Knucklehead
HMFIC
You don’t think Kendrick, SZA, Schoolboy Q, Isaiah Rashad, Jay Rock amongst others is an impressive roster of talent for an independent label?
Does anyone in here actually know how records and artists are broken in the music industry today? (2025-2026)
- Thread starter trillanova
- Start date
as a person trying to break multiple ppl right Now and I just finished a music marketing course. I can tell you it’s a lot of things at play that you guys don’t even know about.
I can’t be bothered to type a dissertation but just know if you’re making music and you are actually trying to blow up now in 2025 your content creation game for social media needs to be on point and not just talking TikTok I mean TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. All of them and you NEED will need an exorbitant amount of capital too.
You Damn near need a marketing specialist to blow fukk an anr.
I can’t be bothered to type a dissertation but just know if you’re making music and you are actually trying to blow up now in 2025 your content creation game for social media needs to be on point and not just talking TikTok I mean TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. All of them and you NEED will need an exorbitant amount of capital too.
You Damn near need a marketing specialist to blow fukk an anr.
- branding
- marketing
- promo
- playlisting
- PR/publicist
- radio
Just looking at radio to take a song to the billboards just on the urban side and get it to the top 10 will run you at least $75K-$100K
Ol’Otis
The Picasso of the Ghetto
trillanova
The Truth
Damn so the A&R game is fcked and pivoted to basically short form content likeability.
The fact that there’s no workaround social media sucks a little bit because you live and die by the algorithms and that’s by design.
It makes it so an artist has to keep doing these stupid TikTok trends for their career instead of focusing on the craft, which in certain ways cheapens the art and the artist. They’ll all be doing the same shyt at one point just to stay in the algo no matter what kind of music you make.
When you say exorbitant fees minus what you said was spent on radio, could you shed a little more light on what it is they have to pay for just to get out there?
I think it’s a lot of great artists out there who will never get on even a little because it seems the new blueprint or even just to learn how to navigate the map is not really shown. There’s a few different sources I’ve seen over the years but the information seems generic and based off of the previous iteration of the music industry when it’s clearly not like that anymore. It’s not even the same game it was in 2023 and it’s obvious.
bourgeoisie tall freak
Superstar
The biggest problem with social media for artist is that when artists create content they have to center it around their music because if they don't they come across more like an influencer and that is TOUGH because it's hard to create a situation where your music will be playing at every angle without it being corny or annoying.
The key to making GOOD content is to always ask yourself why would it get shared amongst random ppl you dont know and usually things only get shared if its either: entertaining, educational, or engaging. People need to see value in that content and have reason as to why they should share it.
If I had money to blow I would just invest in marketing specialist that's understands this thoroughly. Just to PROPERLY brand, market, and promote yourself just that side of the music business alone can run you a solid $100K+. People forget that the music business is still a BUSINESS if you want to at least break even without running in the red you need understand what the business itself looks like at an intermediate level.
If you make a song and blow like $5K on it running meta and youtube ads WITHOUT properly branding yourself, you're just wasting money at this point. A lot of artist can not tell you the difference between branding, marketing, and promotion they all do different things and serve a different purpose from each other.
Let's not even get into paying influencer, paying to be on playlists, paying a PR agency/publicts. All that shyt adds up. We haven't even gotten into the artist development side where you need to find good engineers and producers that know what they are doing, or finding a stylist that create a look for you that says "yeah I have IT going on". It so many fukking layers man. I don't blame a lot of artist that have given up about blowing up and just do them. This shyt takes so much time and the bills add up like crazy.
Yes you can do this all for free too and all on budget don't get twisted but understand 2.
1. It will take you A LOT longer to blow up
2. Don't expect to have crazy backing, unless you are cool with being an underground artist. To make it to radio you NEED the machine. Nothing wrong with being Indie but if you want to be an Icon you need radio. Most artists popping on radio at a national/global level are all signed.
M4T
All Star
Tate Mcrae maybe. If you're trynna break a rapper, you're gonna have to find someone who needs some money laundered lol, or tell his ass he better start rapping in Spanish
M4T
All Star
Interscope and universal music group ain't independentHe just be trying trying to get my attention, pay it no mind
The Devil's Advocate
Call me Dad
Wendy Day had a podcast all about how to break into the industry... fukking amazing and full of great content
But she says EVERY show... If you don't have money or an investor, you ain't going NOWHERE
"The Cheat Code"
But she says EVERY show... If you don't have money or an investor, you ain't going NOWHERE
"The Cheat Code"
