He showed me his Instagram inbox which is flooded with fans telling him how his music saved their lives. I’ll pause as you pick your jaw up from the floor. Oh, and he’s got no label, no manager, no publicist, no agent and is on zero official Spotify playlists.

And was making less than $100 a month from his music.įast forward to today, three years later, he now has over 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify (no my finger didn’t get stuck on the zero key), over 50,000 followers on Spotify, over 200,000 Likes on Facebook, over 100,000 followers on Instagram, he’s getting around 5 million streams a month, has over 100 million total streams across all platforms and is making around $20,000 a month just from his recorded music. He had about 150 monthly listeners on Spotify (no I didn’t forget a zero) with merely 45 followers, about 1,500 followers on Instagram and Facebook. Three years ago the northern Virginia conscious hip hop artist Lucidious was struggling to get listeners to his music. This is an excerpt from Ari Herstand’s book How to Make It in the New Music Business (second edition).

Spotify top artists month