Halfway Through the Year? How to Reset Your Music Goals With a 30-Day Experiment

Back in January I sat down and made my plans for the year. One of them was simple: post 5 to 7 times a week, every week.

By the middle of June, I was posting maybe 2 to 3 times a week.

In the past, that would have bugged me. This time it didn't.

I spent the first half of the year focusing on other parts of my business, and that work mattered. So I wasn't going to feel bad about a number I picked six months earlier, before I knew what the year would look like.

What I did instead was pivot.

Half the year is gone, and the other half is more than enough time to change where you end up. The same goes for any point in the year when you realize your plan isn't working.

Why big goals make you freeze

Here's the mistake I see a lot. You look at one big goal from January, something like 100k followers or 500k streams, you see how far away it still is, and you quietly give up on it. The goal feels too big, so you freeze.

The fix is to stop treating it as one giant leap. Break it into one small experiment you run for 30 days.

How to turn a goal into a 30-day experiment

• Pick just one number to move in the next 30 days. Streams, saves or followers: choose one of them and leave the rest for later.
• Write it as a goal with a deadline you can measure. "Grow from 2,000 to 3,000 monthly listeners in the next 30 days" beats "grow my listeners."
• Treat it like an experiment. Run your plan for one week and time it. If posting every day takes more hours than you have, shrink the goal instead of dropping it.

After 30 days, look at what happened and decide whether to keep going or change something. Then repeat that for the rest of the year.

If you want to go through this step by step, goal setting is part of The 100K Challenge, my free 10-day plan. You get one short chapter and one action a day, and by the end you have a full marketing plan for your music.

The numbers worth watching

Streams and followers are fine as a way to see progress, and that's all they are. They go up, and you know something is working. But they don't tell you if you're building a career.

The numbers I'd watch more closely are the ones that show a connection. I'd look at how many people come back to listen again, how many save your songs, and how many reply, comment or send you a message.

Money matters here too. Any income your music brings in, even a small amount, tells you more than a follower count ever will.

A musician with 5,000 listeners who come back every week is in a better place than one with 50,000 who heard a song once and forgot it.

So when you pick your number for the next 30 days, choose one that shows people are connecting with you, like repeat listeners, saves, or income from your music. And if you'd like help choosing that number and the plan around it, we can work it out together on a coaching call.

A content idea to try: the voiceover interview

This one comes from a funny trend on the corporate side of Instagram. In the original, someone asks coworkers which department is the best, and a voiceover talks over them so it sounds like every person says "marketing."

You can flip this for your music. Interview friends or strangers and ask who their favorite artist is, then add a voiceover so every person says your artist name. Or ask people for their favorite song and put your own music over their answer.