“In 2025, being an up-and-coming musician, you’re going to have to swallow your artistic integrity – at least a little bit,” Julian Ray says candidly during our video interview. “There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that. Like – there’s no choice.”
It’s a startling and completely ironic statement from the 21-year-old alternative folk artist who defines his brand as “anti-inauthenticity.” But Julian isn’t actually being contradictory. He’s calling attention to a central challenge facing independent musicians: an industry landscape that’s transformed so rapidly that by the time you’ve dialed in on one platform or strategy, the algorithms (and culture itself) have already changed.
Many strategies that launched independent careers in 2019 are ineffective today. Full-length music videos, once a cornerstone of music marketing, now have to be completely supplemented by custom short-form vertical videos promoting the most marketable part of a song.
“All music will have a subjective audience. A big part of it is identifying who you think your ideal listener is and just making everything you do for that person.”
What was already a highly competitive field has become oversaturated with absolutely incredible underground artists. This is great for consumers! That is – if they’re actually able to find the artists they want to listen to in the first place. Undiscovered musicians now must scream and jump and wave their arms to get attention, which raises an interesting question: how do you maintain artistic integrity while being forced to “play the game” for the algorithm?
Throughout our conversation, Julian offers insights on navigating this terrain; strategies that honor creative expression while acknowledging the reality of the market.
Know Your Audience First (An Unchanging Foundation)
Amid the constant flux of platforms and algorithms, Julian emphasizes one principle remains eternally relevant: understanding exactly who your music is for.
“I think there is something out there for everyone,” he says. “All music will have a subjective audience. A big part of it is identifying who you think your ideal listener is and just making everything you do for that person.”
For Julian, that ideal listener is clear: “A 25-35 year old dude who lives in a colder climate. Think Denver, Chicago, Calgary, Bozeman. And women too, of that age, to a slightly lesser degree.” His marketing efforts focus squarely on reaching this audience. This principle has helped him to amass over 30,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
This approach runs counter to the industry’s most profitable obsession: cornering the teenage female demographic. “Everyone wants that 16-24 year old female audience because they’re the ones that stick around forever. Look at the Jonas Brothers, Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, and now, someone like Benson Boone… Everybody [musicians, labels] wants that, but it’s just certainly not the reality for everybody.”
Finding a narrow, deep niche that has less competition can be lucrative. That laser-focused precision allows for the creation of content that’s perfectly resonant with the core audience.
Julian encourages other artists to consider the analytics data to see which demographics seem to latch on most. “At the end of the day, you’re going to want to pander to who’s naturally coming towards your music.”
Without this understanding, all other marketing efforts would lack direction. It’s what calibrates your methods. As a musician, it’s what informs sonic choices, visual aesthetics, and platform strategy. And this is one thing that stays true, regardless of how much platforms and algorithms evolve.
Balancing Artistic Integrity with Commercial Appeal
Julian has adopted an interesting strategy for resolving the tension between authentic expression and commercial viability. Rather than making compromises across his entire output, he separates his approach into two components: songwriting and sonics.
In his songwriting, Julian maintains his complete authenticity by refusing to soften the emotional edges or present himself in an artificially positive light.
“A lot of my music pertains to a breakup or relationship loss,” he explains. “For me, it’s about being okay with saying, ‘I fucked up, too.’ Because a lot of music about similar topics is pretty one-sided and typically puts the blame on one person. For me, it’s about not being afraid to turn that around on yourself.”
This vulnerability in his lyrics serves as the core of his artistic expression. But to help the medicine go down, as they say, Julian makes a strategic choice with his sonic approach. “What I try to do, and what’s prevalent in some, but not all of my music, is keeping a pretty upbeat and poppy instrumentation going on.”
He points to his most successful track as evidence: “Downtown Calgary, my highest streamed song, is exactly that. It’s really just pretty gut-wrenching lyrics laid over a C major, four-on-the-floor folk pop instrumental.”
Complete honesty and truth in the lyrics paired with accessible sonic backdrops. This bifurcated strategy allows Julian to navigate the industry’s demands in a way that’s sustainable and still allows him to stay true to himself.
The New Landscape: Short-Form Rules Everything
Content distribution strategies are different now. “For a small up-and-coming artist, it really is what everyone says: TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts. 1,000%,” he says without hesitation. “What used to be the big budget super sick music videos of 2015 to 2018 is now high quality, super deliberate short form media.”
