If I had to give you only one article from Blue Rhymez Entertainment, it would be THIS ONE. I urge you to check out these 10 infallible ways to test your song’s potential and apply them ASAP. If you respect your time, if you care about creating truly lasting songs, AND if you don’t want to lose listeners, proceed to reading the list below!
10. Send your song to +15 different people.
From different backgrounds, different ages, and most importantly: make sure they don’t know each other, or at least, they don’t know you’ve sent the song to other people as well. Reason being, you want objectivity. When a group of friends has similar ideas, taste, and preferences, their feedback might be biased. You want honesty. Luckily for you, we’ve put together a nicely organized list, that you can print as many times as you want and write all details inside it: Download Song Listeners Feedback List
As you’ll have noticed, they are classified by Name, Age, Location, Feedback, Rating. The first 3 are self-explanatory, the 4th is for commentary you will get back from your test listeners, and Rating, the 5th, you will have to ask your audience to rate your song from 1 to 5 or from 1 to 10. You will see that in about 20 feedbacks, a trend will emerge. A common pattern will be established and you will discover where your track’s strengths are or where it fails to deliver.
9. Match your song against popular songs from the same genre.
So you think you got a hot hip hop track on your hands? Cool! Now pull out Billboard Top 100 and go to the hip hop section and listen to those songs. Are they better in quality? Are they catchier than yours? Or on the contrary, are those songs more minimalistic than you’d have expected? Now see what adjustments you can perform on YOUR song to take it as close as possible to the TOP tracks in the world in the same category. I am not telling you to be ingenuine, but I am telling you to match the industry standards. No way around it. Yes, you might have the next big thing on your hands, but honestly, what’s more likely to change first? The world’s taste in music or your song?
8. Pay for a professional’s opinion and endure the criticism.
Nothing that is truly worthy in this industry comes for free. NOTHING. And if you’ve been in the music business for a while now, you already know this. If you didn’t, now you’re learning. Find someone who specializes in your genre, like a blogger, a website, a radio DJ, an MC, a reputable sound engineer, or even a professional music curator, contact them, then offer to pay for 30 minutes of their time. Ask their rate and get your money ready. Then get on a live call with them and see their facial expressions, hear out their commentary and be ready to be bombarded. People who do this for a living have an acute sense of feeling hit songs before they even top the charts. And you better hold your sh*t together and not start crying or defending yourself. Take it like a champ and be most curteous and grateful for their time. Chances are, if your song sucks now, thanks to their valuable feedback, you might improve your music by leaps and bounds, saving a lot of money and time.
7. Make sure the catchiest element of your song matches the title.
If it sounds absurd to you, get this: people remember what was most repeated in your song. So if your song title is Russian Roulette, but the catchiest part is ”You can see my heart beating”, you bet your ass that listeners are going to search for YOU CAN SEE MY HEART instead of Russian Roulette. And yes, that was Rihanna’s song we gave as an example. She, however, can afford to make such a mistake. You, on the other hand, CAN NOT. People don’t know you to the point that Google will still suggest the right song despite the erroneous search key words. More than likely your fans will discover someone else who used those words in their lyrics. Feel like being risky with your fragile career? Didn’t think so.
6. Imagine you had to send your song to your music idols.
Ha! Most of you will blush even just thinking about it because YOU KNOW you are not that good! YET! But there are few who might actually get excited thinking of the reaction your idols would have when listening to your song for the first time. And THAT is where you want to be mentally with your craft. So certain and so convinced of its greatness, that you wouldn’t hesitate even a second to push it to your long-time admired idol.
5. Is your song true to who you are and your life experience?
You might have paid for high quality production, you might have hired the top songwriters in the world to put this song together for you, you might have even set aside a budget for it, BUT… is it truly who you are or is it a reflection of what you THINK your fans would like? There’s a certain degree of transparency that is needed in order to establish a genuine connection between you, your music, and your fans. If the song is not speaking to you and is not representative of who you really are, think about this: would you rather be hated for who you are than liked for who you’re NOT?
4. Make sure your song makes people FEEL.
If the sentence above sounds unfinished to you, it’s because it is so. Make sure your song makes people feel to a HIGHER extent the emotion you’re trying to send, whether it be happiness, confidence, pride, courage, anger, indifference, hate etc. Powerful emotions, positive or negative, are still powerful nonetheless. So please, don’t ever release a song that makes people FEEL NOTHING.
3. Make sure your song’s structure is not too deviant from standard formats.
I get that you might feel that your song is the best thing since sliced bread, but if it differs too much from: hook, verse 1, hook, verse 2, bridge, end hook, you are in trouble. The order is not mandatory. You could have verse 1, hook, verse 2, hook, bridge, end hook. The general industry rule is: hook must be repeated 3 times. No less, no more. And no 2 bridges please. It is annoying, insane, and pointless. Your song starts sounding like an act that’s part of a musical. We absolutely can NOT digest songs that abide no format whatsoever. And if WE can’t stand it, your fans will hate it.
2. Would YOU listen to your song in your spare time?
Your song must be that good that even YOU would listen to it! Don’t expect the world to believe in something that you don’t see yourself. Don’t expect faith where you haven’t even laid the foundation. Don’t expect support when you wouldn’t even push your song day in day out. Now ask yourself if you are genuinely proud of that WAV file you got in your PC. No? NEXT!!!
1. Would you sacrifice a much-needed vacation to invest in your song instead?
If the answer is no, save your effort and energy now by cancelling the release. A song that is mediocre never benefited anyone with anything. Songs that are truly powerful and worthy of promotion, will have you itching for a budget and working extra shifts just so you could invest those extra dollars in it. A music video costs, a blog feature costs, a Spotify Playlist inclusion costs, a repost on Souncloud from a legit source – you guessed it – costs. If you’re ready to get all that money together to promote your song like no other before, you got a very promising track on your hands.
Good luck and stay improving!
Blue Rhymez Entertainment 