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?

Been using unhurd for a little bit to test marketing, and curators were pretty 50/50 but gave feedback atleast when they denied, but this dude put the song in his playlist and just did this, I guess hes just speeding through it and probably didnt even listen to it, is that normal? Its my first week doing this and all im really looking for is the words lol

Hey everyone, sorry to kind of drop into your community, but I want some feedback, and this seems like a good place to get it.

So I recently started dating a singer; she has a bunch of tracks on Spotify, and we just recently recorded a new one. I'll be the first one to say I am a dope when it comes to music, my tastes are all over the place, but Biases aside, I think she is really good, and I wanna help promote her. I do have some self-promotion knowledge from some semi successfull you tube and streaming shows I ran over the years, so I am applying those skills to try and help boost her music, but I understand this is a completely different beast than what I am used to in the tabletop and video gaming space. I wanted to lay out some things i am doing to help and look for some recommendations.

Ok, so first thing is I started sending some of her top tracks out to any radio station that allows for music submissions. CBC Radio Canada is the only one that got back to me so far.

Next, I started reaching out to music podcasts that regularly feature guests, trying to pitch her for a guest spot. (not much traction on that front yet)

Last thing I did was film a bunch of b roll interviewy stuff at her last song recording and cut some promo videos together, and started work on a personality YouTube channel separate from her music channel.

I'm thinking about groover but it looks like they might be full or crap?? and I wanted to make her a band camp and boost her stuff in some tumblr communities.

Any suggestions on what I should be trying? She has already spent too much on ad campaigns for youtube, facebook, insta, and they haven't gained her much, and I've always had more success with more boots on the ground personal promotion with my stuff.

thanks for any feed back that can be offered.

Is it just an excuse so they can tick off that they've responded and can continue to get paid from submithub?

Can see they skipped 2 seconds in so their clearly not in the zone for active listening...

I have been hitting reddit hard the past year, but also building out and maintaining my own website that intertwines with my socials and music platforms.

I am not one of these people that post religiously every day if at all, if I have something cool to share I just share when I feel like it, never more.

But this has resulted in 160k YT views (120 subs), 1600 FB followers, 1600 Monthly Spotify listens, and non-notable Insta and Tik Tok, but they exist and are cross referenced in all the others.

Reddit posts and deep discussions and commenting seems to have given me the greatest web presence I think, just sharing live playing of whatever I can capture in a moment when I remember I have a phone, and finding others to encourage and advise.

Any ways I guess the point is, I put little to no effort into "influencing" or "content strategy" I just free ball it, and now you can google my name and the entire page is just me and my music. I can't think of what else I would want want really. It made it really easy to share my music last night when playing live and after I could just say "Google Homer Doak" instead of "scan this code" "go to this link" etc. Just sharing I guess, thanks.

​Hey everyone, just wanted to drop a quick update here since my last post about getting a literal 0% approval rate on SubmitHub blew up a bit. For context, you can see my previous post I was ready to just call the whole thing a scam and walk away.

​After averaging 10%, 13%, and then that 0% on my recent campaigns, I decided to give it another shot and tried out SubmitHub's new 'easy mode' promotion feature instead of doing my usual manual targeting.

​Why try again despite abysmal results? Because I am a dreamer like a lot of you. And I like gambling. So you can be sure that I'm not a shill because of how I used to slam the service.

​Anyway this time around, the campaign pulled a 50% approval rate, and the track actually landed straight into the SubmitHub EDM charts, despite me only starting promotion 10 days after release.

Honestly, I'm very pleased with the results. I guess the platform's system understood how to correctly categorize and target the track better than I did.

If you are struggling with approval ratings like me, and constantly hit under 15%, it might just be better to use Easy Mode for your budget... and morale.

I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to confuse activity with progress in music marketing.

Views, likes, playlist adds, saves, comments, follows, and streams can all look useful, but not all of them mean the same thing. Some numbers feel good short term but don’t seem to translate into actual audience growth.

For people who track this seriously, what metrics do you care about most?

Do you look more at saves, repeat listeners, follower conversion, listener retention, email signups, playlist source quality, or something else?

