In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after many years of working extremely hard and even touring the US. Among many things, my primary advice to them was to start live streaming, particularly on Reddit. By the time 2021 arrived, they had more than tripled their social media presence and doubled their listener count. The continued to stream on Reddit throughout the year before recently switching to TikTok, and in the process garnered over 1 million new followers, 150k monthly listeners, sold out an entire US tour and their music is being licensed left and right.
That's just one example of countless many, and it's the way the entire industry is moving. If you're not on board with that, then you're behind the times, because you don't need a million dollar music video budget to become famous and you never did. Financial support has always been a very well-understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary promotional activities."
Which definitely does seem like a missed opportunity for the streaming platforms. Maybe one of them needs to step up with the equivalent of Stream's Greenlight programme— an opportunity to temporarily have your stuff listed alongside the AAA content, and if it hits whatever the numbers are, they'll buy it from you?
I was led to a oddly human travel show and watched it go from a few thousand to millions of subscribers over the past couple years, they were recently on the Ukrainian / Russian border the day before the invasion talking to locals and ended up leaving on a refugee train in 1080p60, 3+ million views.
Questionable character I don’t want to promote and some of the episodes I don’t want to be associated with, but that’s tvesque isn’t it?
Repeat for true crime, history, cooking, children, educational, political commentary, informercials…
If everyone starts live streaming reddit and tiktok, what will make certain groups stand out versus others? I would guess there would be an opportunity for paid promotion, maybe by Reddit or TikTok themselves.
Not that there is anything wrong with considering success to be whatever you achieve without outside funds trying to promote you, it all simply depends on personal goals and what you are willing to give up to gain an edge.
I've quite literally never once seen a musician expend effort toward learning marketing and business without finding success.
I also don’t know all your marketing knowledge. Maybe you know a whole set of things I am completely unaware of.
What I do know is success as an artist seems to be a weird blend of savvy, talent, luck … and who knows what else.
I have a bad reaction when people make blanket statements like you are doing, because it has a hint of victim blaming.
You initially added nothing to the conversation, except for a very brief and vague claim about how you may know some people who contradict my own experiences. So, I'm not sure what kind of response you were hoping for, but a little snark never hurt anyone, and you're overreacting to it.
If you have an actual example of a musician who studied marketing and business but was unsuccessful, I'd love to hear about it, because I've simply never seen it happen.
I genuinely think you might have access to knowledge or perspective I lack, and I would be very curious whether there are specific materials or resources you would recommend.
It seems like many markets and industries are initially dominated by indie, creator-driven work, but then gradually as they mature and become more commodified, agencies and corporations start to dominate. Look at YouTube-style streaming, or digital game distribution.
Additionally - 15k monthly listeners on Spotify is a pretty great starting point. Most indie artists, regardless of quality, will struggle ever even reach that without a lot of outside help (or luck).
And specifically to your emphasis on needing funding, that's just not the case anymore. Everything is cheap. You can live stream from your phone in 480p with a $20 ring light, and fans of the content will still throw money at you. It happens all day long on Twitch.
> Additionally - 15k monthly listeners on Spotify is a pretty great starting point. Most indie artists, regardless of quality, will struggle ever even reach that without a lot of outside help (or luck).
Again though, that was after almost a decade of gigs and touring and marketing. All it took was opening their eyes to those series of opportunities that platforms provide, and then applying all of their effort toward those instead of pursuing the traditionally prescribed music industry path.
This is seeing the survivors. Even if there are 100 new big YouTube channels per year for some saturated niche. That number might practically speaking basically mean zero if 10 million people every year earnestly try to succeed in that niche. The hit rate on this example is 1 in 100K.
In the past the only way to do that was to get the backing of these massive capital pools, and dance when and where they say dance, all to get a little trickle down to that artist. Even if that fame resulted in fortune, it was still the smallest piece of the pie.
When someone has X subscribers paying $Y/month directly to them, with fairly low overhead costs of their content creation, they simply aren't going to be in other parts of the workforce and definitely aren't going to be begging labels, because its good enough for most for the time being.
So it doesn't really matter about the saturation in the same way you assumed.
The question was whether any artist can become a massive success without a record label. 10 years ago this didn't even make sense to ask. Today, I can almost believe it.
I think the goal from the artists perspective is to reach the most people while reducing advertising costs.
The goal for the consumer is to be able to easily get the music they like at low costs. This is getting met, but I'd like to see the costs lowered. (consumer bias)
Currently the environment is benefiting early entreprenuers of streaming platforms. The costs are lowering for artist which is also good.
I'd like to see the balance to continue to shift more to the artists, but not to the point where one artist can dominate over another.
This. Just look at TLC, one of the biggest R&B groups of their time, and yet they were personally broke.
All of my close musician friends generally have teams that deal with those sorts of things, but not necessarily from their label (although the more famous ones playing large rooms/stadiums definitely go through their labels).
These are massively different economies of scale than the labels deal with. Unless we see technological breakthroughs that make scaling easy for a DIY musician, the labels look well protected for the next generation.
