Artists and producers, listen up. I promise we all need to hear this. This is a quick case study of Joshua Showtime Williams' "Nasty," one of the most successful songs of my production career yet. Here are the streams and views stats:
Joshua Showtime Williams - Nasty
produced, recorded, mixed, mastered by Drew Mantia
Apple Music 2,000,000+
Music video 1,100,000+
YouTube audio 2,600,000+
Spotify 500,000+
TikTok posts using the song 24,500+
plus whatever other platforms
. . .but let me show you some more important stats. The song was released July 2nd, 2021, and it was getting plays in the low five figures. It got picked up by a TikTok influencer in October ‘22 that helped skyrocket it to its first million streams in January ‘23. Its first million music video views in March ‘23.
Song single released 7.2.21
Album released 8.4.21
Plays in the low 5 figures
Tiktok influencer post 10.29.22
Hits the first million streams 1.2.23
Music video first million views 3.30.23
So what did Josh do to get it there? Social media, but of course. Look at all these posts:
Pre-single-release teases 3
Post-release posts 26
Album release posts 12
Total posts (so far) 41
He teased it three times before it came out. After the song was out, he's posted it at least 26 times. He's posted about the album that it's on at least 12 times. So we're talking at least 41 times that he's posted in promotion of this song. Josh did pay for TikTok ads but only after he found a piece of organic content that attracted attention on its own. Also worth noting that he posted that same piece of successful content at least a few times, in addition to running ads. None of his content was cringey trend-riding either, mostly just singing the song to the camera. Eventually some clips of the music video and live performance footage. For months he's also been doing a weekly live stream performance on Instagram and TikTok so he’s promoted Nasty an additional dozen or so times there.
What did you do when your last song was released? Post about it twice and then give up because it didn't get the plays and attention you wanted? I’m guilty of this when releasing my own songs as well. I hope the story of Nasty can inspire us all to push our releases harder.