Category: Promotion

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 that. No hack, no button, no magic post. But there are approaches that still work if you’re willing to treat this like a long game instead of a quick dopamine chase.

This is for anyone who, like Haidyn, feels humiliated posting songs that get one like out of hundreds of views.

Your Friends and Family Are Not Your Market

First, we have to emotionally untangle something.

Most of us assume that because people know us, they’ll support us. That friends, family, coworkers, and old schoolmates will share, stream, and rally around our music.

They usually won’t.

Not because the music is bad.
Not because you used AI.
But because they don’t use social media that way.

They see you as “the person they know,” not as an artist whose work they’re actively following. They scroll past your song the same way you scroll past their MLM pitch, their kid’s soccer video, or their vacation photos.

When you understand that, the pain shifts:
It’s not a personal rejection. It’s a mismatch of expectations.

You are trying to build an audience out of a social circle. Those are two different things.

Real engagement starts when you stop expecting your immediate network to behave like superfans.

You Have To Go Where People Are Already Engaged

The impulse when we feel rejected is to build our own little bubble: “Let’s create our own community, our own scene, our own support network.”

That can be emotionally comforting, but it doesn’t necessarily get your music in front of listeners who are in an actual listening mindset.

People aren’t engaged everywhere. They’re engaged in specific places, for specific reasons.

Your job is to find those places and enter them respectfully.

Examples of where people are already engaged:

• Genre-based communities (synthwave, shoegaze, lofi, etc.)
• Emotion-based spaces (grief support, breakup recovery, anxiety, healing)
• Topic communities (sci-fi fandoms, gaming groups, spirituality, parenting)
• Lifestyle and identity groups (neurodivergent communities, LGBTQ+, over-40 creators, etc.)
• Mood and function spaces (study playlists, sleep music, workout mixes, background instrumental)

Notice what all of those have in common:
They are not about “discovering random musicians.”
They are about a shared experience.

If your song speaks to that experience, you can share it in a way that feels like contribution, not intrusion.

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Playlists Still Work – If They’re Purposeful and Organic

A lot of musicians are chasing playlist placements, but they’re thinking about it backwards.

A playlist is not just a container for your track. It’s a tool for the listener.

Good playlists answer real-life questions like:

• “What can I listen to while I can’t sleep?”
• “What helps me calm down after a rough day?”
• “What fits my 2am driving mood?”
• “What makes me feel like I’m in a retro movie?”
• “What do I put on while I write, study, or paint?”

If you’re building your own playlist or aiming to join someone else’s, the key is purpose:

• Define what the playlist does for the listener.
• Curate it carefully — not just your own songs, but others that honestly fit.
• Keep the vibe consistent so people stay once they press play.

A playlist full of random AI tracks is not a selling point.
A playlist that helps people through insomnia, heartbreak, grief, focus, or joy is.

When your track supports the intention of the playlist, engagement feels natural. People are there to listen, not just scroll.

Your Story Matters More Than Your Tools

If you lead with “I made this with AI” or “This is a Suno track,” you’re starting in the wrong place.

Most listeners don’t care how you made it. They care why you made it.

Why this song?
Why these lyrics?
Why this feeling?

Did it come out of a breakup, a burnout, a late-night realization, a childhood memory, a spiritual crisis, a moment of joy, a long silence where you thought you were done creating?

That’s what people connect to.

The tool is just the instrument.
The story is the bridge.

When you share your music, try framing it like this:

• “I wrote this after losing someone and trying to put the grief somewhere.”
• “This is the first time I’ve heard my lyrics as a full song after 20 years of writing in notebooks.”
• “This track is about being completely stuck in life and still moving forward one tiny step at a time.”

Now you’re not asking people to “check out my song.”
You’re inviting them into a moment that might mirror something they’ve lived.

Social Media Is Topic-Based, Not Music-Based

This is a big one.

Most platforms are not designed for people to say, “Please show me unknown songs from unknown artists today.”

They are designed for:

• Relatable posts
• Shared experiences
• Emotional validation
• Humor
• Outrage
• Advice
• Community chatter

So if you just drop a link and say:
“New track, what do you think?”

