Releasing mixtapes... A bad idea?

Releasing a mixtape, A bad idea?

  • Yes, it is a bad idea

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No, it is NOT a bad idea

    Votes: 4 66.7%

  • Maybe

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • Total voters
    6
K

Ksane

New member
Have you noticed that quite a lot of artists that release a handful of mixtapes, are only partially successful when it comes to releasing albums.

Take French Montana for example, he has released 20+ mixtapes and made around 55k first week sales for his debut. I know first week sales aren't usually an inidicator of how well the album will do overall, but it is often a figure that is always looked at in the industry. Bad first week sales =/= bad album, IMO.

Anyway, I think releasing mixtapes makes people not appreciate the work you put in. This is because you are putting out music for FREE, meaning it is not worth anything. Then when it comes releasing albums or singles, they may or may not do well in sales because of all the free shit you've been handing out.

Maybe releasing a mixtape here and there would be a good idea when you're first starting out to promote yourself, but it seems like it is all independant artsts do these days. Then when it comes to acutally releasing a single, ep/lp, it does worse than expected.

I wrote this thread to gather ideas, I'm still trying to come up with a plan, as to how I would enter the music biz. Do I put up a single I've been working hard on for a dollar? Or do I create more songs and put them out for free as a mixtape? Or even an EP to start off with... Let me know what you think.
 
I think it's a good idea to drop a mixtape when first starting out in the business, just to get a little buzz going and get people familiar with the music. Then follow it up with an EP, shows, and a full length album. & make sure there is promo and advertising behind every project so they don't go unseen. I think the mistake a lot of artists make is just dropping mixtape after mixtape and then never taking it to the next level. Album sales will continue to decline overtime especially in hiphop where so much free music is given away so a lot of major acts depend on getting booked for shows and tours to make money.
 
It depends.

There are artist who can create moderate success in Hip-Hop using the mix tape format. However, I believe the words "mix" and "tape" invoke a feeling of "not valuable". Instead, I recommend artist who are like me,



stay away from the slowly dying format of mix tapes. I recommend EPs and LPs of original music. For example, my EP Random Shit and Songs for Chicks, will be released later this year.
 
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If you kick out 20 mixtapes and 1 EP/LP in a year then you have devalued your worth significantly. The key is to tease them with a mixtape appearance or two but just enough to make them want more which is when you kick the EP or LP.
 
Nightshade said:
If you kick out 20 mixtapes and 1 EP/LP in a year then you have devalued your worth significantly. The key is to tease them with a mixtape appearance or two but just enough to make them want more which is when you kick the EP or LP.
Click to expand...

Or make good, enjoyable music.
 
Nightshade said:
If you kick out 20 mixtapes and 1 EP/LP in a year then you have devalued your worth significantly. The key is to tease them with a mixtape appearance or two but just enough to make them want more which is when you kick the EP or LP.
Click to expand...

This is the real concept of mixtape-releases.

Plus, artists are not that smart, they put out albums that sounds just like mixtapes.
 
Supply and demand.

As a artist you start off with no demand at all. So yeah some sort of free thing to gain fans makes sense whether its a mixtape or something else.
 
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The mixtape hustle is kind of like a game.

You got x amount of mixtapes to make people want your album, but too many and people will start to want it less. Additionally, you release a bad mixtapes, they wont look for the album at all.

I've developed a formula which represents the mixtape game. 3 seems to be more than adequate number of mixtapes leading to an album release. The ideal number being 2 but we'll use 3. X represents the number of mixtapes released by the artist.

If 0<x< or =3, then album buzz increases proportionately with each mixtape, given that the quality of each mixtape is = or >Wiz Khalifa's Cabin Fever.

If x>3, then album buzz decreases proportionately with each subsequent mixtape no matter the quality.
 
It's quality vs quantity. Drake kinda started this mixtape-mania. He dropped 3 mixtapes then released a platinum album. Now everyone else thinks if they make mixtapes, they'll be huge too.
 
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