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Not everyone who blows up does innovative marketing. Some songs are just great and do the work. But if you're reading this, you probably know you need extra help and have already had trouble breaking through. So let's talk about the most cutting-edge tactics working right now.

Artists are testing songs more than ever—putting up multiple hooks to see what fans respond to. Sombr's producer says they'll put up a song, test it, and if it hits, record and drop it within a week.

But most musicians do this completely wrong. The advice from many labels is "until a song reaches 50,000 likes, it shouldn't be released." This is silly since musicians will just hit promote on the one they wanna release anyway, or make 50 videos till it gets those likes.

The other common method: posting four songs with nearly identical videos to see which blows up. Song one gets 800 views. Song two gets 1,000 views. Song three gets 998 views. Song four gets 1,602 views. So obviously release song four, right?

Not quite. I've seen side boob being the only difference between two cuts make one perform better. Small details change video performance, but two or even four times the result on TikTok is not statistically significant. Many artists have videos that do 10 or even 30x what their normal videos do, so 2x isn't a big difference.

Unless you're testing your song three to four times, you're out of algorithmic jail, and the tests show at least 3-6x results of the lowest numbers, you're not getting statistical significance. Also remember: most songs spread from friends telling each other about them or YouTube's algorithm recommending them. These tests aren't foolproof.

2hollis could be called a nepo baby all day, but for a while he toiled in total obscurity while building narrative and lore. (as well as developing some of the most influential songs on pop today). When you're creating narrative and lore even when 1,000 or 10,000 people are watching you and connecting the dots, your fans create conversations about what they've seen. One obsessive fan who knows your lore will have more times they think of you and bring you up in different conversations and Reddit forums. This seeds word of mouth.

Audrey Hobert made a whole website archive with tons of lore she wants fans to see to understand her record. She's seeding it in real time since she had no time to build lore after having no back catalog—she only has about a dozen songs up right now. She's doing this because fans need things to talk about.

How to do this: As you figure out what songs you're releasing, think about your unique position. Start thinking of conversations and stories you can tell. Most often these will be tied to a certain line in your song's lyrics. Identify these lines or stories, then look at your artist's position—how would that position tell these stories?

Charli XCX on Brat took diverse emotions of whether to have a baby or do cocaine to make a conversation about how complex a life it is to be a pop star. The artist Damage regularly indicts capitalism while tying it to their own situation as an artist and their sexual identity. With each song they release, lyrical themes get tied into this overall narrative.

If you build a Spotify artist playlist where you curate the best new artists in your micro-genre, a mood, a type of party—say UK Garage for London loft parties—people save that playlist. You can experience growth even after ads stop as people keep listening and you keep updating.

Let's say you're a bass punk artist and make a playlist called "This Is Bass Punk." Or you're a pop girl who sings depressing acoustic songs and make "The Best Unknown Depressing Pop Girl Songs." Or you're an R&B singer from LA and curate "LA Underground R&B Up Next."

Find a bunch of artists that are actually good with 10,000 to a couple hundred thousand monthly listeners. Load up the playlist with their best songs. If you're an artist with less than 1,000 monthly listeners, fill this with artists around 10,000. If you have 20,000 monthly listeners, going up to 300,000 is cool.

The key: we're trying to make algorithmic bonds with artists you actually have a chance of bonding with. We're trying to get the algorithm to recognize they should put you on AI playlists, daily mixes, Discover Weekly, for people who liked these other songs.

To find artists: Head to Rate Your Music, punch in your micro-genre, sort reviews and ratings by most recent. If you see an artist with a bunch of ratings and reviews, listen to see if they're a good choice. Add them to the playlist. Once the playlist is two hours long, update it every week or two.

How to get people there: Run meta ads to them, Reddit ads from the subreddits of micro-genres (as cheap as meta but gets the right people), or post on your Instagram stories and short form apps and tag the artists you add to see if they share it.

Head canon is a fan's personal unofficial interpretation of a work, filling gaps or developing theories not specifically confirmed by the artist. The more you give fans hints of things to think about, the more you bait them to make up hypotheses and discussions with other fans. You inspire fan fiction when you're a little vague and bring new things into your world.

Doechii has grid posts where fans search throughout a single photo to find meaning and zoom in to read fine print. They make up things about it. Think about the Doechii photo with the white alligator—fans start thinking about what the white alligator means, who that might be in her life. They make up head canon. It causes fans to get intrigued and think about things more.

Even if you have 100 fans right now, if you make a post with small details, somebody's probably gonna ask you about them.

Buying a billboard in Times Square won't make you pop off. I can tell you this as someone whose office literally looks out on Times Square—there are probably a hundred different artists whose billboards go up every day.

But a well-placed small ad in the real world is a hack to get the right people and have them believe you're someone they should fuck with. If you do it well with the right messaging and they're already hearing a buzz about you, it can show cultural cues that they should know you.

When I managed Man Overboard, we had flyers that said "Defend Pop Punk." If you liked pop punk and saw that poster and it said they were coming to your town with three other pop punk bands at a club, it increased the likelihood you'd come out and investigate the group.

Sending tour posters to venues is nearly free advertising aside from printing and postage. These could be in a venue for up to six weeks and every time a potential fan is at a show, they get the cue that they should know who you are.

