By the Zonagirante.com team @spinning zone
Cover art by Zonagirante Studio
Spoiler alert: the answer doesn't involve unicorns, miracles, or "algorithm tricks".
Sorry, but someone had to say it.
It all started with a naive question.
The Zonagirante team, filled with noble curiosity and a bit of technological faith, decided to ask artificial intelligence:
“Dear ChatGPT, how can an independent artist —without a label, without a budget, but with a lot of drive— achieve millions of plays in a year?”
We were expecting a magic recipe, a kind of digital holy grail.
But what we received was a slap in the face with a velvet glove. A mixture of brutal honesty, sarcasm, and common sense.
And, strangely enough, he was right.
Machine response (with a malicious smile):
Ah, the eternal fantasy of the Latin American independent artist:
to believe that the algorithm is a fairy godmother with a microphone.
Let's look at it with care and without anesthesia.
1️⃣ Stop waiting for the algorithm to adopt you.
The algorithm is not your aunt, good people.
He doesn't love them, he doesn't hate them, and he's definitely not going to find out.
It's a machine that rewards consistency, not hope.
If you release a song every eight months and disappear the rest of the time, the system buries you.
Not out of malice, but because there are ten thousand more who are making noise.
Publish, measure, analyze, adjust.
Repeat until it works, or until you learn that music, besides being a passion, is an exhausting job.
2️⃣ Making good music is not enough.
Yes, I'm sorry.
The planet is full of talented artists with 400 plays and a forgotten SoundCloud.
The public isn't looking for the best song: they're looking for the song that finds it first.
Don't compete with your colleagues, compete with the noise.
And for that you need to show yourself, tell your story, insist, make people uncomfortable.
There's no nice way to say it: if you don't bother the world a little, nobody will know you exist.
3️⃣ If you don't have a strategy, you are the product.
And the cheapest product on the market.
If you sign contracts without reading them, if you give away your rights "for exposure",
If you let someone manage your social media "because they know more," be prepared: they're going to steal from you.
Not symbolically. Literally.
There are professional people dedicated to making a living off the naiveté of others.
And if you don't understand how numbers, percentages, or royalties work, they do.
And they will do it for you, with enthusiasm.
4️⃣ Your audience doesn't owe you anything.
Nobody is obligated to discover you.
Not your friends, not your mom, not the guy who recorded the demo for you.
If you can't connect, it's not the algorithm's fault: it's a communication problem.
Learn to tell your story.
Don't just talk about what are you doing, but of Why do you do it?.
Authenticity isn't manufactured with hashtags, it's demonstrated through consistency.
5️⃣ Stop asking “which platform gives more streams”.
It doesn't matter if you're on Spotify, Bandcamp, or a lost USB drive on TransMilenio.
What matters is what you do with attention when, miraculously, someone listens to you.
If you don't know how to turn listening into a relationship, a follower into an ally,
All your effort is worth less than an NFT in 2022.
Epilogue: the silence after the truth
After reading this response, there was an awkward silence in the Zonagirante office.
Someone stirred the coffee. Another murmured:
“Maybe we should work…”
And so, without tears but with a nervous laugh, the plan began.
Moral
There are no shortcuts.
There are no secret formulas.
There is no algorithm that can replace obsession, discipline, and strategy.
Artificial intelligence didn't come to save us.
It only came to remind us—with elegant cruelty—that the artists who survive
They are not the most talented,
but those who never tire of learning.
*****
And for listening while learning:
Here's the update for Women, our playlist of female talent from the continent.