Written by Dr Neil March
INTRODUCTION
About four years ago, Fresh on the Net published an article by two moderators – Neil and Tobisonics – giving out quite a lot of detailed advice about how to carefully navigate the multitude of services, offers and deals out there in the independent music space. It was intended to be partly a wake up call for artists to get a grip and be more realistic about their music, their careers and their strategies. Mainly, though, it was intended to provide the best advice we could give about what to do and what not to do in trying to take your ambitions forward as an independent music artist or someone in a supporting role to independent artists.
Four years on, that world has changed so much and we have all learned a lot more as we have continued to find our way around it. In particular, the two of us (Neil and Sherry Sahayaraj) have been running Trust The Doc Media for long enough to be in a position to offer fresh advice which we hope will be of value to aspiring independent artists. As with all these things, there is an element of subjectivity and there are areas where our knowledge is weaker or stronger. So not everyone will agree 100% with all the advice. That is fine and is to be expected. All we can do is give out our best and most honest view of the current landscape and hope it doesn’t change so rapidly that the advice dates too quickly!
THE PROMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE IN 2025
It was already the case, when Fresh on the Net published the article by Neil and Tobi in 2021, that the promotional landscape for independent artists had changed markedly with the advent of digital. Streaming had led the charge and, with subscription-based streaming currently accounting for nearly 50% of global recorded music revenues and ad-based streams accounting for a further 17%, the picture is clear. Streaming is the dominant player in the global recorded music market whether we like it or not and putting your back up against it, as I still see so many older [usually] male artists doing is pointless and counter-productive.
We will return to the subject of what streaming is and why it is silly to compare streams to record sales when they are nothing like the same thing. In terms of promoting and plugging music, especially music that is not likely to bother the A or B lists of significant national radio stations, it is important to recognise that the value of radio play in terms of translating into sales or followings, is very low unless you are on rotation on shows with big audiences. Of course we all enjoy getting spot plays on national radio, especially BBC shows on the likes of 6 Music, 1Xtra, Wales, Scotland, Ulster etc. But the truth is airplay of that kind is better for your feelgood factor and your EPK than it is for gaining any new followers or selling your tracks. For that to happen, you would need to be played 4 or 5 times a day on similar shows for at least a week and preferably a lot longer.
The reality is that, if you are a struggling grassroots band or artist, that is simply not going to happen. We frequently get messages from artists who have just enjoyed a spin on a BBC Introducing Show and are asking how they should go about now getting onto the BBC 6 Music playlist! The answer is they are not going to. Not, at least, unless they can demonstrate that they have thousands of monthly Spotify listeners, are playing headline tours, have great engagement on the cooler social media platforms and similar levels of engagement with their YouTube content. And even then there is no guarantee. They still need all of that plus a great track. The great track, on its own, is not sufficient. That inevitably raises a big question mark over the value of paying pluggers to take your music to radio. Even a top level plugger who can get a seat at the hallowed Monday Morning Playlist Meeting of a big station is still not going to get your music onto the playlist unless there is enough of a story that convinces the Head of Music and their team that you have such momentum that, if they take a punt and play you on rotation, they will not look stupid and out of touch when your track bombs.
One of us (Neil obviously!) still recalls the days of doing national and regional plugging on behalf of his indie label in pre-digital times when, if you managed to get a one-to-one meeting with the Head of Music or the senior producer of a target show, the first question they would ask would be ‘What’s the budget for this release?’. In other words, if there was going to be a major advertising campaign with rotation on music video channels (which were particularly important at that time), billboards, full page ads and promises of reviews in leading music journals and magazines (also very important at that time) and ads on commercial radio, they might consider playing it. Otherwise, forget it!
The landscape may have changed but that safety-first attitude in the national media has not. If you do reach the level where you can get onto the A or B list of a station like BBC 6 Music or 1Xtra, then airplay suddenly becomes far more valuable because that rotation not only familiarises an audience of two to three million with your track but it also presents you as having ‘made it’ and you are now being listened to, streamed and followed across the UK and have a really good chance of being able to sell tickets for gigs in enough locations to make touring a reality; perhaps even a necessity given the importance of live music in today’s popular music ecosystem [with the caveat that there are artists who, for appreciable reasons of mental or physical health, do not have that option].
