Video by The Business Side of Music via YouTube
Why do so many independent artists stall out? JC Sanchez has seen it from inside Sony Music, Spotify, and Meta, and his answer is simpler than you’d think: artists mistake one busy week for consistency, then disappear for three months.
JC is a creative music strategist and the founder of Orphiq, an AI artist management platform built to answer the question every indie artist asks: what do I do today? Sarah sits down with JC to talk about what actually moves the needle for artists in 2026 and what’s just noise.
In this episode:
* Why Spotify monthly listeners is a vanity metric, and the number you should be watching instead
* How over half your streams likely come from fewer than 20% of your listeners
* The streaming and social signals the algorithm actually responds to
* What record labels do on every release that indie artists can copy for free
* Where to spend a $200 music promotion budget for the biggest return
* The patterns JC saw in artists who broke through versus artists who stalled
* How AI tools like Orphiq can build a release plan in minutes, and where they stop
* Why building superfans matters more than chasing playlist spikes
Whether you’re a self-managed artist, an independent musician, or working on an artist’s team, this conversation will change how you read your Spotify for Artists data.
Book a one on one strategy call with Sarah Fleshner, host and artist manager: https://businesssideofmusicpodcast.com/#bookacall
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