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I disagree and think this is changing rapidly, especially in the electronic/EDM scenes. In these arenas, a lot of careers blossom from SoundCloud, YouTube, and

I disagree and think this is changing rapidly, especially in the electronic/EDM scenes. In these arenas, a lot of careers blossom from SoundCloud, YouTube, and having other artists/DJs pick up tracks and play them in their sets. Marketing is still a factor but matters a lot less (many artists even wear masks/helmets). A quality track can (and many have been) made with just a laptop. Martin Garrix released his first hit "Animals" at age 16/17 after one his remixes was picked up by another DJ. Additionally, music discovery has fundamentally changed because of streaming services like Spotify, as well. Just a couple of days ago there was an article on the front page of HN about how the top 40 tracks on Spotify make up a smaller percentage of the streams than even a year or two ago. Discovery features allow tracks to rise on their merit/listening stats making marketing much less important than it used to be, across genres. With that said, it's still hard to make it. The barrier to entry has never been lower and thus there is a tremendous amount of competition and talent to contend with now. The determining factor for winning these days seems to be the ability to consistently and reliably release quality tunes over and over again.

obstacle1 6y ago
> Marketing is still a factor but matters a lot less (many artists even wear masks/helmets). Marketing doesn't matter any less now than it did back in the day; it's just something the artist is expected to do themselves, rather than something to outsource to a label. The helmet/mask thing _is_ marketing. It's a gimmick and is half of what built the original hype for guys like deadmau5 and marshmello. It was really novel to see a guy spinning records in a mouse costume, at one point, and that was the reason _masses_ of people discovered, rather than just a few. Martin Garrix had to find, reach out to, and collaborate with hundreds of unknown artists before he built his network big enough such that Tiesto 'discovering' him was a possibility. There are hundreds of thousands of people producing EDM and releasing it on Soundcloud/Beatport/etc. A tiny fraction of those people will ever get more than 10 listeners. The ones who do get listeners will hustle like hell to build up their network and broadcast their channels -- i.e. market themselves. Marketing is still the only way to get people listening to your stuff, quality tunes alone won't get you there.

obstacle1 6y ago

> Marketing is still a factor but matters a lot less (many artists even wear masks/helmets). Marketing doesn't matter any less now than it did back in the day; it's just something the artist is expected to do themselves, rather than something to outsource to a label. The helmet/mask thing _is_ marketing. It's a gimmick and is half of what built the original hype for guys like deadmau5 and marshmello. It was really novel to see a guy spinning records in a mouse costume, at one point, and that was the reason _masses_ of people discovered, rather than just a few. Martin Garrix had to find, reach out to, and collaborate with hundreds of unknown artists before he built his network big enough such that Tiesto 'discovering' him was a possibility. There are hundreds of thousands of people producing EDM and releasing it on Soundcloud/Beatport/etc. A tiny fraction of those people will ever get more than 10 listeners. The ones who do get listeners will hustle like hell to build up their network and broadcast their channels -- i.e. market themselves. Marketing is still the only way to get people listening to your stuff, quality tunes alone won't get you there.