 A hidden secret behind how many of your favorite artists blow up. One of the things musicians forget is their bio is a chance to get people to inception into their audience and the press how they should think about you. Here's what I mean. Numerous times I've gotten artists to get called a record of the year contender by simply putting that in the press release and bio for them. And then I watch it repeated verbatim all the time. Other times I've said an artist is one of the most respected voices in their genre and sure enough, the record reviews on YouTube are repeating the exact same thing, which then makes those reviewers audiences feel like they need to understand who this artist is and it keeps getting repeated and the results really help build a fan base. Why are all your favorite musicians changing their old album covers? So you may have seen musicians like Dua Lipa or Doja Cat changing their album covers recently and thought, what the fuck are these people doing? Since after all, this is the silliest marketing move since everyone started archiving their Instagram grid whenever they had a new album to come out. So why change old album covers? Well, if you notice, they're all changing them to something that fits the aesthetic of their new material and new album cover. It sits the suits who do artist marketing have finally gotten the hint of how much back catalog is consumed and that it can drive your new catalog. Since nothing promotes new songs like old songs and vice versa, they know if they change this cover art and a listener wonders if their mind is playing tricks on them as to whether the cover was changed or not. They'll go to the artist page and they'll see the new material the artist has and then drive up streams on the new single from those people who are most likely to rinse a new song their biggest fans. Hiring a music writer to write your bio or Spotify playlist pitch is one of the best hacks to get fans and connections fast. Not only can you get a music writer who covers your favorite artists to have to get to know you and your music and also put a polish on your story and get to know what's good about you, but no one is better at weaving a story when there's little there than a music writer. It's basically in their job description, but there's another benefit to doing this that's even bigger. These writers are hanging out with labels and managers and making playlists for other influential people who like your type of music and showing them what to listen to. And if they like you, well, you're about to get heard by a lot of people who could set you up for success. So look for a writer who covers the smaller bands in your genre to write your next bio and support the musicians. They feel the closest bonds to one of the things I think some DIY musicians miss out on is that fans spend money and share the posts of the artist they feel closest to. There's been so many studies that have shown this dating back to the 7-O-1 by MTV in 2012 and countless sins that prove this. Feeling close to an artist comes from a connection. Yet so many musicians spend their days plotting how to avoid those connections by being anonymous or working on songs that they think will make them look cool instead of writing about their authentic emotions and showing them to the world. But I got bad news for those musicians for years. We've lived in a world where even the dumbest music fans can sniff out the musicians who are faking it. So you have to remember your time on social media should be spent showing parts of you fans can bond with, as well as in your music, making sure you're also being vulnerable and guided by making as an intense emotion as possible, since that makes the best music and what excites fans the most. Many of you can't get your TikTok, Reels or Shorts past a couple hundred views, but here's how to fix that. Stop using big crowded broad hashtags. You want microgenre and niche hashtags. Instead of emo, you want things like elder emo or Midwest emo. For the love of God, don't use hashtag musician or FYP. The reason the big TikTokers could get away with that or not using hashtags is the algorithm understands who to show them to, but they don't know what to do with you, which is why you have no views. Next, unfollow your friends who aren't musicians similar to you and follow them from a personal account and only follow musicians in your community. Now comment like and bookmark their TikToks that you really like. If you don't know how to find those musicians you're similar to, you should watch this video I made on how to find them here. But one last thing, you should also duet, stitch or repost the artists that are similar to you and that your friends with. And after that, things should start going better for you. If you're having trouble growing on here, this is a nice trick. Right before you make a post, go through all your recent videos and reply back to any comment or like them. That way, when you put up your next video, if the user is recently interacted with you, well, they're way more likely to get you in their feed with your new post and keep building a relationship with you. I'm going to tell you why some short form videos do better on one platform rather than another. So I've done a lot of experimenting with short form over the years and there's a few reasons. The first is easy. Comments, replies, pitches, views and shares are all weighted differently on each platform and will determine how much the video is spread. But truly, one of the more interesting phenomenons I see over and over again is these platforms all judge you by an initial response. So sometimes reposting the video later on really does get a better response. As well, each algorithm has different data about who to recommend you to, which is why the artists you interact with, tag and make connections with on each one of these platforms matters greatly in getting you recommend. I'm consistently shocked how many musicians complain when they have quick viral moments or their song gets a lot of streams, but then no one follows them on Instagram or whatever social media. But what most of these musicians have in common is they either don't have many other songs out that people rinse or they haven't made a music video. The reason music videos are important is they build relationships with audiences that get them curious to know more about you. And you know who gets followed on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. People who've generated curiosity, fans want to know more about and build a relationship with and music videos are the ultimate way to do that. P.O.V. TikToks are really driving songs into the TikTok algorithm lately, but there's a trick to make them really effective. As I've told you, the best way to get people to stream your songs is to tell them the emotion they would feel if they listened to your song. So if it's an EDM banger, make a P.O.V. showing the club getting wild. If it's a sad ballad, show someone bawling their eyes out. You can make numerous P.O.V. videos for the hook of your song, re-interring the emotions that will make the audience feel if they hit play on it and it will get them to jump the Spotify or YouTube and stream the song to hear the full thing if you show them an emotion that they'd rather feel. YouTube is blowing up music videos that have shorts attached to them right now and you should really take advantage of this. If you missed it, YouTube just started a music shorts chart and I keep seeing the artists that are pushing their videos with shorts are getting tons of