Image based on "Untitled (Dada)" by German artist Hannah Höch. Created around 1922.
For most of the streaming era, there seemed to be a consensus about how new artists should build a career and at Spotify and Apple Music I was a co-conspirator in pushing that narrative.
Release music constantly. Feed the algorithm. Chase playlists. Keep your social channels busy. Grow monthly listeners. Repeat.
It made perfect sense. Streaming had become the dominant way people discovered music, so naturally artists optimised for the platforms that controlled discovery. But now, with millions of songs uploaded every month, and streaming unlikely to be a major source of revenue early in a career, artists are open to alternative ideas, and I increasingly believe we’re entering a new era.
Over the past few weeks I’ve spoken to three artist teams whose careers are gathering momentum: Dirty Hit founder Jamie Oborne, Cork’s fast-rising band BABYRAT, and Connor Hunnisett, manager of Ren. They work in completely different ways, with different genres and different audiences.
What struck me wasn’t what made them different. It was how similar their thinking had become. None of them seems particularly interested in optimising for streaming. Instead, they’re optimising for something far harder to copy: genuine human relationships.
Build the audience before you build the catalogue
Perhaps the clearest example came from BABYRAT. The conventional wisdom says you release music to build an audience. BABYRAT have almost reversed the equation.
Within their first year they played around fifty gigs across Ireland. Every show led to another. Three weeks after their very first gig they recorded demos, simply to have something to send promoters when applying for more shows. They have deliberately delayed releasing music on streaming platforms because they want people to discover the band in real life first.
Even more striking is how they collect fans.
At the end of gigs they pass around a clipboard asking people for their names and email addresses. Early demos were shared privately through SoundCloud links sent directly to fans who asked for them after shows. Hundreds did. In other words, they set out to own the relationship rather than rent an audience from an algorithm.
It reminds me of the early days of Arctic Monkeys. Fans copied demo CDs, ripped tracks onto computers, burned new CDs and uploaded songs online. Rather than trying to control every copy, the focus was on building demand. Recordings weren’t the destination - they were the invitation. The real objective was filling bigger venues.
BABYRAT feel remarkably similar. When they eventually release music widely, they’ll already possess something many artists spend years trying to build: real demand.
You can check them playing live at Dublin’s famous Whelan’s.
Community is becoming infrastructure
When I recently met Sarah Wilson, Head of TuneCore across the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, I asked which independent artist she thought had built one of the smartest businesses in Britain. Her answer was immediate: Ren. That led me to a fascinating conversation with his super-smart manager, Connor Hunnisett.
Connor explained that one of Ren’s biggest growth engines wasn’t traditional music marketing at all. It was YouTube reaction channels. Instead of issuing copyright claims, Ren’s team actively encouraged reaction creators to monetise their videos. Connor personally reached out to many of them. Those long-form reactions then generated thousands of short-form clips across TikTok and other platforms, creating an ecosystem where everybody benefited.
But that’s only part of the story.
Around the music sat Discord communities, Twitch streams, fan-run Facebook groups, Patreon memberships, physical products and merchandise. The business has grown to the point that Ren now operates his own fulfilment warehouse.
It all adds up to an artist building a community, with music at its centre.
Craft is becoming a competitive advantage again
The most surprising conversation came from my old friend Jamie Oborne.
Jamie has built extraordinary careers with artists including The 1975 and beabadoobee, so when he talks about emerging artists it’s worth listening carefully.
The hot new act he’s managing, Compost Compost Compost, aren’t rushing towards a record deal. Nor are they rushing to release music.
The priority is playing live, developing as a group and making sure the foundations are right before exposing themselves to the world.
Jamie believes one of the biggest mistakes artists make is releasing music before they’re truly ready - before they’ve put in what he described as their “10,000 hours.”
I don’t think the lesson is the number (we have Malcolm Gladwell to thank for that). The lesson is patience. For years the industry rewarded speed. Release something every six weeks. Don’t disappear. Feed the algorithm.
Jamie believes we’re moving back towards a world where mastery matters more than momentum. And I suspect he’s right.
Why this is happening
There’s a bigger shift taking place beneath all of this. Streaming solved distribution, and now AI is flooding the market with more music than ever before. As songs become less scarce, the scarce resources become attention, trust, identity and belonging. That’s why all three teams are investing in assets that can’t easily be copied by either competitors or algorithms.
Relationships.
They’re building worlds, not campaigns
Another pattern emerged from every conversation. None of these teams seems obsessed with streaming metrics. They’re building ecosystems.
BABYRAT are embedding themselves within Ireland’s music community before chasing global streams.
Ren and Connor have created a business that extends far beyond recorded music.
Jamie is already thinking about places where fans can gather outside traditional DSPs - spaces that feel more like the early MySpace era, where artists own the relationship instead of renting attention.
They’re not simply releasing music. They’re building worlds people want to belong to.
One phrase Jamie used has particularly stayed with me: “I’m in the business of making long-form content, not short-form.” He wasn’t talking about video. He was talking about careers. And this reminded me of something I’ve written about before: the Iceberg Principle. Every one of these artist teams seems willing to invest heavily in building the ice below the waterline.
This is one of the reasons I recently joined Frank Hamilton at MEME Records. The vision is to help artists build richer worlds around their music - places where fans can participate, explore and connect, while artists retain ownership of both the relationship and the data.
That feels far more aligned with where the industry is heading than simply trying to squeeze another few percentage points out of playlist optimisation.
The old rules may be becoming new again
Ironically, much of this would have sounded completely normal in the decades before streaming. Play live. Develop your craft. Create demand before supply. Know your audience. Own your mailing list. Don’t rush.
Perhaps the streaming era briefly convinced us these principles no longer mattered, but in a world where AI can generate an almost infinite supply of music, the advantage is shifting to artists who can build real communities around their work.
After speaking to these three teams, I came away convinced we’re witnessing the beginning of a quiet correction. For almost two decades artists have optimised for platforms.
The next decade will belong to the artists who optimise for people.