Obviously this video is only talking about the embarrassment of being an artist on social media which I'm sure a lot of you can relate to. But I feel like the underlying message is that being an artist on social media is just broken, and doesn't really feels like its meant for us.

"Do I make trendy stuff because that'll get views at the cost of my image? Do I just let my music speak for itself even if I'll get less views? OR, do I just make music for myself?".

If you don't post, you're invisible. If you post you feel like you have to follow trends. You're not just competing with attention with the millions of other artists and ai artists out there, you're also competing with the 100,000,000 posts being added to instagram a day (actual number). And to quote Willow Kayne (the person in this video who makes good music btw), "Embarrassing" to be forced to post on social media if you want to make any progression towards your music career.

After all of this, theres also the looming thought above all else is that these platforms could be banned in your country, erasing your months or years of progress. Like how TikTok was almost taken away (and I believe cant even be downloaded anymore? Right?).

MY SOLUTION:

To preface this idea, I think whatever you want to do and where you find success in is fine and I wish everyone the best of luck. I see the value in putting your face in front of others and building a community on social platforms, take this from someone who worked in music marketing for several years, and who now does content creation and marketing for some of the worlds largest brands (Sirius XM, Coach, New Balance, Hermes, Uggs, Jacob and Co.). The algorithm CAN work... It just feel like there could be a better solution:

For the last 3 years I've been building an app / web app trying to fix this cycle. The core functions of it is that its a social music app for just musicians and music lovers with a local music focus. No videos, no trends, no algorithms, no dog videos, no political news, no memes, no celebrities, just music and community.

As of right now you can post your song, credit the people who helped you make the song, link it to the streaming places you want views on, chat with whoever you want, search for music by location, genre, popularity, or discover artists randomly.

It's still a work in progress since I work two jobs. But I have plans to clean up the UI, add more precise location data so you can reach people in your city easier, adding a feature where your followers get announcements when you're playing a show, and adding ways for artists to sell their merch and tickets directly through the app. Features are added in accordance to how many artists on the app have suggested them.

It's completely free (none of this "add a credit card and in a month you'll be charged" nonsense), and we already have a little community with artists around the world on it. Worse case, you spend 5 min uploading a song and get a few more monthly listeners on your song. Best case (and with any amount of luck) I can grow this community to a size where artists have a way to reach their communities.

Would love your thoughts on this idea, what you think the solution to this "just post until you get famous or die of embarrassment" era we're in, or if you have any criticism I'm happy to hear you out.

Thanks for hearing my yapping. My names Chris, the app is on apple, google, and a web version. Its called Oxchord.

MODS: I hope this post doesn't infringe any of the rules. While this is a type of self promotion, its also a free, valid, potential solution music marketing solution for artists, coming from an industry professional.

Hi, I’m Jasen!

I was employee #2 at DistroKid and worked there from the early startup days through its growth into an industry leader. I helped build the artist support and education teams and worked directly with thousands of artists and labels, so I’ve seen just about every weird issue that can come up when releasing music.

Following discussions with the r/musicmarketing mods, I’ll be here for an AMA on Tuesday, November 18 at 6:00pm PT to answer questions and clear up confusion around:

• uploading and releasing music
• copyright, cloned tracks, and other infringement issues
• metadata, ISRCs, and royalties
• how distribution really works behind the scenes
• what actually counts as “organic growth” (and what gets you flagged)

I recently left DistroKid and now consult with artists, but this AMA isn’t about selling anything. I just want to share what I’ve learned and help artists navigate the system a little more confidently.

Ask me anything about distribution, promotion, DSPs, royalties, or artist strategy—I’ll be honest about what I know and admit when I don’t.

Edit: A quick note—the mods asked me to post this AMA ahead of time so people could add and upvote questions in advance (standard AMA practice on Reddit), and I’ll be back here on Tuesday, November 18 at 6 pm Pacific to start answering live.

I appreciate everyone’s patience and the thoughtful questions so far!

Edit 2: Here we go! It’s been great reading the questions that came in over the last couple weeks. I’ve had time to give detailed replies, and I hope they spark more good conversations! I’ll be answering new questions live as they come in, and checking back over the next few days for any stragglers.

Thanks to everyone who jumped in with questions! I’ve tried to give clear, useful answers you can actually apply, and I hope the thread keeps helping people long after today!

Hi everyone! Just a thought I wanted to share with you : I'm fed up with artists (whatever their status) using AI to create cover art. It's like I see the same cover everyday and it's starting to annoy me.

