How Does A New Artist Grab And Keep Our Attention In Today’s Music Landscape?
I’ve seen many up-and-coming musicians successfully adopt these marketing strategies
Labels are having a difficult time breaking new artists. There’s been a lot of online chatter about a Billboard article from August that detailed music executive’s frustrations with the current musical landscape.
In the article, the industry folks interviewed provided the following reasons:
Radio is losing its marketing power.
Social media and video games are fragmenting people’s attention away from music.
The increased number of artists signed to labels in recent years has disabled labels from seriously pushing one mega-artist.
As someone who follows the music industry closely and repeatedly finds new and exciting young artists, I have some thoughts on the issue.
The Billboard article concludes that maybe labels need to lower their market expectations for mass-appeal artists and instead focus on “superfans” and marketing costs across a wider pool of artists.
While I appreciate adaptation, I don’t think the overall goal of lowering mass appeal expectations is necessary.
Mass-appeal artists are growing across many genres, and we must consider what those young artists do.
This article has a dual purpose:
Firstly, I want to give budding artists a blueprint to follow. Hopefully, this blueprint will help them see the necessary steps they’ll need to take to maximize their audience and increase their reach.
Secondly, I want music listeners to understand why they’re listening to certain new artists and how those artists are pushing through the noise and getting recommended to them on social media/streaming platforms
I have five strategies successful young artists implement today to stand out. In each section, I am providing the action steps a young artist is taking to excel in each strategy.
Capitalize On The Viral Moment
When an artist experiences a viral moment, their most ambitious dreams come true. Within a day, a viral moment can thrust a young artist straight into the mainstream.
Like many of us can attest on Medium, creating viral content increases our follower count and engagement rate. The same applies to musicians.
Once a song, music video, or meme goes viral, the artist will receive more eyeballs than a label’s marketing team could manufacture on their best days. Further, the rarity of the viral moment means that they are hard to predict and anticipate. Still, if and when a viral moment arrives for a young artist, they must capitalize on it.
Fast.
For example, look at Ice Spice and her life-changing song, “Munch.” The New York drill smash hit erupted largely thanks to the song’s music video. In it, Spice is twerking in meme-worthy fashion, wearing eye-grabbing clothes, and drawing us into her world with her unique ginger curls. The video was just as intoxicating as it was polarizing. Many people who watched the footage initially commented about how the song felt like a joke or dismissed Spice as a lucky one-hit-wonder.
Over the next 12 months, Ice Spice proved all naysayers wrong.
In August of 2022, when Munch dropped, Ice Spice had just 150,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. By March 2023, she had over 30 million.
How did she accomplish this?
In the early weeks after “Munch,” Ice Spice did the best thing an up-and-coming artist could do — she didn’t waste any time. From the start of the viral moment, you could find her interviewing with mainstream platforms, tweeting consistently, and meeting with high-profile stars. Ultimately, it’s not about how you get the viral moment but what you do with it.
Moreover, in the following months, “Munch” Ice Spice continued to capitalize on the song’s success with more music. During this time, she maintained a high dosage of quality, sensational hip-hop hits. The songs were short, memorable, and featured music videos that were just as clickable as “Munch.”
In early 2023, Spice also made the brilliant move of working with her fans to create a fanbase name. After a quick X poll, the people picked, you guessed it, “Munchkins”. Thereafter, the Munchkins became an unofficial member of Spice’s marketing team and became forever attached to the viral song that made their beloved artist famous.
From a viral moment, Spice built one of the most inspiring come-up stories in the music industry.
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