overnightfame

[overnightfame]

The easy steps to fame.

Ever wondered how musicians find their way to the top? How they climbed their way to fame and success? Nowadays their stories can look quite different than in the olden days.

The phenomenon of overnight fame came into being with the rise of internets popularity. The days where music labels played an important role in turning an artist famous are long gone. Even though they control the markets, the internet is enabling young aspiring artists to infiltrate this market and fight against this controlling market. From the days of MySpace to the inception of platforms of like YouTube and SoundCloud, the internet is giving everyone an opportunity to tell their story and make their voices audible to the world.

In this new era many artists have risen to fame with the sole help of internet and it’s consumers and through comparing the most remarkable artists profiting from this innovation, we could create a theoretical formula to achieve what they have. Fame.

The Rise of Marshmello

Making his first appearance March in the year of 2015, Marshmello, a producer of the genres Trap, Future Bass and Dubstep, released his first song “WaVeZ” on his Soundcloud account. He kept on releasing new tracks, gaining listeners, and made his first break-through when the one and only dubstep-legend Skrillex reposted his track. Releasing his first album at the beginning of 2016, Marshmello managed to secure first place in the electronic album charts just within 24 hours. Half a year later, he debuted his single “Alone” on Monstercat, an electronic music label based in Vancouver, Canada, which later turned into a huge success, gaining him a whopping 360 Million views on YouTube alone (as of March 2017). But what is Marshmello’s secret?

It’s extremely unusual for a music artist to become famous in such a short time, and people may wonder what’s so special about him, and why so many people listen to his music. The answer is probably a combination of factors, one being luck, others being appearance, marketing, style, and others.

Compared to other electronic artists, Marshmello has a unique style of appearance – a combination of anonymity, physical appearance and a very unusual name: Like the famous artist “Sia”, Marshmello has kept his identity a secret, never revealing who he really is. To support his name anonymity physically, he wears a white bucket with a smiley drawn on it over his head and dresses completely white wherever he goes. Another big factor contributing to his fame could also be his style of music alone – Marshmello has the unique ability to create a very distinct type of sound, which one can distinguish with ease from other producers of the same genre.

Step 1: Finding Yourself.

A key element of being an artist is to be yourself. You want to find your own sound; your own style, a type of genre, or a type of sound that a listener can identify with your artist name. Even if the listener doesn’t know the song, but knows you as an artist, and hears your style, they automatically connect the song with you, rendering a more unconscious connection between the listener and the creator. Marshmello’s unique stylistic traits have definitely contributed to his rise to fame. Every fan of electronic music knows his sound, and if you’re not familiar with what his music sounds like, feel free to listen to one of his tracks, and you’ll know what I mean. His music, compared to music from other artists of the same genres, is so different that even some people claim he’s created his own, artist based genre.  

The Rise of Post Malone

Austin Post, better known by his stage name “Post Malone”, is an American Hip-Hop artist, who released his first song in the summer of 2015 and got to experience huge success fame with just that one song. The rapper gained over 50 million views on YouTube within the first six months of publishing it, calling it “White Iverson”, and he’s been working his way up the steep hill of artist popularity since then. During this time Post signed with Republic Records, a music label which represents many big artists such as Drake, The Weekend, The Chainsmokers and many more. He also went on an Americas tour with Justin Bieber, performing as an opener. There he gained a lot of new listeners and could learn from one of the biggest staples in pop culture. Under Republic Record Austin brought out a mixtape, and in December 2016 his debut album “Stoney.” On March 31. 2017 his debut album went platinum, which means he accounted for a million album sales just in the U.S.

This 21-year-old come-up seems to be the most random success story in Hip-Hop history; this kid from Texas who played in Hard Rock bands before ever writing his first rap song, and with an appearance more resembling a classy cowboy than the typical rapper nowadays, his fame simply seems to be absurd. But if we consider his networking skills, it all starts to make sense.

Step 2: Networking.

Building connections within the industry is very important. All you need is just that one barely famous person, who knows more people in the industry, who will know even more people, and so on. You get the idea. For Malone, these people were also the producers of his first hit single, which previously had worked with big names like Mac Miller or Wale. But networking doesn’t end there. Through his first single Austin made the whole industry observant, which lead to him to the major record label Republic Records. There he could build friendships with many artists including Justin Bieber, who later decided to take Post Malone on tour with him.

Having people you can trust working in the industry as a newcomer is a very lucky situation to be in. Just remember the more you show yourself on the web, the easier you’ll get noticed.

The Rise of Porter Robinson

Porter Robinson (born 1992) is a young, self-taught American producer based in North Carolina, who produces mainly in the electronic genres. Robinson first gained international recognition with 18, and has been releasing singles and EP’s through various music labels, landing in the top electronic charts multiple times on multiple platforms like Beatport and iTunes (one release being so successful it caused Beatport's servers to crash), gaining more and more recognition, also online, for every new track he produced.

August 2016, Porter Robinson released his most successful single titled “Shelter”, in collaboration with fellow producer “Madeon”, which landed in the electronic charts of iTunes almost immediately. “Shelter”, on YouTube, as of May 2017, has almost gained 13 Million Views.

Step 3: Collaborations.

Work with those who make the same music you make. There are only benefits coming out of working with other artists; you double your ideas, increase work time, you teach each other new ways of creating, and well, you also increase your audience outreach. Collaborating with other artists is a relatively new thing to do, but it’s proven itself to be a successful strategy – For Porter Robinson, it resulted in his most successful single yet.

The Rise of Night Lovell

Night Lovell is a prime example of becoming popular over SoundCloud. In 2014, this then 16-year-old, self-taught music producer wondered how fun it would be to rap over his home-made beats, and that’s exactly what he did.

Writing his first song ever in English class at his school in Ottawa, Canada, and later then recording it with a 30-dollar microphone, is all Shermar Paul needed to make a hit song. The rapper has published multiple hits since then, also releasing two albums independently. No labels, no distribution companies. Just him, his music and his fans. Fans, whom Lovell cares about deeply; he shows this appreciation by playing live shows all over the world all the time.

Step 4: Tour.

Touring is an effective strategy for growing your outreach and gaining new fans. If you already have a small fan base, and some income, this is what your main goal should be. People want to see you. It doesn’t even matter if you’re selling out venues or not, every new city you visit, you’ll have a chance for local news coverage and at every show, there’ll be at least one person who won’t have heard your music yet. In a conversation with Night Lovell on his European Tour, he told us his opinion on touring. He thinks an artist should never miss a chance to play a live show, because every time you step out on stage, you learn a little more, and become a better performer. You’ll learn to connect with your fans and even gain some new ones. He believes that there is almost nothing better than seeing people enjoying your music in front of your eyes.

This step is often overlooked by many artists because they believe it’ll be just a loss of money; but if you target the right cities and the right venues, you may expedite your journey to the top.

Conclusion

As we come to an end with this in-depth analysis of how some artists of today made it all the way to the top, keep in mind that this is not a 100% success rate strategy to get famous; luck, and other factors - which we may be unaware of -have most likely played a huge part in their climb to worldwide fame. What we put together here is a theory - and theories have to be proven to become fact. But if you follow the formula we set up for you, you definitely will increase your chance of getting your music heard all over the world. Start off with creative working, so you can explore what you’re able to do and what you're best at. Look for other artists, who make the same kind of music - and work with them. Build up your community; make connections in the buisness. In the end, you decide, if you’re going to be successful or not.