Welcome [back] to another week of your weekly dose 🎶

Every Tuesday, I’ll be sharing tips, updates, and must-know music marketing insights to help you get your music heard!

By Finch Bergling

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This week's newsletter is sponsored by... me 😀

I would like to introduce you to "More Than Streams 🧩" - the weekly music marketing podcast that will teach you how to get, you guessed it, more than streams.

Listen to the most relevant music marketing tips, case studies, interviews, and everything you need to grow your music career.

Today's episode - "How to Get Verified on Spotify (Part 1)"

LISTEN TO MORE THAN STREAMS 🧩

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Your Weekly Tip

So this weekend was the Champions League final, and my whole feed turned into a sea of football shirts.

Andddd here's what keep noticing - people don't only wear those shirts on match day.

When I travel, I see people in football shirts all the time, on a random Tuesday, in an airport, in a coffee shop, with no game happening anywhere.

A grown adult walks around with another man's name printed across his back.

A football shirt says something much bigger than football. It tells the world who you belong to. This is who I am. This is what I stand for. These are my people.

So I started thinking about how this applies to musicians, because it explains almost everything about branding.

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Most musicians think branding is the logo, the colors, the font, the aesthetic. But that's the surface. Branding is also, and mainly, giving people something they are proud to be associated with.

Nobody pays good money to turn themselves into a walking advertisement unless they get something valuable back. The football fan gets an identity. He gets a tribe. He gets to tell the world who he is without saying a word.

So here's the first rule of branding for your music. Stop measuring whether people like your songs. Start measuring whether someone would be proud to tell their friends they are your fan.

Would they wear your merch in public? Would they put your sticker on their laptop where everyone can see it? Would they share your content on their own page? Would they tell a friend about your show?

If the answer is no, the music might not be the problem. Maybe you don't stand for anything beyond the music yet.

So let me connect this to something else, because it works exactly the same way.
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Virality.
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The word viral comes from virus. A virus spreads from one person to the next person, and content spreads in the exact same way. A lot of musicians believe they go viral because the algorithm picks them.

The truth is people go viral because other people decide to share them.

So stop asking how to get more views. The better question is why someone would send your video to a friend in the first place.

Let me give you two examples.

Imagine an artist who spends weeks building an animated lyric video, frame by frame, by hand, without using AI.

Someone shares it, and when they share it, they are saying something about themselves. They care about human creativity. They stand with artists. The video becomes a way for them to show what they believe in.

Now imagine an artist who releases a song against war and posts a powerful lyric reel.

People share it because the artist put words to something they already felt but could never express themselves. The share becomes a statement about the person sharing it.
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So here is the key insight:

People don't share your content because they love helping artists. People share your content because sharing it says something about them. Every repost, every story share, every DM is someone signaling who they are.

And virality is only the beginning. The same idea explains why fans buy tickets, wear merch, and turn into superfans.
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So the questions to sit with are these:

Why would someone be proud to come to my show? Why would someone film it and post it? Why would someone tell their friends about me? Why would someone wear my merch in public? Why would someone call themselves my fan out loud?

The answer is never because you asked them to. People do it because being associated with you gives them something. It gives them a belief to stand behind, a tribe to belong to, a way to show the world who they are.

So next time you make something, stop asking if it will go viral. Ask why someone would send it to a friend.

And next time you think about branding, stop asking what your logo should look like. Ask what you stand for that someone would proudly wear on a T-shirt.

Because the artists who grow the biggest fanbases do a lot more than make music.

They build an identity people want to belong to.

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Your Weekly Reel Idea

I just referenced this viral reel idea inside my weekly tip, so I wanted to share it here too. The hook is simple: "Who needs AI when you can just spend [x hours] doing [thing]?" And then you show something you made with your own hands. A music video, cover art, a melody you spent hours on.

📝 Want to watch this full content idea + hundreds more? Find this and hundreds of other proven content ideas inside my 'Content Vault'. Click here to unlock lifetime access to the full collection - never run out of content ideas again!

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Let's work together

• ​Submit your music to my Spotify Playlists.
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• Learn step-by-step promotion strategies with Your First Hit Song 2026.
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• ​Book a 1-1 consultation.
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• ​Build a playlist and grow your streams, email list and fanbase.

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Discounts & Links 🔗

• Get 10% off on SubmitHub​
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• Get ​7.5% off your first campaign on Playlist Push - use code finch
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• Get 40% off your first month on PlaylistSupply - use code finch40
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• Get 40% off your first month on Booking-Agent.io - use code finch40
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• Get 40% off your first month on RadioPromo.io - use code finch40​
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• Get 7% off on DistroKid​

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That’s it for this week! Hope today’s email gave you something useful to work with.

Until next week, Finch 🎶

P.S. Newsletters aren’t social media - I can’t see what you’re enjoying unless you tell me. Hit reply and let me know what you liked (or didn’t) - I’d love to hear from you! 😊

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