Bypass: Music Industry News for Independent Artists

Friday edition • 3 min read

88% of Songs Flopped Because They Had No Plan

What's Up

Back again with another report, and, uh, you might want to sit down for this one. Turns out, 88% of tracks on streaming platforms got fewer than 1,000 plays last year. And half of those didn't even crack 10. That's single digits right there.

So What

75% of a track's first-year streams come after release week. You, your team, and anyone who calls themselves a "marketer" probably stopped caring about the song the moment release day hits. Not a great plan.

Now What

Treat your track like your kid. You wouldn't ditch a newborn on day one, now would you?

Pitch editorial playlists 10 to 14 days out. Fill in your metadata (genre, credits, ISRC, and mood tags). That alone doubles your odds with the algorithm. Release day is only half the story. Your real competition is small. They're the few that showed up with a plan.

[Full story at Hypebot]

AI Companies Just Got Exposed. You Can Blame The Atlantic For That

What's Up

We know you're probably tired of the AI stuff. We are too. But maybe check this one out for a sec? The Atlantic's AI Watchdog project made four of the massive datasets used to train AI music models searchable. And two of them have 12m and 9m tracks. Now you can check if yours are in the pile.

So What

Not saying they deserve to be called out. But they totally deserve to be called out. Companies like Suno and Udio swear they only train on what's "freely available online." But The Atlantic is calling their bluff. The only thing missing from those datasets is who stole what (allegedly).

Now What

Time to play detective. Check out The Atlantic's AI Watchdog project to see if you're in the pile. It's not gonna win a lawsuit by itself, buuut you can think of it as a receipt. It certainly put a hole in the story Suno and Udio are selling.

[Full story at Music Ally]

64% More Streams, Just for Posting a Video

What's Up

Hey, Spotify. Video's kinda our whole thing. (YouTube, probably)

Spotify just opened up a beta, letting artists upload full-length videos. Music videos, live sets, studio sessions, covers, cat videos with your songs over them, go crazy. Apparently, you can collect royalties from them, and apparently, they can even hit the charts.

So What

Yeah, yeah. The labels and distributors are yawning right now. They had this for a year.

But artists can finally get their hands on it. Spotify claims that a single video could spike that song's streams by 64% and catalog listening by 57% for the next three weeks. These are Spotify's own numbers, though, so take this with a grain of salt.

Now What

If you want in, head over to Spotify for Artists and sign up for the waitlist. Fair warning: you are stuck with 16:9 landscape, no lyric videos or visualizers yet, and they're killing off the old Clips feature. Now get those videos off your hard drive and on your profile.

[Full story at Music Ally]