What Changed About Music Marketing In 2025

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One of the funny things about entering year 17 (next week will mark this) of chronicling music marketing and how it's evolving is that, many years later, not much changes. In fact, in many years it would be laughable how much most people would perceive change, but it was really just small things. But 2025 marked some pretty big changes, so I will give you the TLDR and how to go deeper on them.

So you may have noticed I not only put out a FREE 4 Hour video on YouTube that chronicles how artists go from zero fans to millions and walk them step by step through the process, including a roadmap that walks you through each step. In that video, I got into some of the trends that changed this year for the first time. But the one that really got a lot of attention was how much I talked about the increasing need for artists to take positioning seriously.

Positioning Is What Moves Streams

Algorithms are overhyped for music discovery, and they're also a massive determining force. But I regularly need to remind people that the artists who get into the algorithm do it in 2 ways.

1. Friends tell friends who they should check out, the algorithm sees this happening, and it gives the artists more juice.

2. The artists who excite word of mouth are also the ones who create thumbstoppers while scrolling, and then people watch.

But what is above both of those things is when you have a strong position, you inspire both of those actions. Therefore, positioning matters most, and I firmly believe that the significant change in 2025 was that artists without strong positions are getting less traction because they don’t inspire thumb-stops or sharing with friends, as they aren’t exciting. We discussed this a good deal on the above episode of My Point 4 Cents.

You may be curious what positioning is and how to do it. I have a masterclass on it in the roadmap but we will also be discussing it for the next 4 weeks on Thursdays issues of this newsletter so you should really subscribe.

Aura Vs Slop

In a world where all these losers are going to be flooding the zone with shit, the kids are well…. Auramaxxing. What I mean by this is we all know slop is the endless AI crap we see each day that everyone is doing, it looks really unremarkable and dull, but Aura is when we see something exceptional and want to send it to a friend. Just as we discussed above, knowing your position will make it more likely that people pay attention to you. This means that for artists, one of the big choices you will need to make is whether your strategy will be to engage in Aura, Slop, or Mid for the majority of your account. We of course discussed this on a recent newsletter.

Your SFVs Need To Be More About Your Artist Message

Another thing I talked about at the front of my FREE 4 Hour video on YouTube is that you need to have a strong artist message. This can be who you are as an artist, what the song you are presently promoting is about, or a part of your personality you are trying to reinforce. In the years before, what worked great on the SFV apps was prompts and doing scenarios that other artists do. And while you can still do those videos, they should be less of what you do, and you should be making content that really is more about you and things your audience can relate to about you. The opposite of this is artists just making jokes about life truisms. This is much more about showing yourself and how people relate to you.

I will do an in-and-out list since we love those for year-end lists.

In

Videos About Your Songs Emotion

Videos That Show Who You Are As An Artist

Videos That Show How You Are Different Than The Artists In Your Genre

Creating Trends

Out

You Just Found A Pop Punk Band From Isreal That Replies To Every Concert

POV

Did I Just Write The Song Of The Summer?

Following Trends

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

Testing Songs

Well, let’s get real, that MFer Sombr is the breakout artist of the year, and he loves testing songs. Famously, Mr. Neck loves to put up a demo, then record it and post it within a week. This is probably not going to go as well for you, but nonetheless, testing songs is a thing you all increasingly ask me about and even though I am not that big a fan of it, I have written about how to do it well here.

Three Account Strategies

I know some people get mad when I discuss this, but when I look back at my life, I probably spent well over 100 hours designing 3 account strategies for various clients. This is due to its effectiveness in generating streams and interest in an artist. If you aren’t familiar, artists often use at least 3 accounts to promote their music today, since in an Auramaxxing world, we need to be able to post mid and slop on other accounts to get people interested in your music and dominate the algorithm. I talk about a bunch of the strategies I have been making in this two part series.

AI Slop Won’t Hurt You

Honestly, it hurts my soul how much musicians fear AI artists and the millions of unlistenable songs uploaded daily. The reality is humans want to connect with other humans, connect with communities, and find people with similar interests. That does not exist with AI artists, and their narratives are fleeting and temporary, as we can’t relate to them or be shocked by the depths they can create. Don’t despair, keep connecting with people with the emotions you make.