Design by Tyler Farmer
Much has been made about what music marketing can and can't do following revelations surrounding marketing agency Chaotic Good. We talked to eight industry insiders about what, exactly, marketing means in 2026.
May 13, 2026
BY Will Schube
I would argue there's a degree to which I might be able to convince you that a band is maybe greater than they are, but I don't think I can sit here and play you dog shit and go, ‘Well, this is amazing.’
All of a sudden, everyone was talking about music marketing. The drama began in the middle of March, when Jesse Coren and Andrew Spelman, two co-founders of the digital marketing firm Chaotic Good’s, joined Billboard’s On The Record podcast at South by Southwest for a chat about how music goes viral. They rather cavalierly bragged about the tricks and tools they use to help the artists who have hired them, even at one point claiming that, “Everything on the internet is fake.”
Ironically, their conversation went viral, leading music fans across the internet to wonder if everything they knew and loved about their favorite artists was faked, duped, or planted…a psyop. That was the argument made by Wired writer John Semley a few weeks later, who drew the line from Chaotic Good’s work with indie rock darlings Geese to the band’s astronomical rise. A debate not far from the chicken/egg conundrum began to surface: were Geese famous because they were good? Or were they successful because they were good at manufacturing popularity? The answer is pretty clearly the former—Geese are a really, really good band—but their affiliation with Chaotic Good, quickly becoming an evil empire of digital marketing, raised some broader questions about the way social media can lift and bury artists with a seemingly cruel indifference. If you have enough money you can become a star, seemed to be the implication.
To learn more about music marketing in 2026 and seek to demystify a polarizing topic, we tracked down eight industry experts and insiders. We spoke with Darren Hemmings, Founder of growth marketing agency Motive Unknown; Dean Bein, Founder of celebrated indie label True Panther Records (home of Oklou, Frost Children, Grace Ives, and more); Dua Saleh, whose Bon Iver-featuring new LP Of Earth & Wires is out Friday; Henny Yegezu, Co-Founder and CEO of EQT (Masego, Monte Booker, Wale); Todd Goodwin, Creator of °1824, Universal Music Group’s culture marketing and creative strategy team; Muayed Alsherif, Digital Marketing Manager at Too Lost; Bre Harper, Director of Artist and Label Strategy at Stem Disintermedia; and Alex Figueroa, Vice President of Creative at Atlantic Music Group.
In surveying these thought leaders and marketing wizards, a few things came up again and again. First of all, nothing is more important in 2026 than fan connection. Whether you have one diehard or a million, targeting your music and content to the fans that support you is more important than chasing views, page counts, or streams. Secondly, while the tactics of companies like Chaotic Good are unsavory, they’re in no way new; they’re just the latest iteration of marketing strategies that have always existed. Lastly, there’s no surefire way to predict the strange ways music promotion and marketing will progress in the coming years, but one thing is certain: it’s not going anywhere.
What’s the point of connection? For artists, that’s the thing. It’s not a money thing. Money’s not going to buy you connection. Money might put you in front of people, but if what you’re putting in front of people is shit, then nobody’s going to connect with it.
Look at SAULT. They really landed after a couple of releases, with the Untitled record that came out during the heat of the BLM movement. They didn’t spend a load of money on awareness. They released a phenomenal record and everyone was like, ‘Holy shit, have you heard this? This is incredible.’ It was word of mouth because the album was so great and its message, what it was saying, resonated so deeply that everybody shared it.
For artists starting out, understanding that is critical. Have other people involved to give a more objective take on who you are and your values, someone to help you develop that. That’s really critical because we’re all blinded by our own subjectivity. Many bands think they sound like Radiohead, but in reality, they sound like a very different band.
It irritated me that the narrative around the Chaotic Good stuff became about Geese because when Chaotic Good were retained to work with Geese, I believe around the time the Cameron Winter solo album was coming out, Geese were already red hot. They were already there. I’m glad to see there have been a few commentators going, ‘Hang on.’ This wasn’t some psy-op bullshit like Wired claimed. That’s ridiculous.
I would argue there's a degree to which I might be able to convince you that a band is maybe greater than they are, but I don't think I can sit here and play you dog shit and go, ‘Well, this is amazing.’ It’s not how the world works. It irritated me a bit that it got co-opted with Geese's name getting dragged through it. I don't think that was fair to the band.
