Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.
Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently).
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."
How long does that work for though and for how many artists? If you get on a new platform early you can find success, but once the platform becomes swamped with content it's impossible to stand out without creativity, luck...and funding. Unless you're lucky enough to find the next platform.
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).
I think you're maybe putting too much emphasis on the platforms, particularly on them being a single opportunity that goes away at some point. Every platform, regardless of whether it's a specific function like Spotify or a content hub like YouTube, is a separate venue representing a series of opportunities, not a singular event. If you need evidence of that, you can find countless new YouTube channels finding success in the same markets which have been "saturated" for years -- some since the beginning of the platform.
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.
> countless new YouTube channels finding success in the same markets
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.
This is only sort of true, basically music artists and other content creators can support themselves now. They don't have to go work at Wendy's or learn a different marketable skill now.
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.
Why would you need more than 100 new creators per year in a specific niche? How many tries to fill the niche doesn't matter, what matters is if the niche gets filled. And today more niches gets filled than ever before, at least from what I see. So the problem isn't that the modern system doesn't successfully make people able to support themselves with these things, but that it lowered the barrier to entry to much that many more people fight over the same pie so you have many more losers than before.
Ignoring that your hypothetical examples are using extremely unrealistic numbers, the overall point you're trying to make is actually right in line with the success rate of any startup, which makes perfect sense and is the entire point. There is not an infinite amount of societal bandwidth to allow for 100% of everyone to be successful at everything, but the startups who stay flexible enough to pivot and take advantage of new opportunities are typically the ones who find sustainable success.
Both can be true. The question wasn't if every artist can make it - it's not like small artists get rich off record labels.
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 I get the point. Advertising has merits, so does being a first adopter. It's possible to make it without advertising or being a first adopter, it's also possible to get swept under the rug.
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.
Is it possible this method was doable for them without the backing of bigger money because it's sort of novel?
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.
That's an argument which could be made for any market or industry. There are obviously a finite amount of people in the world, and those people have a finite amount of time to find and listen to music, so there is always competition and certain artists are going to stand out among others -- that's the nature of human preference. But that doesn't automatically mean a few are successful and everyone else fails. It's a spectrum of success which, as it turns out, is directly proportional to the effort invested toward getting better and producing more attractive content.
I think it has more of an effect on markets where the marginal cost of an additional sale (or attention) is effectively zero, which results in very bimodal winner (or top few winners) take all type situations.
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.
If things in life were directly proportional to effort and similar things. We’d be living in a meritocracy. Society doesn’t work that way. There are most certainly people who failed while putting in more and better effort than others who succeeded.
No, there are people who put more effort toward the wrong things, and that's why they didn't find the same success. The best songwriter in the world could be incredibly unsuccessful if they don't have any concept of how to market themselves properly, so sitting in their studio practicing guitar all day is technically effort, but it isn't doing anything to progress their career. That's exactly why most musicians fail. They don't bother googling "how to be a band" or learning any of the necessary skills to be successful independently, and instead spend all of their time hoping that someone will "discover" them.
I've quite literally never once seen a musician expend effort toward learning marketing and business without finding success.
Then I would question what material they were learning, or how much effort they actually expended. I've watched even the worst songwriters and performers find success by grinding away at the right stones, so "I know a guy who tried Facebook ads and it didn't work" doesn't mean anything.
I don’t know who you are or what your perspective is but I am a music industry professional in New York. I also don’t know how you are defining 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.
It's somewhat disturbing that you would claim I'm "victim blaming" by asking for details on what these "unsuccessful marketing musicians" actually studied. "Victim" is a wholly inappropriate word to describe being unsuccessful at something.
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 would never refer to a specific real life artist as an example of a failure!
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.
But the argument is valid for most hit-based markets/industries, isn't it?
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.
Out of curiosity, did they book their own tour? What sort of rooms are they playing? And who is dealing with their music publishing?
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).
They handle everything themselves. The recent tour was 200-300 cap rooms, with a couple of large clubs in the mix. Booking can definitely be a grind, but at the end of the day, the booking agencies are saving you about 5 hours of work in exchange for ~15% of gross, which they hope translates to at least $150 to make their own 2 hours of work worth it. But if you're grossing $1,000 from each gig, that's $30/hr that could be going to a band member instead of some third party, presuming somebody has the motivation to do it and they're not already making more at a day job.
