Mark RobergeFounder, Artist Strategy, Make Our Music · Your A&R. Without the Gatekeepers.

Every artist says they need... #shorts

8 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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0:49

In this short, the speaker addresses independent musicians seeking quick fixes—record labels, bigger shows, booking agents, festivals, or massive streaming numbers. He argues that all these aspirations share a single underlying need: a larger, engaged fanbase. The core advice is to focus on building a sustainable, grassroots audience, identifying potential fans, nurturing them, and turning them into super‑fans who become an "army" that can later drive viral moments. The speaker dismisses shortcuts like overnight millions of streams as unrealistic, emphasizing long‑term fan cultivation as the genuine path to momentum and success.

Chapters

And so this is really for indy artists who want clarity and that want help in building momentum and building real sustainable fan base. Because that's the solution. I tell everybody, for any problem, any artists that's going, hey, I need a record label or I need bigger shows or I need a booking agent, I need festivals, I need more followers, I need more streams, I need more views at the foundation, the panacea to all of that. The solution is more fans. And that's really what we focus on as a team and how to build that or how to connect and create those fans and find them and then nurture them into super fans. So that's who, you know, our advice is for. If you want, like, a shortcut ahead and you want to, you know, just get a million streams and a million views overnight, it's. That's not real, you know, so we don't really focus on that. We focus on really building, like Sean said earlier, grassroots, foundational fan base that's going to become your army, that's going to allow you to become viral.