Most artists think like failed start-ups. Too much time creating, not enough time promoting.

When Lil Nas X dropped out of college to pursue music he didn't create much. Instead, he lived on Twitter and made online friends by sharing memes. His account quickly grew to 30,000 followers. His plan was to share music with his followers. But it wasn't that simple. He would post a meme and get 2,000 retweets. When he shared a Soundcloud link he would get 10. Sound familiar?

Nas got creative. He started sharing his music as the soundtrack to the memes.

Lil Nas X - Old Kent Road now has 950 million Spotify streams. The track was originally shared as a cowboy meme that went viral. The meme was recreated by other creators on Twitter and TikTok before becoming a trending topic on the Reddit thread 'Name That Song'. Nas added 'I Got Horses in the Back' to the title of the Soundcloud link as a response to what users were searching on Google.

Nas didn't stop there. He originally listed the song as a country song on the Billboard charts as the genre has less competition. Billboard removed it and this is the best thing that could have happened. The removal became a national talking point across the music industry. Nas wasn't stopping. He began lining up remixes with some of music's biggest stars. 17 weeks later he'd broke Mariah Carey’s record for the most consecutive weeks at No. 1.

You could say that Lil Nas X got lucky. But this was no accident. Nas learned how to distribute his music on the internet. That's what you have to do…

Source: Marketing Examples