Grow as an artist
Growing as an artist with no label is slow and mostly unglamorous. It is also a set of steps you can learn. This is a practical path, in order, from a song you have finished to the first people who care about it. Each step links to a guide with the sources behind it.
1. Finish the song
A finished song beats a perfect plan. Choose the one you would play for a stranger, fix what a listener would hit in the first thirty seconds, and call it done. Play it for three people whose taste you trust and who will be honest. Ask which song they would play again. The answer is often not the one you expected.
2. Get the details right
Titles, credits, and codes follow your song everywhere. A wrong spelling or a duplicated code is hard to fix later. Our guide to ISRC codes covers the one most artists have never been told about.
3. Release it where people can listen
A song needs a link that works before anyone can hear it. Release through a distributor or directly on a platform such as Bandcamp, then check the link on your phone. Every extra tap between "I'm curious" and "I'm listening" loses people.
4. Put it where a person will hear it
Nobody finds a new song by accident anymore. The scale is the reason: about 106,000 new tracks a day arrive at streaming services. So the first listeners come from a person choosing your song: a blog, a radio show, a playlist maker, an editor, a friend. Read how to submit your music for coverage for a pitch you can copy, and submit to Life of Art, where a person listens to every song.
Be careful with advice that assumes you already have an audience. Most "get more streams" tips do. We take it apart in why most get-more-streams advice doesn't work for brand-new artists.
5. Read what comes back
Early numbers are small and noisy, and they say more about how many people have heard a song than how good it is. Watch the share of listeners who liked it, not only the total. See what you get for how to read Life of Art's numbers, and playlist placement and listeners for why a placement is not the same as a fan.
6. Keep going, at a pace you can hold
One song rarely does it. The artists who grow tend to keep releasing and keep reaching new people. There is no correct schedule. How often should you release music? lays out the tradeoff so you can set your own.
7. Learn the business, slowly
You do not need to understand everything before you start. Learn it as you need it. The part of a label that scouts and shapes artists is called A&R, and you can do much of it yourself: what A&R is, and who does it when there is no label. The guides library grows as we publish.
Three questions to ask about any advice
- Who is it for? Does it assume an audience you do not have yet?
- What does it cost? Money, time, or a rule you might break?
- Can it be checked? Is there a source, or only a confident tone?
Send us a song
See how submitting works, then send in the song you finished in step 1.