In the meantime, though, the vast majority of artists; those still at grassroots level; need to weigh up the all-important question of how to use what limited budget they have for marketing and promoting their new tracks. Radio plugging is still a viable option depending upon two factors – cost and genre. If your music [potentially] appeals to a niche or specialist audience for which there are a number of independent shows (i.e. online or community radio etc.) that may have modest audiences but audiences that are loyal and engaged and want to hear new music, it might be worth paying an indie plugger if the price is friendly enough and the plugger understands your music, the target audience and the shows that are likely to support you. At least then you may be exposed to precisely the kinds of music lovers who could decide to come and see you if you are gigging in their area, buy your track from Bandcamp, follow you on socials or at least stream your track and save it to their library for future listens. This could be particularly useful for genres like dark synthwave, contemporary punk, electronic and ambient music etc.
We have one advantage here as a business whose portfolio involves managing, marketing and promoting a band as well as broadcasting on radio and online TV, writing for blogs and providing educational courses. Namely that we receive a continuous stream of new releases sent to us by pluggers and PR outlets. So we get to see the quality of their submissions and the quality control in terms of whose music they are prepared to represent. There are some low cost pluggers who are very honest about the level of their media contacts but who might be the right fit for the kinds of artists referred to in the previous paragraph. We also see some very good quality submissions by more expensive pluggers but, in all honesty, the only people who should be paying for their services are labels that are investing in taking artists to the next level or artists [and their managers etc.] who have already reached a level where the potential results in terms of volumes and levels of airplay are worth the cost.
Even then, whoever is paying for those services should be enquiring as to the extent of the promotional reach. If they are only presenting the music to radio shows, that could be a problem. If, on the other hand, they are also presenting to the correct editorial staff at leading and significantly popular journals and blogs, that could make a difference. After all, reviews stay online for long periods (i.e. years in most cases) and have greater lasting value than a few plays on radio. And, while some may mourn the collapse of the once-mighty music press thanks to digital, it is a fact that there are now far more options for reviews, news and interviews and the great bulk of them are free to read (NME, The Skinny, Louder Than War, Clash, Dork, The Quietus, The Line Of Best Fit, Earmilk etc. not to mention this blog and others like Del Owusu’s Platinum Mind, Tony Hardy’s Fifty 3 Fridays and others like Joyzine, GodsInTheTVZine etc.). Even better though if they also include some serious playlist pitching in their portfolios. And yes, we are talking about streaming playlists with Spotify at the indisputable top of the list given the degree of influence it has on the current media.
NEW SERVICES MEAN RETHINKING OUR PRIORITIES
The shift towards Spotify playlists as being a top priority both for generating eye-catching monthly listening figures and for achieving exposure to new audiences who prefer to discover new music in this form has given rise to a bunch of new services. Worryingly, for the long-established pluggers and PR outlets, these services are mostly offering highly competitive prices and promising new ways to help artists achieve greater exposure and engagement. For a long time, we have all tended to adhere to certain principles when it comes to the do’s and dont’s of independent music. They have firmly included never paying for airplay or reviews. These have always been seen as offers that should be made on pure merit and not because you are paying for the exposure. While those rules may still apply a lot of the time, the way these new services are shaping up necessitates some thinking outside the box. So let’s talk about some of these new services and our experience of researching their offerings, talking with them to establish more information and, in some cases, actually working with them.
MUSOSOUP
Musosoup have been developing their brand for a while now and they have changed their approach in the past year or so. This is how it works. You submit the track you want to promote to the team first so that they can decide whether it is of the requisite standard. You usually hear back fairly promptly and, assuming it is a yes, you can then pay them a fee of £36.00. So it is not expensive at all. However, it is unlikely to be the only cost of using their services as we are about to see. The track is then automatically circulated to all Musosoup’s curators. This is an international mix of independent blogs, journals, radio shows, social media marketers and others. If they like your music and believe it would work with their audiences, they then make you an offer. The offer includes a service (or services) that you are charged for. Some cost as little as £4.00 while others might cost £20.00. But they must also make you an offer of a freealternativeso that you have the choice to go with that instead of paying for the service offered. In the great majority of cases, the free alternative is being added to a Spotify playlist which means you will probably end up on a lot of playlists even if only for a limited time period. With a few of them, it may be a social media post endorsing you to a significant audience or something similar.
