It’s a bit more complicated than that: being good is necessary but not sufficient. It’s true that terrible music will fail even if promoted but once you’re over

It’s a bit more complicated than that: being good is necessary but not sufficient. It’s true that terrible music will fail even if promoted but once you’re over certain quality thresholds there are many artists who are roughly comparable but most won’t make it big because they weren’t picked by the right label/promoter (not being in with the Ticketmaster/LiveNation cartel means you can’t even play at a high fraction of live venues), didn’t manage the right social media campaign, didn’t ace an interview with a music reporter or popular influencer, etc. or simply didn’t have the interest/stamina/wealth to keep cranking out posts and new material. It’s similar to what we see in the Olympics: Algeria getting a gymnastics gold in a historic first for the entire continent didn’t mean it’s somehow impossible for African kids to train up to that level but rather that no matter what raw talent you’re starting with, nobody gets to the top without expensive infrastructure and training which aren’t even distributed. Music isn’t that extreme but there are still a lot of advantages to the artists who can hang in the right scenes in a few cities compared to equally good performers who can’t swing the rest of the career-making package.