Simply too much music is released into the world. Many artists release just because it gets them gigs. Releasing songs and tracks is more marketing than it is worth the time spent. Only a very few out of the millions of artists around the world, make proper money with music releases.
Label companies are used to get into the picture. They have the networks; they know how to trigger. Sure some may get traction by doing some TikTok or whatever, but any success coming from such can only be regarded as a bonus, not as a plan to get success.
Hmm
I think I’d talk about record labels next
They are quick to pushing artistes to limelight if they really want to
But, there are too many problems connected to record labels
Sure, problems exist in the complete chain from artists to fans and music consumers, but it is for a reason that labels and distributors exist. Artists and Market is highly decentralised when taking out all the parties in between (labels, record companies, distributors, streaming platforms etc etc). All these companies in between fill in a need to connect gazillion artists to gazillion people. My take on the digital side of things, is the way we consume music these days: Those services that offer great UX to the music consumers, are those services that will be most successful. Those services are then the services that artists will have to use. Another take (well add on the the previous one) is that artists will use digital services as promotion, even great production for marketing, and have to gig to earn money.