Releasing consistently when you have a job
Most independent artists are not full-time. Almost no advice is written for them.
Most guidance about building an audience assumes you have the day. Most people do not.
The weekly release is bad advice
It is repeated constantly, and for someone working forty hours it is a recipe for either burnout or bad work, usually both.
The underlying idea — stay visible — is sound. The prescription is wrong, because it optimises for a system rather than for you, and you are the part that runs out.
What consistency actually requires
A rhythm you can hold for a year without hating it.
One release a month, or one every six weeks, sustained for a year, beats a weekly schedule sustained for six weeks and abandoned. The abandonment is worse than the slower pace, because it teaches your audience that you are unreliable.
Separate making from publishing
The single most useful change is to stop publishing things the week you finish them.
Build a small buffer — two or three finished pieces. Then publish on schedule from the buffer while you work on the next thing. A bad week at work no longer means a gap.
This is unglamorous and it is the difference between people who sustain this and people who do not.
Use the in-between
A release is not the only thing you can publish. A note about what you are working on, a photo from the session, a half-finished idea — these keep the relationship alive between releases and cost almost nothing.
People who follow you are not only there for finished work. They are there for you making things. Let them see some of it.
On guilt
You will miss weeks. Your job will get busy, someone will get ill, the file will corrupt.
The audience notices far less than you think. What they notice is disappearing for four months without a word. A single sentence — taking a few weeks, back in March — costs you nothing and preserves everything.