These days, you have to more than fake it to make it, and typically speaking, it all boils down to personal branding. You have to be a content creator. You have to make every single person on Instagram and TikTok guess which person in your band is actually the drummer, and which of you are faking it. In most cases, itâs the one person who doesnât play the drums like a total fuckwit.
You need to do reaction videos, review food in your car, schedule three posts a day across all social platforms, share them in your stories, let people share your posts in their stories, and share the stories youâre tagged in that were sourced from your original post.
At some point, you actually have to practice your instrument, and then you need to post the screenshot of your Notes app thatâs a wall of text about how you need to pause the project for your mental health.
Gaming the algorithm is serious business, but youâre overthinking it. You want to get pushed to the top of the feed? You have to think outside the box and accept the fact that all and any engagement is your meal ticket out of whatever bullshit sucky town you live in.
The âYou Canât Hear Itâ Method
Long gone are the days where you can drop a single song ahead of an albumâs release because you need to release every single song one-by-one to let the algorithm know youâre coming. By the time your long-anticipated album is finally out there (big things coming, amiright?), everybody already heard the whole thing and theyâre no longer interested.
Itâs counterintuitive because in order to let streaming services know that people want to hear your music, you need to give them music to listen to in advance. The problem is that you gave away the farm, and repackaged it as groups of singles, EPs, and finally, the final product, which everybody knew would suck well enough in advance thanks to your release strategy.
Congratulations, you shot yourself in the foot.
Next time, donât release anything at all, but spend six months posting cryptic teaser clips where nobody can actually hear the song. Put a filter over it. Add crowd noise. Talk over the intro. Cut away right before the riff hits. Caption every post, âWait until you hear this one.â
They wonât.
Every comment asking, âCan we hear the actual song?â counts as engagement. Every angry âThis sounds like shit because I canât hear itâ is engagement. Every boomer who accidentally comments âWHAT?â because they think Instagram is customer support is engagement.
Congratulations. Youâre trending.
Rage Bait Your Own Fanbase
You know whoâs holding your career back? Your fans.
Theyâre not supporting you at all. They click Like and move on. Thatâs worthless. What you need is discourse.
Post a picture of your pedal board with the delay pedal at the end of the signal chain. Say the Epiphone Grabber is superior to the original Gibson model. Claim that the snare on St. Anger was actually ahead of its time. Tell everybody that blast beats are overrated and that the greatest metal drummer of all time is the guy from Imagine Dragons.
Watch the comments pour in.
Remember, Spotify pays fractions of a cent per stream. But some guy writing a 1,700-word Facebook comment explaining why youâre an idiot? All eyes on you, baby.
Manufacture A Scandal
Real controversies are risky. Fake ones are scalable.
Announce youâre breaking up.
Twenty-four hours later, clarify that you meant youâre breaking up with your old logo.
The following week, unveil a new logo thatâs identical except the sword points slightly farther to the left.
Watch three generations of fans declare that youâve betrayed the legacy of a band thatâs been around for eighteen months.
Become Impossible To Ignore
The algorithm doesnât know the difference between admiration and irritation. It only knows that people stopped scrolling to pay attention to your face.
Thatâs why the smartest move isnât writing a better riff. Itâs filming yourself explaining the riff using the wrong technical terms in five separate vertical videos, reacting to someone elseâs reaction to the riff, ranking your own riffs, posting a crying selfie because the riff âdidnât connect,â and then announcing the riff has been remixed, remastered, and reimagined before itâs even officially released.
Is any of this healthy?
Absolutely not.
Will it make you a better musician?
Also no.
But somewhere in Silicon Valley, a server just decided youâre interesting, and honestly, thatâs about as close to success as any of us are getting.