Bypass: Music Industry News for Independent Artists

Saturday edition • 3 min read

How Nathan Bank Sold Out His First Show By Giving Tickets Away

With a name like Nathan Bank, you'd expect this Mexican pop artist to be all about the money. Nope, he's all about connection. He's got 600k on TikTok but only 34k monthly listeners on Spotify, and he still self-funded his first headline show in Mexico City, which sold out.

How They Did It

He posted his ticket link and turned it into a matchmaking game.

Fans who couldn't afford tickets commented, "Yo Quiero," and fans feeling generous commented, "Yo Regalo." (Google Translate's right there.) Then he used DM automation to pair them up.

That post ended up getting 4.1k comments, and all of them put him in front of a new audience.

How You Can Too

It's all about building something fans get to be part of. You don't need to know exactly what he did. Just take a long, hard look at your ticket link and ask what your fans could do with it besides buy.

[Full story at Music Ally]

Set Up a Free Tripwire for Your Own Name

What's Up

Previously on Pimp Your Google: we told you about Hypebot's guide to check your online presence by Googling yourself in Incognito. Hope you did it. Anyway, there's more. Google Alerts. It's free, and it doesn't take up your whole afternoon to set up.

So What

Set it and forget it, kinda like your gym membership. Except this one is doing something. You get an alert anytime your name pops up online.

Think about it.

A blog reviews your music, you'll know. Someone butchers your band name in a listing, you'll know.

Now What

Go to google.com/alerts and put in your name (in quotes, by the way). Then add one for the way people always botch the spelling. You know the one.

Full guide's below if you want the settings.

[Full story at Hypebot]

They Stole This Duo's Album and Outstreamed Them 25-to-1

What's Up

A Philly folk duo, Makeshift Hammer, got ripped off, and they had to hear it from a fan. Which stings extra, because one of them is a private detective for a living. Their whole album got pitch-shifted and re-uploaded as Blue Road by Carey Dupont. The fakes pulled in around 50,000 plays per track. Meanwhile, MH's own tracks were sitting at 1,000 to 2,000.

So What

Spotify pays out based on share of total streams. That makes this fake way more than annoying because it's literally pulling money out of their pocket.

MH did report it, though. They just heard nothing back from Spotify and got an automated message from the scammers' distributor, SoundCloud. Classic.

Now What

Search up your songs but misspell them (instead of "All My Friends," search for "All My Friend"). If you don't find any knockoffs, great. But if you do, screenshot everything, then get loud. Post about it, tell your people, and don't sit around waiting on Spotify.

[Full story at Digital Music News]