There is no barrier standing between your song and streaming services in the US today, yet reaching those millions of listeners is a different matter. Often, this is where the careers of independent musicians quietly fall by the wayside.
Distribution Ceased to be the Hurdle
There are no longer any manufacturing deals or physical store connections required to get your music onto platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. You can use a third-party digital distributor for an annual flat-rate fee and retain ownership of your master rights and any licensing fees that would previously have gone to the label. Physical distribution is merely a checkbox on the upload form for digital retailers, no longer something requiring label intervention.
So, the necessity of a label has not evaporated. It has simply shifted elsewhere.
Instead of a Gatekeeper Problem, the Industry Now has a Cold Start Problem
Millions of new tracks are uploaded every year. If the industry is to survive, a song cannot be made discoverable just because it exists. It has to be discovered because it demonstrates signs of popularity: likes, repeat listens, and playlists. An artist with a record label had an entire staff pushing those signals before an algorithm ever detected the song. An artist without a label must generate that heat by themselves, and it is probably one of the reasons that same RIAA report points out that labels are increasingly focusing on “superfan” initiatives, focusing on a smaller number of dedicated fans rather than an additional group of interested listeners.
An artist not associated with a record label can achieve a scaled-down version of this with relative ease. Repeat this for each release, rather than creating a new marketing plan for each one. Post a piece of that content differently on multiple social networks, rather than the same video to all social networks. Get involved with niche communities that people in your genre congregate in, whether that is Reddit or Discord or something else. Maintain a fan email newsletter, because that is a direct channel that does not depend on a particular platform that may or may not cooperate on a given week. None of those actions carry the risk of having your content algorithmically filtered.
Legitimate Paid Promotion is a Viable Marketing Option
Organic growth tends to compound over time, so if your first few videos are getting 300 views or less, it often takes a couple of years for a YouTube channel to gain visibility and become wildly successful. Paid promotion is not a means to circumvent industry regulation, regardless of what its reputation is. It is a marketing expense just like every other expense an artist with a label would have.
The problem with paid promotion occurs in how it is delivered. Social media platforms can identify fake bots and unusual growth spikes easily. A legitimate YouTube marketing service aimed at musicians will use real account viewers to add views to your videos over time at an organic rate.
That distinction matters a lot more than some people give it credit. Promoters and playlist curators check the numbers before agreeing to work with anybody. A band leader looking for an opening act looks at your video views first. A Spotify curator checking out your playlist will look at your subscriber counts before adding a song you produced. Overcoming the cold start problem with legitimate numbers that will withstand scrutiny creates a doorway through which an artist without a record label and with an organic view count will not pass.
Physical Formats and Fan Funding are Achieving the Same Results
Streaming services aren’t the only path to independent artists generating revenue outside of the record label structure. The vinyl LP grew for its 18th consecutive year in 2024 with $1.4 billion in gross sales, marking the highest number ever in vinyl history. CDs are outsold by vinyl records for the third straight year, with 44 million records and 33 million CDs. None of that is dependent on a record label’s distribution network or physical manufacturing. A fan funding site allows an artist to sell records, merchandise, and other digital goods directly to a website URL in their profile.
What used to require the entire infrastructure of a label now comes down to a spreadsheet and a subscription service. It is not the record labels that make the difference between the artists that are going to become mainstream stars and the artists that are going to end up with three hundred views on YouTube. It is about who you have a system to introduce you to, and how.
