Hey y'all, first of all I wanted to say that I'm a musician more that makes more underground songs than anything else, making Phonk songs and I actually don't think I've made a single radio friendly song in my entire life haha. I really like to talk about violence in my songs, blood, drugs, demons (not on a sense of things you go through but actual demons), my songs lyrically wise can be one-sided because of that but I don't mind it at all if I'm being honest. I really like being a musician and part of the process of me creating songs is really being a cathartic experience, almost like a second therapy for me, where I can release my anger, my anxiety, and put all that into a very fierce and energic track to motivate not only myself but everyone who may stumble upon my songs. There's where I've been having these doubts nowadays, my numbers are growing on Spotify slow and steady, I've made some nice playlists and some big channels that promote these kinds of songs, I already have people that look forward for my next track, even if it's not much people, but I feel like there's this threshold or this limit where I can go making songs about what I do on Spotify, that favors way more radio friendly, trap, and when it comes to Phonk the only two playlists that are originally made by Spotify where you can pitch your songs to, are all more on the instrumental/eletronic side, attracting views from both people who like rap, eletronic and some other sub-genres. Which is not what I do. On the other hand, I feel like SoundCloud is way more acceptive of this underground type sounds and lyrics and it could even boost me on other platforms like Spotify, Apple and so on. I see way more songs that look like what I do there than on Spotify. And after releasing my stuff there since most of the people there are in the music business too somehow, there were even labels trying to sign me but Sean taught me well on the things to look out too haha, so I dodged some bullets. I only have a monthly budget to really promote myself in one platform, I don't have enough budget to run ads for both platforms, speak to playlist curators on one side and repost channels on another, at the end of the month it gets heavier monetary-wise. So I'm here wondering, is it worth the transition to focus more on SoundCloud since I'm slowly but steady growing bit by bit? Should I only do that if somehow my Spotify starts to drop on views and people are no longer that interested in my songs anymore there? Especially being a niche genre that is trending right now but people could lose interest in a year. What are you guys opinion on this? I have the annual SoundCloud plus and there I make more money than Spotify too, so there's another thing to put in the math's, and both are organically growing too.

Great morning BMN just thought I’d leave this link on how QC just became apart of HYBE a global entertainment powerhouse. Let me know what you think in the comments. Is it the goal to partner with industry giants or do it all on your own? https://www.billboard.com/pro/hybe-acquires-quality-control-label-lil-baby-migos/

I was looking into getting an action camera to vlog as well as create music videos for social media

I've been able to get about 75k in business funding the last month through leveraging the bank system. It's helped me chart on my last album release. I know getting funding for artists always seems to be the hardest part. Let me know!

I wanted to break down with a "major label" release looks like. Let me start with a disclaimer, as I'm not actually signed with a label, but I wanted to treat the release and the budget as if I was. . I'll start with the context, my best performing song that I've been working over the last 2 years was something I wanted to find a "reason" to push again, so I decided to repackage a bunch of tracks I've released and a few more filler tracks to make it a complete album. I know y'all might have very specific questions so feel free to ask away in the comments! RESULTS (after 10 days of release) : - Billboard in Time Square https://www.instagram.com/p/CnXqGMZDo8D/ - Charted #28 iTunes R&B album sales - 13 Spotify Editorials for lead song "Lucky" - Went from 60k to ~400k monthly listeners in 3 weeks - Approx. 3 millions streams in the last month There's going to be 4 main parts I'd cover: Asset Creation Pre-release strategy Release strategy Post-release (2 weeks after release) Asset Creation (Budget approx. $5k) - 12 songs, 1 "lead song", 3 other singles, 5-6 album songs ~$4k of recording equipment/studio time/misc. (but spread through 2-3 years) - Album artwork (Front, Back), Spotify Banner, Studio Rental ~1k Admittedly, this portion of the album can be significantly higher or lower, the $4k budget realistically is me doing 85% things "in house" (mixing, production etc.) and the rest is paying features/booking time when my own setup wouldn't cut it. Pre-release strategy (Approx. <$200) I'm not a big believer in big pre-release strategies as I don't think you need them to have a successful campaign. Admittedly, I find it challenging to time things/build momentum by announcing a project so far ahead in advance from the release date. Instagram Conversion Ads from pixeled Instagram users (mostly as a test to see how it would do) $200 I announced a pre-save campaign on Jan 2. 2023, and had the album was to be released in Jan 13th. It led to a toneden link I created that was basically a hyperfollow from distrokid to "save" the album.