Of course, not everyone has time or skills to spend hours on creating a great cover art. I've started using AI when I was looking for ideas and finally, I came up with a much better idea : use my own photos from my phone.

I have thousands of photos on my phone (just like anybody) and I was scrolling through my gallery. I found a perfect image, put in on Canva, applied a filter, a little bit of correction, a nice font and boom! My cover art was done! I've done it again since and I've never been disappointed by the result.

So please, artists from any country and any genre, stop spamming AI cover art for your music and start creating something unique, true to you and of course, it's free!

I've posted 2 of my recent example just to show. It took me 15 minutes to have a final result. Do you also agree that it can be worth it?

I wish I had people around me that could truly understand the grind I've been on. I'm no one special. Just a normal guy with a job and responsibilities and kids and cats.

I started uploading about a year ago, after having some videos blow up of just me playing songs online, and people started commenting that I should upload to spotify, so I figured out how to do that in my bedroom over many late nights.

I've put out 24 tracks this first year, and you can see by the spikes that 3-4 tracks have mostly carried. I haven't spent any money on ads or playlists, but I'm wondering if I should start looking into it, or if there's even a value to be gained from it. I don't even know where to begin, if anyone has any thoughts.

The point is, if I can do this, you can absolutely do this. I don't have a big secret or magic bullet. I can't figure out algorithms from a hole in the ground, and I'm just an old man that decided to finally give it a real go. It comes with a ton of disappointment and second guessing, and so, so many flops.

My best advice is show up even when you don't feel like it. Even when you think there's no point. Do it because you love it and it will make the dips more bearable, and at some point, you will be in the right place at the right time. Just keep showing up.

Hi everyone! Me again with a milestone I'm really excited by (especially as an independent artist).

If you've seen my posts on this sub before you probably know I've been posting pretty consistently on socials (mostly TikTok) for all of 2024, but really only started locking in and trying to grow last October.

Every time I talk about posting on social media I get some questions around whether or not this converts to real streams, so - I tested it by not doing anything else promotion wise other than continuing to release music (1 song in November) and post on socials. This drove an average of +1-2K monthly listeners each week!

A few things to note:

• I make indie / alt pop primarily but it spans a bunch of different subgenres
• At present I post over 10x a day across multiple accounts
• My strategy in one sentence is to maximize authenticity at scale: run different niched accounts for each subgenre as well as different accounts editing my music to the TV shows and media I enjoy, so listeners and fans who discover each new account are discovering a new piece of my world along with it

At this point I've probably experimented with almost every type of short form content out there, and so happy to answer any questions!

Both images represent daily listeners - first is over the last month, second is over the last year.

Follow suit from other big artists and show that Spotify needs to change or do something about the artist compensation model. If we don't, we're letting this company contribute to the demise of the music industry.

How many of you can make over 1000 streams a year? And at $.003 per stream, what's even the point?

Consider to stop posting links to Spotify.

Maybe this sub should consider banning Spotify links for the good of artists and the music industry.

More content driving the point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fy9PcTYm90

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRtKD4gx1k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plleJ0Zv0Ww

New article from Wired just dropped stating that:

“Essentially, [Chaotic Good] creates networks of social media pages (typically on TikTok) and uses them to drive the band’s music into the recommendation algorithm. Songs are dropped into the backgrounds of videos. Live clips are shared. Sometimes, burner accounts, comments, and whole ecosystems of interactions can be fabricated out of digital cloth, stoking—and in some cases, completely manufacturing—discourse around an artist. These ginned-up interactions push the songs and the discussion about them higher up a platform’s algorithmic rankings”

So as long as you’re willing to hire a marketing team that creates hundreds of fake accounts to help hype your music up, you’ll be a success!

Anyway, it WAS a psyop all along!

Edit: can’t share links so look up the Wired article “The Fanfare Around the Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop “ and Eliza McLamb’s substack “Fake Fans”

I pitched my song to some curators on submithub and none of the feedback I got made any sense, it’s like they didn’t listen to my song or listened to it on the most cooked speakers ever. I’ve seen people here and in other places say it’s a waste of money but now I see first hand what they’re talking about. Has anyone ever had success submitting to curators?

so over the past 83 days, i’ve dropped 83 songs. this is part of a goal i set to release a song every single day for the entire year, across all platforms. i’m doing it under my artist name sadzilla, and most of the music is nerdcore, basically rap inspired by anime, video games, comics, movies, and that kind of stuff.

