Around 120,000 tracks go up on streaming every day. Luminate’s latest count is closer to 106,000, so take your pick. Either way it’s a number nobody can actually hold in their head.
Now think about your own week. You probably listen to about 40 artists. And it’s been roughly the same 40 for years.
That gap is the problem. Not the algorithm, not the playlist gatekeepers, not your mix being too quiet or your master sounding shitty. There is more music than there is room for music and there always will be now.
People say music isn’t a zero sum game. It is. There are only so many hours in a day, and if someone is listening to that artist they can’t be listening to you at the same time.
For a long time the answer was just be great. Be great and you’d get found. That worked when making a record was hard. Studio time cost real money, distribution needed a deal, and great was rare because great was expensive. When I was at MTV we got about 70 submissions a week, all of them on VHS, and a viewing session took three hours. Seventy tapes. That was the whole intake.
Now anyone can make a decent record in a bedroom over a weekend. The barrier is gone, so great isn’t rare anymore. And rare was the only thing that ever mattered.
If it’s easy for you it’s easy for everyone, which is exactly why it won’t work.
The marketing that still works in music is the marketing nobody wants to do. Sixty shows in rooms that are too small. Making a record with a real band in a real room over months instead of days. Writing to fans by hand. Building something that takes two years before it pays. Turning up in person when a post would have done the job and cost nothing.
None of it scales. That’s the whole reason it works.
A handwritten card and a mail merge can carry exactly the same words. Only one of them lands. The difference is the effort behind it, and people can feel it even if they’d struggle to tell you how.
You also already own something nobody can copy. Where you’re from. Who you’ve played with. What you lived through. Usually the thing you’re slightly embarrassed about. That’s the only real advantage left. Everything else is a commodity now.
And stop asking for a slot. Their ears are full. There’s no gap for you to slide into. If you want three minutes of someone’s week, be honest with yourself about what those three minutes are replacing.
I could be wrong about all of this. I’m still working it out.
But if you read that list and thought I don’t want to do any of that, then that’s your answer. That’s exactly why it would work.
