It’s no secret that the music industry can be a complicated place to gain traction. While the industry has always been difficult to break into, it’s more of a challenge now than before. Now, high volumes of music are coming out on a variety of platforms, causing most new artists to be drowned out. The artists who manage to make it into this industry also have challenges and need to hire other people to take care of management, marketing, and additional details.
Sawyer Wildgen is a talented artist who’s made not only his music shine but also took charge of the marketing himself. These incredibly daunting tasks take a lot of energy and finesse, but Sawyer has successfully managed to pull them off.
For many artists, there’s a moment when they recognize their talent’s potential and decide to put it into action. Sawyer saw this with social media trends and learned how to leverage them to market his work. Sawyer had no real following at the beginning of the year but decided to tap into TikTok user hype and used it to his advantage. Utilizing this technique, Sawyer built an impressive following of more than 230,000 people on TikTok and more than 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
That was only the beginning for Sawyer. The following month, Sawyer created a viral TikTok dance sensation that had more than 300,000 videos recreating it. Sawyer knew that he wasn’t only a talented artist, but he was also gifted at marketing his work online. But, he needed to find a way to funnel people from the trends to his original music. Sawyer made a song with the viral dog @pudgywoke as the background sample, and the results exceeded even Sawyer’s expectations as the song went viral in just a month.
All the hard work and effort combined with Sawyer’s marketing talent paid off, and Sawyer currently has an impressive one million streams on Spotify and Apple Music this year. He knows what an incredible achievement this is and says, “it’s a big deal for me as a new artist.”
But Sawyer understands that the world of music-making is not as easy. He knows that there is currently such a high volume of music being made that artists need to have something exceptional to shine, or as he says, “you need to break through enough to give people a reason to listen to your music initially.”
Sawyer further talks about the challenges of the industry and how Spotify will only pay artists a mere $2-3 for one million streams. Sawyer says that to help out with this situation, he had to work in cryptocurrency to “supplement the artist income,” as he calls it.
Looking ahead, Sawyer’s attitude is very different from most people in the early stages of their careers. He states, “I’m never going to look at my music as an outlet to generate money.” Sawyer looks forward to having a platform where he can promote artists he thinks are genuinely talented.
To check out Sawyer’s music, visit his website, Spotify, and Apple Music.
