Repost: Cameron Sunkel (EDM.com), “Chasing Viral Trends Rarely Turns Into Long-Term Streaming Income: Report”
I saw a favorite progressive electronic music artist, Mandragora, repost this, so I decided to do the same. It’s short and reminds me of an RA article I reposted three years ago.
I’m not an artist. I curate, I don’t create. I wish this analysis were true. TBH, I don’t buy it.
Let’s take Lollapalooza Argentina, since I’m going tomorrow. The lineup is absolute shit. Not just in the “maybe I’m getting too old” sense. I talked with teens about it, and they agree it’s shit, minus Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan capturing their attention. It was always commercial, Steve Albini called that out 30 years ago. But commercial music used to have longevity. I’m not convinced recent music does. The music scene doesn’t know where it’s going, in part because people are extremely addicted to social media. Gimmicks and marketing rule more than ever.
Why is Mandragora still relatively unknown while Lorde, whose last album was absolute trash, is headlining? (OK, OK, personality counts.) How does Doechii become famous for a one-hit wonder, “Anxiety,” based on another one-hit wonder, Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” and will people remember her in ten years? Musicians fly a flag associated with music-festival massacres today for clout. It works. It makes people forget about Kneecrap’s sexual assault allegations before they got famous for hating “the West.” I could go on and on, like a broken record.
This is my first time reposting something from EDM.com, a site I forgot existed for about a decade. Still, I like the sentiment. Please click the link and check out the article, or explore more from the author on their site:
https://edm.com/industry/chasing-viral-trends-rarely-turns-into-long-term-streaming-income-report/
Alternatively, go straight to the source: https://www.duetti.co/2025-music-economics-report
I don’t have permission to repost it, but, as I’ve said before, neither does anyone doing it on social media.
Credit: Florian Schmetz https://unsplash.com/photos/a-person-standing-in-front-of-a-cell-phone-UAwNxfXESDY
Chasing Viral Trends Rarely Turns Into Long-Term Streaming Income: Report
An analysis from Duetti of over 6 million tracks revealed the qualities in a catalog that are most likely to make it “durable.”
Cameron Sunkel • February 22, 2026
If you feel like your career path as a music producer depends on a viral moment, Duetti’s new Music Economics Report has a blunt takeaway: viral success is uncommon, and even when it happens, it usually doesn’t stick long enough to become reliable, long-term income.
The platform analyzed streaming behavior across more than six million tracks from independent artists earning between $100 and $350,000 per year. The company’s focus was “catalog durability,” a phrase used to define a music catalog with less than 10% annual decay in streaming activity in 2025.
The data suggests virality is a lottery ticket. It’s exceedingly rare to sustain viral momentum, as only 0.11% of tracks maintained virality after six months. By contrast, tracks that build steadily over six months were 60% more likely to be part of a durable catalog.
The report also points to controllable levers that stack the odds in an artist’s favor. That includes frequent, strategically timed releases, which correlated to a roughly 20% revenue lift.
The report also indicates that the artists with more concentrated audiences were 50% more likely to have durable catalogs, and those who grew on YouTube first were 16% more likely to end up with them than artists whose growth started elsewhere. Albums also appear to punch above their weight, since the cohort of independent artists who released at least one annually saw 16% higher revenue per track in the first year than those who only released singles.
You can read Duetti’s Music Economics Report here.
My takeaway from the report wasn’t the EDM.com headline. It actually comes off as a call for authenticity. Becoming viral is like hitting the lotto, with only 1% getting there.
Read the actual report! There’s a lot EDM.com leaves out.
Up top they say something I agree with: artists should focus on regions (they say country). "Artists with a high concentration of listeners in one country are 50% more likely to achieve durable catalog. [For this analysis, high concentration is defined as having >85% of listeners from one country.]"
I’ve seen a lot of big entrepreneurs (ex: Gary Vaynerchuk) discuss this in different contexts: Think local.
If you’re big in Brazil, focus on Brazil. If you’re Polish, stop trying to be American. It’s lame AF.
Similar, but way different, if your content is translated by AI, it can become viral where you least expect it. You then have a choice of where to focus: where you can get paid or where you want to be. My content gets spikes in China whenever I used to post to GroundNews IG, but I don’t want to cater to possible bots, who don’t engage.
Think of Sugar Man, the story of a musician who randomly got huge in South Africa, but otherwise stayed unknown. Was it worth it? Most would say yes. I say it doesn’t matter.
The report also discusses wanting an older audience. Us foagies have disposable income. We socialize. Famously, Gen Z is looking for free, at home, entertainment, for the socially awkward. They can’t afford to tip their arists.
So am I getting old and uncool? Was I ever cool? IDC.
Do what you love for free. Everything is free now. Take it from someone with an unpopular, free blog, who recently spent money to make a second, free blog for music focused content like this, but with the actual analyses.