I’m interested in how people decide whether a campaign is actually working, not just getting attention.

I'm wondering, for instance in France when we play a gig as a professional musician we're often asked details like social security number/IBAN and a few things specific to France : GUSO number & Congés Spectacle for instance.

If I were to play in your country, what are those specific things that I would be required to provide ?
I'd be interested to know per country as I'm developing an app to ease booking and admin details like those and I'm creating some templates per country so that it's simpler to gather and communicate all details per musician when booking for a band/venue.

Thanks !

or does it matter should I just keep posting on Instagram who cares as long as someone cooks on it? Whatever it takes right? I don’t have time to make any music anymore, but the guy down the street said if I wanted the gig I just need to keep posting.

Basically I want to test waters first and do something like 8 euro a day for like 2 weeks, something like that. It will be my first time ever doing Meta ads (I did IG post boosting, got some followers but in the end it wasn't worth it)

I will do this for my upcoming song which is pitched and hopefully will land some playlists.

What kind of results should I expect from this kind of promotion?

Hello boiiis. I'm doing french music. Every now and then a playlister doesnt take my song because it's in french. F this S man, they can toggle wich language they accept. That is their faut. The tool existe. But I get robbed and can do nothing about it. No refund. Pure unfairness. You know thats the energy. Not nice.

What do you think? Happened to anybody aswell ?

Edit : "The tool existe" I wont edit it bc it's hilarious 😅 bonne journée

So I got kind of obsessive about this last year. I started logging every single thing I spent money on to promote my tracks on SoundCloud and where my actual growth came from. Not just plays, like actual followers who came back and engaged on the next release.

I’ll spare the full spreadsheet but the short version is I burned probably $400 on repost networks, a couple Instagram ad runs, and one of those “submit to curators” services. The repost networks got me plays. Like technically yes the number went up. But I’d check back a week later and none of those people followed, none of them commented, none of them showed up on my next track. Just ghost plays that made my stats look weird.

The Instagram ads were even worse honestly. I was sending people to my SoundCloud from Instagram and the bounce rate was insane. People don’t want to leave the app they’re in to go listen to some stranger’s track on a completely different platform. I think I got like 11 followers out of maybe $150. Not great math.

The curator submission thing I actually don’t regret as much because it taught me something. The one playlist I got on that was niche and specific to my genre actually sent me listeners that stuck around. The three bigger playlists with generic names did nothing. So it’s not that playlists don’t work, it’s that broad ones are basically the same as bot plays with a nicer label.

What actually moved things for me was way less exciting. I found like 8 artists making similar stuff to me, not huge ones, people roughly at my level. I started genuinely listening to their stuff, reposting tracks I actually liked, leaving comments that weren’t just “fire bro.” After a few weeks their followers started showing up on my page. That was free and it outperformed everything I paid for.

The other thing was just fixing stuff on my profile I didn’t realize was broken. My bio was trash, my tags were way too broad, my header image looked like I made it in 2019 because I did. I cleaned all that up and my conversion rate from profile visit to follow went up noticeably. Nobody talks about this but your profile is basically a landing page and most artists treat it like an afterthought.

I’m not saying never spend money. But if your profile isn’t converting visitors into followers organically, paid traffic is just expensive proof that your page needs work.

Hey all!

I'm an Artist Manager keen to find out more about fashion stylist(s) and the role they play in the music industry.

- What's the best way to find stylist for my artist. Is there an online platform (SoundBetter equivalent) to find them?

- How do they charge? Is it a fixed monthly fee regardless of the number of public appearances/awards shows? Or is it a variable rate?

- Is it only for daily outfits, or does it include tour costumes, photoshoots, music videos?

- Do they source brand endorsement deals as well? Or is that the job of the agent (eg CAA/WME/UTA/The Team)?

- Any other helpful information

Thanks in advance!

I know they use a different set of social media channels and youtube equivalents, but I'm not even able to sign up for them without a Chinese phone number.
Has anyone managed this? What did you do?

Hey all, had a question about what you'd do here. I released a song on May 4th, a bit over 3 weeks ago. I have experience with meta ads triggering the Spotify algorithm, had a previous song do well and get 250k+ streams, the majority of which came after the campaign.