Of course, you could simply accept all the free alternatives and not pay for any services. If so, you will only have spent £36.00 and got yourself onto any number of playlists (our last single had over 100 offers in the end and we ended up on over 100 playlists just from Musosoup curators). But the ‘thinking outside the box’ part refers to the paid offers. The purist will turn their nose up at any such activity but our experience has been that paying modest sums (mainly to cover some admin cost and people’s time) for in-depth interviews or lovingly-written reviews seems to be pragmatic, particularly when the reach of some of these curators can be impressive and might be focused in a territory you are particularly interested in developing. We have used Musosoup for our past three single release campaigns and, while our label takes care of releases, distribution and royalties, we take care of the marketing and promotion and we used more paid offers with the last single than with the previous two because we felt the value they brought us was worth the little amounts charged (typically around £6.00 each). It still cost a good sight less than hiring a plugger or PR outlet!
In reality, our experience is that being on a Musosoup curator’s playlist is unlikely to have a major impact on your streaming numbers although it might add a decent few and, if you are not paying for the playlist adds, that is still a bonus. But we have felt the Musosoup experience has been positive and, because we are not having to pay per curator to be heard and can pick and choose which paid offers we go with, it has meant we have the principal share of the control and have been happy with the outcomes. We have talked to a lot of others in grassroots music and, although opinion is mixed as to which services are the best value, most people had positive things to say about Musosoup. Musosoup offers diverse curator opportunities. Not all have significant reach, so research offers carefully. Timing your campaign with release and tracking results can maximize impact, while building relationships with supportive curators can maximize future opportunity. Musosoup is a tool and how well it works depends on how strategically you approach it. The key takeaway from our experience is to balance enthusiasm with intention and know what you want to achieve and dont be afraid to experiment.
SUBMIT HUB
SubmitHub is a well-established service and one that most independent artists are familiar with. There is a free version of it but it limits you to submitting a track to one curator and it is unlikely they will like it enough to ‘accept’ it and add it to a playlist and/or write a feature about it. Then there are different packages you can pay for that enable you to pick a fixed number of curators to submit your track to. You can ask for feedback but, if you are not interested in hearing what others think about your music, you do not have to include this element. We chose not to do so last time we used SubmitHub because we felt that, given our music had received airplay from national radio shows, first class independent/online radio and some lovely reviews, we really were not interested in being given advice on how we could improve our track!
Likewise, given that our tracks are mastered by Mark L Beazley (Rothko) of Trace Recordings, we will not be impressed by a know-it-all curator telling us we should have eq’d the bass more or gone for a warmer sound etc. Mark’s mastering is top-notch and meticulous. What is interesting though is that, when we told grassroots music community friends we were considering paying for the lowest cost non-free service, this was met with a chorus of people urging us not to ‘waste’ our money because none of their curators would ever accept our tracks. We paid for ten curators and picked the ones whose profiles suggested they might be the most suitable. In reality, three curators out of ten did accept which meant we were, put on their playlists and they published blog posts about us. We thought that was a pretty decent result.
One disadvantage with SubmitHub is the amount of curators you get to submit to but we did get given some bonus ones. And again, at least we had control over which ones we picked and could look at their profiles as a guide to their suitability. For us it was a positive experience even though we did not use them on the latest single as we wanted to try a different mix. SubmitHub continues to divide opinion but founder Jason is prepared to go on social media platforms and challenge critics, defending his approach and argue that he is not encouraging anyone to pay for reviews or playlists. He also points out that making feedback an option ensures the curators do actually listen to the music and cannot simply reject a track without explanation. We can see that, for some, the feedback is either useful or, at least, validating but we also feel that giving the customer the choice about receiving it makes sense.