You're mistaken and only thinking in terms of major labels and Beyonce. There are thousands of indie labels working at that small scale, along with countless major label "baby bands" (as they call them).
> Unless we see technological breakthroughs that make scaling easy for a DIY musician, the labels look well protected for the next generation.
The entire premise of my original comment was about how technology has made scaling easy for independent musicians. It's already happening. That's the whole conversation we're having here.
Indie bands have always done this grind on their own -- I remember all the shows at Glasslands and the lofts and bars around Brooklyn 15 or so years ago, which were in that 150-300 cap range. Or my friends' college bands back in the early 2000s. Labels definitely weren't involved with any of that, it was just a bunch of musicians in a rented van driving to cities crashing on couches. Once you start playing 1000+ cap rooms (or stadiums, in the case of a few friends), the administrative part takes more time than the music part, and I don't really know any artists that care to deal with that. You need lawyers, tour managers, PR people, etc.
It definitely doesn't take a major label like it used to, but an indie label that can support you in that work is often necessary.
Record labels that the likes of “Sub-Radio” are suited to have always be and will continue to act as taste makers and curators, and not large money making organisations (and for the better). Even the large indies like Sub Pop, Stones Throw, and K7 operate in completely different seperate financial and reach realms than Universal, Warner and the like.
If someone becomes “Tik Tok famous” overnight then they’re likely to seek management and guess who that manager is most likely to be aligned to? Major labels aren’t going anywhere.
This is the important thing for labels to focus on in the future. The actual logistics around the physical world is something you cannot handle if you are also seeking time to record new music and practice. On the web however things are getting easier for everyone and the value proposition of record labels vanishes.
I said 150k unique listeners, not streams. Also, you're entirely wrong about this. The 100k-250k range is a very distinct tier of band, and those bands are ubiquitously on record labels. So, your insistence that labels aren't even interested in them is the exact opposite of reality.
> Record labels that the likes of “Sub-Radio” are suited to have always be and will continue to act as taste makers and curators, and not large money making organisations (and for the better). Even the large indies like Sub Pop, Stones Throw, and K7 operate in completely different seperate financial and reach realms than Universal, Warner and the like.
They operate at different scales because of the overall size of the rosters and the major label's ability to literally throw away cash at every turn just to maintain superiority. That doesn't mean major labels don't manage projects that are operating at smaller scales, because they absolutely do. They're called "subsidiaries" and they fit directly in the category that you're pretending doesn't exist.
> Major labels aren’t going anywhere.
Nobody said they were, so your entire argument was made with a false premise. The point was that they aren't necessary anymore.
It is, and increasingly, but not obviously.
Labels have money and power. If you have enough money and/or power, you can always be some form of gatekeeper. It used to be studio access. Nowadays that's increasingly a commodity. What is increasingly more expensive is attention, so the labels shifted towards being publishers, building their own channels of distribution, to provide ears and eyes to artists in need.
If an artist has already broken through the wall, and has the attention, labels are in a very awkward position, in terms of their value proposition.
> Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.
Which bring us to this part: There is no viable career strategy for most artists, period.
Artists obviously don't wanna believe that, so they think of labels as the solution to their issues (they are not).
Labels on the other hand only need artists that they think do maybe have a viable career strategy. The bigger the label, the more able and willing they are to take high risk/high reward bets, but relatively a lot less so than they did years ago, simply because it's not necessary anymore because of the dramatic democratisation of access to music production quality.
Put simply: Labels want artist that don't need them, but also don't realise, that they don't need them. In 2022, if you are an artist, and labels are getting terribly interested, you are probably a lot closer to not needing them than you think.
Your options have either been to fight and more than likely fail (or succeed with one viral song and then fail) or give in a join them. However recently, the tide has been turning because labels haven't figured out how to gatekeep things like TikTok (yet).
You don't need a label to distribute your music on major music services. https://www.tunecore.com/
That being said, the real challenge for independent artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists. I'm not keen on the details of the Spotify algorithm, but I imagine labels do help with this, and being on the same label as a popular artist would increase your chances of showing up on that artists' song radio.
This mindset is unfortunately why most musicians fail to gain traction. Relying on an algorithm for success is fallacy, because all of these algorithms are based on input, not random chance. If you're not steadily supplying new listeners through your own direct efforts, then the algorithm isn't going to perceive value and you won't get any benefits from it. Playlisting represents approximately 1% of the independent music industry puzzle.
Parent may have been referring to promotional deals (getting onto official Spotify playlists, Discover Weekly, etc) or special royalty rates. The major labels have tons of leverage, and they definitely cut deals that entry-level artists don't have access to.
First 2 Eleven is a YouTube cover band who I believe are still fully independent and
On the streaming side, musicians like Danielle Allard are killing it, though sometimes in a scenario like this it's unclear if it's even the goal of the person to "go mainstream" vs just carving out a cozy and sufficiently monetized space to achieve financial stability and practice their craft.
I've not heard of the others, but Tessa is on a label, T∆G Music, which has a global distribution deal with a subsidiary of Sony. She launched her career on the Make Music label as well.
How many self sustained artists in the music industry are there, comparing against the self-claimed ones?