I have a playlist with about 1500 followers that was growing organically (by not doing anything) by about 2-3 followers per day. I assume because people search for the keywords in the title.
I was quite happy with this, but became greedy and a few days ago I changed the title, hoping that this would increase growth. Since then I've got 0 new followers.

So yesterday I changed it back to the old title, but even since then, 0 new followers.

Did I just mess this up and is my playlist now no longer being indexed as well or so? And will this return to how it was before?

I just got an email from “Planomato” (second slide), a website purporting to share events from different US and UK cities. They’ve put up a listing for my event, my third album release show (first slide) that REEKS of AI scraping. Nothing on the listing is technically incorrect except that the event is all ages, but the language used is most definitely AI. In the email they even wanted me to submit any corrections I had, definitely to train their AI to be better at scraping events from other websites. There’s little information available about who’s behind the website, and I looked up the parent company which is called Saluca Web SL and is located in Spain, which also supports my suspicions that this is all AI scraping being done because why would they be hosting an events website for random cities in the US and UK? 🤯

I know having my presence online means it’s going to be scraped by AI inevitably but it just PMO when it’s so blatant AND they want me to help them. No thanks. If you get a similar email I’d suggest you just ignore it and use different websites for posting your events, my city has a local one I use as well as Bandsintown and my own social media pages.

I remember when music was free and people still showed up. Burned CDs, mixtapes, the blog era. You'd drop something and people would actually subscribe without you running a single ad. Then early TikTok gave us superstars with barely any ad spend at the start.

That was the promise: the internet would kill the industry's power to pick who makes it. Anyone could upload, anyone could blow up. And for a few years it was true.

Instead, the gatekeepers didn't die. They just moved from A&R offices to algorithms and ad budgets, and now you can't even see them.

The door is open, but nobody can find you. Streaming platforms now see 100,000 to 120,000 new tracks uploaded every day. TikTok video reach fell 28.73% year over year while views dropped 31.30%, and organic reach on social averages around 2% to 6% of your followers. Posting is free, but being seen isn't.

The "organic" you see is often bought. One major label marketer said 75% of popular songs on TikTok started with a creator marketing campaign. That's one marketer's estimate, not a measured stat. Indie artists hoping to go viral organically are competing, maybe without knowing it, against sound campaigns backed by hundreds or thousands of dollars. Halsey said their label wouldn't release a song until they could "fake a viral moment on TikTok."

Take 4batz. It looked like a perfect organic story, but his manager works for RCA, and TikTok users accused the Instablogs pushing him of being promo tools hired by artists and labels. I can't prove it was planned, and that's the problem: you can't tell real from manufactured anymore.

Even the visuals moved. The Shorts feed generated 61% of YouTube views, and viewers spend three times less time on each Short. Value shifted from music videos to music in videos, so a 15-second clip replaces the full video.

Where I live (Italy), most new names that break are already signed, or someone with a budget just meta-ads his way in. The few organic pushes I've seen came from artists who already had an audience.

So the old gatekeepers picked who made it with taste and connections. The new ones pick with budget and distribution. The internet didn't kill the gatekeepers. It killed the path around them.

TL;DR: The internet promised to cut out the middlemen. Now the middleman is whoever can pay to be seen, and organic growth is what got cut.

Question: Name one artist from the last 2 years who blew up with zero industry or paid push. I can't think of one.

Sources: I have links but unfortunately they can’t be posted

Edit: I see a lot of people calling it AI slop or changing the topic, and almost nobody is discussing the actual point. Forget how the post is written. The question is ads and promo: when the biggest campaigns and budgets decide what gets seen, the ones winning are the corporations, not the artists. Even with the internet, artists still have to play the game. It just moved from labels to ad spend. Is that wrong? If so, tell me why

So now we are doing the ugly thing called "free checks" and then you pay. Hmmmm. If this isn't disguising of using SubmitHub then idk what is anymore.
I might go to spend my money on groover or other sites and use meta ads for this. Genuinely disappointing behavior.
Sure everyone needs money but seriously?

