How Internet Girl Rides Stories Of Being From South Africa To Success

Internet Girl is proving that diversity, authenticity, and a strong community can carve a unique path.

Music Marketing Trends is a Newsletter by Jesse Cannon that breaks down how musicians really get their music heard. If you know a story we should be telling or an artist we should cover just hit reply to this email.

Artist Overview

Internet Girl is a genre-blending band from South Africa gaining significant popularity in America. Their music spans indie punk, hyperpop, and aggressive punk vocals with Death Grips-style beats. Despite their diverse sound potentially challenging growth, they've found success.I discovered them through their TikTok video about being from South Africa, which I later analyzed in my own content. Examining their metrics shows strong performance in American cities. Disclosure: I mastered their vinyl record, though unrelated to my previous content about them. I was already familiar with their songs like "Dumb Party," "Difficult A Lot," and "Pull Up" through hyperpop playlists.

Should Artists Avoid Diversity?

One of the most common questions I get is how much Spotify punishes artists for diversity since many artists have spoken out about this in interviews. Diversity can make things more challenging but not impossible. Some fear that anything making life more difficult when already tough creates panic, leading to misunderstandings - it's just harder to grow as it can be difficult to get in the algorithm for small artists without dedicated fanbases making songs that are far away from what their audience expects..

Internet Girl proves that when the audience resonates with the material it can have diverse sounds and still have many different songs succeed. They're featured on 20 different editorials, achieving 14,000 playlist listeners against 388,000 monthly listeners - that's an impressive performance. In some genres, these numbers would be even better, though these aren't the types typically dominating playlists.

Their Spotify playlist presence covers Front Page Indie, All New Indie, Lorem, antipop, The Lockeer, Rock Now, Fresh Finds Indie, New Noise, and Oyster - these are all fantastic platforms to feature on. The diversity of their playlist inclusion demonstrates their versatility across genres, reaching multiple playlist categories effectively, even in unexpected ones like Oyster. This shows how diversity can function as a strength.

Spotify Strategy

Visuals

These guys have great visuals - their Spotify banner page matches their band's attitude perfectly. They're aggressive, in your face, really charismatic. The members each show their personality - one's outgoing and charismatic, another takes the music seriously, and their lead singer brings that in-your-face energy.

They've been at this since 2020. . Their songs have been accumulating and doing well over time, with playlist benefits building up as more people become repeat listeners. Every one of their pictures and album images are so good. The "KIDS" cover and "EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF" demonstrate exceptional art direction, perfectly matching their sound. Their imagery balances their diverse aesthetics very well

cover art for “KIDS”, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF”, and “parasocial interaction”

Release Strategy

Their song "Pull Up" gained traction on TikTok through a distinctive HiChord synth sample. The artists quickly capitalized on this viral sound, creating their track and releasing an instrumental version to encourage remixes and open verses. Despite having newer releases, they're strategically promoting this TikTok-successful song more heavily.

This follows a pattern seen with other artists we dissected like Lay Bankz, Dasha, and South Arcade. South Arcade similarly leveraged continued interest in their song "Danger" by releasing a well-crafted music video that showcases their personality, even a year after the track's initial release. This demonstrates how artists can effectively build on existing momentum and audience engagement.

The strategy of featuring successful tracks prominently in playlists and creating additional content around viral moments shows a smart adaptation to current music promotion dynamics.

Genius Artist Playlists

First, they maintain a dynamic discography playlist that adapts to listener preferences, reordering songs based on current popularity and similar sound profiles. Since their discography is so diverse, it lets them basically recontextualize their catalog based on what's connecting with listeners at any moment.

Internet Girl’s dynamic discography playlist

Second, each band member has their own playlist, named after them and featuring their top 20 picks. This is really smart branding because as fans get into the band, they can explore what each member is actually listening to. For a group with such a unique sound, it's a perfect way to let fans connect deeper by discovering their influences.

each band member’s curated playlist

TikTok Strategy

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