GROOVER
Groover, if nothing else, should probably be awarded the gold medal for effort where promoting their own brand is concerned. Lately, it has felt as if we can barely watch a YouTube video without first having to sit through a 30 second ad involving founder Dorian talking passionately about Groover. He is also, like Jason, very proactive on platforms where others have made comments about the service, going to the lengths of looking up their individual Groover campaigns and challenging their claims by pointing out what was done for them and how, statistically, it suggests they did better than the average customer etc. He does this in a way that is clever, not arrogant or aggressive and is able to win over the neutrals with his logic. Actually though, the more potent element that weighs heavily in Groover’s favour is the calibre of artists who appear on their front page, endorsing the platform and confirming it helped their careers. That includes Bonobo, Low Island, Passenger, Ninja Tune, Far Caspian and others who are significant and current. That kind of validation is not to be sniffed at.
Despite these positives, we are yet to test Groover out on our own campaigns. Partly this is to do with the current pricing. Like SubmitHub, the up side is that the customer chooses the individual curators to submit music to. But also like SubmitHub, the cost is per curator and most are £2.00 each (which Groover explain is split 50/50 between platform and curator). So £20.00 will usually get you 10 curators or, if you wanted to compare this with Musosoup, £36.00 paid to Groover will generally equate to 18 curators whereas Musosoup will put your track in front of all its curators.. So, if only a smallish percentage are ever likely to accept your music in any scenario, that does not leave you with much. So we had a look through the list of curators on the Groover site and it was a confusing experience. Some of them were people we knew personally and who, with the best will in the world, we would not pay for feedback let alone for them to potentially do something for us (i.e. play us on a radio show, write a review etc.) and there were none that leapt out at us as the kinds of media who might seriously impact our career journey.
As soon as we began asking questions to the team at Groover, they began sending us their recommended lists of 50 curators, tailored especially for our music. This was interesting as we were not sure they had heard our music at this stage. But even if they had, this would have cost us £100.00 (£64.00 more than Musosoup for nowhere near as many curators) and a lot of them did not look particularly suitable in terms of the areas of music they operated in. Nevertheless, the Groover model seems to be delivering for a lot of artists and labels. So it seems to be that you need to be prepared to spend maybe a little more than on the aforementioned platforms and choose your curators carefully from the information in their profiles and what you are looking for (airplay, reviews etc.). If you can translate your choices into increased engagement, fanbase and streams, it will be money well spent. We are considering trying the Groover model for our next release in Spring 2025. In the meantime, the unexpected continuing momentum behind our current one has forced us and our label Monochrome Motif to agree to put the next single release back while we enjoy our extended campaign. You will find out a little more about why as this article goes on.
THE TUNES CLUB
The Tunes Club popped up on our radar in the Autumn and, having checked out what people were saying about them on well-known forums, we decided to take a chance with their introductory package which cost $39.00 (approximately £32.00 depending on the exchange rate at any given point). The deal was that they would continue to promote our track to playlist curators whose lists had over 250K followers plus social media and their own playlists. Initially we were delighted. In a relatively short time, our streaming figures
for the single in question had hit 3.6K and our monthly listeners had jumped up accordingly. But the joy was shortlived. On 1st January 2025, Spotify took the track down, claiming it had been boosted by artificial streams. At the time of writing we are still challenging this decision after our label has already tried to do so via their distributors. We have produced a folder full of evidence of all the playlists we were added to as a result of ‘free alternatives’ by Musosoup curators plus those we achieved through SubmitHub and other evidence including an email from The Tunes Club strenuously denying any use of artificial streams, describing their methodology and confirming that all the streams are organic and genuine. So the jury is out on this one. For our own part, we have decided not to risk using their services again. But whether we will be able to prove that they did nothing wrong and have our track and the streams restored remains to be
seen.