before i get into what i’ve learned and some interesting things that’ve happened, i’ll break down the promo and marketing side real quick. every day, i post 4-5 tiktoks, and i usually repurpose a couple of them for instagram reels, youtube shorts, and x. each song also gets two videos on my youtube, one visualizer and one edit. every friday, i drop four compilations that collect all the songs from that week, and at the end of the month, i release a full monthly compilation with all the tracks from that cycle.

doing it this way helps a lot with spotify’s release radar. i’ve been able to hit around 140k monthly listeners, and that radar traffic helps boost not just the daily drops but the compilations too. even if a track doesn’t do big numbers on day one, it can get a second wind at the end of the week or month when people hear it again through the compilations.

another thing i’ve done is set up a separate spotify profile for my collective, kaiju kult, where i’m also archiving the full 365 project. that way i can track all the releases separately from my main profile and keep everything organized.

so with all that in mind, here’s how it is going:

the very first song of the project actually landed on an editorial playlist, which was a cool surprise especially since it didn’t get picked up by release radar for some reason. that led me to do a deep dive into how release radar works, and i learned a lot. basically, if you’re dropping a song every single day (like i am), it doesn’t matter if you pitch the song 7 days ahead, only the thursday track seems to consistently get the radar push. i’m guessing this has something to do with time zones or internal scheduling stuff at spotify.

so what i figured out is if i want a specific song to get a proper release radar push, especially on a day that’s not thursday, i have to pitch it at least 8 to 10 days in advance. 7 days isn’t enough. it’s kind of weird and probably not something they optimized for since this kind of daily release project is pretty rare, but i’ve just had to test and figure it out as i go.

anyway, moving on.. in january, one of my tiktoks actually went viral and gave a decent boost to a song. that track still gets about 700-800 streams a day organically, and it gave a nice lift to the first month’s compilation too. nothing super life-changing, but still way more than the second month did in comparison. the first compilation has over 200k streams now, second one’s at about 150k, and the third is creeping toward 100k. total project streams are pushing around half a million and we’re not even three months in yet.

release radar has definitely helped with that, but it’s also been wild seeing how many of these daily songs have made it into my top 50 most-played tracks for the year. what’s even cooler is that each weekly compilation gives the older songs a bigger boost than the last one. like, early on, I was seeing about 100 extra streams a day on the non-featured tracks, and now that boost is close to 300 streams a day. hoping that trend keeps going and the whole thing snowballs as more people catch on to what i’m doing.

so another part of all this has been talking to a bunch of different people, running analytics, and just trying to get a better understanding of how the numbers move. i’ve also been using tools like chatgpt and others to brainstorm and dig into the trends; looking at how growth happens algorithmically, where spikes come from, and how things build over time.

one big thing i found is that spotify takes a while to adjust when you change your release schedule. like, when you go from weekly to daily or anything like that, it can take somewhere between 3 to 6 months for the system to “get it” and start sending stuff out properly again, stuff like release radar, radio, discover weekly, and other algorithmic playlists. so hopefully, as i keep pushing, i’ll see more of those pushes kick in.

on the growth side, it’s been cool seeing each weekly compilation doing better than the last. the boosts are getting bigger, and it seems like we’re slowly snowballing. my goal by the end of the year is to be pulling in around a million streams per month. if nothing goes crazy viral, a more conservative goal would be somewhere around 500k to 750k. right now, i’m hovering around 250k streams a month off the project, so we’re about halfway there.

mentally and physically, it’s definitely a grind. i started working on a lot of these songs back in august of last year, so i had a head start. right now, i’ve got about 140 songs done and 120 of them scheduled out. but burnout hits sometimes, not creatively, really, but motivationally. like, i’ll get in my own head about songs. i used to be less picky, but each month i’ve been trying to improve the catalog and push the quality higher. and that progress has made me more critical, which can slow things down.

so i’ve had to learn to step back every now and then, reset, and then come back for another sprint. staying consistent without burning out has been a huge challenge. another major piece of this is just the organizing, getting everything uploaded, scheduled, and tracked across all platforms. honestly, if i wasn’t good at organizing, this wouldn’t be possible. that side of my personality has really been carrying me through this whole thing.

so where does that leave me? honestly, just grateful. if you made it this far, thanks for reading. i hope something in here was useful or gave you some perspective on how this whole thing is going.

that said, i definitely don’t recommend most people try this. it could work, or it could crash and burn. i’m coming at this from a place of privilege, i’ve already built up an audience of around 140k monthly listeners, and i’ve been dropping music under the sadzilla name for over three years now. i’ve also been releasing music every single week for almost that entire time. so the people who follow me are kinda used to the high output.

