

If you don’t have the muscle of a major label behind you, or friends in high places at Spotify or another streaming platform, you’re showing up to a tank battle on a rusty bicycle. “You’re fighting for a lot of ear time,” says Austin Chase, an A&R at the independent label Commission Records (MadeinTYO, Lil Dicky). Most of the music uploaded to streaming services every day sinks without a trace. Over a year ago, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek estimated that roughly 40,000 new songs were hitting the platform every day. But the resulting flood of music threatens to drown its creators. 13-year-olds around the world can pirate a copy of a production program, learn how to use it through YouTube tutorials, and start uploading singles from their kitchens. This simple task, the basis for any sort of music career, seems like it should be easy today. “We need to get our music seen and heard by as many people as possible.” “I would recommend it for artists who are independent like myself,” Jvanz says. The company did even better than it predicted, earning Jvanz thousands more streams than expected on one track. “They said that I would get 100,000 streams on two of my songs,” the singer recalls. Jvanz found one that agreed to aid him - for a $2,000 fee, the company promised to reach out to a network of independent playlisters with dedicated followings on Spotify and make sure they added Jvanz’s songs to their collection. So he started to ask around about marketing companies that could help increase his music’s exposure. “You can’t just put out a song and hope you’ll be the lucky guy who goes viral.” “There’s a lot of competition,” Jvanz says. He released his first EP in 2019, but like thousands of artists who upload their music to Spotify daily, no one cared. Catherines, Ontario with a flexible voice and a lancing falsetto. Jvanz is a 20 year-old aspiring artist from St.
