Promoting music: Inertia of getting started with zero fans

Getting off the ground is the current challenge for me in my music career.

Recently I've rebranded as a new artist KOSHL (at the tender age of 37). I don't have any songs out yet and essentially zero fans/followers on all of the major platforms (Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Soundcloud etc).

One big challenge is battling the inertia of being unknown with zero visibility.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. On one hand having actual fan engagement really helps open the door for editorial playlist pitching and showcases "proof" of seriousness as an emerging artist.

On the other hand in order to build engagement I need to actually get on those playlists so people can even find me to build an audience!

It's a bad loop. It's much harder to gain additional exposure with zero exposure. Similar to how it's much harder to make additional money with zero money.

Having a solid base of engagement for everything I do (ie the first 1000 fans) is a hard challenge coming from nothing. 

If, for example, I put a song out with no built-in audience and no additional promotion then there's practically no chance it will ever be heard.

I've been strategizing how to break out of the inertia of nothingness and I've come up with two pathways, each with their own difficulties and pitfalls.

Paid playlist promotion and social ads

With zero fans I think paid promotion is the quickest way to get exposure, however, it's highly volatile and speculative. 

With the right amazing song, artist brand and big budget it might be possible to get some movement through paid promotion and advertising.

With the wrong song it could be a very expensive dud.

There are many pitfalls here. Exposure doesn't mean conversion. The songs have to be outstandingly good to get real buzz with paid exposure.

You see, I’d be paying money upfront for unproven songs (and an unproven brand) and I don't yet have a test bed of existing fans to try out material with. It's hard to gauge which songs should get on the paid machine track. It would be very, very easy to swing and miss here.

The final obvious pitfall (that goes without saying) is that it's expensive. Finding a record label to support me financially and take on this burden is probably unlikely (and not something I’d even desire).

In my case luckily I do have some funds and am able to start my own indie record label (Ciderpop Records).

Realistically not everyone is in the financial position to do this.

Organic growth

The other path is building a base slowly and organically, fan by fan, by delivering high-quality value over time in a consistent way.

Value here is all-encompassing in that it means releasing incredible music, but also other forms of entertainment, information, insight and cult of personality that may be part of the overall brand narrative + identity that’s being built.

There's some tough challenges here too though. First of all, it takes years and lots of intentional self-development to be able to deliver music that people want to listen to over and over again (or prodigal natural talent, which I don’t have unfortunately).

With 60,000 songs released daily on Spotify the bar is super high and it's easy to get left behind.

Secondly, with no fans, I don't have any way of people finding me organically. I'll have to pick channels to develop slowly and methodically. This could be everything from social media, to Youtube to my own website/blog to a local live show routine to Twitch livestream etc etc.

No matter which route is chosen no one will be searching out for me. At the beginning I can’t can't just spam messages out and say "Hey here's a new song/stream/show... please listen to it!"

Nobody will care. I have to do something special to get seen both by real people (and by the algorithms to get organic boost) and I have to do it consistently over time.

Instead of spammy pleas on social media, the game here is delivering value in a way that already has some built-in discovery that can be piggy backed on. Some ideas..

• Finding friends and family as a crew who support me to seed an initial email/text mailing list as my direct audience channel that I grow over time

• Finding targeted communities of people who listen and share music in a certain genre or style (through hashtags, discords, subreddits) and participating for real in the community for the long haul (not spamming).

• Sharing creative, viral videos that are engaging even if people don't know who I am. This could be cover songs or unique twists on ways to present music that will get buzz on social video platforms.

• Finding in-person live opportunities (and now virtual zoom open mics and free showcases). The pandemic has made the possibility of showcasing music live around the world a real possibility.

• Giving away free things. I'm a vocalist so I can give away some free vocal stems from my latest track for people to remix. I'm also a producer so I could share some sample packs or maybe even free beats.

• And many more ideas not listed here...

In closing... it's gonna hard either way.

No matter which paths are chosen it's going to be very difficult. The hyper competitiveness of this space makes it so improbable that I can't simply just work hard.

I have to work hyper efficiently and strategically on the right efforts both for success and for my own mental health.

My plan is to curate songs for paid promotional release by first testing each song in limited groups (i.e. family & friends, limited test runs of paid feedback/promotion while its in demo state on Soundcloud).

If something has some heat I'll turn on the burners for a real paid promotional rollout.

While I do this I'll pour a lot of energy into the organic channels through content marketing (this blog, youtube channels with creative and informative videos, giving away free stems/sounds), live performance and social media.

For sure this is going to be a long road that will require lots of consistent focus. Excited to see where it goes.