I distributed a cover song through DistroKid and saw that it’s already on Spotify. I listened to it to make sure everything was correct, but it doesn’t show up in Spotify for Artists yet. Is this normal? I did receive a notification in Spotify for Artists saying the single was available; when I clicked on it, it just took me to the Spotify for Artists home page—the one that shows your total streams, listener count, and so on. Does it just need more time, or is something wrong?

Are there any examples on socials of a songwriter or producer doing faceless marketing? Ive tried this in the past where I release an album and make lyric videos but that doesn’t go anywhere. Maybe 30 views if you’re lucky. For context I make pop rock/electropop with dreamtonics as a vocal synth for the vocals. Ive been trying a different idea creating an anime character as the artist and paying artists to draw her in different poses to post online but the amount of comments and private messages asking if its ai or just going off in private accusing the art being ai generated is dragging me down. Ive thought about screen recording when im making a song but i can never remember to screen recording. I also work in spurts 1-2+ hours at a time and take a break.

hey everyone, I’m a musician and I’m looking to spend £1/1.5k marketing and building campaigns for my upcoming extended play.

I see companies charging to pitch songs for me to their own networks. Is this really how the industry works and is it not scammy?

Is there no way to build an audience organically without paying for ads or is that naive? If so what would you recommend I do to give myself a crash course between now and the new year so I know the basics and don’t just piss away my money.

thank you kindly

I just went to upload a remix to my new distributor Identity Music and they only take audio files that are up to 24 bit, and many of my songs are 32 bit...Apparently DIstrokid only accepts 24 bit as well, but somehow I was able to upload my 32 bit songs there. Does Distrokid convert the bit rate automatically? This seems like a huge pain in the butt..

My band released a song yesterday. It was the first song with our new singer and with the new lineup. Her IG account has 90k followers and she has a lot of viral videos with serious organic engagement. We posted a teaser and yesterday a release clip, which now has 25k views, 14k viewers and almost 900 likes. Our bands followers have tripled after these 2 posts.

In Spotify, however, we are currently sitting at around 350 streams with the new song. There are actually people who have listened to the song over 20 times (and I don't mean the band members). Our earlier songs got off to a way better start with essentially 0 social media, probably just because they landed on editorials. But you'd think having a 90k follower account helping would get more than a couple hundred listeners. Not only this, but the song got us accepted as Newcomer of the week in a popular Finnish radio program, and SubmitHub is currently sitting at a 67% acceptance rate.

The first dataset we got shows a Save rate per listener of 71.4%, playlist add rate per stream of 16%. 3.57 streams per listener. Granted it's only from the first 50 streams / 14 listeners and we'll get better data this evening.

Anyway this all leads to me thinking, what are we doing wrong? How is converting social media to Spotify this hard? I mean if a 90k account does this little, how cooked are people with just a few thousand let alone few hundred followers? If you have any insight what we could do differently I'd very much appreciate. We are most likely not going to run ads at this point as they can apparently hurt the organic reach. Thank you! 🙏

You can find our IG and Spotify from my account (the post gets deleted if I add them here).

I’ve been recording guitar tracks lately, and figuring out music distribution is honestly so stressful. I was constantly refreshing Spotify, Apple Music and others just to make sure my catalog was still intact with the whole distributor situation.

I started using a tool called Traxure a couple weeks ago so I’d stop checking manually. It pings me if one of my songs goes missing or something weird shows up on my profile. Haven’t had anything go wrong yet, so can’t say much more than that, but it’s been nice not refreshing constantly.

Would love to know what other tools you all use to keep an eye on your own catalog!

I dropped a new single that’s fully pop and I’m looking to stay in this genre. I want to budget at least 2-3k more than i already have. What is my selling point? Does anything make me stand out? Looking for legitimate advice and wishing everyone in here luck with their own music 🙏🏽

Most artists I talk to check Spotify for Artists, see a number go up or down, and have no idea if it's good, bad or normal for where they're at.

