro. We're talking like they they don't even have the next song, they don't even have the next song ready. Stuff. So again, I think you can I think you can always be like sliding in new shit that you've made, but like if you have to take time off, even to do this. I mean, I'm I'm actually going through this with an artist friend of mine where I'm wrecking, you know, I'm I'm I'm recommending to her, like, look, you don't have enough song in the vault right now. Yeah, like if something pops off, like you're in trouble. You're fucked. You know what I mean? Because then the pressure's on. So I would almost like pump the brakes. Let's make a fuck ton of music and have a roadmap for the next six months at least, right? Give yourself a six-month runway with you know, fairly consistent releases, like maybe once every like few weeks or whatever, right? Um, to not have to scramble. And then again, if you make better shit, slot the new shit in and get rid of a song that you maybe had on your roadmap.

This roadmap doesn't have to be like set in stone, where like I have the next, you know, 12 songs ready to release, and I have to release these. It's like, no, if you make some other shit that like better fits with your brand and like is a better song, fucking drop the the weakest link. You know what I mean? And it's and it's done smartly because Steve also, you know, I mean, had an entire rollout. where He didn't just have the music. I mean, he had the tour, he had the merch. It's it's the whole the whole shebang, you know, was ready to go. So it all just all these new people flooding in when bad habit starts to go viral, have this whole kind of journey now to go on, right? To because now they know who he is, but they haven't connected deep yet. So he gave them all these reasons and all these possibilities to really connect with him and his brand. And that's why I think he is where he is now. Yeah, I just think it's about the momentum. Like so much of a of a artist's success is dependent upon like it's gotta be this just like gradual build, right? Like, yeah, there's gonna be some kind of like ebbs and flows to it, but like generally speaking, we need to always be kind of just building, building, building.

Like I really like to liken it to like a snowball effect, like and you need to constantly be snowballing, right? Every single thing should be building on one another, right? And a viral post is like, you know, running over the mushroom and Mario Kart, right? Man, You don't want to just run over banana peel after that, and you gotta keep it going, man. Exactly. You don't want to get shocked by lightning after that, you know what I mean? Oh man, you don't want to get red shelled. It's the worst. Mario Kart references. But no, so if this was helpful, um, let us know like another topic that you guys are struggling with, right? Because I think that this whole viral thing, like I said, it beats people up. It has a lot of artists just like down and out, right? They're posting, posting, posting, trying to go viral, obsessing over it. It's something that's gonna help you, but it does not need to be obsessed over for sure. No. It's something to be thought about and it's a tool that is something you should make content to that aims to outperform, but it not at the expense of your sanity. Absolutely. So let us know another thing that you guys are struggling with, right? Because we make these episodes, we bring experts onto the show all to help you guys, right? So drop a comment, let us know a topic we should discuss in the next episode.

And until next time, Henry, what are we doing? We're getting out of here, man. Getting out of here. Peace. Peace, y'all.