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How To Get Real Engagement For Your Music (When It Feels Like Nobody Cares)
We’re not living in a world where people are starving for more music. We’re living in a world where they are absolutely flooded with it. So the question shifts from “How do I get people to listen?” to “How do I place my music where listening is already happening?” There is no easy answer to…
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How Artists Can Prevent Streaming Manipulation and Protect Their Releases
Digital distributors and streaming platforms are becoming increasingly strict about identifying and removing artificial streams. While these systems help protect artists and maintain fairness across the industry, many musicians are surprised when they receive warnings for suspicious activity they never knowingly engaged in. Understanding how manipulation is detected—and how to avoid it—is essential for keeping…
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Making a Life in Art: Creativity Between Paychecks
Most artists I know live somewhere between two worlds. There’s the creative one — full of sketches, half-finished songs, ideas scribbled on napkins, and those small, perfect moments when you lose track of time in the act of making. Then there’s the other one — the world of rent, groceries, client deadlines, and clock-ins. For…
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Hallwood Media, Neil Jacobson, and the AI Artist Gamble: Lessons for Indie Musicians
For independent musicians trying to make sense of what’s happening, it’s worth looking past the hype of the recent Hallwood Media AI Artist deals.
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Paying to Be Heard: Playlists, AI Music, and the New “Review” Economy
Scrolling through a thread the other day, I saw a musician talking about their experience with Submithub, Submitlink, and Groover. They’d put $20 into pitching a country song to eight playlists—every one declined, though the platforms refunded the money. They tried again with a pop track and got the same result. Their conclusion: unless you…
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From Cassette Culture to TikTok: The Ongoing DIY Spirit
Back in the late 1980s, when GAJOOB first launched, the world of DIY music was built on tape hiss, photocopied zines, and the steady hum of a 4-track recorder. Musicians recorded songs in bedrooms, garages, and basements, then dubbed cassettes by hand and sent them across the world in padded envelopes. Every tape was a…
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Why I’m Releasing All My Music Under CC BY 4.0
Copyright law is broken. It doesn’t protect creativity—it fences it in. That’s why I’m releasing all of my music under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows anyone to use, remix, adapt, and build upon my work—even for commercial purposes—so long as they give me credit. That’s it. No…
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How to Generate Your Own ISRC Codes
Yes, you can generate your own ISRC codes — but only if you register to become an ISRC Manager (Registrant) through your national ISRC agency. Here’s how it works: What is an ISRC? An ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is a unique identifier assigned to each individual recording (not to an album, but each song…
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How a DIY Band or Label Can Start Marketing Themselves in 2025 and Beyond
Marketing as a DIY band or label in 2025 doesn’t mean selling out—it means showing up. With the right tools, mindset, and a bit of grit, independent artists today can build real audiences without needing a corporate machine or massive budget. Here’s how to start attracting true fans, engage them directly, and grow a sustainable…
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How Bandcamp Works for Labels: A Guide to PRO Accounts and DIY Artist Collaborations
Bandcamp has become a powerful platform for independent musicians and labels to distribute and monetize their music. While many think of it primarily as a direct-to-fan platform for individual artists, Bandcamp also supports labels—both established and DIY—with a specialized tier called the Bandcamp PRO for Labels account. This article explains how PRO accounts work, how…
DiY Art, by Briyan Frederick Baker of GAJOOB, is a blog and a learning community for creative artists navigating the business of being a DiY artist in 2025 and beyond. Its guiding ethic is to help artists live an artistic life with passion.
