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 - "The Best Music Marketing Lesson From Every Episode (So Far)"

LISTEN TO MORE THAN STREAMS 🧩

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Your Weekly Tip

My two most unconventional sources for discovering new music are buying clothes and rewatching old TV shows.

I know.

When I walk into H&M, I stop and listen before I even look at the shelves.

Their playlists are some of the best-curated pop music you'll hear anywhere, and at some point I caught myself coming back more for what was playing than for anything I actually needed to buy.

I eventually found their official Spotify playlist and started following it. I still love how differently it hits through their store speakers compared to headphones, and I can't fully explain why.

The TV thing is less glamorous to admit.

I rewatch shows I've already finished, sometimes seasons I've seen three or four times, and my main filter for whether a show is worth my time has sometimes been the music.

One of the most underrated shows for this is How I Met Your Mother, which has a better ear for song placement than most shows that cost three times as much to produce.

Yesterday I was back in Season 5.

There's an episode where Ted watches the love of his life marry someone else, and there is a montage of videos showing how she met her husband while Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear plays.

I already knew that song.

...But the combination of that scene and that moment in the song hit me in a way it never had before. I searched it up immediately after the episode ended.
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Emotion is the variable that makes everything else work harder than it should.
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In politics, in advertising, in cinema, and in music, the words or production don't always move people. The feeling does.

A song you've heard twenty times can become the song of your life the first time it's being played at exactly the right moment.

The secret behind the cheapest, most effective ads I've ever run is this: attach your music to an emotional scene.

I do this in one of two ways.

The first is taking a clip from a popular movie or TV show that carries exactly the right emotion, and placing the artist's music underneath it.

The scene already has an audience's trust. People already associate it with a feeling. Your music steps into that feeling and inherits it.

The second is directing the musician to film their own scene. It doesn't need to be cinematic or expensive. It needs to be specific and emotionally true to what the song is about.

A breakup isn't two people arguing, it's one person sitting in a car not starting the engine.

A moment of hope isn't a smile, it's someone opening a door they've been standing outside for a long time.

...When you get it right, the saves and streams come cheap. And that's what musicians and labels are looking for.
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The reason most music ads underperform is that they ask people to pay attention to a song they've never heard. The scene makes them feel something first, and then they notice the song is doing it.

That's the whole thing. That's what How I Met Your Mother figured out decades ago, and what the best music supervisors in the world do as a job.

You can do the same thing with a phone.

I would love to share with you examples of ads I've created and spent cents to promote! Reply to this email, and I will send you the videos (:

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Your Weekly Reel Idea

Send a snippet of your new song to friends and screenshot their reactions - the funnier or more genuine, the better.

Then post the screenshots with the audio playing in the background. It's authentic content that your audience created for you, shows real people connecting with your music, and naturally promotes the song without feeling like a promotion. The best content comes from your actual audience's reactions.

📝 Want to watch this full content idea + 300 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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• Make your next song a hit 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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