I will fucking die on this hill. Marketing hasn't changed in a hundred years. Every marketing book you read is basically a rewrite of How To Make Friends and Influence People, which came out in 1936. The underlying principles are identical. The medium through which this all works is constantly evolving. If you measure the last 10 years, what we were doing on Instagram X number of years ago is not what Instagram is now. Now it’s fully algorithmic. This notion that your feed is just what your friends are doing and stuff you really love, that’s all out the window in favor of cat videos and bullshit. It’s becoming very, very difficult, but the underlying principles remain the same. Marketing is about connection and ascribing value. It’s somebody connecting with your music and ascribing value to it to say, ‘This means something to me. This speaks to me on some level.’
I wouldn't advocate for anyone using them, but I kind of get it and that might be an unpopular view. When you consider that artists have so fucking much to handle now, the expectation of them to do the marketing is probably greater than it's ever been. When somebody steps out the shadows offering them a means to do something about that, I think it does really appeal. Everything about today's culture wants us to judge this and put Chaotic Good in a corner and be like, ‘Boo, bad people,’ but they were guys who had an idea. There were a lot of people that liked that idea and engaged with that idea. Sombr used them, Mitski used them. A lot of people use them. If we try and have a bit of empathy for the artist, you could understand why the artist’s team would use something like this.
We can’t manifest something fake. We don’t have the money, we don’t have the time, we don't have the resources. The greatest thing that we can hope for, whether it’s in the release of an album or the marketing of it, is to put something authentic that connects with people in a real way and then amplify it with integrity and cohesion. If there’s no inertia, no gravitational pull, we can’t force anybody to listen to the music we put out.
From the biggest major labels to little labels like us, nobody can really say what marketing is or what works. Nobody knows. That’s why majors have vastly increased their A&R budgets and vastly diminished their marketing budgets. They’re just like, ‘Let’s grab as much material as we can, spend small amount on digital, and then roll the dice.’
We’re not built to do that. This is going to sound woo-woo, but the way we get the word out is we sit and we talk. Who is this for? Who does this speak to? Who are the people in our network that can go from being fans to being evangelists? That’s all hinged on there being a cohesive story. Is that story going to connect?
Everyone trying to get some attention in this attention economy is up against algorithms. You have a whole generation of people that get 95% of their information from TikTok or Instagram. Those people might follow and be fans of an artist, but they're actually gatekept from the artist by the algorithm. Historically, the label's answer would be, “Just post more, post more, post more.” That sucks. That's terrible. We want to access the people that have actually expressed genuine interest in an artist or the music. For better or worse, sometimes we have to pay for that.
If you make something good that is going to naturally resonate with someone, you have a greater chance of reaching those people than ever before. The flip side of that is also true: you can’t force something through. We don’t have a monoculture anymore that’s forcing someone to engage with something or listen to something that they just don't have any need for. The same applies to marketing. You can’t just manifest something out of nothing. Good marketing is focused, authentic storytelling. It works like gasoline on something that’s already happening. You can't fake it.
Considering what I look like, the algorithm is not going to pick up my skin tone as well and not favor me on the TL. I need a little assistance because it’s kind of hard to work within a racist algorithm and expect to actually reap rewards. Sometimes people are hot enough, but I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just random. There are also other factors like engagement, knowing my audience. It’s important to know why your fans initially came to you for. Because I’m an actor, I had an audience prior to music, but it's a very different platform. Utilizing what you already have—the blessings that you have—and knowing what your audience wants, is important. You need to do all that while also staying true to your narrative.
Narratively, there’s been an aesthetic throughout my entire career. All art is talking about your story and sharing who you are. There have been a lot of desert aesthetics that I made with my creative director Braden Lee. That was done specifically to engage the audience on what home means to me. Staying true to your culture and identity and highlighting that in your artistry is something that people seek out because they're looking for themselves in the art they like. They want to see representation. I post my Eid fit and stuff like that, and people are like, ‘Yeah, let’s go.’ It’s a bunch of Muslims super excited to be like, ‘Yo, finally, I wish I had this when I was a kid.’ Or, they are kids and they’re like, ‘Cool, I can be whatever I want.’
Surround yourself with an abundance of geniuses. I’m surrounded by people who are amazing at music. The people who engage with my content and my music are nerds and are like, ‘Yo, I’m so excited to see this live.’ They really do deeply care about the music and I appreciate them. They understand me. We share a lot within the culture of artistry and a lot of artists show up to my meet and greets. That community is important.
We’re in an era now where the things that connect and find an audience aren’t always driven by budget, especially in the early phases of artist discovery. Do music videos still have value? Yes. But do music videos drive discovery? Probably not anymore. How do you create visual content and unique storytelling through social and vertical? How do you create things that gamify the relationship between you, new music, and your fans? A lot of that stuff doesn't necessarily cost money. It definitely takes ingenuity. We’re in a space where the second something starts to stick and go viral, most times that actually happens without people spending money. That budget is actually for when something is starting to prove that it can work. You’re throwing gas on a fire.