YOUGROW
YouGrow came to our attention through reading what others were saying about the different services they have used to increase their streaming numbers. YouGrow appealed to us because they were strident about not using any artificial streaming methods and having a patient approach to presenting music to curators of popular playlists until they find some that fit the music and are prepared to add them. Then they let the playlists’ popularity do the rest. Also, if you pay for their package, they plant a tree so the service and the environment go hand in hand. We used the Spotify Tester package which cost $47.00 (£38.59). We paid for this on 13th December and, for several weeks, nothing seemed to be moving forward and we were getting frustrated. The representative, Emiel, kept telling us to be patient as he was working on suitable playlist curators and would have something for us soon. Then, as January arrived, so too did good news. We had been selected for two significant playlists and we would be added to them in the following weeks. We sat tight and then, sure enough, the playlist adds materalised. We were briefly concerned to see how far down the playlists we were. But that concern was shortlived. First we saw our streams begin to slowly accelerate to nearly 700 in the first couple of days. Two weeks later the monthly figure was 11K and the track had reached 6.8K streams. It is still growing at the time of writing. The other novel aspect is that there is a facility on our Artist Spotify Home Page that shows how many people are listening. It always used to say
0 People are listening when we checked it. But at the time of writing, it is fluctuating regularly between 1 and 6 people listening!
Incidentally, if we have understood the information on the Artist Spotify account correctly, there are over a thousand people streaming the track who are not linked to playlists, possibly because the impact on the algorithm is to share it more widely. Probably there are a number of reasons including that plus airplay, reviews and our social media marketing. But there is no question about the key role played by YouGrow in delivering this success. Given that the two playlists producing the bulk of these streams are recognised by Spotify as genuine, we have to hope there cannot possibly be any reason for them to question them this time around. So, right now, it seems YouGrow is a very good option for achieving good streaming numbers provided you can supply them with a track that curators of popular playlists are likely to accept.
One thing you do need to be aware of is that YouGrow has an international network and you may find the vast majority of your streams are happening in other countries. For example, thanks to our inclusion on a very popular playlist that is based in Southern and Central America and is followed by Spanish-speaking nations, the majority of our streams at the time of writing are emanating from Mexico with Chile in second and Spain third. The UK, previously always our biggest audience, is not even in the Top 10 as things
stand. We are not complaining though. Music is an international art form and we are happy to have exposure everywhere we can get it. It is certainly true that their service is effective for reaching international audiences, but artists should prepare for their streams to originate from countries outside their primary market. This can be a positive for global exposure but may require adjustments in marketing strategies to engage listeners in these new regions.
FINALLY, ON THE SUBJECT OF PLAYLIST PITCHING
There are others advertising services that promise huge volumes of streams. Our advice is to tread very carefully and do background checks before spending any money. It is no fun having your content removed because of alleged violations of Spotify’s rules. They don’t make it easy for you to find where and how to raise a complaint either. So watch this space for now. We will report soon on any progress with our own case.
MAKING SENSE OF THE CURRENT RECORDED MUSIC ECOSYSTEM
The music industry has changed immeasurably in the past decade alone. There is a graph that we are always seeing being used by ICMP students when they are working historic data into the rationale behind their project ideas. It shows the make-up of global recorded music revenues by format over the period since 2000. At the start, streaming does not exist and downloads are growing year on year in terms of market share at the expense of physical formats (CD and Vinyl) while other shares are held by publishing royalties, synchronisation etc.
Then, from about 2013, streaming begins to change the game. Initially, downloads continue to be popular but, by the end of the decade (2020), they have been reduced to a market share of around 3.2% where they have remained steadily ever since. Physical formats have made a marked comeback in terms of the total revenues they produce but not in terms of market share. The reason for this is that streaming has grown just as quickly. The total market share for streams currently sits at about 67%. Nearly 50% of global recorded music revenues are now from subscription streams with around 17% being ad-based streams. The message is loud and clear. Streaming is in the ascendancy and, unless a new format comes along to challenge it or something changes in the international legislation which is what it would take for streaming platforms to be more redistributive, the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer are going to continue to enjoy gargantuan profits while artists receive precious little by comparison.
One of the problems we face as musicians is that we obviously believe our work is of greater value than the miniscule amount of money we receive for making it. But, if we were to play devil’s advocate, we might be inclined to point out that the market value of any product is determined by what people are prepared to pay for it. So, if people want to pay a monthly subscription of £11.99 and stream as many tracks as they like, that raises a large question mark over how music is valued from an economic perspective in 2025. Of course, not everyone uses streaming in the same way. Some of us will use streaming to discover music but will then spend money on purchasing our favourite discoveries either in download form (possibly from Bandcamp if it is available there or otherwise from the likes of Amazon) or in physical formats. Even then, if we are honest with ourselves, we are still streaming a large quantity of music that we will never go and purchase in another format. Others see streaming as the principal way in which they interact with music beyond possibly going to see artists perform live.