This song however, I couldn't get anything working. Everything was at least .80 CPC, tried tons of creatives, different targeting, countries, etc. Just accepted that it wasn't as marketable as I'd hoped.

However as a last experiment based on what's been working on YouTube shorts and tiktok, I tried a different kind of creative and it's performing with 0.15 CPC.

Is it too late to trigger the algorithm? Should I just keep that riding? Would you under any circumstances consider rereleasing the song with the successful campaign to attempt another trigger?

For the curious, it's a fantasy/rap blend of music and is pretty nerdy and niche. Think NF but crank up the strings and choirs even more and telling a fictional story. What failed was alternative hiphop, hiphop, cinematic movies, marvel, rpgs, even tried just music itself. What worked was anime fight edits targeting anime fans.

It's at 2k streams now with a good chunk coming from radio and at a popularity score of 19.

Everyone and their dog talks about having a good social media presence for extending their fan base, that’s all good and dandy but what I’m curious about are the other obscure ways people are reaching new audiences

I've been running a Meta campaign for my release with very good results. The song was released on May 1st The save rate is unlike everything I've ever seen on any of my releases, and I get plenty of engagement and comments on my ads. Usually RR pulls at least 4-500 plays and then radio triggers in the first week. I pitched this 2 weeks before release - that has consistently worked for broad RR earlier. I'm now sitting at a 28% Popularity score with a total of 72 radio streams total, 28 in the last 7 days. Please help me understand what is going on?

I’m trying to claim my music and complete the tik tok for artists account application but my music is nowhere to be found on the “claim page” despite having 10 plus songs on the platform… help?

FYI I distribute using DistroKid and my artist name is a singular first name

(Oddly enough I see my old artist name on there which is two names (including my first name) even though my music has been pulled from that name)

I was originally going to release my EP doing the waterfall release style but now I’m not too sure. Sounds a bit too complicated and I don’t like how it makes everything unorganized and etc with a bunch of releases.

I don’t want to only release the EP only though.

Could I release 2 songs from my EP as singles and then release the full EP after? I plan to have 4 or 5 songs on my EP, I have 4 ready right now. So I would take the 2 songs that I think are best for a single and release those and tease/talk about my upcoming EP. Which then will have the last 2-3 songs on it.

If I do it that way, how do I release the singles so that way they are still part of the EP? Do I release them again on the EP once I submit that?

I don’t have much of a fan base really and I do already have 5 singles out. My goal isn’t necessarily to get tons of streams. But I just wanted to put out a more cohesive body of work and talk it up a bit so I can still market it.

I am looking to help artists remotely but I have a lot of different ideas, wondering where I should start: product launches (strategy), career strategy, digital marketing, helping with riders and production (not on site)… Also I have studied a lot about legal but I wouldn’t be comfortable giving legal advice 100%

From an artist perspective, what is something they need usually help with and there are not many people willing to help or know how to? I feel like for example digital marketing is so saturated and there are tips everywhere already on the internet

my band has been releasing music for years now and we have an upcoming single that’s ready to go, and honestly i think it’s the best thing we’ve made. in the past, the most we’ve gotten from label outreach were distribution deals from semi-random labels that didn’t really seem to lead anywhere meaningful.

i’m definitely a believer in self-releasing and don’t think it’s a bad route at all, but i am also looking for a labels help with audience reach, rollout, PR, etc, which is mainly what we’re lacking since we really don’t have much of a budget.

i’ve always heard the whole “labels come to you” thing, but i’m also a big believer in being proactive. at the same time, whenever we’ve reached out in the past it hasn’t really amounted to much, and part of me worries that reaching out can come off as needy/uncool, even though i know that shouldn’t matter.

i just really want to do this single justice because we worked insanely hard on it. curious what other peoples experiences have been with label outreach for singles specifically, and whether anyone has tips or thoughts on the best way to approach it.

I have zero plays on Apple radio

Does it only play your music on Apple radio if it’s already popular

How many streams do you need before Apple puts it in radio?

Also does Apple Music naturally push your music like Spotify?

Because I get 100 streams daily on Spotify but almost no streams on Apple Music