"I think of music promotion as Whack-a-Mole in reverse," says Marc Schuster. "You're the mole - one in a field of millions - and you're trying to get someone to notice you."
Ask an artist about promotion and the answers get noticeably less comfortable than the ones about songwriting. Six here describe what they actually do, and most of them lead with what does not work.
Marc Schuster
Marc Schuster records from Delco, Pennsylvania, in a style he describes as somewhere between Elvis Costello and Belle & Sebastian solo, and more 80s new wave with his band The Star Crumbles. He is endlessly curious with a short attention span, which he offers as the explanation for constantly moving from one thing to the next. The mole image is his summary of a genuine strategy problem: popping your head up in a field of millions and hoping the timing is right. He got here from the Beatles' White Album on family car journeys, and made his first attempt at a song around 1986 in the style of the Dead Milkmen. Lyrics remain the hard part; most songs start with a groove, bass or guitar over a drum track, and grow from there.
Jean RN
Jean RN frames it as a personal project rather than a marketing one. "I'm trying to force myself to be less shy when it comes to self-promotion." For the last EP that meant sending it to blogs well ahead of release. The music itself is unbothered by any of this - scattershot and maximalist, by their own description, from someone who calls themselves something of a Silly Goose. The songs start as dumb melodies stuck in their head during the day, and get shapes and textures later. The last project left them emotionally drained, so this EP was deliberately lighter - fun and experimental rather than deep. It was recorded in a tiny studio that got hot enough over repeated takes that they warn readers about what the vocals were tracked in.
The Utter
"I'm really not very good at self-promotion, and it makes me quite uncomfortable," says The Utter. He has found the one thing that transfers anyway: "There's no substitute for enthusiasm, and my enthusiasm seems to rub off on other people." On engaging with listeners he is more direct still - it is difficult and uncomfortable, and he feels like he needs a pseudonym and a separate facet of his personality for it. It has not stopped him pressing physical copies: for one release he decided to press CDs regardless.
Bobby Wallisch Jr. & Acid.Prof
Born in Vienna in 1966, Bobby Wallisch Jr. came to music in 2013 after dramatic events in his personal life, wanting to give back something of what he had enjoyed in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. He has firm views on the machinery: disappointed that Spotify punished third-party promo agencies and does not offer its own Marquee in Europe, he treats playlisting as the only legitimate route left. His actual engagement happens elsewhere - the comment section of his YouTube channel, which he calls his best interaction point.
Sockpuppet
Sockpuppet - "totally a whole band, and not the fanciful invention of a single person recording on their own from a basement recording studio" - found an audience by going somewhere nobody else was looking. "Lately I've been performing live in VRChat a lot, which has been great for finding a new audience and making connections outside of my usual circles." The upcoming release is a pair of albums, one of them early Song Fight! material recomposed with twenty-five years of additional experience.
Dino DiMuro
Dino DiMuro, who describes his style as "Walt Disney on acid," has replaced strategy with cadence: he is mostly excited to see how long he can keep releasing a new single or track every two or three weeks. Fans get met on social networks, occasionally in person at shows. A physical CD, MACHINE, has been a long time coming. His method is a decades-old habit: an electric guitar kept in his editing room, work stopped mid-task to record riffs onto cassettes. His current subject is Sylvia Plath, which he has pursued the way he pursues most interests - far enough in that he admits it is almost a waste of time.
Enthusiasm is the only transferable asset
Nobody here describes a funnel. What recurs instead is a single quality that survives contact with an indifferent internet - The Utter's enthusiasm rubbing off, Wallisch's comment section, Sockpuppet finding a room where the competition has not shown up yet.
Schuster's image is bleak and accurate, but note what the mole is doing. It keeps popping up. That is the whole strategy, and for most artists here it is also the only one available.