See if you can guess which band this is- They started as a local indie band, going from club to club and occasionally getting a spot in a regional music festival. Once their name and their music started to pick up traction online, through shared videos and word of mouth, they became a national and then an international sensation. They never signed with a major music label, but thousands of people download their music every day over services like iTunes and Google Play Music.
Who is it? The truth is, this could refer to any number of bands operating today. Fugazi did it by starting their own record label. O.A.R. passed their tapes around in their shows and encouraged their fans to bootleg their music. OK Go heavily promoted themselves in the Chicago area through inventive advertising tactics. Even individual artists like Chance the Rapper broke out into the big time without the need for a major music label to back him up.
These are the kind of success stories that are more and more common these days, thanks to the ease of viral marketing due to the online music services provided by the internet. Now, if someone sees a great band performing and wants to show that band to the world, they can post their performances to YouTube, write a blog about them on a music-oriented site like this one, or create social media posts that bring attention to the band that otherwise might not get much traction.
Some bands just don’t know how to market themselves. Their talent is in performance and writing rather than self-promotion. They have to rely on their fanbase to do the marketing work for them, and that happens more and more often these days.
In the past, it would be very difficult to make any kind of breakout success beyond a single city or a small region without a major music label behind you. It was expensive to market yourself and get your music out to the public, because it had to be physically handed out or mailed. Now, music can be passed around electronically, sometimes for free. That makes it so easy to share what a band is doing and allow more people to discover them in a short period of time.
Even though a lot of bands and musicians will flare up and then flare out, not lasting in the public consciousness for very long, plenty of bands manage to retain their foothold on the music market and stay relevant for years after a breakout success. They usually do this by releasing a steady stream of music, relying on singles rather than the conventional album release. For these smaller bands, the typical album format may not be viable, and operating outside of the standard label methods often means doing a few things differently. Simply releasing music regularly is often one of their best means of marketing in a modern world where each song has a chance to be a viral hit.
