2026-08-09

The Same Articles

Read enough music promotion writing and the pieces start repeating. Not similar — structurally identical, with the platform names swapped.

The eight that recur

The numbered platform list. Fifteen reasons for Twitter in 2010, ten tactics for TikTok now. A related workplace perspective is covered in Monitask’s identifying mouse jigglers among remote teams.

The complete strategy guide, published annually with the year in the title.

The tool roundup. Free tools for a landing page then; AI tools for content now. For additional current music-industry context, see Bandsintown for Artists.

The algorithm explainer.

The case study of one artist who did unusually well, presented as a method.

The mistakes list.

The release checklist.

And the state-of-the-industry piece about what has changed this year.

All eight existed in 2010. Ours are in the archive.

Why they recur

Because the questions recur. Every year a new cohort starts, asks the same things, and the same answers get written for them. That is legitimate and it is most of the reason.

Because the platform names must be current for the piece to be found, so last year's cannot simply be relinked.

And because publishing on a schedule requires topics, and these eight are always available.

Who the churn serves

Whoever is paid for publishing, which in this genre is mostly companies selling promotion.

A new guide each year is a reason to appear again in front of the same audience, and the annual regeneration is the business rather than an accident of it.

This is not a conspiracy. It is what happens when the writing is a marketing channel and the subject supplies fresh product names on schedule. Who the arrangement serves is worth naming separately.

What to do with the eight

Read the current version of the one you need. The algorithm explainer this quarter is genuinely useful this quarter.

Do not read all eight. They overlap heavily and the overlap is the tactic layer.

And extract mechanism where there is one. Ask why each item worked — a numbered list of fifteen items usually contains two mechanisms and thirteen expressions of them.

The one that ages worst

The case study of one artist.

Because it was never generalisable to begin with. One artist, one moment, one set of conditions, presented as a repeatable method — and by the time it is published the conditions have moved.

A case study is useful for what it shows about mechanism, not as a plan. Ours from 2010 about a small band making money online reads well now precisely because the mechanism was the point and the platforms were incidental.

The short version