109MUSIC · Music Marketing
Music
marketing
Step-by-step guides with real numbers. Marketing, money, and the business behind both.
Before the release
Everything that has to be true before the track is public.
Plan a release rollout four weeks out, not four daysA pre-save funnel that has been live for a month, an announcement split into two or three moments, one motif repeated across the whole era, and four checks before you press publish. The rollout shape independent artists can run without a label budget.
Before you post anythingTwo things worth settling first: an honest read on what level you are actually at, and the four decisions that turn an account into an artist brand. Both take an afternoon and both save you a year.
What to release next, and how oftenTwo decisions that people make on instinct and should not: which of your finished songs to put money behind, and how long to wait before the next one. Test the first with twenty people. Set the second to a calendar, not a mood.
Spotify deleted 75 million tracks. What it means for youSpotify removed about 75 million spam and AI-generated uploads in 12 months and begins badging AI acts in mid-September 2026. Badged profiles are excluded from personalised recommendations by default, which hands recommendation slots back to human catalogues.
Release week
The seven days that decide how far the record travels.
After the release
Turning a launch into something that keeps working.
Ongoing growth
The work that compounds between releases.
Film a month of content in one hourOne setup, three formats, thirty posts. Then a testing rule that stops you rebuilding from scratch every week: change one variable per post and let the feed tell you which one mattered.
Where your first hundred real fans come fromNot from reach. From a narrow group of people who already want what you make, in a place small enough that you can be the one they know, given something to belong to once they arrive.
4 new ways your music pays in 2026Four revenue lanes opened for independent artists in one month: paid fan remixes on Spotify through the Merlin deal, TikTok LIVE gifts on original songs, SoundCloud's hand-picked The Upload, and YouTube fan funding that stays at 500 subscribers while ad thresholds double in 2027.
How to turn streams into fansMonthly listeners stopped converting into ticket sales in 2026. Post Malone canceled a tour at 60.6M monthly listeners. Here is the three-move fix independent artists can run without a budget.
Case Studies
All case studies →Major-label rollouts taken apart, so you can steal the structure at your budget. These are not our clients: they are other people's rollouts, reconstructed from what was public.
Market your release like JENNIE: one drop, two productsMonths of live seeding before any announcement, a reveal split across two dates, a digital EP of 3 tracks against a physical of 6, and 3 random photocards from a pool of 9 in every order. Five mechanics from the Fallen Angel rollout that scale down to independent budgets.
3 million saves before day one: inside petal's rolloutAriana Grande entered release day for petal with 3.22M pre-saves and opened with 62.19M Spotify streams, charting all 12 tracks inside 24 hours. The mechanics scale down to an independent release.
Market your album like Charli: the no-dead-air rolloutA remix album bridged Brat to the next record, three songs dropped on consecutive days, a B-side surfaced on an alt account, and phone-locked shows kept footage scarce. Four rollout mechanics independent artists can run without the budget.
Bespoke work
We run this for artists, not just write about it.
Everything on this page is what we do for clients. If you would rather we ran it, tell us what you are putting out.
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