but even then, like 90–95% of those older tracks were collabs or had features. this project? it’s fully solo. and that’s made it way harder, but also a lot more rewarding. it’s pushed me to level up as a writer, performer, and artist in general. that’s really one of the main reasons i’m doing it. because repetition matters. practicing over and over makes you better.

i know people are gonna bring up the quality vs. quantity debate. and i get it. but that’s not really what this is about for me. i’m not trying to convince anyone that this is the best method, it’s just the one i’m following right now. especially with how fast AI is moving and how easy it’s becoming to make music and art in general for other ppl, i kind of see this as me training to keep up with the output While not resorting to cheap tricks. if the landscape is changing, i want to change with it, not fall behind, but still create genuinely as a music artist

so yeah, if anyone wants to talk more or has questions, drop a comment. i’ll try to reply to everyone and give as much insight as i can. and if you want to connect outside of reddit, there are other ways to do that too. just appreciate y’all for real

Been an avid fan of this channel for a while now. Please excuse my frustration and "passion" behind this topic:

Background:
I absolutely loved Spotify's algorithm. Specifically on providing me with brand new tracks in the discover weekly and release radar playlists. Recently (today) I received 70% AI generated tracks.

I checked their spotify profiles and they are clearly AI generated. HOWEVER, they all have between 200-500k monthly listeners. Some artists NEVER achieve this, despite their talent.

Now to the question:
Is there anything that you do in your marketing approaches to accommodate / mitigate this into your strategy? Do you think that the music community should speak up about this?

Should we, as the marketing brains behind new music, start focussing our efforts to different channels (suno.ai for example)?

Take it eze and stay REAL,

BnH

I wanted to promote my newest song, so I made the decision to spend some money on advertising and submitting to Submithub curators. In hindsight, the latter doesn't seem to have been worthwhile.

Many curators gave glowing praise for the composition and production quality, but they all rejected, giving unhelpful feedback with lots of contradictions:

-Too commercial / too experimental

-Too dark / not dark enough

-Catchy / not catchy enough 

-Too modern and mainstream / too old-school

-Good progression / not enough progression 

I understand that different people have different opinions, but I don't feel like any of this feedback helps me become a better producer. Has anyone else had the same experience?

This is my first release as a musicians .How do I continue to get more streams as I believe it can take off 10x from here .

Has anyone felt like making music has just turned into becoming a content slave? All you hear is “make 200 tik toks if you want the song to do well”. Like damn man I’m spending more time making content than making music. To be fair I did it. I made 1000 videos and after the 800th one I went viral. It genuinely works but that viral moment lasted for about a year. I got some ok money from it. Not enough to live off of. $20,000 from 50mil YT shorts views and 1mil Spotify streams plus everything else was solid. I spent about 3 hours every day making content and I’m so sick of it. Now with my numbers down if I post I’m “washed”, you still have to constantly go viral. Maybe I didn’t hit big enough numbers? It seemed like a lot but realizing you need a billion seems so stupidly daunting. I’ve been chasing the dream of making it as an artist for 5 years doing only music for work but the math ain’t mathing. I got job offers for business related stuff and it’s triple what I made in a year. I don’t want to give up but man it seems ridiculous to spend the majority of your time not doing the thing you actually want to do, but if you don’t, it won’t go anywhere. I understand marketing but why is it 90% of the job now?

Morrissey isn’t completing tours in Europe (despite being able to pack rooms) because it’s not financially feasible.

Chappel Roan is publicly beefing with label execs due to what she believes is a systemic failure to fiscally support music artists.

In 2024 major labels restructured and laid off substantial percentages of their workforce.

Live Nation YoY revenue dropped 11% in Q1 this year.

Nobody is reporting it- (or industry giants are suppressing it, my tinfoil hat brain suggests) but money is getting harder to come by in the music game.

The LIFEBLOOD of our industry are the artists themselves, and they’re suffering the most.

I’m going to tell you what’s going on, as someone who’s been in the trenches developing fiscally sustainable careers for independent artists from scratch for the last five years.

There is an industrywide process-level misunderstanding of what should actually be sold and marketed.

Hint: not music.

Economically it makes sense- basic supply and demand equations easily demonstrate a profound oversaturation of recorded music combined with disproportionately low demand. Most people discover new music on curated playlists or pandora, not because they’re out looking for it.

Combine this with the fact that is the lowest revenue per-sale item in the business (hundredths of a cent per fulfilled ask) and you have a losing equation for any business that is optimizing towards streaming.

