#202: I Gamified My Music Production—and It Changed Everything

Ever wondered if you're tracking the right metrics in your music production journey? That nagging question—"Am I measuring what truly drives growth or just staying busy?"—led me to create something that transformed my creative process completely.

In this episode of Inside the Mix, I introduce the Producer Growth Scorecard—a free, gamified tool designed to help you track what actually moves the needle in your music career.

Whether you're trying to release a new track every six weeks or just break through creative ruts, this system helps you focus on the right production habits. Each task—like finishing a loop, mixing a track, or releasing a single—earns points toward a weekly goal. The target? 40 points per week. Simple, measurable, and motivating.

We’ll dive into how the scorecard works, how it ties your day-to-day activity to long-term output, and why it’s helping producers worldwide stay consistent and finish more music.

If you’ve ever asked, “How do I stay productive as a music producer?” or “What should I track to grow as an indie artist?”—this is the episode for you

Links mentioned in this episode: 

Grab your FREE Producer Growth Scorecard

Chapters

• 0:37 Are You Tracking the Right Music Growth Metrics?
• 1:32 What Is the Producer Growth Scorecard?
• 2:44 How the Scorecard Works: Points, Goals & Workflow
• 5:51 Using the Progress Tracker to Stay Consistent
• 7:42 Get the Free Scorecard and Start Finishing More Music

Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:00

I've nailed my six-week release cadence. But here's the real question Am I tracking what truly drives growth as a producer, or just staying busy? And, more importantly, what am I actually using to track my progress? You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production. Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome to Inside the Mix.

Marc Matthews: 0:40

Now, if you listened to episode 200, you will be aware that I've been sharing my journey to 10,000 monthly Spotify listeners and I've been sharing what's worked well, what hasn't worked well, my reflections and how I'm evolving my strategy over time. But in this episode, I'm zooming in on how I measure progress over time. So this is all about tracking. If you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you will probably know very well that I love to track things and I do it outside of music production as well, because it's all about maintaining consistency and it's important to track the right things, and that is why I created the Producer Growth Scorecard which, again, if you're a long-time listener of the podcast, you probably would have heard me mention before. Whether you're stuck in a creative rut or you just cannot seem to move that needle, this creative framework, this producer growth scorecard, will provide you with the clarity momentum and identify measurable improvement. Now we haven't gone through the producer growth scorecard yet, but the best part it's entirely free. I like to give all this stuff away for free. You can click the link in the episode's description and you can grab your copy of the scorecard and start tracking your results and make a meaningful impact. Now, if you want to learn more about tracking and, in particular, how work expands to fill time and why deadlines are important, then check out episode 151 with Travis Ference, where we discuss Parkinson's law.

Marc Matthews: 2:03

I'm going to describe the producer growth scorecard to you. So it is a Google sheet when you get a link to it. So click that link in the episode description. You will then need to make a copy and there is a link to watch a video to go into more depth and how to use it, but I'll briefly describe it to you. There are three sheets in here Week template, so you've got action taken and it ranges from a new album release, create an eight bar loop, complete a final mix, create a door production template, and each one has a points value attributed to it, ranging from sort of one point for receive feedback on a work in progress to five points practice a new songwriting technique, and you then, just when you complete that task on a given day, you write in the value and then the idea is over time, you will build up points over time and you'll get a total.

Marc Matthews: 2:55

Generally, I aim for 40, at least 40 points in a given week, and in doing so, you're gamifying your music production. Now, when you get your copy of this, you can change all these actions. These are the ones that I've just put in and these are from discussions with existing users of the scorecard. So there's hundreds of people using this now, which is amazing because it's been around for a couple years and there is a previous podcast episode on it, but I wanted to revisit it. And again, as I always say with this, this is conversational. So if you're watching this on YouTube, in the comments, let me know how you've altered this, if you've got your version of it. Alternatively, you can DM me at InsideTheMixPodcast and let me know how it could be improved. It's a work in progress and I'm continuing iterations of it over time. But basically, yeah, you're gamifying it. And again, watch the video. There's a link in the scorecard. You can watch the video and it goes into more detail.

Marc Matthews: 3:52

But we're gamifying our music production. We're attributing points to tasks, the idea being we want to get above 40 in a given week. That's sort of the benchmark I would go with. Some of these tasks might not be applicable to you and again, you can change them to make them applicable. There is an example week in here and in this example week I've got 46 points from a range of tasks, from creating an eight-bar loop, songwriting greater than 30 minutes, create a door production template.

Marc Matthews: 4:19

Some of these are one-off tasks as well, folks. So some of these you'll only do once favorite your favorite presets. So maybe I need to rewrite that. Favorite your favorite presets. Maybe I'll put star your favorite presets or save or something on those lines. That's a big one. Just I do that. I've recently got serum 2 and I've gone through it and I've listened to all the patches in there, the presets, rather, rather, and I've starred the ones that I really like. It just means I can hit the ground running when I want to find a bass sound, but little tasks like that gamify your music production and this has really helped me continue that songwriting, that release cadence of six weeks. Again, some of these tasks I'm not going to do every week but some of them I will like songwriting greater than 30 minutes. You know, one of these new single b-side single again probably need to rewrite that one, so maybe I'll rewrite some of these in between recording this and it going live.

Marc Matthews: 5:14

And then what we have is the progress tracker. This is the third sheet and basically in here I've got it set from cycles 1 to 12. So with the week template you will need to create weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, weeks 1, 2, 3, 4. So you need to right click, copy that particular duplicate, that week template, that sheet, and then what you're going to do is at the end of each 28 day cycle so four, sevens you're going to total up the producer growth scorecard point total. So you're going to add weeks one, two, three and four together. So in theory it'll be above 160 points and then you'll see a graph over time.

Marc Matthews: 5:50

The idea is then there is a in column c, you've got producer releases for that 28 day cycle. So, the idea being you can sort of make a number of how many songs you're releasing and track it against the points value and see if there's a correlation between more points and more songs released, basically or it might be the other way and then you've got a graph, so that graph will update and populate as you enter data into this particular sheet. And then you've got top single day point total, top seven day point total and top 28 day point total as well, so you can track your best days, weeks and months, 28 day cycles. And then there are targets. I've got four targets in here. Usually I probably go with only three, but I've got four examples create at least three eight bar loops per week and another one.

Marc Matthews: 6:33

Release one ep, and you can change these goals. I'd probably go with three, to be honest, but I've given you four just to get you started. And that's it, folks. That is the producer growth scorecard. So it's quite a short episode. What I really want you to do is click the link in the episode description, get your copy of the scorecard, watch the detailed video that goes with it and just implement it. It won't take you long to start using it and start gamifying your music production and seeing if there's a correlation between score and releases over time and see how you get on. So again, click that link in the episode description and I will send you a link to get your own copy of the Producer Growth Scorecard. And once you've got it up and running, please do DM me at InsideTheMixPodcast or leave a comment on YouTube if you're watching this on YouTube, as I'd love to hear what tools, techniques and tactics tracking, maybe tactics you are using to stay sharp with your music production. Until next time, stay inspired, stay focused and keep experimenting inside the mix.