Artists, We Have a Problem!

21 Sep 2022 7 min read

Artists, we have a problem! When revenue from music is much less than the time and money we may spend in marketing, then there is a problem. When countless new tracks are not being heard by record labels every day, then there is a problem. When we need less than 100 downloads to enter a music chart in a digital store, then there is a problem. When we know that 0.005% of all active musicians worldwide manage to make more than a basic salary then there is a problem. And when there are so many problems that the music industry is either unable or unwilling to see, then there is definitely a huge problem.

I believe that most of us want to express ourselves through our music. To express a story, our joy, our jokes, our sadness, our tension, our dreams and all these daily emotions that overwhelm us and often make us creative. Each of us is unique and the way we choose to speak with music as well. This is one of the major reasons why musicians want to reach and connect with other fellow human beings through music. If we weren't interested in communicating with other people through our music, we obviously wouldn't be uploading, submitting our demos to record companies or releasing our music publicly. Since millions of musicians and bands are doing it, it means there is a need for communication through music. So is there any secret guide outhere to help artists breakthrough, connect with music fans and live their dream? 

To be honest there is not any secret guide but there may be information that can help an artist's career and brand awareness, but the volume of information is so large that it will take a long time for someone to be able to find and understand what to use and when. There is so much misinformation out there about how to get into the music industry and what to do once you're there. Many musicians are bombarded with ads, mentors and tools that claim to take off their careers but most of them are either scams or require you to spend a big amount of time and money to get much less back. To make your music heard you need not only more luck than ever before but also a huge talent in marketing and daily use of your social media which you definitely need to dedicate a large part of creativity that you could use in music. From the time we moved from physical formats to digital downloads and streaming services there is no way to properly filter the amount of music that is released every day. For this reason marketing is very important for the success story of a track because without it the chances of being heard are infinitesimal to zero. This is of course the fault of the music industry itself as well as the stores that allow the circulation of any audio creation. 

The real problem though is not just marketing but that the music industry doesn't have a reliable filter.  When there is so much music available, we need somehow to have some type of filtering to help music fans listen to the best available music. The majority of supporters are teenagers and youth as they have much more time to spend on music than adults. Simply put, from the moment adults get into a daily routine they don't have enough time to search and discover new music. And whatever mood there is, it very easily dissipates when you start listening to the countless releases and encounter wrong categorizations, bad quality of sound and ideas and a thousand other problems. Also a young person who doesn't listen to music too much will always have a friend who will listen and suggest him new music, while an older person will not differ with his friends because in most cases all work, have families, daily routines and obligations so objectively they don't have the time that the young person has to seek and discover new sounds. The older ages therefore rely on listening to old favourite tracks and if they want something new they will either rely on algorithms (ex. Youtube, Spotify) or charts or radio stations. And as we all know very well, all of these are either business driven or underpowered based on what you were listening to before. But emotion is what determines what we want to hear at the moment we choose it. And the feeling in each person may need a different music genre at a specific moment. Don't forget that the music we like or will like is very much connected to our memories and life events. So to bring more fans and especially adults to listen to new music, we need to filter music based on quality. 

Seeing the problems for artists swell since streaming services entered our lives we need to find a way to support creators more than ever. This is the main purpose of creating Traxbeat, to filter music with the help of fans through charts and without the use of marketing in order to give exposure to artists that have great music to offer. To achieve this, every piece that is being uploaded to Traxbeat goes through a rating process for a certain period of time. Until now, all the platforms that attempted a similar rating strategy counted on the dynamics of each artist who was forced to advertise on their social media to get votes from their friends. So whoever had enough followers was always in the higher places of the charts, without music playing a role. In essence, the platforms seem to be created for the purpose of self-promotion and not to actually help musicians. Our aim is to have transparency, dignity and the fair evaluation of all uploaded music. To achieve this we had to find a way to not allow artists who already have a large audience to promote their track in order to get a positive rating. So when someone wants to listen and rate a track in Traxbeat they can't select the track but they will get one randomly that is bound to the user until it is rated for a certain period of time. The random track is always based on the user preferences that match up with what the artist has selected including the music genre, audience and more. The user must rate in order to listen to another random track. In this way we not only bring people closer to new music and artists but we create a merit-based music promotion process, our charts that are making our platform the only one in the world where the music quality will be able to define a song's success story.

We are still at the beginning of a long journey and our purpose is while we are building a community of musicians and fans to be able to provide a better filtering in the music industry and develop a platform that will increase the revenue of all the artists that have the talent and music quality. 

Imagine charts in which your music will be the only criterion of your success or not. Imagine charts that are not based on marketing or on the number of sales, downloads or friends you may have. Imagine charts where it doesn't matter if you are taking your first steps in the music business or you are already a big star. Imagine charts in which every musician has the opportunity to be heard and excel. Imagine charts in which the ranking of a track is defined by music fans, not just one human being or an A&R that skips your music because he hasn't enough time. Imagine charts that will drive you more sales through your preferred digital stores. Imagine charts viewed by category, genre, audience type and language. Imagine charts where marketing and social media have no power to keep you in or out. Imagine charts like you have never imagined before. Imagine Traxbeat.