How Much Does It Cost To Break an Artist in 2026

Yeah. >> How much money do it take to get me popping to get me out here? >> A lot. I'm going put it like this. A lot. Because I don't think we have I know not at CMG. We don't have a number, right? We don't have a number that we say it cost this much to to break every artist because everybody's different. >> Everybody going to need something different. Like, you know, artist A may need something different than artist B and C. So, >> so how much money does it take to actually break an artist? Because depending on who you ask, the answer might be there is no answer. For some, it might be 150K just to get an artist to break through the noise, while for others, it might be 200K just to take a song to number one at radio. Or if you're an independent artist watching this, then it just might be whatever you got in your checking account. And somehow someway, I think that all of those answers can be right because I personally helped artists build real momentum for as little as a few thousand dollars. And I've also been a part of campaigns where we spent tens of thousands of dollars. sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get an artist through the noise. And the most amount of money I've ever personally spent was $180,000 in one weekend. And if you're a part of the 40% of artists subscribed to this channel, don't don't get nervous. I'm not about to tell you that you need $150,000 just to break through. I mean, some of y'all just got comfortable with paying for promo because of the last video. And I'm not trying to scare anybody back into retirement because I actually think asking how much does it cost to break an artist is the wrong question. Before we can even answer how much it costs, we have to answer an even more important question. What does breaking an artist even actually mean, let me explain. But before I do, make sure you hit that subscribe button because, you know, it is completely free and apparently it's one of the few things in the music industry that won't come out your budget. So, do your part to help us grow and make sure you hit that button. Now, let's get back into the video. Now, Yoatti is a great person to answer the question of how much does it cost? Because he's seen it from both sides. He's been an artist that signed to a major label that has someone spending money to help push him through. And at the same time, he's also signed artist and been the ones responsible for drafting up their budget for whatever quarter or whatever project. And he seems to be very confident in his answer to that question. There is no number. And his thinking is that every artist is different and has different needs and speaks to different people. So, how can you really put one singular price on a group of people that all are playing the game a different way? But then there's the other side and you will come across people like Wendy Day who have a very specific number. >> It takes millions of dollars to break an artist. And even me, like I'm 29 years into this. And dude, I can't do this without a budget of at least $150,000. $150,000 to to break a rapper. That's not even pop or or R&B. That's rap, which is cheaper to work. Can you break down where that 150 goes? >> Absolutely. It goes to marketing and promotion. It goes to shooting videos, behind the scenes content. It goes to Google ads. It goes to getting on playlists. It goes to everything you can imagine. And then on top of that, you've got the expense of recording. >> So $150,000 to break a rapper. And you heard her specify that rap is actually on the cheaper side in terms of breaking an artist. Now, if you're an independent artist, you probably heard that and immediately started to update your resume on Indeed or start thinking about, you know what I'm saying, which block you might have to hit a little lick on cuz that's a crazy amount of money. But here's my problem. What exactly are we buying for $150,000? Because we use this phrase breaking artist. Like, everybody in the music industry agrees on what it means, and it's music, so of course we don't. Does breaking mean a h 100,000 streams? Does it mean a million? Does it mean getting a label deal or getting a hit song? Does it mean being able to sell 500 tickets to a show or being able to quit your day job? All of those things are completely different accomplishments and they all require completely different resources. Now, me personally, I think about breaking an artist in two ways. And the first wave is what I like to call getting in the game. This is where you get an artist to the point to where they're consistently streaming. They're consistently gaining new fans and their content and their music is starting to move because people are actually paying attention to them. And even more importantly, that artist can now start to play the game from both sides. On one side, they're building consumers. So, new fans, new listeners, new people who might buy a ticket to a show or buy some merch. You know what I'm saying? All the cool stuff that artists want to start to get. And on the other side, you're now starting to attract the industry and people who can lend you resources and opportunities to further your career. So, this could be managers, publicists, publishers, labels, agents, distributors, or even producers, and other artists. Basically, people who have resources and opportunities that could help you go further in your career. And to me, that's the first big break because now you stand out above the millions of other artists just trying to get somebody to listen and you're actually in the game and can play it. And as I sit here and think about their stage and what artists have to go through to even get to that level, it makes me agree with Yo Gotti even more. The most amount of money I personally spent to help an artist reach that stage of their career was about $50,000. And the least amount of money I ever spent to help an artist get to that same stage was $3,000. So, same objective, but wildly different amounts of money spent just to get to that