This shift represents perhaps the most dramatic transformation in music marketing of the past decade. Artists must now adapt their art to fit diminished attention spans, vertical screens, and a seemingly infinite amount of other musicians (resulting from the democratization of distribution that gives everyone a stage). Julian and his creative collaborator Isaiah Kim approach this by treating short-form content as “performance takes, as if it was from a music video, but just rigging the camera vertically and focusing on one part of a song.”
It’s a shift in the type of content, and in the amount of content needed. “It’s about focusing on the ‘TikTok moment’ in each song. In every song, there’s a catchiest part, usually the chorus,” Julian explains. This becomes the focal point for short-form content.
“When filming, we try to find a fun but clean background, something where you can put text captions for people to read. That is such a big thing. If people can’t read your captions, you might as well not post the video.” He’s serious about this point. “People can hear the lyrics. It’s not that people are stupid. They just don’t have attention spans and they need something else for their eyes to look at and track.”
“You’ll spend so much money before you get paid or even break even, it could be hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.”
Winning Short-Form Strategies
While the landscape shifts, winning strategies emerge. Julian has specific insights into three different formats that are generating results today. And by “today,” he means Q2 of 2025.
"Skit type content," Julian explains. "Having something where the first 3 to 10 seconds, depending on how good you are at acting, is something completely unrelated to the song, completely unrelated to anything. It’s to grab attention. It's fast movements or something like out of pocket or shocking that happens. Then you hard cut to a similar-ish scene of you singing a song."
This approach aims to both capture curiosity and create a pattern-interrupt; something unexpected that interrupts the typical doom-scrolling behavior. Julian has seen this strategy work repeatedly, noting that many successful artists begin their videos with something completely unrelated like a crash, a surprising moment, or an absurd setup, before transitioning to their music.
Another effective strategy Julian identifies is repurposing viral content: "I've seen people that will use clips of other people that aren't them, you know, just like random viral videos on the internet that are already popping off. Stitching or using the first few seconds."
Even more surprising is his observation about the power of meme content: "True meme content. I see so many artists that, on their main Instagram pages, are posting straight up memes. If you went to go look at their IG reels, you’d think it's a meme page, but every single meme video is just using their music."
This approach allows artists to tap into existing engagement patterns rather than trying to create interest from scratch. The music becomes the soundtrack to content that's already proven to capture attention, creating more paths to discovery.
A lot of these tactics feel like TikTok’s version of Buzzfeed clickbait articles of the previous decade.
Algorithms Reward Frequency
Consistency is the next variable in the equation. The algorithms that determine visibility have made this a non-negotiable step for small musicians. “Six, seven days a week” Julian advises emerging artists.
This reality forces artists to develop production systems for marketing materials that can sustain high output. For Julian, it’s batch filming. “Whether that’s once a week, once every two weeks, whatever. For me, I usually spend a whole Sunday filming whatever I need.”
This keeps the content flowing. “Film everything, edit everything, grade everything, get it ready to go, then schedule what gets posted.” It’s a fast world now. For most smaller musicians, especially when resources are tight, this means learning how to film and edit on their phones.
Meta Advertising: The Not-So-Secret Weapon
Beyond organic consistency, Julian is up-front about another essential tool in the music marketing toolkit: the necessity of paid promotion to accelerate growth.
“Run conversion ads through Meta. They’ll be your best friend for a Spotify algorithmic boost,” he says. As with organic posting, this method relies on repeated exposure. “It’ll take someone seeing you 10, 15, 25 times before they’re like, ‘Okay, word.’ And want to go off-platform to actually look at your music.”
This approach requires financial investment that will not see immediate returns, especially as a smaller artist. “You’ll spend so much money before you get paid or even break even,” Julian admits. “It could be hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.”
But that money is only truly wasted if you haven’t honed in on your audience. Some things never change.
SAD BIRDS STILL SING
Julian's debut album SAD BIRDS STILL SING, released in early 2025, explores "different feelings of loss, whether it be loss of a loved one, loss in the sense of death or loss in the sense of yourself."
As our conversation draws to a close, Julian returns to the challenge facing musicians today: a rapidly and mysteriously evolving set of algorithms. The industry demands adaptation, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of artistic identity. It requires strategic thinking, but it doesn’t have to be a cynical calculation.
For the Montana-born, LA residing musician, Julian Ray, navigating this career means embracing both the limitations and opportunities of being an artist in 2025.
It’s about finding a sustainable balance between timeless marketing principles and adaptive tactical execution. This philosophy can act as the bridge that serves as musicians’ best shot at crossing the ever-shifting realities of the modern music industry.
See more from Julian & Listen to SAD BIRDS STILL SING:
