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I have a tattoo of the band The 1975. When I first started hearing about them, I thought they were awful. But I was invested in knowing who they were, since everyone I knew was talking about them, so I wanted to understand what the fuss was about. I kept checking in, and that curiosity grew into them becoming my favorite band, one I spend money on every time they come around.

If you regularly disappear and don't seem like someone fans need to know about, you'll get ignored. Some people care about staying ahead of the curve more than others, and in music marketing, we're really trying to find those people: the ones who look for new artists before everyone else. Most people just want to be told what to listen to and won't dig around for the next cool thing, but the ones who do care about knowing music first get something out of it. Show them you're worth paying attention to by doing exciting things regularly, and your job gets a lot easier.

Charli XCX's rollout for brat is a masterclass here. It worked because, if you were a fan of hers, you never knew what would come next throughout "brat summer." One minute, she's throwing a surprise pop-up show in front of the "Brat Wall," a wall on the side of a Brooklyn climbing gym she kept repainting with new messages and livestreaming every change. Next, she's out at clubs, seemingly everywhere at once. That unpredictability creates conversations people want to be part of and understand. Even with a fraction of her fanbase, that same feeling, needing to stay tuned because something new might happen, is what gets your followers talking, and gets everyone around them feeling like they need to know who you are, too.

This is also why celebrities say ridiculous things for attention: as long as they stay top of mind, they're winning. Contradicting their own brand doesn't matter. What matters is that people won't stop talking about them.

Here's why that scales down to artists nobody's heard of yet. A 2024 YouTube study found that 8% of Gen Z now consider themselves professional fans, meaning they earn money talking about things online, and 65% consider themselves creators. There's a whole culture built around discussing things online.

Unless your music feels like something people need to know about to bond with the group they want to bond with, whether that's a broad audience or a very niche one, you're not going to get discussed.

Those creators make memes, explainers, reaction videos, dances, and video essays, and they play your songs in them. Artists who do interesting things regularly become part of that conversation. A lot of what fans end up discussing is hidden meaning in lyrics, things you say in interviews, or small hints buried in a video, so don't get discouraged if the "discourse" starts out feeling shallow.

If you pop in every month or two and disappear again, you read as boring, just another musician not worth watching. Fans won't feel the need to follow you closely, and they'll just assume they'll catch your next mid-song whenever it turns up in Discover Weekly, never really locking in on who you are.

We're living in what people call the attention economy. Artists who consistently do things that remind people to listen to them, music videos, songs, or anything a fan is likely to send to a friend with a "you gotta see this," are the ones who grow fastest. Break that down: growing fast means doing something eventful at least every week or two, something one friend would actually send to another.

Compare that to typical musician behavior: doing things nobody remarks on, going dark for stretches with no explanation, then posting "stream our music" over a photo you've had up for weeks. That reads as an annoying clown who isn't putting in the effort. Nobody's going to pay attention to you over the artists who show up consistently with things people actually want to talk about.

If you're doing Consistent Sustained Promotion, your name keeps coming up and gets recommended by the algorithm. Remember, platforms like TikTok and Instagram want to see you posting at least 10 times a month. Tell stories around your music, show up regularly, and make things people will actually talk about, and potential fans will eventually click in and learn more about you.

The catch is that you have to keep coming up with genuinely eventful things. When you do, it gets fans talking, and eventually gets press and industry doors opening, too. When people can create eventful moments regularly, that's often when I get a call to check an artist out, and it's usually not long before someone's talking about signing them, because that consistency is the real skill, separate from just making good music.

When I'm planning a release strategy with an artist, I always push for the most eventful video we can make and the most compelling story we can tell around the music. Being eventful means giving people something to talk about, continuously.

Music gets discovered in a lot of different ways. A lot of it happens through playlists or scrolling TikTok and Reels, but a huge amount comes from being reminded constantly: a name popping up on a trusted friend's social media, seeing it come up again and again, or hearing people talk about an artist you already sort of know. Think about how often you've loved a song, forgotten about it, then seen that artist again and remembered you meant to go deeper, and later discovered they'd put out something new, the moment that finally locks you in as a fan.

If you make boring posts and only care about quantity over quality, you'll be deemed uneventful and die in the algorithm. You'll get muted, or you just won't get spread. Muting is real: a lot of the time, when people ask me why nobody's seeing their posts despite having a decent following, it's because they've been wasting people's time with uneventful content or annoying their audience with "big things coming" teasers, and people mute them rather than unfollow, just to be polite.

But when you're doing eventful, exciting things, fans keep coming back to you when they want to be entertained, and that deepens the relationship. I remember when Chappell Roan was first blowing up, sitting behind a girl on a train who scrolled through her entire Instagram feed, top to bottom, for the whole ride. Create compelling images, position yourself well, and tell compelling stories, and that's the behavior you'll inspire in fans. But you have to develop it.

One of the most common things I hear from musicians is that they're gaining followers, but those followers aren't actually engaging. A lot of that comes down to meta-narrative, telling stories that give fans something to understand about you beyond the music. That story doesn't need to be a tragedy. It can be as simple as playthroughs, vlogs, shorts, behind-the-scenes footage, or narrative threads inside a music video. Creating that kind of headcanon material and feeding it to fans speeds up the whole process.

Look at how other artists do this: Charli XCX plays the party girl wrestling with the pressures of modern pop stardom and whether to have a family or keep partying. Morgan Wallen is working on being less of a bad person, for reasons the record shows.

Dillon Francis is always doing something silly, usually with other artists, while boosting up-and-comers. Sleep Token sings about rituals and the complexities of a strange, hidden life. Artists are allowed to be complex, contradictory, and full of nuance, but you have to actually think about what you're showing people, or they won't have much to follow along with. If it's just you lip-syncing and looking hot every day, that's not enough to give people something to discuss.

The YouTube algorithm is very good at finding the exact fans who'd want this kind of content, converting them into deeper listeners. It can tell when someone's watched several of your music videos and is probably ready for a vlog, a playthrough, a behind-the-scenes clip, or a Q&A. The more engaged a fan gets, the deeper they go with you. One of the biggest mistakes artists make is not giving fans that material in the first place, so nothing is pulling them deeper. Long-form content genuinely builds deeper relationships and keeps people thinking about you.

Instagram stories and grid posts exist mainly to keep people in touch with you and deepen that relationship. Show them things about yourself. Maybe you stop walking in the forest on tour. Great grid post. Maybe you're obsessed with trying every terrible fast food chain in America on the road. Also great. Maybe you make candles as a side hobby. Perfect for stories. The relationships you build on TikTok and Instagram Reels are often what make people think about your music more, because something they've seen you talk about before gets triggered in their brain later, and they remember to go listen to you again.