Either way, it is as well to understand that a stream is nota record sale and to attempt to use such a comparison as the main argument for streams paying out more to artists and rights owners is hopelessly unrealistic. Let us present a scenario that attempts to explain this. If digital formats were no longer available to us and you had a monthly budget of £11.99 to spend on buying new music, you would have to choose between buying an album or maybe two or a bunch of singles. In that scenario, you would have to be very choosy about whose music you spend your money on. If you are honest, how many of the singles or albums you spent that limited budget on would be by unknown or little known grassroots artists when you are faced with new releases by more established artists who you follow? The honest answer is probably somewhere between NIL and one or two in a good month!
We are not in that scenario though and your streaming subscription allows you to take lots of chances on artists including some you may not even like. You can stream a host of tracks to be supportive of grassroots artists without it taking anything away from your budget for more well-known artists’ music because it is risk-free. To equate that process to a record sale (in pre-digital times) is absurd. A stream is not a purchase and, when people are paying £11.99 to stream hundreds, maybe thousands, of tracks, it is ludicrous to imagine this would still work if people had to pay for every individual stream as I have heard some music traditionalists argue should be the case. The irony is that most of those arguing for such an idea are the ones who would suddenly find their streams reduced to a handful if they got their way!
The truth is that, unless you are at a level where you have so many thousands or millions of streams that it actually is making you money (and if you are, then you are probably also making money from physical format sales, live shows, merchandise and a whole lot more anyway), you need to treat streams like an extension of radio. Just as radio used to be the lynchpin of exposure and audience reach back in the last century, so streaming has taken on that role in the current one. Getting onto a popular playlist postulating the right kind of music for your potential audience can give you a much better opportunity to win new followers over as well as generating significant streaming numbers.
You can obsess over the notion that the amount you are paid per stream is unfair. Alternatively, you can recognise that, if you want to build a fanbase, get attention from other media and achieve a degree of validation by being placed alongside broadly similar artists by curators of successful playlists, you need to be actively involved in streaming from a marketing and promotional perspective. In the same way that it is not credible for an aspiring artist to have no social media presence [even if that means getting someone else to handle that for them], so it is not credible for them to be trying to shun streaming. For us, that means not only having your music available on Spotify but also actively plotting how you will drive your marketing and promotional strategy to target streaming playlist adds and try to convert social media engagement into streams too; however difficult that is to achieve in reality.
Last but not least, we talk to enough industry insiders to know that, when record labels, radio programming heads and reviews editors of leading journals are considering whether to take an interest in an up and coming artist, the first place they look is Spotify to see whether their streaming numbers suggest they have sufficient momentum. So it is a good idea to be thinking about whose attention you want or need to grab when you are taking a stand about where people can access your music.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
That brings us neatly onto the issue of social media marketing. There is a broad consensus amongst music industry commentators and advisors that the modern aspiring artist needs to be regularly and consistently posting engaging content. That can mean anything from a video trailer of a new track to the artist talking about a new idea and playing a bit of it with a guitar or piano or just simply talking about their work. The notion is that, where we would once have seen releasing unfinished works as an absolute no-no, now that is the norm. It speaks to the idea that the modern fan wants to feel they are involved in your story and you are sharing something intimate and special with them; allowing them into your world where they can experience what you are working on before it is complete.
We can talk about a lot of these issues but, coming back to the point of the article which is about what to pay for and what to avoid, what is the right approach to using social media ads? A glib response would be to say there is no right or wrong answer even though that is essentially true. But what is important is to know what you are seeking to achieve. It is easy to assume hitting boost on a post designed to sell an idea to potential followers is always the best way to use small amounts of money to increase your reach. One of the headaches we all face when deciding to commit any money, even just £20.00, on a social media ad is working out how to pitch it in the most effective way. You need the accompanying post to highlight what it is you want people to know, what track(s) you want them to hear and what you want the impact to be (i.e. for them to go and stream it, to buy tickets for your live shows, to purchase it from Bandcamp etc.).
