The advancement of technology, the emergence of social media and the established popularity of digital streaming platforms has changed the landscape of the music industry forever. Gone are the days of needing professional recording studios to create your music. Gone are the days of huge marketing budgets needed to break a song. Gone are the days of needing a major record label or distribution company to release your music. Artist can now, almost literally, do everything from the comfort of their bedroom.
Since the inception of the major record labels, back in 1950s, the A&R and record labels were the gatekeepers to the music industry. In order for an artist to be able to have any chance of “becoming a star” they needed to gain the recognition from someone at a label. The A&R was in charge of finding the talented artists, signing them, developing them, placing them with the right music producers, the right songwriters, (as many artists in those days didn’t write their own songs and some still don’t), and oversee every aspect of the artist’s music creation. Until recently, (around 2010) artist development was the responsibility of the A&R that signed the new artist or band. It was their job to get the artist or band to a point where they can release music (and of course make and recoup money for the label). The A&R would enlist the help of different departments with in the label to ensure the development of the artist. From scheduling, studio sessions, branding and image, media training, appearances, shows, everything you see an artist do on a daily basis, was the responsibility of the A&R. Very little fell on the shoulders of the artist, because the label wanted the artists to solely focus on creating and recording music, because the more music the artist made, the more albums the label could sell, the more shows the artist could book, which means more money for the record label.
Now-a-days the labels aren’t willing to spend the money, time and effort on developing an artist from scratch. It is estimated that in order to break a song on the radio today it will take around $200,000. Why would a label shell out this kind of money for an artist they are unsure of their sustainability? Why would a label spend years of effort and a number of their resources on trying to develop an artist that may or may not make it in the end? Giving an unproven artist a budget and the unlimited resources at the disposal of major record labels without the promise of recouping is no longer an option. After all, it is called the music business. If the labels were just handing out money to anyone they thought was talented, or even anyone at all, not worried about what the outcome was, it would be nothing more than a hobby. The A&Rs are unwilling to do this as well, as one failed artist could result in the A&R getting fired from the label. This is a reason you see most artists that release music today look and sound the same. Just as artists are chasing a hit and riding the popular wave, the A&Rs are too. There is a hypothetical scenario that my boss always used to go through with me when I first started to make the transition from being a studio engineer, into becoming an A&R and music publisher. Two people get hired as A&Rs at the same label at the same time (for this example I will be using popular artists that have made recognizable hits not necessarily artists who everyone thinks are the best). The first guy signs Lil Uzi (who already has a pretty big following), the second guy signs an unknown act that he likes and has a connection with the artists music. Lil Uzi (as we know) releases his first single and then an album and does huge numbers. The second guy, his artist do the same but because he has only a niche market, his numbers are considerably smaller. The first guy now gets a bigger office and an assistant, as well as begins to work closer with the heads of the company. The second guy, is now answer questions from the heads of the company as to what is happening with his artist and how is he coming along with the budget. The first guy, now because of the money he made for the company gets assigned the next act with a big following, and the second guy is still trying to break his first artist. Ultimately the first guy keeps moving up in the company, while the second guy most likely loses his job. This hypothetical example may be exaggerated to an extent, but the main point holds true. The labels are only looking at numbers and how much the artist can generate. Regardless if the second guy with the smaller act had better music, he wasn’t producing as much as the first guy with artists who have huge numbers but their music may not be as good. Talent is now overlooked by numbers whether we like it or not.
The artist development process has now fallen on shoulders of the independent artists themselves. Artists are able to leverage all social media and digital streaming platforms to grow their following and build a fanbase on their own. It has become an unspoken rule that an artist must have around 100,000 followers to even be on the radar of a major label. This is due to the fact that the larger the following you have, the more fans you are looked as having. The more perceived fans you have, the more money you can generate from merchandise, live shows, and streaming. Unfortunately, streaming doesn’t yield the artist much money (almost nothing actually, less than a penny per stream) but it shows popularity and gives money to the labels, which they can leverage into other revenue streams for the label (and hopefully the artist). If you don’t have this type of following, you better have a viral song with millions of plays across all platforms to get notice. The price of going viral is gold. If you have one viral hit you can almost name your price at a label. The latest example of this would be the artist, “RMR” and his first released song “Rascal.” If you don’t know who this is, one go look it up because he is an incredible singer, (and from what I have heard his music knowledge is astronomical) and second, the music video for the song is awesome (especially because his voice and the video are completely different, even though if you listen to the lyrics it makes sense). This song was at around 2,000 views on youtube, and in a matter of about two weeks grew to over a million views, being featured on the top music blogs, podcasts and social media networks. This led to him being signed by Warner Records within the next few months (after meeting with literally every label you can name) and now currently has a second single released with a remix featuring “Future” (also having worked with top music producer and engineer Mike Dean). Where this is an exception to the rule, in most cases, this is how artists are finding their way into the music industry. Think “Pop Smoke” (Republic) and “Fivio” in Brooklyn with the “Brooklyn Drill” movement, or “Cookiee Kawaii” (Empire) in New Jersey. Granted these examples have other driving forces behind them other than just a viral song (Pop Smoke and Fivio being in the forefront and could be considered the creators of an entire genre taking the music industry by storm in Brooklyn Drill. And Cookiee Kawaii bringing back the New Jersey Dance movement which was a music staple back in 1980s) but having a song a song take off that fast, with those amount of listens and plays, is beneficial in getting the artist noticed.
