How Hudson Freeman Changes It Up

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This week's dissection is Hudson Freeman — a Brooklyn-based artist by way of the Midwest doing lo-fi indie folk. Super interesting case. Even if that's not your vibe, there are great lessons here.

The Growth Story

The Spotify numbers don't even begin to tell the full story. Hudson has been putting music up on Spotify for 10 years. For the first 3 of those years, absolutely nothing was happening. Through the years after that, he hovered in the 16k to 30k monthly listener range, depending on what had come out. Back in 2023, he got up to 66k. Then, with his big viral moment, he got all the way up to 660,000 monthly listeners.

That's the arc.

Branding

The branding here is exceptionally good all around — and I don't usually even use that word.

Hudson is really controlling what people see him as, and it feels very authentic. Even the bio is just: "I am a folk artist."

There's a reason he's saying that — it's actually disobeying a bunch of rules people think of in folk, which we'll get into. A good example is the 2025 album, which is literally named after a folk artist. It's not lying by any means. He sounds folky. But there are moments with drum machines in there, too.

The Sound

One of the most interesting things about Hudson's sound is he's clearly very influenced by modern-day shoegaze — specifically quannnic and their record Kenopsia. If you're not familiar with that record and you really like fucked-up lo-fi sound manipulations, it is chef's kiss. It's one of the records I've listened to the most in the last few years, definitely in my top 25. The way it fucks up the songs underneath it in a way that accentuates the emotion is really sick.

You can hear that influence in Hudson's work. One of the things I definitely spotted in the sound — and if he's not using this exact thing, it sounds just like it — is WavesFactory Cassette. It's a plugin where you go in, choose a bunch of parameters, and then choose how the cassette messes it up. I have used this on a bajillion productions. It's what I'll do to a voice memo a lot of the time to make it seem way more vibey than it actually was — sterile and kind of boring becomes this thing where you go, oh wow, this artist is really in their vibe and killing it. Little slice of magic. It's also quite affordable at $60, and it goes on sale for much less than that on plugin sale days — if that feels like too much, it'll be half that price on a sale day.

While I'm on the topic: TrackSpacer by the same company — I don't think I've mixed a song with more than 10 tracks without using it in many a year. And if you have Soothe 2, you can do just about the same thing, not exactly the same but very similar.

Spotify Strategy

Hudson's most popular song has almost 3 million streams. One funny thing there: the main version actually has fewer streams than the demo, which I always find so interesting. The demo's been out a little longer, but not by much.

One of the smart things he's doing is running a lo-fi folk playlist. It starts with "If You Know Me" — the song that's been getting him a bunch of attention — and then has a whole bunch of songs in it to make algorithmic connections. Scroll down that playlist and sure enough, there's another Hudson Freeman song. Keep going — another one. And another. He's tying himself to other artists he should be quickly connected to algorithmically and pulling people deeper into this lo-fi folk world he's doing.

Enjoying this? Forward it to a music friend you’d like to be closer to and start a discussion!

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