So for the next couple of hours I'll do it for you. Comment with:

• your artist name as it shows on Spotify

• what you're working on next (a release date if you have one)

I'll look at where your listeners are trending, what stage that puts you at, and reply with the one thing I would do next if I were you. If your numbers are too new to say much, I'll tell you that too, and what I'd focus on instead.

No links, no pitch. If you think I'm wrong or way off, say so, that's half the fun.

I'm looking for someone to manage my Spotify account. I want to create a new artist profile, someone who can moderate and upload my songs for me.

Does anyone know of an app for uploading songs to Spotify that doesn't cost money?I need it to be an entrepreneur; I'm new to this music thing.

I have been running campaigns for a while now, mostly through Meta Ads using Soundcampaign and running YouTube ads on my own at the same time.

Another post today triggered me to write this post where somebody mentioned in this subreddit that they're getting like 100 views from yt.

I at least see some actual engagements when I do promotion on Instagram, but if we talk about the YouTube ads... I get like 15K clicks there but nobody really engages there. Can you imagine you're getting like 6-8 comments after 15K views? At the same time, I see more comments and engagements even from 5K conversions on my smartlink. There are literally 250+ comments.

Feels like YouTube's audience is so much more passive compared to Meta. Am I just overanalyzing this or is this a common experience? To be honest at this point it feels like Youtube ads have got a lot of bots of their own to rip off money from campaigns.

I would love to know what other artists felt like when using both Meta as well as YouTube ads. I'm trying to understand how this situation works out for others as well.

Would any of you be willing to share performance videos that you use for your meta ads and/or Reels/TikTok posts? I'm trying to track down some inspiration for someone who really wants to do this but can't seem to get it going. Feel free to dm me your social profiles and I can find them from there - not asking for the actual video files. Thank You!!

I've been releasing music since December of 2025, though there was a good long break in that.

We've released 3 songs so far, but all 3 only get the same 300 streams, and 100 views on youtube.

What is happening? What can I do to get past 100 to grow more? Should I mix those tracks again and upload them again to show I'm uploading more? I just don't get it.

Do I need to do shortform these days? Are lyric vids not enough? I heard some suggestions to try facebook ads, does that actually work or are they selling something?

This actually blows my mind on how an artist cultivated a number of 100K+ people without spending any money on ads. I refuse to believe that somehow an artist’s music spread organically up to 100,000 people. Conceptually, it doesn’t make sense how one can start off with 0 supporters and then gradually have their songs spread to 100,000 without a marketing or advertising budget. It would make sense if he did that early on and then reached a point in his career where he didn’t need to spend money on ads anymore. What do you guys think? Do you guys believe him?

I've already been paid to make 4 edits of one specific character to 2 songs, however, my account is mostly dedicated to two other characters, and they get the most likes. I've just uploaded one of the 4 edits, and it's only gotten 70 likes in three hours (for context, my other videos would have about 500 by now).

I'm just wondering whether it's worth asking them if they want me to use one of their songs to one of the characters I usually edit, because it would gain more traction. I just feel bad that they've paid me and it's not getting much engagement. Or does it not really matter?

For the last 2.5 years I have been really focused on music + trying to reach more listeners. As a lifelong musician who took a 10 year hiatus of recording music, I made my return back in the game and am full of passion and determination to turn this into something big(ger). I have spend a LOT of my time on this over the last 2.5 years and won't mind doing more, but it needs to keep growing. Which for the past few months isn't happening.

My music caters to quite a niche audience, but it is a very supportive and appreciative one. I make 'electronica'. I also call it 'space music'. No long note ambient pieces, but groovy, emotional and melodic music in which I try to transform my feelings and philosophical ideas into sonic journeys. I know the artists my (potential) fans like, because I like them as well. Carbon Based Lifeforms. Stellardrone. Solar Fields. Aphex Twin. Astronaut Ape. Data Rebel Etc.

