Justin Bieber's Formula

Yesterday on my Music 3.0 blog, I posted an excerpt from my Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook entitled, "The New Release Schedule" regarding how frequent releases are essential for success in today's music marketplace.

Now comes a post by Jay Frank on Hypebot analyzing the success of teen phoneme Justin Bieber and attributing his quick rise to fame as a result of having a lot of his music out there often, just as my excerpt described. In fact, Bieber had 2 full albums released in 9 months and a new video every 3 months, and this kept the fans interest stoked because there was always something new. This is the new paradigm for releases; a song or two every 6 to 12 weeks is a lot more effective than an album every year or two.

A couple of the other points of interest in the article are about Justin's songs, such as:

• Short Intros - the longest intro to one of his songs is 14 seconds, but "One Time" is only 7 seconds before it gets to the meat of the song. Always a good thing if you want to your song to chart.

• Chord Changes - There's not a lot of changes in his songs but according to Frank, they happen when it counts - at around the 2 minute mark. This is just about the time that a bridge would enter, so it makes sense. Good songs tend to have a bridge.

• Repetition - If you want to chart, repeat the title over and over. In fact, in his hit "One Time," Bieber repeats the title 32 times in the song and the word "one" another 17.

I can't say that this is a great way to write a song, but it's certainly a formula that has worked over and over with pop material, for better or for worse. As always, be aware of the formulas, but take what works for you and leave the rest.

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