I sat in on a demo review session last week after a music business seminar presented by one of my colleagues. It was my job to give frank and constructive feedback on the music written and recorded by seminar attendees.

Everyone was supposed to send only one song. Of course, our music coordinator received between three to five songs from most of the attendees. And most of the attendees who sent multiple songs asked if I could please listen to all or several of the songs they sent.

I like music, and I don’t mind listening to muliple songs, even if it means that the demo review session will run late into the night. I went through all of the music that was sent to me, and then I gave brutally honest feedback on what I heard: cut the vocals, they just don’t work. I can’t care about the hook if I don’t hear the lyrics you expect me to remember. If you were an 85 year-old Cuban singer or could hire one to lay the vocal track, that song would be pure licensing gold. And so forth.

By the end of the night, there was only one chestnut of advice that I had refrained from dispensing to the attendees: I didn’t make any comments about the number of songs sent, and I didn’t say anything when I was asked to review multiple songs. And now I am wondering if I did the attendees a disservice by holding back on my thoughts.

When you as an artist receive explicit instructions to sent one song for consideration, your very best song, you should generally follow the instructions. If your song is amazing and the listener or listeners want to hear more, you will be asked to send more songs. You may think that you are sending a message about your talent as a profilic and profound songwriter by sending five different and awesome songs from your catalog or even an entire zip of everything you have written. But actually you are sending a message about how you feel about your own music: indecisive and insecure. You don’t feel good about any of the songs to let them shine on their own, so you send more.

Of course, this may not be actually be what you feel. Perhaps you just want to maximize the opportunity for exposure, or you really feel that all of your songs are amazing. However, you may nevertheless inadvertently send this message by failing to follow the instructions.

You don’t always get explicit instructions when you are pitching music according to a creative prompt sent by a music supervisor or studio. In these situations, you don’t necessarily have to limit yourself to one song but you should be aware of this general principle of diminishing returns.

There are exceptions, of course. For example, you shouldn’t hold back if I am working on a dance video game — which in fact, at the moment, I am — and I tell you that I desperately need dance music in the vein of Lady Gaga. But you should be sure to send only the strong or relevant material. If out of twenty songs, one is perfect and 19 are embarrassingly bad, I will send along the one and then keep in mind that most of your songs aren’t very good. But if you send me five great songs, I will definitely call you again when I need more dance music.

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And in other news, watch out State of California! I am now licensed to practice law. It’s been a very exciting week.