You’re asking people to stop what they’re doing, click away, listen, come back, and then respond. That’s a big ask.

Instead, you can align with the topic.

Examples:

In a group about grief:
“I wrote this trying to put words to that feeling when someone is gone but somehow still in every room.”

In a group about anxiety or burnout:
“This song came out of being completely overwhelmed and trying to breathe through it. Sharing in case it helps someone else feel a bit less alone.”

In a genre group:
“I tried to capture that hazy late-night city feeling I get from old trip-hop records. Would love thoughts from anyone into that sound.”

You’re still sharing your music — but through the doorway of the topic, not just the doorway of “I made a thing, please listen.”

People Can Smell Selfish Motives

This part is uncomfortable, but it’s true.

If your main motive is:
“Please give me validation. Please prove that my art matters.”

People feel the pull and instinctively resist it.

If your motive is:
“I made something that might resonate with what you’re going through, and I’d like to offer it.”

People feel the difference.

This doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to want listeners, or streams, or fans. It means that the way you show up — your tone, your captions, your consistency in giving as well as taking — shapes how your posts land.

If you never comment on other people’s work, never join the conversation, and only appear when you have something to drop, your music becomes another ad in a feed full of ads.

Engagement is a two-way street. If you want response, you have to be willing to be part of the ecosystem, not just a constant promo.

There Is No Easy Button

The hardest but most freeing truth is this:

There is no trick that will make people suddenly care.

Not AI.
Not an algorithm hack.
Not a magical group.
Not even a “support each other” circle on its own.

What still works is:

• Being honest about why you create.
• Placing your music where it actually fits people’s lives.
• Building or joining purposeful playlists.
• Sharing sparingly but meaningfully, in topic-based spaces.
• Engaging with others without an agenda.
• Accepting that it’s slow, and that slow isn’t failure.

If one person, somewhere, really connects with something you made — that is not nothing. That is not “just one like.” That is the real thing all the vanity metrics are trying to simulate.

We don’t control who shows up or how fast.
We only control how we show up, and why we keep creating.

And if your songs matter to you, and you’re willing to do the slow, human work of connecting them to real moments and real people, engagement can happen.

Not easily.
But genuinely.

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 already have a following, these curators aren’t interested.

Others chimed in with mixed results—some had a handful of successes, some ran into bot playlists and warnings from DistroKid, others noted the limited number of curators even willing to touch AI-made tracks. One comment stood out: most curators are just making pocket money and sending copy-paste feedback. Even if you land a slot, you’re just track #47 on a 200-song list, and nothing sticks.

That hit me. Because when I first heard that people were paying money just to get on playlists or to get a review, I didn’t understand how that became normalized. Back in my zine days, reviews weren’t something you bought. You sent your tape or CD into the world and hoped someone connected with it. If they wrote about it, it was because the music sparked something in them.

There was no transaction—just exchange. You mailed your work, maybe you wrote a letter, maybe you got one back. If someone scribbled a paragraph in GAJOOB or any of the other zines, it meant something because it was given freely. It was a conversation.

Now that conversation has been replaced by micro-transactions. Playlist spots, “reviews,” or “exposure packages” that promise access but often feel hollow. Even worse, sometimes you’re not even reaching people—just bots. And for AI music makers, the funnel is even narrower: fewer curators willing to consider the music, less chance of honest response, more hoops to jump through.

I get it—promotion costs money, and we all want our songs to be heard. But I can’t shake the feeling that something gets lost when the act of listening becomes a service you pay for. Feedback should come from genuine engagement, not from someone checking a box because you slid $2 across the table.

It makes me wonder if we’ve traded away the deeper connections we used to have in favor of “metrics.” Streams, clicks, placements—things that look like progress but don’t always build fans. In cassette culture, the magic wasn’t in the numbers, it was in knowing that someone out there was spinning your tape because they cared enough to.

Maybe I just missed the boat on this new model. Or maybe I still believe that music deserves conversations, not transactions.