Todays music climate is revolved around your social media and online presence. Artists are left to market themselves, release their own music, and “become hot” on their own before anyone will take them seriously. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok have become the best marketing tools for artists. Influencers on these sites are now regarded as the gatekeepers to breaking your song rather than the traditional route of radio stations and DJs being the way to break a song. Having an influencer on TikTok create a video with a dance or challenge featuring your song could net an artist millions of views. Powfu and Meg thee Stallion are great examples of this. If you use social media, especially TikTok, undoubtably you’ve heard the song “death bed (coffee for your head).” This is song was used in countless TikTok videos, and was all over Spotify’s viral charts. At the time this artists only had released this song and maybe one or two others, but was by no means a house hold name, or even a known name. This song getting the recognition it did on social media led to this unknown artist getting a deal from Columbia, and now in the process of releasing his first label studio album. Meg thee Stallion is a slightly different case, but some of the same principals apply. While she did have the background of her mother being a known rapper in the Houston area, and had the backing of the production company 1501 (owned by baseball all-star Carl Crawford) it wan’t until her song “Savage” blew up on social media that she began getting recognition. Once kids started creating specific dances to her song, she became an incredibly sought after artist (even now being signed to Roc Nation in a management deal. However, it was a tough road to get there, look up any of here social media posting or interviews before he last album release about the restraining order she needed to release the album, and the back and forth going on between here and Carl). Being placed on the right playlist and in the right spot on any of the digital streaming platforms could net an artist millions of streams and monthly listeners. With followers and streams being more valuable than gold in this digital age of music, these are invaluable marketing techniques. It’s true you can put your money into buying fake followers and fake streams, but real analytics people can see those numbers are fabricated. Running paid ads on social media and streaming services is good too, but in most cases only provides traffic to that specific site, leaving your other platforms with the low numbers you began with. It takes time to build up your social media following, and get people to listen to your music. Think how long it too Russ to become the artist he is today. Go to any of his pages or channels and you can hear his story of coming up as an independent artist, the struggle and process he went through to get his music heard (FIY, it took him years and numerous mixtape releases before his music caught on and grew the huge fan base it has now).
How do you gain traction as an artist in todays climate? Through knowing how to develop yourself, knowing how to separate yourself, being true to yourself and focusing on creating great music instead of following a trend. There are thousands, of online articles and videos and books that can teach you how to grow your social media following. Some of these things are useful, but at the same time they don’t take into account the fan base or niche you are going for. They are telling you what worked for them and how to follow their model. I will say, that some of these techniques do work, but only if you follow them step by step in meticulous detail. It is incredibly hard work to gain a social media following, but it boils down to a few simple things. First, create good content, if your content (whether it’s music or the graphics, photos and videos you are posting to promote or show who you are and what you are doing) isn’t captivating to an audience, then there is no reason for them to view your content. Just think about how many people are on social media, and now think about how many times people post each day. Millions, maybe even billions of times. You have to have great content to make people watch. Second, find your niche. Don’t make the mistake of trying to reach a huge audience because you want to reach the most people you can because you think that you will gain a following faster that way. Wrong! Find a specific group of people (gamers, fitness, cartoons, horror, and so many others) and boiling it down either further into a specific category within those massive communities. Creating content specifically for that audience will create your following faster than generic posts you see everyone else doing. Gearing content to a small group within a community will create a loyal following that actually enjoys your content and they will be more willing to engage with you and share your content not only within your small community, but to the rest of the larger community and it snowballs from there. Third, being engaging. Answer every single comment, dm, message that you get on anything you post. This will show your audience that you care about them and create a personal (as much as a relationship between two people on the internet who have never met and know nothing about each other other than what one person is posting can be) with them, making them feel a connection with you and your content. This personal connection will make your audience more likely to share your content because they will feel as though they are part of your community. Think of what Ryan Leslie and Gary V did. They gave out their personal phone numbers for anyone to call or text them. While this maybe an extreme case (because let’s face it, very few of us would want to give out our personal numbers to the whole world and have to deal with random people sending us messages at all hours of the day) but they created a loyal and engaging fan base from this, and look at where they both are now. Fourth, go to pages that have a similar fan base you are trying to reach and follow people that follow those pages. Be careful as following to many people at once can lead to page bans and restrictions (I know from experience) but this will possibly create a new following for you (as the people you follow will get a notification and may follow you back) but also give you an audience you know will have interest in your content. Be sure to talk and engage with these new people you follow to create the relationship we spoke of earlier. Lastly, (just last for sake of this article, you can search many different tips and techniques on how to do this process, these are only a few, and by no means the end all be all) create conversations. Go to the similar pages we mentioned and comment. Create a conversation in the comments. If you comment with enticing statements and questions it will engage with that audience and could drive viewers and new followers to your page. Do not just go in the comments and hastily advertise your content or page, millions of people do that in everyones comments and I will tell you from experience from both my pages and people I know, close to 90% of those comment advertisements either don’t get answers, get the account blocked, or do get an answer to see what they can offer and the commentor doesn’t answer back or has nothing to offer.
