Bypass: Music Industry News for Independent Artists

Thursday edition • 3 min read

You Didn't Upload That Track? Then Who Did?

What's Up

The UK Music Managers Forum dropped a five-point survival guide on how you can fight against fake AI tracks being uploaded to your profile. You know things are bad when you need a survival guide just to keep your profile clean.

So What

MMF called it "digital cuckooing." The term's cute and all, but it's when a cuckoo drops its eggs in some other bird's nest and dips. Managers say it's happening to working artists a lot right now. And who knows? Maybe you're being "cuckooed" now, too.

The guide covers everything from setting up every security feature available to tracking down where the fakes came from.

Now What

Quit scratching your head trying to figure it out and check out the guide on MMF's website for the full breakdown.

[Full story at Music Ally]

Free Promo If You Can Sing Or Rap

What's Up

SoundCloud and Overtune partnered up, and they're celebrating by throwing a vocal contest starting June 15. The setup's dead simple. Pick an instrumental template from Overtune and sing or rap over it. Then drop it on SoundCloud for prizes and free promo.

So What

Overtune links directly with SoundCloud (which has one of the most loyal indie bases out there, by the way), so getting from idea to upload is basically one tap. Really low friction.

One of the companies backing it is Meta. We are not saying Zuck greenlit this because he is suddenly a musician now, but... come on.

Now What

Pick a template from Overtune, record your vocals, and upload to SoundCloud when the contest opens on June 15.

[Full story at Music Ally]

Fans Buy 81k Items a Day on Bandcamp. Here's How They Find You

What's Up

You read that right. Fans are buying 81,000 items a day on Bandcamp, and you're probably missing out. You're in luck, though, because Bandcamp's editorial director just dropped how artists get discovered on the platform, and it's pretty simple.

So What

The director called it "human-powered discovery." In other words, Bandcamp isn't letting algorithms run the show, and it's what's working for indies right now.

The Discovery Page tells you what fans are buying, and when someone grabs your track, their whole follower list gets notified. That's word of mouth on steroids.

And they even have listening parties where you can drop your new song in a chat and hang out a bit while your fans buy merch.

Now What

It's time for some housekeeping because your Bandcamp is probably dusty. Set up a listening party for your new release. And actually pitch your tracks to the Bandcamp Daily blog because there are some real people looking for real music there.

[Full story at Hypebot]