You also need to pick the right setting. Are you targeting engagement or are you looking to achieve thousands of ‘likes’? We have realised that engagement is more useful for us. But it is still easy to get this only half-right, typically achieving a useful volume of new followers but very little conversion into streams or any other form of commitment. You also need to know enough about your target audience to choose the right platform(s) to focus your marketing efforts on. It is easy and comforting for artists to imagine their music appeals to a cool, young Gen Z audience but, if you were to research the audiences of similar artists and genres, you might discover your target demographic is a lot older and less gender-balanced etc. than you had allowed yourself to believe! So do your homework and make sure you know who you are targeting and why.
One final word on social media because it would be too easy to talk about this subject for pages and it really merits an entire other article. With the current antics of a certain Elon Musk driving a lot of people, especially those of a sensitive and creative bent, away from X (formerly Twitter), there is a growing army of people on BlueSky who are finding it a much less toxic place and one that, with its emphasis on building and joining communities, feels like Twitter in its earlier years. The current state of play suggests it may be
more likely that BlueSky will be the chief beneficiary of the move away from X more so than the Zuckerberg-owned Threads. But time will tell. I was certainly cheered when I saw The Guardian newspaper, one of the leading media voices on the left of the political centre for many decades in the UK, has put an announcement on X to say they are no longer going to be active there and to follow them instead on BlueSky.
PAY TO PLAY AND OTHER EVILS!!!
We end this article with a little piece about live music at grassroots level. This is fitting in a sense because being live music entrepreneurs and regularly receiving Arts Council England funding for live music projects has been such a feature of our work for so long now. Our role, alongside Del Owusu [and some notable others] in putting on Fresh on the Net Live in London and Leicester with Arts Council support was another example of this. In an era where, partly because there is less money in recorded music than there used to be before streaming changed the rules, live music has become more important than ever, it is a good idea for grassroots bands and artists to approach this element with certain principles in the backs of their minds.
One of these is the types of deals you should be prepared to accept. If you are putting on your own gigs, the issue is likely to be what arrangement you have with the venue. Deals do vary but, for us, unless there is some special reason why the venue and its location are so important that they are worth paying extra for, we would generally stay away from venues that demand a hire fee. When you are taking on all the risk of marketing the event, printing posters, paying the artists, sound engineer and someone to run the door and you are putting all the hard graft in to sell tickets and provide the venue with an audience to sell drinks to, what justification is there for the venue to expect a hire fee on top of that? It should usually be a straightforward arrangement of you take the ticket revenues and they take the bar profits. If they want to offer you a cut of the bar, you would be foolish not to take it but this is pretty rare. So, unless the venue and its location are highly likely to contribute significantly to your ticket sales and maybe ticket price too, we would advise no hire fees. If they are not prepared to accept this, there are plenty of alternative venues who will.
If you are playing a gig someone else is promoting and managing, this is where you also need to tread carefully. There is not a lot of money in grassroots live music promotion so we have to accept that fees for performing live are usually modest, especially if you have no track record of pulling a big crowd. Typically a grassroots music promoter will offer the artists an agreed split of the net profits which is reasonable [although, in our case, we guarantee each act a minimum of £20.00 even if we make a loss so that no act will ever have to pay for free]. Equally, a promoter may offer a fixed amount of anywhere between £20.00 and £100.00 (or more if they are confident of a lucrative turnout). Deals anywhere along this spectrum are usually fine. But promoters who do not mention payment and do not offer you any fee at the end of the gig should be avoided. They are clearly in grassroots music for the wrong reasons and are exploiting artists’ desire to play live.
Much worse though are the ‘pay to play’ cowboys. We are talking about the kinds of so-called ‘promoters’ who offer you a contract that involves you having to sell a minimum quantity of tickets (typically 50) with the carrot that you are getting to play a prestigious venue which could be anything from the O2 Academy in Islington to the Dublin Castle in Camden. We are not sure whether similar deals are being bandied about in other cities and towns but, in London, they are all too common. You then find yourself on a six-act bill
where every act has had to sell at least 50 tickets; the audiences are only interested in the act they came to see and the atmosphere is not usually particularly pleasant with an aggressive door policy of asking every attendee who they have come to watch. You may as well have recruited the same 50 people and got them to come and watch you play a free gig in your local pub! These people are not ‘promoters’ since they are not doing any promoting. Instead, they are exploiting artists’ desire to play cool venues and getting the artists to provide them with a minimum of 300 ticket buyers while they take all the profit. That makes it worth them having paid the hire fee for the venue. Our advice is simple: Do not touch these so-called promoters with a barge pole!
