So what is the queer musician to do now? How is she to promote her new record?

We reviewed a queer country debut from Andrew Sa, listened to Rachael Sage’s new album, and spoke with Patrick Wolf. All three are already fairly well-known artists, which is not necessarily the situation for many independent musicians. How does one promote their music to new listeners? What’s the formula for getting a record out into the world?

There’s no easy answer to that question. For artists who are already successful in a particular niche, the task is easier. The key question for most is how best to cultivate new fans. The answer, in the end, probably has to do with getting people to play your music. That could include getting people to sign up for your mailing list. It can also mean banding together with other artists so you can split the cost of advertising for everyone at once. It might also include posting social media videos of songs over the course of months to build buzz for the album. For some artists, this can include putting money behind the release in the form of buying the first handful of subscribers to their channel to ensure that the algorithm is more likely to recommend the video. In his 2026 letter, Mohan wrote that Shorts receives on average about 200 billion views per day. For independent artists who don’t already have followers, this can be a helpful way to give their clips a boost, provided that the views come from real users with watch time and history and as long as the password isn’t shared, because that’s frowned upon.

106,000 a day

Luminate recently published its year-end report as well, and one figure stood out to us: as of January 2026, 106,000 new songs per day are being uploaded to streaming services. Of those songs, 88 percent will never reach 1,000 plays. So what is a singer-songwriter to do?

For us, the album, meaning the recording of the ten songs, specifically the ones that survive out of the dozens you worked on in the evenings over two years to polish, plus the master fee, is the easy part because at least there’s a finish line. It is the post-production part, which involves deciding what to do next and deciding how anyone is ever going to hear this, that is the hard part. Especially now.

As you might imagine, there’s a lot of unsentimental advice out there about how artists can get noticed on the internet in the current moment. A lot of the advice can be boiled down to video. Music videos, sure, though those are expensive and not always necessary. YouTube is no doubt important, but the videos can be as simple as a home recording in the kitchen, for instance, and the more quirky and entertaining they are, the better. They don’t have to be perfectly composed, and they don’t even have to be professional mixes of a song. Clips of rehearsals can work, too, and clips of live shows, especially queer live shows where the performers are likely visually striking and there's a good reason to pay attention to them.

The video is the thing that travels

There’s a thriving local queer scene in South Florida that can sometimes slip through the cracks in terms of what audiences nationally are looking for in queer musical acts. The live show remains important to that local audience. That’s where artists with longevity are thinking about whether they want to make music a career, about how long they want to continue, such as what their plans are five years from now, and they’ve figured out that it’s not just about the music. It’s about the distribution of that music. It’s about planning where to play that music. Forty people in a bar is a show, a real show, not a rehearsal.

The room you can already fill

This can be a reality check for musicians who may have been dreaming up a record, but who need to consider how people are going to hear that record. It’s not just about making the songs, it’s about making sure people hear the songs. It’s the least sexy part of the process. But that’s what separates the artists who are still working in five years from the ones who quietly stop.

The views, opinions, and recommendations expressed in this article are solely those of the author and are provided for informational and editorial purposes only. They do not constitute professional advice and should not be relied upon as such. OutSFL makes no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy, completeness, or applicability of the content and assumes no liability for any actions taken based on it. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of OutSFL.