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By Randy Dominguez
Executive Producer
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A song can reach millions of listeners without changing how any of them hears the world. Another may reach a small audience and inspire people to start bands, tell unfamiliar stories, or build a musical community. The music industry needs to distinguish between those outcomes.
My concern is that treating streams, chart positions, and viral engagement as the main measures of an artist’s value risks overlooking the people who could shape what comes next.
The financial stakes help explain the attraction of numbers. IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026 shows that global recorded music revenues reached $31.7 billion in 2025, with streaming accounting for 69.6 percent of the total.
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Those figures demonstrate streaming’s commercial importance. They cannot tell us which recordings will influence another generation.
Streams, chart rankings, and social engagement offer useful evidence of attention. The danger comes when that evidence becomes a substitute for listening and judgment. A decision about whom to sign, promote or book should consider what an artist contributes beyond the immediate size of an audience.
Popularity and cultural influence can overlap. A hit can give people language for a shared experience, and a widely celebrated artist can open doors for others. But influence can also develop slowly, through musicians borrowing an approach, listeners finding recognition in unfamiliar lyrics, or a local scene developing its own identity.
Those effects require attention beyond a release’s first burst of activity.
My background in finance makes me sympathetic to the need for returns. Yet working on a documentary about New Jersey’s music history has reinforced my belief that the larger the music business becomes, the greater its responsibility to the culture sustaining it. Financial discipline should leave room for artists whose importance may take time to become clear.
Lasting Music Might Not Start With an Instant Hit
I believe The Velvet Underground and Nico shows why early sales do not always reveal an album’s lasting influence. The Library of Congress notes that the album was not commercially successful when it was released, yet it later influenced artists including David Bowie, Patti Smith, and R.E.M. To me, that history shows why the industry should give original music time to find its audience and make its mark.
That example does not mean every overlooked release is a future landmark. Nor should executives pretend they can predict history. It does suggest that requiring immediate popularity as proof of promise may exclude precisely the work that challenges familiar expectations.
Consider what happens when a label makes early engagement the decisive condition for continued support. An artist may have reason to repeat a successful formula before developing a distinct voice. A promoter may favor an act with stronger online visibility over one building a committed local audience. These choices can be commercially understandable while narrowing the opportunities available to unfamiliar music.
The public has a stake in that narrowing. A regional sound can carry stories and experiences that a national trend leaves out. When decision-makers give those artists room to develop, listeners gain more opportunities to encounter perspectives beyond what is already familiar. When support depends too heavily on immediate scale, those opportunities may shrink.
There is a business argument for patience, too. A brief surge in attention may create an opportunity, but continued support gives an artist a chance to turn that interest into an enduring relationship. The question for an executive should extend beyond whether a song is spreading today to whether the artist has the resources and freedom to give listeners reasons to stay.
A broader standard must also avoid becoming an excuse for personal taste or nostalgia. Executives should be able to explain why they see promise in an artist. Evidence might include audiences returning to performances, musicians identifying a creative influence, or listeners following an artist across several releases. None proves future significance. Together, they can support a more thoughtful decision.
Labels should reserve a defined share of artist-development budgets for acts selected through both commercial evidence and documented creative judgment, then assess progress across several releases. Promoters should offer recurring opportunities for emerging local artists and track whether audiences return. These practices would give patient investment a place in decisions that otherwise risk favoring immediate attention.
Music’s future deserves investment before its value becomes obvious on a chart.
Randy Dominguez is executive producer and publisher of the music-history project The Jersey Sound, and all opinions are the author’s own.
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