What is the main marketing strategy for a new artist audience growth in 2025?

Why is the answer always "tell the artist to post more?"

Jun 23, 2025

How do you get new people who have never heard of an artist to care about new music? It’s one of the most challenging tasks in the music industry.

Further, it seems like all of the work really lies with the artist - often expected to do it themselves with no manager, team, or social media manager.

So let’s unpack this topic in a way that is ‘future-proof’ - addressing how it is right now in the current digital marketing landscape, but in a context of history that lets artists plan for what’s next. I hope that anybody who internalizes this information isn’t just ready to succeed today, they can spot the next trend and do better next year and the year after.

Make Great Content That Features the Music

This is not, actually, the FIRST step chronologically but I’m putting it up front because it’s the most direct answer to the question.

Assuming everything else is great (which we will address below) the best way for a new artist to grow is to make great, compelling content, featuring the music and to share it on short-form video platforms that use algorithms to choose the audiences.

As of Summer 2025 in the United States those are:

TikTok
Instagram Reels
YouTube Shorts

Notice, I did not say post on social media. The most important thing you can take away from this piece is short form video platforms are entertainment platforms that have social elements, they are not social media. We’ll dig into ‘legacy’ social media later on in this piece, but for now let’s stay focused on this topic.

Most TikTok users aren’t scrolling to see people they know. They open the app as an alternative to television, video games, podcasts, or any other way to waste a few minutes or hours and be entertained. As an artist, it is your job to put your content on those platforms in such a way that they reach the most amount of people possible.

Some things to remember:

Be consistent - this may take several weeks or more, you should be posting daily at minimum.
Be entertaining - the algorithms use over 100 data points to pick who will see your content - following is not one of them. Consistently, regardless of algorithm changes, the top two tend to be video completion and view time.
Drive to the end of the video - just like your song has a hook, your video should highlight your superpower as an artist. Why would someone fall in love with you or your music? What would someone say to their best friend when they’re sharing your music. That is what you want to highlight.
You can expand number 3 further with “storytelling” - think about having a ‘beginning - middle - end’ to your video. Or maybe a joke - ‘premise - setup - punchline.’ Condense that idea into 15, 30, or 60 seconds and your videos will have more success.
Remember these are NEW people - 80-90% of people who see TikToks are not following you and something close to 80% of people who see Reels are not following you. Do not post ‘stream my song’ and expect it to work. Remember to focus on new audience here and entertain the viewer!

What’s going on here? This sounds too simple and a little unfair to artists…

First of all, I agree it’s a little unfair to artists. You’ve spent all of this time, money - not to mention blood, sweat, and tears - creating and crafting your music and now you have to become a content creator.

The history of all music marketing has always been about creating content and distributing that content to audiences that might be interested in hearing the music.

The radio is a content distribution platform. When it switched from radio plays to music at the invention of television, the concept of the hit single was invented.

Magazines used to be a content distribution platform. Get interviewed in SPIN or RollingStone and you gain new fans.

MTV was a content distribution platform. Get on TRL or 120 minutes and people would discover you through a music video or interview.

TOURING is a content distribution platform! Send yourself across the country and perform!

What do radio, magazines, MTV, and touring all have in common?

They’re all booked or managed by human decision-makers (gatekeepers) and they all cost a LOT of money…

TikTok, Reels, and YouTube shorts are all free platforms. Your investment is the time, energy, and resources it takes to make content. Distribution of your content comes at no additional cost.

So is it unfair? Yes - if it was 30 years ago and you were an amazing artist you’d get signed by a label and they’d pay for all of that for you. Or maybe you’re a punk artist and you’d jump on a van tour and slog it out and build a base that way. All great things…

However, it’s also an opportunity. You can now create a piece of content in your bedroom that reaches tens or hundreds of thousands of people in minutes and has a direct impact on your streaming.

So it’s about going viral?

We are no longer talking about the ‘lightening in a bottle’ moment of going viral or having a UGC moment that launched artists like Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion - or even Benson Boone or Benee from 2020-2024. The moment you are aiming at is a few thousand views - maybe 10,000 from time to time - maybe 100,000+ when you get lucky.

Each time you’ll see a little uptick on your Instagram following and Spotify other streaming services. Maybe a few new followers on TikTok.

The difference now, compared to the marketing methods of the past, is the algorithm is handling the distribution of the content for you and then you get to own the relationship with the fans. You can reply, comment, share, stitch, and engage with their content. You can email and text them directly. You can start a discord or a reddit.

The Marketing Equation:

With this type of marketing is you want to be as buttoned up with your image and storytelling as possible. Everywhere a potential new fan looks in your world should be a chance for them to discover your story and like, follow, subscribe!

The new piece of the puzzle is DATA. The other thing that would have happened 30 years ago - you would have waited for first week sales numbers to find out if any of it worked. Today, you get to collect and own your own audience. Every day you see new IG followers. New Email list subscribers. New streaming numbers.

You get to watch your fanbase grow every day.

The equation is this:

Create great content » figure out how to distribute that content to people who may be interested in the music » Collect and analyze as much data as possible and own a relationship with as many of those people as possible » Drive transactions and streaming

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HATE TIKTOK AND REELS - that’s fine - you just have to solve the distribution part of the equation.

What we, as marketers, love is TikTok takes that distribution question out of our hands while still having the results and not adding to the overall financial investment. If you can come up with other solutions for the distribution part of the equation - TikTok has no specific powers.

That’s also how this is a future-proofed idea. None of this is new! In 1 year or 5 years if TikTok is gone - we will all be trying to solve the distribution question.

What about true social media?

That’s where the rest of your brand image becomes so important. Great art - music, visuals, content, still images - all of that is the pre-requisite to even get to the starting line.

Instagram, Facebook, X, BlueSky - these are all places to engage with people who already know who you are a little bit. You want to have great content for that too, but that content can be a bit more tailored to having some existing awareness. This is where you can post ‘stream my song’ and content really focused on existing fans.

You want your website, social media, email list (and substack?) to look as good and be as consistent as possible.

What’s next?

There are further strategies around finding your superpower and figuring out what content to actually post. We’ll explore that soon.

In the meantime: Submit questions to MusicBizFAQ at musicbizfaq@substack.com