point. And that's because the artists were different, their starting point was different, the music was different, who they were speaking to was definitely different. And the opportunities they received along the way were different. And even what worked was different. And then there's what I consider to be the second wave of breaking the artist. And this wave is more about getting the record to be as big as it can possibly be. Because this is the wave where you finally get a song that takes everything that you've built and moves it into an entirely different stratosphere of attention. And I've personally been a part of campaigns that have helped take songs to top 10 and even number one. So we're talking about hundreds of millions of streams, if not billions of streams. And even there, I've seen wildly different amounts of money be spent just to help these different artists reach those stages. On one of those campaigns, I personally spent like $40,000. And on another campaign, I was responsible for like $20,000. And I'm being very intentional about how I word that. That's what I was personally responsible for and what I had visibility into. But those artists did have labels and they had teams and other departments that, you know, I'm sure were looking at their own budgets for the quarter and what they could spend on their portions of the campaign. So those actual investments were probably significantly higher. Which is why whenever somebody says it costs 150,000 just to break an artist, my first question is to do what? And that's why this next number actually makes a lot of sense to me. If you're trying to break a record and you want to take it all the way, I'll just give you guys some game. If you want to get your record on radio, cuz that's the first thing an artist when you sign, I'm like, "So when am I going on radio?" >> Yeah. What they got to do >> to take a record that y'all see on the radio become number one? That's $200,000. >> $200,000 to get on the radio. >> That's $200,000. >> Yo, that clip is so funny to me. Every time I see it because go back and look at Lil Yachti's face, he's looking like, "Damn, bro. That's what you have to spend on me." But jokes aside, that number is something I can work with. Because if you pay attention, Coach K didn't say it cost $200,000 for an artist to build a career. He attached that number to a very specific objective. It's going to cost us 200k to take the song to number one at radio. Now we can actually build a budget. And I think that that's one of the biggest mistakes that most independent artists make. You have to stop asking what's a good budget and start asking yourself what do I want my money to achieve because your money is about to have a lot of jobs. And the artist money alone actually breaks this down way better than I can. >> Studio [clears throat] typically for a 12-hour block is 1,200 bucks. Then the session engineer 75 to 100 an hour. So just add that up. Say you do seven sessions a week. It's $10,000 just on sessions. And then mixing anywhere from 2500 to 10,000 a track. That's 19 tracks. So that's $100,000 just rounding it. >> Yo, your math is impeccable. >> Now you're already at 120. And now you got to pay for the beats. So they're anywhere from 5,000 to 40,000 a track depending on who you working with times 14. So 400,000. So, let's just say 250 plus 120. Now, you're already at 300,000. That eliminates 75% of the people who are aspiring. I didn't realize how much money that it takes to actually be an artist. This is before you market. This is before you shoot a video. This is before you do an appearance. They tell you to invest in yourself, but it's also a bit scary investing in yourself. >> The song is the most important thing, but there are so many other things that it takes to take that song and make it be worth something. There are hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars that go into taking a song and sharing it with the world. And so that's a conversation that I think should be had. >> Now, obviously, Money Long is talking about the cost in relation to what a major label artist spend or an artist at that tier may be having to put out just to get these things done. But the up part is we haven't even started to push the song yet. You made the song. Congratulations. Now, we need marketing. We need content, a little ads, a little seating. You probably got to move around. So, a travel budget and you got to be drippy. So, now you might need a stylist. And then suddenly that $10,000 that you thought made you rich got about eight different people telling you they going to need 1,500 of it. And look, I empathize with you guys. Music has to be one of the most expensive art forms to create. I haven't done any research to back that up, but just, you know, thinking about all my art homies and the ones that do different stuff, it sure feels like it's the most expensive art form. But that's also why one of the least sexy pieces of music advice might also be the most practical and the thing that actually helps you get your career going. >> Tell like any up andcoming artist that ask me for advice. I ask them, "Do you got a job or a hustle?" If they say, you know, the old answer, nah, this is my plan A. I'm putting my all into this Go get you a job or a hustle because you need money. This is pay to play. You need bread to make the gas don't go in the car without the money. You get what I'm saying? So, you need money to a make yourself be comfortable in a living space because even though it sound cool, you don't want to create from a hella broke traumatic space. It's not going to turn out well. Artists do best creating from that when they've been through it, not while they in it, if that makes sense. >> Now, look, I know no artist wants to hear get a job. And that's probably not the inspirational quote you were planning on hanging above your studio today, but I agree with him. And the older I get, the best advice I think I can give the independent artists is take care of your real life and find you a good job or a good side hustle. Because unless