In April, up-and-coming pop singer-songwriter Chappell Roan released “Good Luck, Babe!”, a sleek, synth-driven single with carefree lyrics and an unapologetically dismissive chorus. Her album Midwest Princess had failed to crack the Billboard 200 when it was released the previous year, but “Good Luck, Babe!” It immediately showed signs of commercial promise, easily showcasing previous tracks. It reached the Billboard Hot 100, starting at No. 77, and eleven weeks later, with little consolation, it made it all the way to the top 10.
A version of this path was common: It took time, usually months, to propel a single into the top 10. Today, however, a trajectory like Chappell Roan's is hard to find. As of the third week of July, 75% of this year's top 10 hits debuted in the top 10. they die from the effects of the first week.
This has its advantages. Because a lot of pre-release marketing involves teasing songs on social media, artists and labels often know how the public feels about a track before it's released so they can spend advertising dollars more effectively. And unlike movies, songs are relatively cheap to produce, so if the teases aren't piqued, an artist can quickly cut the bait or even trash a track and not bother to delete it.
“The industry used to pre-install any strategy before it was confident it was working,” says Nick Bobetsky, who runs Chappell Roan. “You don't have to now.”
But there is also a potential downside. Executives say many artists and labels are often unwilling or unable to run the kind of months-long campaigns that build hits over time — think Latto's “Big Energy,” Teddy Swims' “Lose Control” or “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan. which took more than 20 weeks to chart and peak in the top 10.
“If you don't have a song that reacts right away, if it doesn't get a great stream right away, everybody's like, 'It's not working,'” says J Grand, a former major label A&R who owns the 88 Classic label. “The same way we have to be patient artists, we have to be patient with the songs we really believe in.”
Twenty-five years ago, it was almost impossible for a song to explode off the starting line and debut in the top 10 of the Hot 100. Chart position was determined by airplay, which usually increased as radio stations needed time to measure a song's success in their market, and single sales, which often increased in conjunction with air and television appearances and the release of a music video.
In 2000, an average top 10 hit took 11.6 weeks – almost three months – to reach its peak. “Both the flow of information was slow and the market was slow,” says Glenn McDonald, a former Spotify employee and author of You haven't heard your favorite song yet: How streaming is changing music. “It took a while for anyone to know something was going on, and then it would be a while before they built up the enthusiasm to actually go to a record store and buy whatever it was.”
Now, of course, social media ensures that news travels instantly, and the widespread adoption of streaming means that new music is just a click or two away. But an eight- or nine-week climb up the chart was routine until about 2018.
Planning, financing and executing this climb was the major function of the record labels. “Back then, it was really determined by if you went on the radio, if you went on TV, if you had a big news story, or even if your release was available in a store for people to buy,” says John Fleckenstein, COO. on RCA Records.
The labels still have those tools at their disposal—RCA got Latto's “Big Energy” to radio earlier than expected, according to Fleckenstein, after seeing the listeners “are a little bit bigger than they've had on previous releases of Latto”. “We don't think disk development is a lost art,” he adds. Radio tends to play a key role in this process because stations typically add songs and then play them more often as they see them being created, rather than immediately throwing a single into heavy rotation.
But radio doesn't drive as much music discovery as it used to, especially for young people, and TV viewing is way down. Additionally, driving listeners to a song is much more difficult in a climate where they have seemingly infinite options.
So the marketing process starts earlier, usually weeks before a track is released, and sometimes before the track is even finished. “You're trying to build people's anticipation for that song to come out,” says Fleckenstein. Otherwise, it's just another piece adrift in a “sea of content.”
The biggest stars seem to create anticipation just by existing. And since multimetric charts incorporate streams, acts like Taylor Swift or Drake regularly enjoy multiple top 10 debuts on the Hot 100 every time they release a new full-length. Swift has taken over the entire top 10 by herself. )
Lesser-known acts usually build excitement by previewing a track on short-form video platforms and encouraging fans to pre-save it so they can hear it the moment it arrives. Swedish singer Benjamin Ingrosso shared clips of “Look Who's Laughing Now” 32 times on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts over five weeks before the track was released in June. “The whole intention was to collect pre-saves,” says Tim Collins, the singer's manager. “The whole f–king country knew the song before it came out,” the single's release date was moved up because fans were clamoring for it on TikTok, and it debuted at No. 1 on the Swedish chart.
In the old regime, labels would pick up singles early and spend lavishly to support those tracks, but they were blindsided, with no indication of how listeners felt about the song. Now that is unnecessary. “If you throw away a brick, you probably won't get the marketing you want for your project,” says Grand.
“Every song has to prove itself,” adds Bobetsky. “And with each new phase, the artist, in many ways, has to prove himself again.” This can be mentally taxing—an artist's position is never secure—and cruelly Darwinian.
This landscape can also encourage a fickle approach to promotion. “Artists who have had a viral moment and have leaned into it can be afraid to work on other songs that don't go viral right away,” says Ethan Curtis, founder and CEO of PushPlay, a management and marketing agency.
“They think, 'It didn't have the sauce, it's not that good,'” he explains. But “you might hit a nerve [on TikTok] because there's a certain topic that's trending that day, and if you posted that video yesterday, it wouldn't have gone away.”
The persistence paid off for one of Curtis' management clients, singer JVKE, whose song “Golden Hour” took 22 weeks to peak in the top 10 in early 2023. “A handful” of initial releases featuring the track sank like a stone, according to Curtis. Some teams may have moved on.
But then JVKE caused a stir on TikTok with a clip where he played the song about his childhood piano teacher. After a few more videos along these lines, interest in the app started to show, so the JVKE team encouraged other pianists to post their own clips of them playing the song “to show off their chops.”
They also remixed the single more than two dozen times – choosing collaborators who would expand the song's geographic reach – then closed JVKE's appearance on The Tonight Show, and paid to promote the track to radio. Later, they created their own TikTok fan pages to “repurpose and repost all the content that we and others had created,” Curtis says, which “expand[ed] the momentum big enough to enter the top 10”.
Will other singles benefit from the same kind of patient, continuous, multiple nudging over several months? “I don't think you should ever give up on a song,” Bobetsky says. Still, he allows: “If you accept the promotion and exposure of the song and it's not sticky, then trying to keep boosting it is pretending we know better than the public.”
