Followers No Longer Matter - So What Do You Do?

Music promotion has changed, and I am here to give out the memo. I am very confused about why no one has noticed that in a For You Page (FYP) landscape, this is the first time that what you do is oftentimes seen by more strangers who are not familiar with you compared to followers who had shown enough interest to press a button and come along for a ride. This distinction changes how we promote ourselves in a big way, and I see 95% of you are making the same mistakes. Every time I've pointed it out to somebody I see making these mistakes, they start to do wildly better. So come along with me while I rewire your brain to how people are breaking their songs today.

The Evolution of Music Promotion

To understand why music promotion changed so much today, we need a quick recent history lesson (don’t worry, I won’t go back further than Indie Sleaze). For the last 15 years, all you've wanted to do is get followers, subscribers, likes on Facebook, whatever it is.

• 2003-2008: The MySpace Era. The goal was to get followers to read bulletin board messages saying you put a new song up and then listen to it in your profile.

• 2009 - 2012: The Facebook Era. Musicians reached for likes, trading being able to listen to their song for people to give them a “like”... which is the stupidest marketing era for music promotion ever.

• 2013-2015: The Instagram Era. For some dumb reason, we had a brief time when we were trying to get Instagram followers–who couldn't even hear your music on the platform, and you had to get past everyone's pictures of avocado toast to get noticed.

• 2015 - 2022: The Spotify and YouTube Era. For nearly a decade, musicians have been striving to get monthly listeners and YouTube subscribers.

• 2022 - Today: The Discovery Era. Followers, likes, and subscribers don't matter anymore. It’s all about algorithms, FYPs, and being discovered. Everybody's been sleeping on this new change. 

Some may wonder how this correlates with the Earworm Era, a term I coined for how people discover music today, but this is upstream from the Earworm Era and much more about how all content, not just music, is consumed. 

The New Paradigm: For You Pages and Algorithms

In all those old models of music promotion, you were always making content to talk for your followers to, at best, blast out to their followers. The weird thing about this new algorithmic era is that all your content is being shown to strangers, not your followers and subscribers.

• On TikTok, the for you page is obviously way more popular than the following page. 

• On YouTube, most people don't look at their subscriptions page. Instead, they look at the front page (aka the browse page), or they scroll on their phones till they see something they want to watch or one of their friends is sending them a video, often of somebody they've never seen.

• On Spotify, if you look at your analytics and you have any number of listeners, you probably know that most of your plays come from algorithmic playlists like Release Radar, Discover Weekly, or other algorithmic programming geared toward users’ individual music tastes.

• On Instagram, the explore page has always been where FOMO lives and scrolls and where much of the consumption comes from or through reels, which are just like TikToks, where you see complete strangers all the time.

• Twitter pushes users to the for you page so Elon can push all his dumb memes down your throat because he thinks he's funny. And over on Threads, they strategically hide the following page from users because they don’t want you to use it (see if you can even find it).

• Spotify is pushing their new feed page, which is essentially a FYP, and they want you to use their stupid AI DJ. They have data that proves they know what you like better than you do, and they’re acting on it.

  

  Algo curated playlists made just FOR YOU

Why the Shift to Algorithms?

But why do they all want to make you watch this FYP instead of who you choose to follow? That seems bad right? 

Here’s the secret: I've had some long conversations with people who make these algorithms, mostly because they love to come up to me and talk about their music career, which then ends up with them telling me about how they work on the algorithms and get to pick their brain about it as long as I’m buying drinks.

The drunken truth is dark - they tell me that if they can keep users on the for you page instead of their following page, they’ll stay on the app two, three, four, sometimes five times longer– depending on the user and the app. Which explains the number one question people who have fans ask me about Spotify:

Why won't Spotify just tell people when I release a new song?

Buddy, they don't want you to tell somebody when your new releases are out. That would give you the power to recommend a song to users, kill the vibe (if your song sucks), and then possibly have those people exit from Spotify. Spotify pushes algorithmic recommendations designed for each user since it keeps them on the app longer – that's every app's goal.

Plus, Spotify is a disgusting predator, and I learned they can sell desperate musicians a paid marketing tool. Now we have the showcase and marquee tools, which sadly work very well at promoting your music. And it balances out since the money they make off of desperate musicians purchasing these tools weighs out the cost of having users bail on the app after listening to that terrible song you wrote about that streamer girl you’re simping for.

The New Rules of Engagement

Since those apps' goals are to get people who've never seen your content to stay around longer --- you have to make content that plays well in the game.

Talk To Strangers: 

95% of the musicians in my feed make this mistake on these apps: talking to their followers and not giving enough context to strangers in their content. 

I know many people say it's so cringe to see these...

"Hey, if you're new here I'm making music for the fans of the 1966"

And I get it, I find it corny too, but there's a reason those people do well and you don’t. 

The 3-Step Method

There's a simple 3-step method to do whenever you're making content. 

1. Think of an imaginary fan that you could potentially win over. That imaginary person should be someone you could understand or relate to well. 

2. Think of what you can say to that imaginary person who’s never heard of you before and what would make them interested in what you’re about to show them.

3. Think of how you can say it in the fewest words/quickest way possible. We don't want paragraphs here, chief.

This will, of course, be different with every video, but getting a new viewer up to speed with each post is one of the most crucial things on short-form apps. 

The Big Problem

So now that we’re on the same page about talking to strangers, you’re probably thinking, "But what about my existing fans?" 

Musicians don’t realize that the algorithm suggests your content to people who are already into it. That means they like you enough to sit through a lot of bullshit. Your fans often don’t care to sit through a few seconds of a video while you're getting newbies up to speed– it’s not even noticeable most of the time. Zero in on talking to strangers first, then figure out how to balance it with your followers once you have enough of them. This also goes for repetition in content– one of the main things I have to teach on my YouTube members-only feed every week.

And yes, there will always be that person who will complain about everything you do, even if you do the most flawless, perfect thing ever. 

We just witnessed the greatest album rollout of all time with Charli XCX. Look through every good event she did that was widely praised by the masses, and still, a thousand losers are saying that this is terrible and that they should stop putting that hideous album cover everywhere. 

Nothing Beats The Algorithm 

The real fact of the matter is these algorithms are really good at giving you what you engage with. No one seems to even begin to understand how well these algorithms work– their job is literally to be better than you at picking what you want to watch.

A/B test this theory yourself. Scroll through your FYP and then scroll through your following page. See which one you stay scrolling through the longest until you’re bored. No one wants to scroll through their following page all day.