algorithmic love. And so many musicians don't realize you can link your full-length video from the shorts so fans can click on it easily in YouTube Studio and blow up your full-length music video that way. Musicians always ask me why are you artists still signed to record labels and as someone who works with a lot of artists on labels, the answer is one I don't see all the TikTokers on here mentioning. It's actually the label's contacts list. The fact is major labels have things like brand relations departments where they're teaming with brands to do deals across a few of their artists which is often big money and makes a huge difference in the artist's life. Then there's things like when you're doing well and you want your shirt and hot topic, let's say. Getting the buyer for hot topics numbered and intro from the label where the buyer is actually going to take your call often comes from that label and those are some of the hardest hurdles to get over on your own even when you have momentum. So many of you are wondering why your TikToks or shorts aren't hitting and what so many of you miss is that it's way more compelling to say why you did something that's happening in your video since a lot of the time well, the what is pretty obvious and you're not adding much context or even sometimes embarrassing yourself by saying you wrote the song of the summer but if the why is vulnerable or relatable, you open up a bonding moment with the viewer that makes them way more likely to enjoy your song. So popping a sentence or two of why on top of a lip sync video or something else can be what helps make your video pop off. Musicians are always getting it wrong with the different platforms they use are for. TikTok, Spotify and YouTube are your best discovery channels where new people will hear you and you should concentrate on them for that. Spotify is where they consume musicians the most by an overwhelming amount but if fans stream you on YouTube while watching music and lyric videos, they build deeper relationships with you and get them to be more curious and feel closer with you. Here's Instagram is where fans go to investigate what an artist is about and then if that artist passes the test, they follow them to stay up to date with them. Whereas Twitter is a decent place to update fans but it's a great place to socialize with other artists and people with the business you want to build relationships with and Facebook is of course totally useless unless your fans are Gen Xers or Boomers. Voice messages on Instagram are low key one of the most underutilized cheat codes for musicians. If a fan shares a story that's kind of corny you don't want to share to your audience, thanking them with a voice message encourages them to keep sharing your music but without having your followers see the cringe. They're also great to show your personality and give fans something to brag to friends about and spread the word about you. Doing tiny little things that leave an impression on fans is how you get the word spread about you and these are perfect. Most musicians know that releasing music on Friday is a fool's game because you can be with all the biggest artists dropping music and so many people are busy trying to get enough work done to not work through the weekend or meet deadlines. So what is the best day to release music? I really like Tuesday and Wednesday. Since Mondays, everyone is busy from the flood of emails over the weekend or tired and grumpy. Thursday and Friday are so close to the weekend and since less people are on the internet on the weekend one to two days after releasing your song, you start to lose momentum. So many of you are deathly afraid of A&Rs and managed changing works but I gotta tell you, I deal with A&R every day and have for two decades and 90% of them you'll be lucky if you get an opinion on the shade of pink of an album cover. Never mind a comment on your song. The fact is so many of you think about an evil monster ruling over your career when it hasn't even happened yet. When these A&R are a straw man at best who barely comment on things and just let you do what you want to do while they focus on other things like partying. So what I'm trying to say here is two things though. Is it maybe better to get in the water before you judge if it's filled with a shark or not? And two, no one's gonna save you if you're not doing your own artist development. A lot of these people no longer know how to develop artists so you gotta be learning how to do that yourself. We're no longer in the TikTok era of music and we are now in what I'm calling the earworm era of music and that what's working is odd TikTok to get songs to blow up. Artists are pushing their own music by making tons of TikToks to the hook as opposed to the TikTok era when it was other users and influencers making videos of artist songs. Now the power is in the artist's hands to break their own songs, which is a big deal. Targeting teenagers is actually not the best way to grow fans. No matter what the genre, an interesting thing I see in meetings a lot of the time with big labels is someone who will suggest we target younger teenagers. But an interesting thing we see over and over again is targeting 18 to 25 year olds is actually far more effective as this group is more stable in what they listen to and often could spend more, spread the word about what they like and has a far better spreading effect since they are often traveling and going back and forth between college and spread the word about the musicians they love far more than younger demographics and anyone older than that is often losing their interest in music. So many musicians ask me if they could still blow up if they never play live. And there's long been a lot of evidence that you don't need to play live in almost any genre to blow up. And seeing as two different artists at Coachella this year at their first show be there, I think it really puts the idea that you have to play live to death. But the way to see this is just like if you choose not to do social media or music videos, you really are trying to run a race without a limb. And while there's putty of people who learn to compensate and do an amazing physical thing without a limb, they need to strike that there are other limbs to compensate for this. So the real question is, is what are you gonna do on social media or with your songs to compensate for not playing live? Here's something controversial I truly believe. Musicians don't need to read their analytics. So I literally get paid by big labels, management companies and corporations to read analytics and draw conclusions from them. But here's the thing, you a musician don't need to read them. Music is a musician's dream. What's most important is getting up and doing the work each day to grow and honoring your dream. But so often when you all read your analytics, you get depressed and stop doing the work because of some weird metric you imagined you should have hit by now. Even worse, musicians don't get that it often takes two to six songs of consistent work to really see any big gains. It's that realistic goals of how fast their song will catch on. Since I constantly see when a musician blows up on let's say song five, that song one was actually good, but it got no traction and then it gets even bigger than song five when they're not promoting it. It's not that the song wasn't good then, it's that they kept being consistent doing the work to get themselves noticed. So if your numbers depress you and your analytics make you stop working, well, stop looking at them.