Music is ultimately the product. The content is not the product. You’re getting people to come in, but what gets people to stick and stay there is the music. Success is about how your music sells and connects three to five years from now. It’s about real people in the real world buying tickets to shows, buying merch, becoming life long fans. That still should be the goal. We got stuck in a world where seeing something go off at Spotify Radio makes you believe that it’s successful. You have to ask, ‘Are people connected to this?’ It always needs to come back to the music if you want to have a sustainable career.
The level of consistency and that original spark that brings in fans and gets people interested is miles away from what it means to build a fan base that has the potential to be around for 10 to 15, 20 years. How many glass ceilings broke for Kendrick to go from Section.80 to “Not Like Us.” There were still people that didn't consume Kendrick's music that started doing so after the Super Bowl and became new fans. A lot of fans that discovered good shit early and became fans on that first album cycle didn’t realize how much more room there was for Kendrick to grow, to reach his highest potential.
Before “Not Like Us,” some people thought Kendrick couldn’t get any bigger. There were fans like, ‘Man, he’s the biggest in the world.’ Then he went and then did stadiums he couldn’t do before “Not Like Us.” There is always a glass ceiling to break.
Artists really need to do more research on who their most passionate fans are and pour resources there first, because ultimately, they’re the biggest advocates. Make yourself available—not just online, but in person—while you’re touring. If you’re on your first tour and you’re the first of three on a bill, try to engage with fans locally in that market and do things with them; meet them at a coffee shop, take time to go to the merch booth, things like that.
If you look at the artists that have truly broken over the last, say, three to four years—Chappell Roan Sabrina Carpenter, Lola Young—these are artists that have toured over multiple years. They’ve been on multiple labels. They have really done the work to interact with their fans. Olivia Dean didn’t happen overnight. The thing that makes them so special is they’re actually just going back to the core principles that have existed for a hundred years in marketing: getting on the road, meeting people, touring, perfecting your craft; not just in the studio, but live. They’re reaping the benefits of it.
The age old playbook of market by market, fan by fan word of mouth hasn’t changed much. It’s still a very pure form of marketing that is also very wholesome in the fact that it really is about that interaction between the artist and the fan. That hasn’t changed, but the tools at our disposal have. Who we consider a partner has also changed. Obviously, we have a lot of amazing partners from the DSP space, whether it be Spotify or Apple or Amazon or Deezer. I think our most valuable partner right now that we have to nurture—just like we do with these DSPs and YouTube and Twitch—is the fan. You’re going to see a lot more investment into nurturing that relationship with a fan, giving them exclusive experiences, giving them exclusive access. That is what will define the true winners from the also rans when you're looking at the future of music marketing: which artists that are willing to lean in?
If I’m an artist, relying on those tactics is not necessarily a complete marketing plan. I don’t think anything’s going to be more powerful than that artist being able to lean in and nurture that relationship with their fans…At the end of the day, Geese is big. Real people bought real tickets to see a real band perform. Real people bought records, real people love this band. People can argue about the methodology in which Geese was put in front of people, but I saw the end of their Coachella set and saw people losing their mind for a band that they love. That’s very real. The methodology in which that is accomplished is one thing, but actually getting to that point is something that’s commendable either way because if you market something that’s not great, it’s not going to succeed.
If they couldn't play their instruments and they couldn’t write great songs, if they couldn't play a great live show, none of that would’ve mattered. The reality is that they can, coming from someone who observed thousands of people losing their mind to this band.
If you look at the artists that have truly broken over the last, say, three to four years—Chappell Roan Sabrina Carpenter, Lola Young—these are artists that have toured over multiple years. They’ve been on multiple labels. They have really done the work to interact with their fans.
Budget is only supposed to amplify the idea. It's never supposed to make the idea. I would start with narrative. What are you trying to communicate? What’s the emotion that you’re trying to sell? Once you have that down, you flesh that idea into content. Content is king and content will forever be king. What does short form look like? What does long form look like? What are the different mediums that this could live on? We have YouTube, we have IG, we have TikTok. How do we communicate a specific emotion across various platforms? With content, it's very accessible. You have an iPhone, you have a laptop, and you have Capcut. You put in the reps.
It’s the same way that an artist goes to the studio and records songs. It’s the same with content. It’s still creative. You could still apply that creative instinct and make it authentic to who you are. That’s where I would start with an artist who doesn’t have a big budget. It’s always best to start that way because then money can just amplify and it’s another resource. You're not looking for money to create an idea. The idea should already exist before money can even come in.
