if someone has experience, With 0 following, does selling the song over tunecore/cdbaby/etc helps your song to be heard even to a few ears?

without any other advertising i mean

 

Before: Handful of large record companies as gatekeepers to making it. Odds, ten million to one.
Now: Everyone and their grandmothers drowning the planet in 'music'. Odds of even getting noticed, six billion to one

 

I get thousands of listens since I switched to making elevator music, though it's up and down.

 

sorry what is elevator music?

also do you mean that u sell through tunecore or something like that, and get thousands listens without advertising?

 

without advertising and with 0 followers, @mr.personality said it well, so you might get at most hand full of people listening every now and then, and thats great if its more than you expect and your happy with any number bigger than zero, just so a fdw more people hear your stuff. But definitely don't hope to be "discovered".

 

It solely depends on what u are making,

if u are making a remix or a cover for song i mean the latest stupidest crap that is trending all over the internet, which a musician or a good producer does not even consider music in the first place. You ll get noticed immediately. Because you know the world exp. the internet has the tendency to follow or like the crazy, stupid, weird and bizarre and sometimes the simplest things, why because most can relate to it.

If u are making a cover or remix for an already popular song which is a bit old, well say may be an 80s or 70s song, u don't get as many followers unless u make one every 3 weeks or a month. But u might get listeners.

If u are living by a principle and u r making music from the heart just for the sake of making good music or composing ur own stuff, u may want to invest something for promoting urself.

 

many (if not all) of the big name House Music producers I know were still making a very large majority of their money prior to Covid, by Djing at clubs and not their record sales. And most of the tracks they sell only even get listened to via dj sets at first...or purchased by other djs! lol. Start out sliding in a few original tracks, but still make a good hour worth of music by using popular cuts, etc.

Uploading your tunes to a million places can do the exact reverse of what you want.

 

mostly Throbbing Gristle

 

You need to listen to the whole thing...

 

Selling? No. Even famous acts are struggling to sell. Bryan Adams was doing cover version karaoke from his own kitchen during convid FFS. Best advice play live. Let people hear what you've got. Make a few CD's or USB sticks to sell. Load up on Youtube, Spotify through a 3rd party like Routenote for free etc. Listens are hard enough to get, sales are damn near impossible for unknown acts. Good luck.

 

Just like I found this thread because I responded to similar one, that's how people find your music too. You need to have some loyal following so algorithm can establish pattern of their behavior and classify you in same interest group, than if you are lucky enough you get recommended based on their engagement to others of same interest group. That organically can really take really long time and without any following at all, it's close to impossible. Distributors like that can help you if you pay for it, feature you in some playlist's on different services and all that, but you need to shoehorn yourself pretty much to that exact interest group and have steady outcome of music, so that pattern is created more efficiently. Your one track in one genre isn't enough to get you classified, especially if somebody of random interest listened to it, like someone from your family who just did it for few seconds to see what kind of music you actually make, than continue to listen to the stuff they usually listen.

What you can do, on You Tube, if you are truly shoehorned into one genre, make mix of that music you know people would like, get tittle almost perfect to match search engine, there you can even have one song of yours, pray nobody will strike you, but they won't, if you make quality work, they will just monetize it, easy money. Than keep making that mixes for a while, so algorithm can establish pattern, once you get into machine and see some traffic, than it's time to push it to eleven and post something almost every day, again, staying in that interest group and delivering. If folks notice you are actually delivering what they like, they will subscribe, even just to check out what you have later, that doesn't mean they will actually listen to any of it, but it's important that some of them inside of that interest group follow you. 99,7% of people listening to one of my channels aren't subscribers, they are just victims of algorithm and in analytics I can even see what they listened before me, what they searched to get to my content and all that, so it's pretty much just trying to meet that criteria at that point.

Still, at that point, you can't monetize your channel, you are pretty much working for copyright owners of music you are using, so it's important to make community out of those people that come back to listen, engage with them as much as you can and all that, so that at one point you can push your own stuff easily and their engagement will help you to get recommended to others of same interest group.

 

Last edited: May 13, 2023