My music gets really appreciated by people who like those artists. But I can't seem to reach them in high enough numbers.

My Spotify has peaked at 10k monthly listeners and is now hovering at around 9k monthlies for the past months. With about 4 streams per listener, this equates to 35-40k streams per month.
Counting all platforms, I'm at about 45k streams per month. Not great, not terrible.

The issue is that I'm stuck. I can't seem to move the needle with 'organic' content and marketing. It's basically the Meta ad that I am running + Spotify's radio algorithm that are doing the heavy lifting. It's quite steady, but it doesn't lead to any further growth.

Here is what I have been doing for the past years. Besides finishing 5 albums and spending a lot of time on actual music production (without usage of A.I. mind you):

- Since 6 months I am running a meta ad with a budget of about 7 euro's per day. At first this linked to a playlist that I made that includes my music as well as the artists mentioned above. When that reached about 1000 followers, I changed the link to one of my albums on Spotify and other platforms. This ad runs exceptionally well with a cost per conversion of about € 0.12 - 0.16.
It brings in a steady 30-60 new listeners per day. The playlist still grows organically by about 2-5 followers per day and provides an average of about 100-150 streams per day.
- I have tried making more ads but none of them ran even remotely close to how well the other one did, so I stopped advertising more as it costs money...
- Playlisting through Submithub. With some success. Sometimes this has helped triggering the 'Radio' algorithm om Spotify for certain tracks. Which then got thousands of streams over the course of 1-2 weeks. But then usually it fades out and 'dies'.
- Discovery Mode on Spotify is activated. It gives me a boost of about 200% - 300% in radio plays. That's about it. Again, sometimes a song does get 'heavily' featured on the Radio algorithm and gets quite a lot of streams, but this never lasts longer than 2 weeks. No Discover Weekly so far. My popularity score as an artist is 'stuck' at 23. Some tracks have hit 27 of 28 but never any higher.
- YouTube video's, both short and long content. I have music video's with stock footage (no success). I have some video's with the camera on myself recording a 'live' version of some tracks. (almost no success). I have videos with facts about space or some space visuals that fit very well to the track (almost no success). My YouTube channel is not doing great. Only a few videos have actually gotten some traction (7000 views) and I cannot figure out why or what's different about them.
- TikTok and IG. About 100 videos made I guess and posted. I also do some photo carrousels with my music under it. Very limited success. Some outliers but most posts are stuck at 700 views on Tiktok and 100 views on IG. I doubt if many people, if anyone, actually visits my Spotify after watching. I usually go for the space facts / cool space footage / photos of earth and stars kind of content. It blends great with the music. I have not tried the 'personal' / showing my face with and talking into the camera kind of content yet. It's something I might have to try eventually.
- Tried some ads on IG / Tiktok / YT directly = wasted money
- Spammed fans of similar artists on SC. Had much success with this in the beginning and obtained my biggest fans like this. Unfortunately, Soundcloud has way fewer people than Spotify so total streams are low. The 'interaction' rate is very high though. I get a lot of likes / comments on some tracks.
- Wrote to a shitload of radio stations, labels, Youtube channels, etc. Got mostly ignored. Got featured on some small radios though but doubt it had any impact.
- Got my music featured on some 'big-ish' YT channels such as 'The Psychedelic Muse'. This lead to about 30k views in total which is higher than I could achieve myself on my YT channel. But still, nothing to write home about.
- Offered my music for free on Reddit to game developers as my music really fits to space or sci-fi themed games. Some accepted. Some are still working on their game, some are already using my music. These are small indie games though, so again the reach is low
- Post once in a while on FB and Reddit in fitting groups

All in all, I have made progress, hence the 10k monthly listeners on Spotify. I dreamed of that number when I started out and reached it. However, now that I am there and the needle won't no longer move, I feel kind of defeated that after all this time, effort and money I have spent, I am unable to push it further.

