How does one grow as a new artist in 2025?It really seems like the game has changed these days. From the rise of Chappell Roan, Doechii, Sabrina Carpenter, Role Model, and so many more. We have more artists breaking through than ever.Not only that-- some of these people SKYROCKETED to the top of the charts.But why? What did they do differently from everyone else? How did this artists grow and what can new artists learn from their success?In this week's episode we discuss exactly that questionHow does one grow as a new artist in 2025?It really seems like the game has changed these days. From the rise of Chappell Roan, Doechii, Sabrina Carpenter, Role Model, and so many more. We have more artists breaking through than ever.Not only that-- some of these people SKYROCKETED to the top of the charts.But why? What did they do differently from everyone else? How did this artists grow and what can new artists learn from their success?In this week's episode we discuss exactly that question**Follow my friend Kalesha on IG**JOIN THE DISCORD:Follow me on IG:#musicmarketing #musicindustry #aspiringartist #sabrinacarpenter #musicpodcast
Chapter 1: What changes have revolutionized the music industry in 2024?
2024 revolutionized the music industry, from breakthrough new artists who had been crafting and practicing for 10 years to some of the biggest in the industry who have had record-breaking sales. I mean, we even saw our new emerging artists who had had a number one song breaking records on Billboard charts.
It seems like there's more new artists than ever, and it has never been more exciting to be a part of the music industry, which got me thinking, why? Why do we have more artists now than we ever have in the past?
I think there's a lot of reasons for this with the innovations of technology and streaming, democratizing the way people discover and consume music, this decentralization of the label structure. And more than anything, I think it's just more possible for an artist to succeed on their own. Simply having social media and these tools for discovery has made it so you can be an artist from your bedroom.
And time and time again, especially I feel like in the pandemic, we saw people How that happened and people were able to build entire careers without these teams around them, especially in the beginning. So how do you do that? How do you grow as an artist in 2025? Well, that is exactly the question we set out to solve here today.
Welcome back to Nikki and I. I'm your host, Nikki Verda, and we have our very first guest. I'm so excited and honored to be here. Kalisha Midlani, my very, very good friend who has worked in music. And I mean, I've known her for a while, but Kalisha, just introduce yourself, dude.
Hi, everyone. My name is Kalisha. I've been working in the music business for basically my entire life. I got my start being extremely online, running a One Direction fan account, and now I have experience working at various record labels like Epic Records and Interscope Records, leading digital strategies for some of your favorite artists. I need to breathe.
No, that's great. That was pretty good, though. That was great. I love that you came from One Direction Twitter. It is truly beautiful how much One Direction Twitter has like influenced the music industry.
Yeah.
Like it's crazy how many people have had lifelong careers in music because of Stan Twitter and something super, super interesting. So like if you are allowed to share, is there any like artist projects or anything that you've worked on that you were really excited about?
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Chapter 2: Why are there more emerging artists now than ever before?
Music is this visual realm, not even to account for things like music videos and outfits and you know what I mean, like a rollout of an album is obviously extremely visual, but I think that music is a visual medium. And then you can see also how these things intersect, as we'll talk about later on, you know, like lyrics is a great example of, you know,
the music and the ethos of the artist intersecting and how you're telling a story. Or, you know, I always say like references and symbolism is a great example of how the visual and the ethos can kind of overlap, right? Like, you know, someone referencing Lana versus somebody referencing Britney Spears is not going to be the same visual. You know what I mean?
And they are different ethoses, but combined in different ways. So this is kind of how I have always thought about it. Um, and it'll be interesting, I guess, as I like walk you through, uh, to see like how you think similarly or differently or, or things you've worked on in the past.
Totally. I love how you've broken it down here. I mean, I don't really think about it in almost this like chart perspective, but I do look at it almost like, I guess the, the visual in my brain is almost like, like a Roblox or like Minecraft world. Yeah. Like a fake world, right?
I like that.
Where it's like, okay, I'm walking through this. Like if an artist had like, like a Neopets world almost like Neopets, like when you're going to, you know, the gift shop or whatever, like what does each world look like if you're going to walk through it? And I've been thinking about this, like even before these.
No, I love that.
Yeah.
I love that. And it's also, it's like, what are the NPCs wearing? Yes. You know, like what restaurants are in the world? How are they behaving? Yeah.
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Chapter 3: Who is Kalisha Midlani and what is her background in music?
You know what I mean? Like if you, or regardless of whether you love it or hate it, you at least know it is maybe more interesting. You know, like it, you can't listen to the song and not know about her life. You do like, right. Like even if you don't download that and encode it perfectly, it is there for the people who want to find it, find it as you're talking about earlier, like with Lana. Yeah.
But like interesting, I would love to hear your example. Like talking about an artist like Lana, like what way do you think she, how does one establish that sense of ethos without directly stating it to an audience?
I want to say like it was timing for her specifically in terms of like what distribution channels were available at the time. But if you think about who like has referenced her, right? If you talk about like Lana's daughters in the music business, like Billie, Nessa Barrett, Madison Beer, for example. Yeah.
All of them are kind of taking a play in her book while saying like, okay, we're going to show this through visuals. We're going to show this through having like really public breakups. We're going to show this through whatever it is that we're going through. You're kind of going to know about it, but we're not going to give you everything.
Yeah.
And I'm trying to think, um, like we might have to get this out, but something Lana did tell me once when we're talking about world building for her and like when she shot down ideas of mine, she said, it's not for everyone. Point blank period.
Interesting.
And I took that and like really applied it to my entire life and started gatekeeping myself so hard.
I love that.
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Chapter 4: What are the three essential components to building a great artist?
Yeah.
Like, they weren't in competition ever. And I think Dua has struggled to figure out where she...
is in that spectrum i think if you look at dua as a person right okay positive loves to enjoy nice things loves to read really values her intelligence and being well spoken and health and these are clear motifs that you see in her in her lifestyle right if her instagram was like a content strategy you you know who she is and what she likes and i think if you look at you know self-titled and future nostalgia they were really strong
visually i think she went like in on future nostalgia she couldn't go as in on radical optimism but i do think her lifestyle if we're just using social right really did reflect what she's trying to convey is like you're not gonna see me like hold up writing this album in a mountain because i'm sad over my breakup it's like i'm gonna go experience the world and show my taste through my newsletter and i have all these like multi-faceted things about me and i'm not gonna do
the standard like little show pony things that everyone expects me to do. I'm going to do a really awesome show at the Royal Albert hall. And I'm going to like launch little activations with, with my, my fans. Right.
Yeah.
Um, I do think that there were a lot of other lovers that she could have done. Like, I think one idea I had when I was really disappointed about the marketing initially was like, this red hair was such a moment for this album.
She fumbled not.
Why wasn't there a London club? Right.
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