The other scourge of grassroots live gigs is the so-called ‘30 Day Exclusion’ clause. This is where a promoter makes the artists sign a clause to say they will not play any gigs within a certain square mile radius of the venue in the next or the previous 30 days. So, first off, that is actually 60 days, not 30! And secondly, it is absurdly restrictive practice. So, while we would advise against playing gigs in the same area too frequently if you want to be able to get people to come, you should also not enter into an agreement like this where a so-called promoter is controlling your ability to work in a specified area. One caveat though. While we would never dream of imposing such a restriction on a band or artist, it is incredibly disrespectful when artists accept gig offers and fail to tell us they are playing another neighbouring venue on a more popular night two or three days later.
This has happened to us more times than we care to mention and it is selfish behaviour because those artists know their followers are more likely to go to the other gig and not ours (and both promoters are potentially losing out due to the unreasonable competition this creates). So, if you want people to treat you well, you should treat others well too. This kind of selfish, entitled behaviour will lose you a lot of gig offers in the long term because promoters talk to one another regularly and we will warn one another about artists who behave like that. We once challenged the singer of a band we had booked twice for live shows about failing to tell us her band was performing the very next night (a Friday) at a popular, well-known gig and, instead of apologising, she responded by slagging off our [excellent] sound engineer! Needless to say, we have never booked the band again even though we really liked their music.
On that final point, it is logical for a band or artist to impose certain restrictions on themselves in this respect. Even your best friends are not going to want to spend all their time watching your gigs so avoid playing too frequently in the same area. A recent conversation we had with the managerm of three successful Indie bands who will be familiar to the BBC 6 Music audience confirmed that even those bands will not play anywhere in the whole of London more than a maximum of three times in one year. The reason: because they want every show to be rammed. We have seen two gigs by the artists they manage in the past two years and both were sold out. Case in point. So do think about how best to make each gig an occasion that the most possible people are going to want to be at.
CONCLUSION
So that is it for this article. In brief then, be careful about who you commit any part of your marketing and promotion budget to. Ideally, spread it across several contrasting services that give you different strengths. That might mean using Musosoup to generate interesting offers and free playlist adds, using YouGrow to pitch your music to playlists with large followings and paying for the right kind of ads on social media and/or YouTube/Google. Consider using a lower-priced indie plugger if you are in a genre that is likely to have significant numbers of fans engaging with internet and community radio shows that specialise in your area of music and support a lot of grassroots artists. Even then, you may decide only to hire them if they also include pitching you to suitable blogs and journals and, if they extend to Spotify playlists, even better.
Where you are on your journey should also have a bearing. Hiring a plugger when you have no traction and have barely left first base is money down the drain, regardless of how good they are. Think about your social media footprint. Use ads carefully, doing your research and reading up on how best to use them so that you are using your money as wisely as possible. Post engaging content and lots of it and allow your followers into your world where they can feel like they are part of your story. And, of course, if you can convert engagement into streams, ticket sales or purchases of some form (physical stock, merchandise etc.), you may have cracked one of the great riddles of our time! If you find social media too stressful, make a suitable deal with someone else to handle it for you but, for heaven’s sake, do not simply shun social media when it is so vital to your chances of building a profile and fanbase.
Don’t agree to pay to play deals, 30 day exclusions or hiring venues who are not contributing to your sales. And think about how often you play anywhere if you want to maximise attendances. That is a very potted version of the previous 18 pages! We thank you for reading such a long article and hope it proves useful to you in navigating your careers.
Neil’s book From The Grassroots To The Global Stage: Understanding The UK Independent Music Industry In An International Context is available to buy from Amazon.
This article appeared, in slightly different form, on Fresh On The Net on Sunday 26th January 2025.