Touring isn’t much better. Overhead is absurd and the time commitment is massive for everyone involved. Every band I talk to has tiny margins- typically spending $25k-$30k to tour regionally for three to four weeks; making less than $10k in profit and then needing to split it four or five ways.

This inefficiency is why Morrissey is canceling dates. In 2024 Pirate Studios published a study on cost efficiency of touring and found that 72% of artists LOST money on tour.

Might as well work at McDonalds.

The entities that control the dialogue and infrastructure in music biz- Labels, PR companies, agencies, etc are still optimizing their artist growth strategies towards touring and streaming.

The cultural narrative amongst independent musicians is that you aren’t a “real” artist unless you’re doing huge streaming and constantly touring.

Even though it’s objectively the lowest efficiency business strategy.

However- if we direct our focus towards what’s actually selling, artists can still have profitable careers.

The artists my company develop are primarily focused on online communities. Zero overhead to engage, convert, and monetize them.

TikTok LIVE Streaming payouts for artists on my roster who are consistent and effective at this skill are in the high thousands and low five figures per month. The only cost to the artist is hours of their time- which are now actually profitable hours instead of the expense hours accrued during drives during touring etc.

Brand-aligned sponsorships can pay five figs + just to make a TikTok or Instagram video. Talk about efficiency!

Sync placements are hugely valuable and easily obtained when backed by the leverage of a viral social media following.

Furthermore- artists who develop niche online cultures (Jon Bellion is doing this right now to great effect) are in total control of the entire business model that monetizes their career.

Is it as sexy as huge tours and arenas? Maybe not- but that model is leaving artists financially drained and burnt out on their dream.

Building online communities and monetizing them is the future and HAS to be- once the powers that be figure out how to develop artists for this particular skillset we’ll be seeing more profitable and stable artistry careers with predictable and scalable income.

Until then, my partners and my team will be here doing my part to make this happen.

Genuine question. When did the job description change?

I got into this because I like writing songs and playing guitar. Somewhere along the way it turned into filming yourself, editing clips, posting every day, lipsyncing in your car, thinking about hooks and retention and which platform is pushing what format this week, blah blah blah

I've been posting lyric videos from my truck and my garage for months now. They get like 12 views even with the Capcut captions. And the whole time I'm recording them I'm thinking — I could be using this hour to actually write music. The thing I got into this for.

I'm not trying to be old man yells at cloud about it lmao I get that this is how it works now. I just want to know if the content stuff actually moving the needle for anyone at my level? I'm under 1,000 monthly listeners after years on Spotify. Nobody's finding me through my truck videos.

If you've actually cracked this part I'd genuinely love to know what worked. Because whatever I'm doing isn't it and I'm running out of ideas.

In 2026, artists don’t need record labels to upload music, but they still need them to scale. Funding is the biggest reason...marketing, visuals, ads, PR, touring, and data all cost money, and most artists can’t consistently bankroll releases without burning out.

Distribution today isn’t about getting music online; it’s about leverage...playlist relationships, priority pitching, coordinated release strategies, and data-driven timing that help music actually get seen.

Labels also provide infrastructure by handling marketing, storytelling, analytics, and industry relationships, buying artists back their most valuable resource: time. The real divide in 2026 isn’t major vs. independent, it’s funded vs. unfunded....because most artists don’t fail from a lack of talent, they fail because they run out of runway. #musicmarketing #musicbusiness

No label, money, or special connections in the industry. I'm just a regular guy who happens to love music, piano and composing music, and really wanted to get out of the 9-5 work rut.

I've been a musician and writing/composing songs for over 15 years, and decided about 2-3 years ago I wanted to take it more seriously and see if I could make a living from it. So I started writing and releasing and promoting regularly since then. My music project has steadily been growing since then, although I admit there's been many times I wanted to give up.

It's a ton of hard work and honestly the music aspect of it is just a small fraction of the work. Being a musician already requires immense dedication and self-discipline over a long period of time. But you have to do that AND like 10 other jobs if you want to stand out among the millions of other musicians.

I realized early on, if you want to earn money from your music...you unfortunately do have to think of it like a business. It doesn't mean you can't be creative and enjoy that aspect still! But you have to seriously consider exactly how you'll monetize your music and your plan to get there.

Anyway, I still really enjoy this more than any of the other jobs I've done. I'm constantly learning new skills and things, growing in so many ways, and able to immerse myself in music and creating the music I love. So it's still worth it, and I know I am very very fortunate to be able to do something I love.