It is now the responsibility of the artist to develop yourself (using some of the methods above, but many others as well). Find who and what you want to be and portray as an artist. Figure out who your fanbase is and what type of fans you are trying to attract with your music. Spend time researching how to create and produce music properly, or spend the money to get your songs professional recorded at a studio. There is nothing worse then getting a song sent to you and the production is terrible, making it almost impossible to hear anything clearly. The biggest issues I find are the vocals not being loud enough so I can’t hear the lyrics, the whole song being distorted (which especially for an engineer makes the song unlistenable on any system) there being too many fxs (making it hard to hear anything but the reverb and the crazy fxs you didn’t use properly. A little advice, just because you hear your favorite artists like The Weeknd, Future and Migos use all these crazy fx doesn’t mean you have to. The engineers using those fx to create their sound are top of the line award winning professional engineers with years of experience) or finally, terrible song structure. Technology has advanced to a point where anyone with a laptop can create their own music. Artists no longer have to spend hundreds of dollars an hour for studio time and a professional engineer in order to record their songs. A MacBook, GarageBand (which is a free software that comes with the purchase of a MacBook) and a cheap microphone (which can be purchased online for less than $100) allows you to record and produce your own records. While this is good for the simple fact it gives every single person in the world, who wants to anyway, the ability to have a creative outlet and create their own music, it has diluted the music marketplace with a bunch of artists that not only sound the same, but also, in my personal opinion, don’t sound great because they don’t have the background knowledge of how to properly record and edit. YouTube University is your greatest resource. Use it! Use social media, there are thousands of articles on the internet on how to utilize your social media platform and how to market your music to enhance engagement on your posts and pages (some of which was mentioned above). Each platform is different, the techniques that work for Instagram, won’t work for Twitter, same goes for Facebook and TikTok (however, the general principals are the same but the techniques are different as each platform has a different audience and way of being used). Each platform has different users, in different age groups, with different expectations of the platform and how it is used. Instagram has a demographic of young adults, and is used as the largest online marketing tool, due in part because of its relation to Facebook, but also because the whole platform consists of nothing but graphics, photos and videos. Facebook has an older demographic and is geared more towards personal interactions and staying in contact with old friends and family members (facebook has the largest user base as well). TikTok is the young persons platform, middle school and high school aged kids are using this platform to create short videos, dances and challenges (think Vine 2.0, just more popular, or what SnapChat was becoming before being “canceled” by Rihanna and the Kardashians/Jenners, and having to pivot to a pay wall platform for females, and that is all I will say about that). Twitter is for everyone, this is where you can post anything and everything. Yes, you are limited to 240 characters but any opinion anyone has or ever had is posted on Twitter. Instagram and Twitter are your best friends for the latest news and trending topics. TikTok is where you go for dance crazes and challenges. Facebook is personal interactions with people you have already had a connection with. Use each wisely and you can see a major difference in the engagement and reactions you get on your content on each platform.
Artists now, partly because they have seen it work time and time again, are more worried about single and hit chasing than they are about creating great songs. This new generation of artists have grown up in the “auto-tune” era of music and have seen countless artists come and go with one hit single. They see these artists create one song that goes viral (or a one hit wonder as it was called before the era of social media), see the lifestyle (or the perceived lifestyle), and money and accolades (whether real or fake) that come with a hit single. They then get it in their mind that, one, it is easy and anyone can do it, and two that that is the sound and song style needed to create a hit. It was said on an interview in Ice-T’s documentary, “The Art of Rap” “When the artist picks a beat that drives the song and that follows the sonic trend of what is already out, you know what the artist just did? Made the producer hot.” This has led to a generation of artists riding a wave and following a trend. Unless you are lucky enough to go viral, this technique is unlikely to have you gain traction as an artist.
There are many different aspects of artist development. As an up and coming artist it is impossible to know where to start. You will have many trial and errors before getting it right (or before reaching your “trial and success” as Ryan Leslie puts it). No one will help you, some because they don’t understand how, some because they don’t believe in you, and some because they don’t think you are worth their time. You have to do everything yourself and people won’t notice or extend a hand until you have proven your worth. Being an independent new artist is a thankless profession. But if you have what it takes to get through all the beginning stages, eventually you will find what works in your marketing, your sound will catch on, people will be attracted to your image, and you will being to create traction. It is a marathon not a sprint.
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