2026 is coming. Here's the plan.

Happy Spooky Season everyone! It's been a while since my last update, so I figured I'd sit down and give ya'll a full update on how everything is going, and what you can expect from Diamond Axe Studios Music over the next half a year.

Let's start with some good news and some bad news, the good news being that I am now OFFICIALLY done with grad school!!!

My final assignments were all handed in at the end of August, my diploma will be arriving in the mail any day now, and other than sporadic work to finalize my AFI thesis film, which only requires a few scattered days of work spread over the next couple months, I am completely done!

This means that as of now, at long last, 100% OF MY WORK EFFORT IS BEING PUT TOWARD YOUTUBE AGAIN!!!

September was my first month since early 2022 that I spent as a full-time YouTuber, although, and here's the bad news: September was just about the rockiest possible start to this new era. Between some care troubles, complications stemming from me trying to get medicated for ADHD for the first time, and a really nasty viral infection that knocked me off my feet for over a week, my plans to hit the ground running this month really didn't pan out.

However, I'm very happy to announce that while I did run of bad luck this month, it was just that: a brief run of bad luck, which, unlike a lot of other BS I've had to deal with over the past few years, was all resolved relatively quickly. I'm heading into October feeling more optimistic than ever, and now that I'm finally getting the hang of that ADHD medication (yes, I've been running my channel for the past 8 years with unmedicated ADHD lol), something tells me that my productivity is about to get MUCH more optimized.

Don't just take my word for it thought, because I also have some preliminary action. Not only did I do a HUGE amount of scripting while I was sick in bed, meaning that I'm well ahead of schedule for writing on my next handful of videos, I also cancelled a trip I was planning to take in October, specifically to make up for the work time I lost in September. No more excuses, y'all... I'm gonna do what I have to to get y'all the videos you're owed as soon as I'm able to.

On that note, I'd like to once again thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to pre-charge for some of my videos over the last couple months, I wouldn't have been able to pay rent if y'all didn't offer me this kind of flexibility. I promise to make it up to you, and on that note, here's my plan for the next few months worth of videos and when I'm currently aiming to have them done:

DIAMOND AXE STUDIOS MUSIC PRODUCTION SCHEDULE: 2025 Q4 - 2026 Q2

------

OCTOBER 2025: Top 20 Fall Ranking, Worst Hit Songs of 2024 Part 2, Best Hit Songs of 2024 Part 1 & 2, Biggest Hit of Every Week of the 1940s

------

NOVEMBER 2025: Every Christmas Song Ranked Parts 1 & 2, Biggest Hit of Every Week of the 1950s, Worst Hit Songs of 2025 Part 1

------

DECEMBER 2025: Worst Hit Songs of 2025 Part 2, Biggest Hit of Every Week of the Last Century (1926-2026), Best Hit Songs of 2025 Part 1 & 2

------

JANUARY 2026: Top 20 Winter Ranking, 2024 & 2025 Year-End Rankings Parts 1-4, GOAT 1000 Ranking #1

------

FEBRUARY 2026: Every Billion-Stream Song of the 2020s Ranked Part 1, Grab Bag Reviews #12, GOAT 1000 Ranking #2-4

------

MARCH 2026: Every Billion-Stream Song of the 2020s Ranked Part 2, Top 20 Spring Ranking, GOAT 1000 Ranking #5-7

------

APRIL 2026: Every Billion-Stream Song of the 2020s Ranked Part 3, Why A Billboard #1 Hit Means Nothing and (Almost Never Has), GOAT 1000 RANKING #8

------

Yes, you're reading that right: I am planning on getting between 4 and 6 videos done every month until April 2026. Yes, I have gone insane, thank you for noticing. You know how the saying goes, though: shoot for the stars, hit the moon. If the plans end up changing, then so be it, but for now, this is the target I'm aiming for.

First and foremost, let me be 100% clear: I WILL NOT BE CHARGING YOU GUYS FOR ALL OF THESE EXTRA VIDEOS WHEN THEY COME OUT.

Remember, I'm still in debt to you guys right now; all of these videos I plan on making for the next few months are to honor the videos I pre-charged y'all for earlier in 2025. Basically, my goal is to lock the hell in and work nonstop like a maniac for the next six months, which will not only get me back into the full-time YouTube workflow now that I'm finally out of school, but also let me finish making up everything I owe you guys somtime between February and April, depending on whether I actually end up hitting all the targets I'm aiming for.

Now that that's out of the way, let me go into more details about the upcoming projects.

Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2024 (Part 2), Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 2024: Go ahead and make fun of me for not having these done yet, I'm well aware that I 100% deserve it. All I can say is I'm sorry for the wait, and that all three videos WILL be done before this upcoming list season.

Biggest Hit of Every Week of the Last Century (1926-2026): Earlier this year, after a long search, I was able to find semi-reliable music chart data that goes as far back as 1926 (technically the data goes back to the 1890s, but I think a full-century retrospective is more than enough, quite frankly). This means that, rather than stopping my Biggest Hit of the Week series at the beginning of the Hot 100 in 1958, I'll instead be able to take it nearly back to the dawn of popular music as an industry, and end 2025 by releasing a more than 12-hour long archival resource that will allow the viewer to track the history of popular music, week by week, for the past 100 years straight. This one's been a long time coming, y'all; I'm SO excited to share the finished product with you.

Every Christmas Song: Ranked Worst to Best: This very special worst-to-best ranking of every staple of modern Christmas music (based on the US Spotify Top 200 on Christmas Day last year) has been one of my personal most anticipated videos all year, and I'm so thrilled to finally get to make it. If you haven't filled out the Christmas Fan Ranking form, NOW IS YOUR LAST CHANCE: https://forms.gle/Qbc2Th6yXyzBMscNA

2024 & 2025 Year-End Ranking: No, you didn't misread that; because of the unprecedented overlap between the pop music scenes of 2024 & 2025, I've decided to combine the two Year-End Rankings together into one 4-part video extravaganza, to be released after the 2025 Worst and Best lists. Between Billboard and the V30, there will likely be approximately 215 songs total in the ranking, so don't worry, all four parts will be have PLENTY of meat on their bones.

GOAT 1000 RANKINGS: Here it comes, y'all... before long, it'll be time to embark on a new series, counting down and ranking the Top ONE THOUSAND Biggest Hits in Billboard history, and on top of evrything, it's going to be my FIRST EVER PATREON-EXCLUSIVE SERIES! Each episode in the series is currently planned to be around 15 minutes long, and the series will give me something I've been in desperate need of for far too long: high-quality videos that I'll be able to make more quickly to hold y'all over between the bigger stuff. I'm planning to produce a bunch of these in early 2026 to kick the series off, after which the plan is to get them out at an average rate of around one per month. The entire series will eventually (and I do mean, EVENTUALLY) be combined into several-hour long epic ranking every song in the Top 1000 back to back, at which point it will be made publicly available. Until then though, the GOAT 1000 Ranking videos will be exclusively available to my Patrons, as thanks for your extraordinary loyalty and support.

EVERY BILLION-STREAM SONG OF THE 2020s RANKED: This is gonna be a fun one. At the end of 2024, my good friend Lux documented every song released in the 2020s that had gained a billion streams in the first half of the decade (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaZVGJNlgvU&), and in this three-part ranking video, I'll be looking and analyzing at all 166 of those billion-stream songs. However here's the twist: unlike every other ranking I've ever made, I will NOT be ranking them based on my opinion of the songs' quality. Instead, I'll be giving every song a score of 0-5 based on how iconic and defining to the overall 2020s pop music scene I believe the song is, asking "Is this piece a key part of the overall musical trends and identity of the 2020s, and do I think it will be remembered as an iconic song of the decade years down the line? Based on this song, it's possible that a song I can't stand might get a perfect score, while a song I love might end up with a low one.... definitely gonna be an interesting one.

WHY A BILLBOARD #1 HIT MEANS NOTHING AND (ALMOST) NEVER HAS: And last but certainly not least, I have a passion project half a decade in the making that I'm finally ready to bring to life. When I was an undergrad, I ended up writing a paper for one of my classes about the history of the Billboard Hot 100 and how it's chart methodlogies have changed over time. Ever since then, I've sporadically returned to that paper several times a year, doing more research, adding new discoveries, and just diving deeper and deeper into the topic until now, I have a full-on investigative video essay script finished. This is gonna be one standalone video, and cards on the table, my goal is to make it the best video in my channe's history.... I hope y'all look forward to it.

So there you go... those are the plans. I guess at this point, there's really nothing more to say besides another enormous "thank you" to all of you for giving me the support I need to throw my full body weight into this. I'm at the tail end of LOT of different sagas in my life right now, and I can't wait to give this new one the running head start that I, my channel, and all of you, deserve.

If you have questions about anything at all that was discussed in this post (or anything else), feel free to DM me.

See y'all soon, and until then, take care of yourselves.

-Sean