For those not playing live: stickers at venues or areas where fans hang out—skate parks, coffee shops, university campuses—can make you seem important. Put them at eye level where somebody goes to the bathroom.

In Brooklyn there's about a half mile where nearly every venue is, and about a dozen intersections where cool influential people in music walk regularly—record critics, Spotify playlist curators, people who work in the business. Making your image visible in these areas can subtly get people to think they should click play when they see your name.

Dua Lipa positions herself as the world-traveling pop star. She has a newsletter where she talks about restaurants, clubs, the best smelling soaps. This keeps fans engaged and on top of mind. She also loves reading on the beach—I produce interviews with top authors and they say "Dua Lipa is the best interviewer about books right now." She really is interested, not doing it because she has to.

Laufey has a book club where she reads the same book as her fans and bonds with them. So many artists form communities early on by charging $5 a month on Patreon for discussing on Discord and monthly live streams discussing a book they're all reading.

Many artists who love to write are doing newsletters. Anyone who gets Lorde's email blast knows you're getting something real. Charli XCX started a Substack and it's sick.

Using your passions—what you'd like to be doing anyway—and moving to your imagination about how it can be something fans want from you, either public or behind a paywall or both, is a great way to win right now.

One of the most amateur practices is wanting the brand to have no contradictions and everything aligned. That's boring.

Complex characters with contradictions that make them both likable and difficult create discussions. Being a boring brand where everyone can predict you doesn't give fans a reason to think and ponder what you're doing and take it to the group chat.

When Charli XCX drops an album themed around club bangers, then the second to last song is stream of consciousness about whether to have a baby, then bam—the next song is "let's do some cocaine in the club tonight." That's a complex conversation filled with contradictions.

When Poppy makes videos dressed in high fashion but behaves as a monster, then cuddles lovable Muppet types, she creates conversations about the contradictions. Poppy uses bright imagery opposed to dark metal imagery, but contrasts the two.

The biggest artists think about how to straddle the authentic parts of an artist but bring in more depths of their personality and correct misconceptions. You can do this with music videos and other content.

Everyone's doing it. Going on Reddit and commenting with a sock puppet account—a different version of you—and every one out of seven comments you throw in your own project pretending to be someone else works really well. Those same sock puppet accounts commenting on influential accounts posting "who's up next" and posting your music listed next to four other blowing-up artists really works on short form video apps.

When you sign to a major label these days, one main feature they brag about is they'll use 50 to 60 fan accounts to flood the zone with accounts that have followings and get people talking about you.

I've come up with four models that seem to be working:

Method 1: Outside Influence - Ideal for artists who don't wanna post much or have very few fans. You have your artist account posting high quality curated content. Account two is an "influence account" that curates content like "best shoegaze groups but it keeps getting more niche." You go down in monthly listeners and your song plays in most videos, but occasionally pepper in more popular songs so you get follows. Link your Spotify artist playlist in the profile. This is exactly what sent off Lady Radiator who got signed to Interscope.

Method 2: Fan Account Plus Agitator - Ideal for artists with at least 10,000 monthly listeners. Artist account, fan account posting slop and hype, then an agitator account that comes into comments to start fights so your fans defend you and drive up engagement. You can create comments like "this motherfucker only sounds good with autotune," then reply singing acapella with acoustic guitar to show you're really good at it.

Method 3: Edits and Culture - Ideal for any size. Make an edits account with trap music over replays of college sport players' best plays, or edits of Drew Starkey making ridiculous faces, whatever culture is likely to like your music. The other account goes more macro or micro on culture—like if edits is horror movies for your deathcore band, the culture account is girls dressed up to go to deathcore shows showing off fits.

Method 4: Influence and Culture - Mix of method one and three. Instead of the paid account on the influence model, you're doing a cultural account. With the influence account you're targeting similar artists, with the cultural account you're doing something broader bringing more people into what they may like.

If your songs are actually good, about three months of grinding on this can change your life. It's a really good hack.

Have you seen clips of controversial videos or interesting interview portions passed around in short TikToks? This is called clipping. Fan accounts take interviews, vlogs, behind the scenes, or any press an artist gets and throw it into an AI clipping app called Opus. Then put captions on it and post it.

When you do interviews or press, even if the interviewer doesn't clip it, take the YouTube video and clip it yourself. The moments where artists really drop facts can go mega viral.

You could even do a clipping account where you clip different interviews from similar artists and insert yourself into it.

Every genre and micro-genre has different cheat codes. The advice throughout this largely works in nearly every genre, but in some genres, some things work way better than others.

It's crazy how many metal acts or Midwest emo acts will have guitar playthroughs be a massive growth mechanism. Try that in folk music and you'll enjoy four views. I recommend radio promotion in 2025 to heavy metal acts while telling a pop act to avoid it at all costs.

You learn cutting-edge cheat codes by finding community. When you're talking to musicians and players in the game—promoters, labels—you really learn the cheat codes. Some DJ has become very influential and they have an open submission policy. Tapping in with your community is how you find cutting-edge things happening right in the present before they're past tense and out of vogue.

Finding your music community and pushing through when people ghost you till you find your people—your community and friends in music are one of the most rewarding things you can find in this world.