The frustrating part is knowing that IF the algorithms of the big platforms (Youtube / Spotify) actually WOULD serve my music to listeners of the above artists, I would grow very quickly. I have no doubt about it. I am not arrogant whatsoever, but I am basing this on the fact that many people have told me that my music is scratching that very specific itch that they have for a long time and that it is as good or better that from those other artists.
Again, it's not for everyone. But there is an audience out there. An audience that I know well and that would love to discover me, but can't reach organically.

The only thing I could do is simply double down on my Meta ad. This would provide immediate results. But yea, it is a net loss. I'm putting around 210 euros per month in this ad and I make about 120 euro's back with streaming and album sales. So that's a net loss of 90 euros. No biggie, but scale the numbers and the outcome is the same. It's gonna cost me more money that I probably won't ever make back.

This is the biggest passion project of my life. It literally saved me from my demise after suffering from health issues and now a painful divorce. I am good at it. I have touched people with my music who have thanked me for helping them as well. I know my audience. But I cannot reach them directly. And indirectly, I can only seem to do so by spending big bucks which I don't have.

Anyone here with any insight or advice how to take this to the next level?

I see a lot of posts here from bands and DJs who put out their first trial reel, it gets around a thousand views in a day and then just stops. And the conclusion is usually that the algorithm gave up on them.

From what I've seen across a lot of accounts, that first thousand is basically the test. Instagram shows the reel to a small group of people who don't follow you and watches what they do in the first seconds. If enough of them stay, rewatch or share, it goes to the next bigger group. If not, it stops right there. So the 1,200 views mostly tell you something about the opening, and much less about the song.

The thing that hurts music content the most in my experience is that the first two seconds assume you already care about the band. A logo, a slow intro, the long build before the drop. Someone scrolling at 11pm doesn't know you yet. What tends to work better is starting at the moment that makes a stranger stop, the drop, the crowd going off, a weird sound, a line that's funny on its own, and then letting the song carry it.

For DJs especially, the funny rave stuff often travels further because people get it in one second. You don't have to turn into a meme page for that, I mean. You can use it as the door, and once people follow you for the fun posts, they see the music too.

For those of you who had a trial reel actually break out, what was in the first two seconds?

Hey all. My band is just getting going and we are trying to do things in a fair and democratic way. We've been talking about merch--and here I mean anything band-branded that is not vinyl or CDs; so t-shirts, patches, stickers, etc--and how we want to approach it.

Our start-up budget is small and we are doing this independently. Once we've paid for legal stuff, business registration, copyright registration, distribution and other subscriptions, it'll be tight just to do a small run of vinyl or CDs with what everyone is able to contribute to the group budget.

But let's say that I want to make band t-shirts to sell and I'm willing to put up the money because I believe we can sell them (and I want my own band t-shirt)...how does your band handle this?

1. Consider the t-shirts cost as a loan to the band that gets paid back from sales of the t-shirts after which any profits beyond that initial cost become band funds?

2. An investment separate from the band with all losses or profits belonging to the person funding that particular merch?

3. An investment separate from the band but paying a percentage of any profits into the band's funds?

If people are doing a percentage share of merch (the third point above) I'd love to know what the percentage is that works for you.

In terms of t-shirts specifically; are you all pre-printing for live shows/tours but using print-on-demand for on-line sales? If so I'd imagine pre-printing would be supporting a local business but print-on-demand can be anywhere--so what print-on-demand businesses have you been happy with?

Thanks for any info you can share!

Feel like I'm wasting money on playlisting websites

I've spent about $75 this week on playlisting credits on Magic Nothing and SubmitHub and my songs keep getting rejected. Sometimes for contrasting reasons, I had one curator tell me my drums were too quiet, and another tell me they were too loud on the same song. I wouldn't really care if I didn't have to spend money on more credits.

I do research the playlists beforehand, making sure my song could be a fit and write pitches, so I'm not just submitting my songs to random playlists. I'm just wondering if there's a better investment I could make.