Destroying The Biggest Music Promotion Myths In 2024

The internet is a cesspool of misinformation, and the garbage articles found in the music-promotion-industrial-complex is no exception. You've probably stumbled across countless "expert" opinions that have left you confused, frustrated, or worse - sabotaging your own career. It's time to clear the air and dismantle the bull that's holding you back.

So let’s fix that in the next few minutes and get your head screwed These aren't just harmless misconceptions; they're toxic ideas that can cripple your growth and mental well-being. So let's cut through the noise and get to the truth.

1. Major Labels Control the Charts

This is one of those things that is common with the Internet phenomenon of someone stating a vibe they feel but they have never actually done any research to back this up, so let's destroy this very fast.

One instance I cite a lot is current buzzy artist Chappel Roan who put out a bunch of songs on Atlantic Records. At this time, I was a permalancer at Atlantic, and I knew her and thought she was really talented, but the songs didn't find an audience. Atlantic dropped her and she’s now on Island Records, she's found success. Do you think if Atlantic could control who gets popular, they'd have dropped her and lost a huge investment to have another label make the money? Would they have let this artist who obviously has hits in her, as her song is being tossed around as song of the summer, out of nowhere? No, cause that's very dumb. It's also dumb to say “Good Luck Babe” is the song of the summer when it's clearly Espresso.

The fact is, all you have to do to see how stupid this is, is go through the roster of any of the major labels. They all have them on their website and you can see how many artists they try to break and it doesn't work out despite all the data these labels have and are largely only signing artists who've already had a hit or a song that went viral.

The fact is, in this day and age when anyone can choose what song they are listening to with a few clicks, it just isn't reality that the majors can control the charts since now the trends are made on the internet in the short form videos and sharing among friends. It was true when radio was the most powerful listener influence; the major labels controlled it aside from a few exceptions. But right now is not a time that I would call lawless, but it's breaking about as many laws as one of those videos on Channel 5's YouTube where he shows everyone stealing cars and doing drugs I've never heard of everywhere.

2. "Only Nepo Babies Get Signed"

The number one way of seeing who has a traumatic brain injury in my comments, is when I see "Nepo Babies are the only people who get signed."

Years ago, I made a video on this that really thoroughly debunked how stupid this one is, so if you're still not convinced, feel free to watch it, as it's linked in the description. Anyone who has ever worked at a big label or management can tell you from time to time you need to meet with both the kid of a rich person or sometimes just your boss's dentist's nephew who is an aspiring CloutCore rapper as a courtesy. It's annoying, but it's a thing that needs to be done. When I was at the peak of my record production career with a 9-month waiting period and working 16-hour days, I'd have to lose sleep since I'd have to take an hour to do my lawyer a favor and have the guy who mows his 200-acre estate's lawn's emo band because they wanted to work with me.

This is all to say Nepo babies often get their feet in the door for connections, but a thing you can easily see if you just look at the location tag of any of the major labels is a lot of people taking pictures that says big things coming except those big things never come. The meeting happens, and the label says sorry, keep developing, and hit us when you have something new you're excited about. And 99.9% of the time the big things don't come. But with the new baby, they often have access to:

1. A lot of support from creative parents to not work and focus on music

2. Access to people who give them good answers on what to do, like someone who is a great mixer, or even advice on what to focus on from someone who is actually in the business.

3. The promise is that if you sign them, some of the parents' connections will help out.

Whereas a lot of you never get in front of anyone and frankly go through bouts of depression and lack of motivation and don't build momentum, and cause you work that day job, you don't get to realize your artistic voice. But really, by the numbers, the people whose parents have blue next to their name are not most of the people who blow up, but you internet detectives sure love finding anyone who has the same name as a buzzy new singer's parents and spreading that. It's definitely saying everyone's favorite new rapper, Slumlord Influencer's dad, is the President of Exxon when they just have the same name.

3. The Importance of Editorial Playlists

And now we get to a really dumb one I've been hearing a lot lately since some of those TikTok accounts that clip podcasts love to take the context out of everything and show controversial things. We see one of the geniuses over here say something like "Editorial playlists are over." I hear this one mostly from people who really don't understand how things work and frankly aren't thinking too hard about much of anything.

But those of us who read data actually see something different. The artists who get on editorial playlists get more algorithmic playlist plays. This is because being next to those artists on editorial playlists who have lots of algorithmic connections gets you algorithmic connections to the artists people played you next to on the playlist. Then the algorithm has more artists to recommend you to.

So when I hear people say things like "I'm not focused on editorial playlists," I think yeah, you'd have to be an idiot to focus on a thing where the only thing you have to do is have a song, then take 15 minutes to write a pitch and click send (which you can learn if you watch my video on that, that's helped thousands of musicians), and then there's nothing else to do. If that's your focus, it probably means you aren't getting much done. But this is all to say, when people tell you editorial playlists don't matter and don't get you fans who last, that is correct in a way. By nature, many of the listeners to playlists are hitting play to solve a problem for a few hours or have something to listen to, and if they don't love you, well, you lose those listeners.

But one of the things I see with the bigger artists I work with is that those playlists convert listeners over to them, and they get tons more streams overall, lifting the tide and raising all streams. The algorithmic streams they help to get you into are the real gift that keeps giving you streams for years to come and making you new fans. We even talked about this on the stream with HEALTH, who are on plenty of editorial playlists and, as I make this video, have almost 2.5 million monthly listeners if you want to hear it firsthand.

4. The Myth of Building a Large Catalog

Lastly, a new confusing myth for me is, "I need to build a catalog of 33 songs since none of the top artists have fewer than that." Previously, I went in pretty hard on the myth of catalog being a thing that helps you, but the idea that just getting a bunch of songs out there is what built these artists up is one of those things where we could use it to test if you've got a brain worm like that one guy running for president right now.

To discuss this a little further, while all the artists in the top 200 have those 33 songs, this could be like finding out all of them have toenails that are above a certain thickness. This is not the determinative factor that got them to be one of the biggest artists; it's the consistency of their work along with it being exposed to an audience that likes it.

You need a lot of songs people can continually consume, but they need to be exceptional. Many artists not even in the top 500 have 36 songs their audiences love, so you'd better really come armed with some exceptional songs. Literally, there are hundreds of thousands of artists with over 33 songs out there, and frankly, many of them are way lower down. And then you have an artist who is currently in the Top 100 who doesn't even have those 33.

The point is this should not be your focus; it should be good songs.