Yeah for sure, the percentage take on these sorts of things adds up. But I do think there is a point where it starts making more sense to have a team as an artist gets larger.
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.
> if you're grossing $1,000 from each gig, that's $30/hr that could be going to a band member instead of some third party
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.
> These are massively different economies of scale than the labels deal with.
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.
The way I see it, there is a small window of opportunity for organic growth on TikTok right now, but very soon it will become pay to play. That's the playbook for every social site out there: leave everything free during the growth days, after growth starts peaking, start charging for every valuable thing on the site.
I was mistakenly telling people the "small window" for TikTok was closing over a year ago, but it's still open wide enough to fit a 747 through it. TikTok's algorithm, in particular, is actually extremely friendly toward user content, and that means there will always be room for organic growth on the platform, as is still true for every platform (even the dead ones like Facebook).
TikTok is able to stretch the organic period because of the absurd funding environment right now. It's parent company has raised $8 billion and is valued at $400 billion while still private! When the music stops they will surely charge for virality somehow
There are loads of people making indie movies/docs out there, I think, it's more a question of exposure— there's a long tail of them that get uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube and then just die there. There's some limited curation going on with aggregator channels (eg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA), but it's not mass-market in the way that a Netflix series is.
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?
Outside narrative driven / sports / blue planet level stuff, isn’t a huge part of TV just YouTube/Podcasts/etc now? Curation and everything built in.
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…
Sure kinda, but I'd say that's a new industry rather than an opening of the old one. It's kinda like saying tiktok replaced concerts and singles for musicians, kinda true but not what the parent guy is saying. Tiktok enhances the path to getting success on the traditional platforms rather than simply replacing it. That's not generally been the case for youtubers, though a strong argument could be made for podcast i think.
> 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."
This. Just look at TLC, one of the biggest R&B groups of their time, and yet they were personally broke.
Curious question, if streaming services reach the point where they enable indy artists to actually become super stars (using TikTok for marketing), doesn't that move the role, and power, from label to those streaming services and social media (for marketing)?
No, because the label never had that power to begin with. They were always at the whim of social media and other factors. The trick is to not dedicate yourself to one platform, because they should all be treated as separate venues with different types of audiences (because they are). Social media sites are tools, not goals.
150k streams p/month is absolutely nothing compared to the artists that the major labels are interested in.
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.
> 150k streams p/month is absolutely nothing compared to the artists that the major labels are interested in.
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.
> 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.
marketing is not free and “it just went viral” is bullshit. yes, the internet is available to anyone. buying visibility is not though. that is the main problem for anyone who creates anything, and not something you can solve by working hard.
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.
I think that while it's been "technically" possible to have an audience without labels for at least a decade, it's been incredibly difficult because of all the barriers to entry that labels have put on the industry. YouTube has Vevo. Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make.
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).
Yep. I'm a verified artist on YouTube, TikTok, Bilibili, Spotify, etc. and all it took was a $15/year Distrokid subscription.
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.
> 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.
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.
You're right that getting music onto DSPs has been commoditized.
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.
You highlighted the difference though. Independent doesn't necessarily mean entry-level, and indie artists who do manage to develop large followings on Spotify are absolutely in a position to negotiate better rates. Regardless of recent controversies, the company doesn't actually want to lose any artist from the platform, because there is an actual tipping point when the availability of the total global music catalogue influences consumer purchasing decisions. Spotify took advantage of that tipping point and won the battle when Pandora and others failed to secure large enough catalogs.
Pretty sure indie artists get paid less by the streaming services, but the much bigger deal is getting onto the playlists. Spotify sells playlist/discover spots, and the only artists who can afford the fees are the ones who are backed by labels.
Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc.
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.
> Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc.
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.
I'm not saying it's impossible, it happens for sure. But the death of labels has been predicted for the last 20 years and somehow they've managed to continue to make themselves relevant.
Check out how Frank Ocean released 2 albums at a time to A) get out of his Def Jam contract then
B) release another album (same week?) in a deal with Apple Music. He was black-balled by the industry after. Not another Apple Music partnership since afaik
