We show that the total number of states in a photonic crystal in the entire allowed frequency regime will be conserved, and it is equal to that of its corresponding effective medium, i.e., if the density of states (DOS) has a valley(s) in some range(s) of frequencies, it must be compensated for by increases over some other range(s). This rule is of importance in developing a model pseudogap in order to describe the mean emission characteristics of the system when there is a collection of dependently emitting atoms or molecules with essentially random dipole orientations in a large volume and the spectrum of the active atoms is wide enough. This is because, with this rule, the states-conservative model always results in DOS-induced suppression, absolute enhancement, narrowing, spectrum splits, and redshift or blueshift of spontaneous-emission spectra.