you have a label or an investor or a rich family or just, you know, somebody with some extra bread that feels like financing you for whatever reason, then your job isn't necessarily going to get in the way of your music career. And in fact, it might be the only real chance you have at having one. Because the real advantage that money gives you isn't that it guarantees success. It's the fact that you now have a runway to try stuff and to test out. Basically, you get more opportunities to try, which means you get more opportunities to fail, which means you get more opportunity to learn, which means you get more opportunities to get better at the thing, which means that eventually you get another opportunity to try again. But this does create an obvious problem. And I know some of you are watching like, but I don't I still ain't got 150K. And look, that's fair. Most artists don't. So, what do you compete with when you can't compete with money? This next artist has the answer to that. >> I would make a lot of music. Like I would really hone my craft and skill because the better you are, if you practice every day at anything, you put yourself in the 1% versus the 99 cuz everybody else don't practice every day. Like most of us going to go home and do something else. You feel me? The one person who go home and they do it and they wake up the next day and they do it and they do it. You now entered the 1%. you're better than 99% of the world at what you do just because you did that. So, I would do that first because I want to give myself that edge and advantage and I'm going to make better song. I'm going to rap better. I'm going to write better. I'm You feel me? And after that, I'm going to go to the content phase. I'm going to find somebody to get with where I can make bulk loads of content for these songs I love and I'm going to get real creative and I'm just going to flood. I'm going to hit the timeline every day. I'mma put my music out in blood flood every day and something's going to go. Like >> there's no way I'mma sit here and shoot a thousand shots and nothing drop. If I shoot a thousand and nothing drop, I need to go back to work. >> I a thousand% agree with a Russell. And look, I'm going to be real with y'all because a major label artist can absolutely outspend you. They can hire a better director. They can hire the best marketing teams. They can get the biggest creators, spend more on ads, do more seating, do more PR. They can honestly make phone calls and get access to things that you guys don't even know exist yet. But there is one resource that has proven itself to be the great equalizer and is where the gap has gotten a lot smaller, and that's content. And that's because the internet gave everybody an upload button. But if you can't compete with them with money and resources, you can at least compete with attempts. And this next artist, Daniel Allen, might be one of my favorite examples of what that looks like. >> All right, so I've told this story a few times before. I want to tell you guys how I got my biggest song. Has like like around 40 million streams right now. I released it on Drokid, which for those of you that don't know, it cost $10 to use Dro Kid. Um, so it was like with no major label. Song is called I Just Need by me and my friend Lyra. We put the song out August 11th, I think, of 2023. And January 1st of 2023, I decided that I wanted to start posting a lot more online because I wasn't getting any show bookings. And I just thought that maybe that would be easier if I posted more on the internet. And so I was posting basically every day for like the first seven months of the year through July to the point where I kind of had an idea or like understanding of what people liked or didn't like on my page. And for the most part, by the way, no one liked anything. I was getting, you know, 100 likes on a post, 80 likes on a post, 150 likes would be like a good post. I remember when I posted I just need for the first time I got like 270 likes or something. But what was really interesting is the people liking it. That was like the first time that I think I got a comment and I went to their page and it gave me the option to follow them back cuz it wasn't like one of my friends uh like commenting on the video and that was like enough to tell me that okay like strangers can like the song I just need to find a way to get it in front of them. And so what I started doing was I just started posting the song like shamelessly every day. I started that process in July and then I started doing like multiple posts a day and whatnot. Basically what I would do at the time is I was isolating for everything that did well. So, I was confident in the song number one, but I wasn't sure what style of video to make for it. And so, the month before I had done my first DJ video outside, and the DJ video did really well. And so, I was like, "Okay, like I got to keep promoting this song." It was with a different song. And what I noticed is every time that I promoted the song, it didn't do well. But every time I did DJ videos, they did well. So, I was like, "Okay, cool. Like, I'm just going to do a bunch of DJ videos." And so, I did a bunch of DJ videos with a bunch of different songs. And the DJ video worked best with I Just Need. So, then I had two things that worked. I had a DJ video and I had the song that works with the DJ video. I was like, "Okay, cool. I know that those two things work together. Let me try a DJ video with a song in like a bunch of different locations." So, I tried my living room. I tried outside like prettier places. And then I was like, "Okay, cool. DJ video with my song in a pretty place does better than indoors." And then finally, what got me like my first video that did well was I found out that you could do a DJ video with that song in a pretty place with like hookie like Instagram style text. And that video that I'm referring to was the 192nd video. I'll say that again. Video number 192 that I posted with that song. And then that was the first video that got a million views. And then the song was