Instead focus on getting people to TALK about your music.
I spent years learning how to get more and more streams for my music and other artists I work with. The one thing I learnt through this process was that all of the time and energy I spent on trying to get more streams lead to some major problems that I was not at all expecting, I realized these issues were holding me back from making significant forward momentum. Before I share what major issues I were blindsided by, let me tell you a story of how I found the solution...
I still remember the day when I reached my goal of getting to my first million streams. I felt proud and I remember thinking Wow!! I worked so hard to get to this milestone, I spent a lot of time and money and I also clearly remember for a few moments I was reminded of all the sacrifices I had made to get to this point and it felt worth it-- for a second.
But then right away I got this overwhelming feeling come over me as I thought myself whats next how am I going to get to 10 million streams? Do I have to do what I did to get to 1 million 10 times over to get to 10 million streams? and what does that mean for my life? Do the people who listen to my music really care?
One day I met an artist here in Nashville who would get consistent streams for each and every song she released. I wanted to explore and see what playlists were driving her streams, and to my surprise I found out that the songs was not on any major playlist. I assumed she must have an agency running ads to drive traffic to her songs so I reached backed out to her she responds to me saying, that she did not have any marketing agencies running ads, she also ended up telling me she has never spent a dime on ads either.
I decided to explore further and found out she hasn't played many shows in a while either. I was totally dumbfounded, how is she getting all these streams without doing a whole lot. The more we talked I realized she had done a few things back in the day that drove a very specific group of people to talk about her music and engage with her music. She sort of went viral but not the way we think, she dint go viral on tiktok or instagram/facebook.
She went viral through word of mouth, which is one of the most powerful forms of reaching and connecting with people. Since then I got obsessed with this idea on how to drive conversation.