Fan accounts existed during Justin Bieber’s era, during Chris Brown’s era, the Minaj era. They started from a real place, but labels adopted the tactics. They were like, ‘We’re just going to have an in-house fan-run account.’ It’s not about whether it’s real or fake, it’s about what’s being shared.
That’s what we need to focus on: is the content good or not? Is it authentic to the artist? Every artist and every single brand that has a product markets to its audience. You’re being persuaded to like something and take an action in some sort of fashion. It doesn't matter what it is. There is no, ‘We’re not marketing.’ That’s just silly.
What's emphasized in the 2020s is community. Artists need to focus on building community and not reaching a wide array of masses. If I have five to 10 people that are super die hard and I can just market to them and I can sell product, I can get them to come outside, I can get them to go to my pre-save, they’re my street team. If I have that, I’m compounding that over a period of time. That’s where marketing is headed.
We’re in a community-based marketing era. Before, artists tried to reach the masses; you’d get a pool of people who were not as engaged or they were passive. Now it’s about just getting your niche, your corner of the seven billion people on Earth.
If I were to advise someone that didn’t have a big budget, I would tell them to spend all their money on content. I think content is king. We're in an age where a lot of the barriers to entry are lower because we have access to things like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. I would invest any money into a content person to help you create those bits of content, clip them up into smaller pieces. You can make one 30-second video into at least 15 pieces of content and keep feeding the algorithm. I think a lot of these social platforms now are rewarding consistency over anything.
Being able to hit your fans multiple times a day or multiple times a week through content is the best way to promote yourself. Even with a big budget, I would still give the same advice. Content is basically your free ticket into the lottery. You may as well play the lottery as many times as you can for free. That’s just putting out as many pieces of content as you can.
Being active in real fan pages and real fan accounts is very important. Agencies have had a lot of success in creating their own pages for artists so they can control the narrative, but it is really important to build community with actual fans. Bring them into the creation process, use platforms like Discord and Reddit to really build that authentic community. A lot of the times these marketing managers and suits aren’t in these crevices of the internet where Reddit and Discord soar. It’s where real fans are. Bringing fans in on the creation process or even the promotional process of music will be super instrumental in maintaining that authenticity.
Content can be a blessing and a curse because there’s a lower barrier of entry. It also allows almost anyone in, which as a purist is a bit disheartening, because a lot of the people that are really good and really talented don't want to promote themselves, they want the music to speak for itself. Artists that are willing to do the content piece may not be as talented, but at least they were proactive in promoting themselves.
That’s the biggest and strangest dynamic that we’re dealing with in the music business. It can be self-correcting because fans want more authentic music. They’re wanting live instruments, they’re wanting people that can actually sing. They’re wanting actual talent that takes a while to garner. It’s been an interesting phenomenon. There are people that are extremely talented that don’t want to do content because they don’t want to get trapped in that cycle. There are others that will do anything to keep the hype going. Seeing how that will resolve is really interesting.
Everything is kind of marketing. Say you’re the Spurs and you just traded Victor Wembanyama, who’s going to break that news? You call up Shams and say, ‘Yo, we’re trading Victor for X, Y, and Z.’ That’s no different than record labels or agencies calling Akademiks and saying, ‘Yo, Drake is dropping Iceman on this day…’ It’s the same. Artists need to treat their work the same way. Everything you need is on your phone. It’s free. TikTok is free. Twitter is free. Instagram is free. Try things out. Spam your fans. See what works. Talk to your fans and see what they respond to.
Don't be upset when you're not getting a hundred thousand views. Be appreciative of 10, 20, or 50. I tell one of the artists I manage, Nomi, ‘We don’t want a viral TikTok hit.’ It might be life-changing, but where are a lot of those viral TikTok hitters now? You need to build up a fan base. Don’t be upset when you are not getting thousands of plays. Focus on the 100 that care.
Try to get 10 people out of those hundreds to comment on the video. If you don’t have the narrative, there’s nothing. I have this formula that I like to use: creative + content + digital = narrative. Creative doesn’t exist without digital. Digital doesn’t exist without creative. Both don’t exist without the content. All that becomes the narrative, but the narrative is also something you need to understand before you begin the process.
TikTok changed the whole entire game, but people are discrediting YouTube Shorts and Twitter. If you know how to Tweet and you know how to properly engage with people, that's going to be another game-changer because they’re still trying to figure out the “For You” page and actual video content. Once they actually figure out that, you're going to see a lot of more shine on the Twitter side. During COVID, no one was able to do interviews or go on press runs. Now it’s like, ‘Let me just start a podcast and we're going to do it on Zoom.’ These are all just ways to digitally market yourself. It’s always been in front of us.