like number one at US Dance Radio and blah blah blah blah. Anyways, >> 192 videos. I want you guys to really think about that because most artists would have posted video number seven, gotten like 430 views, and then be on their stories the next day talking about the algorithm is suppressing them and this doesn't actually work. And it's like, no, bro. You made seven videos. Daniel made 192. And because of those 192 videos, he got to get a result that will normally cost people thousands of dollars for basically free. But there's something that's even more important about his story. He wasn't just blindly doing the same thing 192 times. He was testing out different formats and learning what the audience was responding to. And then he would adjust. He would get a little bit better. He would try it again. And eventually, attempt number 192 gave him the result that he was looking for. And this is why I think the money conversation and the content conversation merge together and become the same conversation. Because your biggest advantage as an independent artist isn't pretending that money doesn't matter, because it absolutely does. Your advantage is figuring out how to use the cheap to get an answer before you spend your money on all of the expensive stuff. And honestly, I just kind of went through this exact same situation to a little bit of a different degree, but I had a client who had four different songs they wanted to test out. And for song number one, they shot a really expensive music video for it. And we put it out, we test it, we did our whole thing. Then we put out video two. And then we put out, you know, video in song three. And then we put out video in song four. And guess which song ended up blowing up for him? It was song number three. And what makes it even funnier is that song number three had the cheapest music video. Like he just shot a really quick running gun video while he was out one day. And to be clear, the song with the expensive video did do well. It just didn't do as well as song number three. And that's not because the artist is stupid. It's because none of us know. like none of us know what's going to be next. You can have experience, you can have data, you could have great taste, you could have Superman in the Justice League behind you, you could have $150,000 and the people on the other side of that phone might still pick something that you didn't expect. So why would an independent artist with limited money spend their entire budget pretending they already know the answer? So use the cheap to find the answer and then spend your money behind the answer that you were just given. And that's how I would much rather see an independent artist think. Like that's the philosophy I much rather see you guys live, breathe, and die by. But we got too far off the topic. Let's get back to the original question. How much does it cost to break an artist? 150,000 maybe 200,000 possibly for a specific objective. 50,000. I've seen it. $3,000. I've seen that too. Because in the grand scheme of things, Yo Gotti was right. Every artist is completely different and you all have different starting points with different music, with different audiences that you're trying to reach and different resources and different goals. And if I'm being completely real, you all got different luck, too. So, I can't honestly sit here and give every artist watching this one magic number that would guarantee you make it to that point. But what I can tell you is what I would do if I didn't have this giant budget behind me. I would make sure that my money lasted long enough for me to learn something, for me to be able to create enough content so that I could actually figure out what people will respond to. And then I test my music out enough to learn how not to rely on just my own opinion. And then I use ads and seeding strategically to figure out if that attention will convert. And when the audience finally gives me a signal, they finally send that light down from the sky that this song and this thing could be the one, that's when I will reach as deep in my pocket as I can possibly go and start to spend even harder. Because a big budget is powerful, but a big budget doesn't automatically mean that you'll know what works. And trust and believe, I've seen people spend a lot of money in very stupid ways. Because at the end of the day, more money just means more opportunities to find out what could work. But if you're an independent artist, then you have to learn how to create those opportunities more efficiently. And that's actually the entire philosophy behind the artist blowup blueprint that's inside the no labels necessary community. It's not here's how to spend $150,000. Cuz to be real, most independent artists don't have that. It's here's how to use what you do have intelligently. How to create the content, how to test it, how to use ads, and how to seed your music to start conversations. and most importantly, how to figure out what's working and what to do when it's time to scale it. And we took that entire process and turned it into a 30-day campaign system so you're not just dropping posting three times, you know, spending a little money here and there and wondering if this is even worth it or even actually doing anything for you or even worse, just hoping that something happens. So, if you're trying to run your next release like you actually have a team behind you, then hit the link below this video and join the No Labels Necessary community today. But guys, I want to know what y'all think. If I gave you $10,000 today to break yourself into that first stage that we talked about, that get in the game stage, and I'm talking about with no label, no investor, no extra money coming in in some magical way, just you, the 10 bands, and your music. What exactly are you spending it on? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below. Other than that, if you like this video, make sure you hit the like button, subscribe, share this with the artists that need a little bit of gain today. My name is Corey and I'll see y'all next