Proof: You can check my reddit bio. Not posting any links here so as to follow sub rules~

I’ve always HATED tiktok. i would put in effort recording my projects in OBS, editing in premiere, adding captions, etc etc…. for 150 plays.

it felt like it was tons of effort for no results.

last week i started recording my screen with my phone, doing a quick edit in capcut, and posting it with basically 0 thought. just showing off a song i was working on. essentially what i would do on my instagram story to show my friends.

it went from an hour of work and one post per week to 5 mins of work, and i did it everyday.

a few videos have gotten ~5,000 plays, i’m up 60 followers, and people are dming me about my music. asking for serum presets, release dates, and collabs.

i guess i’m gonna keep doing this? obviously no life changing results, but 60 followers for minimal effort in a single week seems promising.

I get it.

Alot of content is cringe.

Forced lip-syncs. Fake hype. trend chasing with no soul. If you struggling right now because you hate making content, remember that creatin xcontent doesn’t have to be a performance its more about documenting.

You’re not required to do a silly dance, lip-sync, or act like you’re having the best day of your life for the algorithm.

Content can literally just be:

Studio sessions

Writing or beat-selection moments

Explaining what a song is about (30 seconds, no acting)

“How it’s made” clips (behind the scenes content)

Visual loops, analog footage, VHS cam vibes

Short form lyric videos with ambient visuals

You working, not performing

Peoples are way more interested in process raher than polish. Watching someone actually make something is more compelling than watching them pretend to be viral.

If the idea of content makes you cringe, stop trying to entertain strangers and just document your work. The right audience finds that relatable, not corny.

You don’t need to become a content creator.

You just need to let people see what you’re already doing.

Lately it feels like all the work that goes into marketing my music is pointless. Tiktok decides who (or who not) to show your videos to, Insta will have the same handful of people liking your posts every time, X is a wasteland, FB is dead.

I spend a ton of time working on the graphic design for my music, videos for new songs, etc. I look at the analytics, I watch videos how to post properly, but still get 0 likes on Tiktok and maybe 15 people per post on Insta.

Some people say "post 2-3 times a day on Tiktok, it doesn't matter what, just as long as you post constantly." Others say "quality over quantity." Both apps are constantly changing how you're supposed to interact with them and it's all very overwhelming and exhausting considering how much time it's taking away from every other aspect of making music.

Anyone else feeling this burnout?

bag tub bike zephyr combative literate groovy dinner mountainous juggle

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

Hey guys!

So first of all, I'm not in anyway trying to copy or claim others' music - this was made for research purposes and I've wanted to share this with you guys which I feel is my community. (Jason from Submithub I know you're here :))

So I've had this idea for a long time, and a big artist that I like just released a new album with just amazing songs, which are still pretty unknown. So I said, why not? I'm trying to debunk, or at least, reduce the significance that we give these playlisters or just people in general that critique our music.

How did it go? Exactly as I thought - the same old critiques, with vague feedbacks. The song actually didn't do that good and some of my own songs did better.

Did it make me feel better? Yeah

What am I taking out of this? Don't take feedbacks so seriously, everything is subjective, and Submithub or similar services are not the real crowd we're looking for.

Worth mentioning that I tried this with the Hot or Not feature and not actual playlisters since that seemed too criminal for me :)

EDIT: 5.5M monthly listeners, touring artist, with a subreddit of its own, etc.

Is it just me, or is TikTok one of the biggest distractions in music marketing that usually doesn’t yield consistent results to get picked up by the algorithm?

Please tell me if I’m misunderstanding something, but I feel like TikTok is a gamble while meta ads are a proven way (when done successfully and properly) to spike the algorithm. I really don’t see any need to market on TikTok anymore it doesn’t yield any results.

For context, I would post twice daily on TikTok and in 5 months I was able to get ~2800 followers from 0 and my videos averaged anywhere between ~300-2k with a peak of around 10-11k on a few videos. This meta ads campaign has been fluctuating in budget, but no more than $15-20 a day in this image at a CPC of $0.18-20.

What are your thoughts on TikTok promotion for music? Am I missing the point of TikTok or how to actually convert like crazy from TikTok?

Anyone managed to get 0% approval on Submithub? This is my most popular song on Spotify now but it got rejected by 10/10 of curators I submitted to. I'm not sure if it's scam or not since my experience up to 2025 is average of 25% approval.

Not sure if I want to gamble more money on this pseudo scam, or just straightup payola with YouGrow and other similar services.