Thank you for checking out The Industry According To. Every Wednesday, we speak with a different expert or leader from somewhere in the vast music industry — label executives, artist managers, programmers, talent, artists, consultants and beyond. To be considered as a future guest, email me at keithblackboxgroup@gmail.com.
Today, we sit down with Alex Whiley, Head of Streaming and West Coast Promotion at Glassnote Records, one of the music industry’s most successful independent labels.
Alex joined Glassnote in 2023 after building his career in independent promotion at M:M Music. Based in Los Angeles, his work places him inside two of the critical systems that largely determine whether new music gets heard: traditional radio and streaming.
Working directly with programmers, streaming platforms, data and the constantly changing machinery behind modern music discovery gives Alex an unusually broad and valuable view of what happens after a record is finished — how it earns attention, moves through competing gatekeepers and ultimately becomes something larger than activity on a dashboard.
So, let’s dive in.
*Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.*
The State of the Label Business
Keith: From the standpoint of a successful independent label, what does the record business really look like in 2026? Healthier than the headlines suggest, heavily dependent upon a few massive artists and platforms, or something in between?
Alex: I’d say healthier than the headlines suggest, but it really depends on which part of the business you’re looking at. Streaming continues to grow, while radio is facing some real challenges. There’s no question that a handful of superstar artists and platforms command an outsized share of the business, but there’s still so much opportunity for indie labels to develop artists and build real, lasting careers.
As for radio — the challenges are real, but so is the opportunity. Radio doesn’t need to out-algorithm the algorithms. Great programmers will always have one advantage: they can make people give a damn.
Radio Versus Streaming Strategy
Keith: You oversee both streaming and West Coast promotion for Glassnote. Those platforms share the same goal — getting music heard — but often operate with different gatekeepers, timelines and definitions of success. Do you build separate strategies for each, or one campaign that serves both without treating the other as an afterthought?
Alex: Separate strategies, but they absolutely work hand in hand. Every release gets a full streaming strategy, but not every song warrants a full radio campaign. The record decides. Often, streaming traction is what tells us a song is ready for radio. Other times, radio goes first. Noncomm and Triple A have launched a lot of our artists before the streaming numbers were there.
They operate on different timelines and have different measures of success, but the best campaigns are the ones where both sides build on each other’s momentum.
Different Gatekeepers, Different Pitches
Keith: You can pitch the same song to a radio programmer and a streaming platform, but they aren’t necessarily looking for the same evidence or outcome. Put “being a good song” to the side for a moment. What does each side need to see before it will take a meaningful chance on a record?
Alex: On the streaming side, there are a number of factors at play, but active engagement is one of the strongest signals. Is the artist driving fans to the platform? Are fans searching for the song, saving it, and coming back for more? If that foundation is there, editorial support can pour fuel on it, and you’re off to the races.
Radio is a different equation. Are other stations getting behind it? Is it researching? Is it streaming? Is the artist coming through town, and are they down to do something special for the station and its listeners? Every station weighs those differently, but that’s the kind of story that gets a programmer to take a shot.
Where the Dollars Go
Keith: Say a developing artist has $100,000 in promotional and marketing support behind a new release. Broadly speaking, how much of it is now aimed at generating streaming activity versus radio airplay — and how has that allocation changed over the past five to 10 years?
Alex: The balance has shifted toward digital marketing and streaming over the past decade, no surprise there. For a developing artist today, the majority of that $100,000 is going to digital: paid social, creator partnerships, content, and DSP marketing. Ten years ago, radio would have been one of the biggest line items. That said, the split moves with the artist, the record, and where things are catching.
Marketing dollars can generate awareness, but they can’t manufacture genuine fandom. Sometimes that first spark comes from streaming or socials; other times, it’s a programmer taking a chance on a record and getting an entire market behind it. The smartest campaigns figure out where the fire’s starting and put the money there.
Organic or Engineered?
Keith: Fans, and even people at radio, often view streaming breakouts as organic, but there are usually smart people and substantial machinery behind the scenes. How much of streaming success comes from label strategy, spending, platform relationships and marketing — and how much remains timing and luck?
Alex: It’s both. Luck favors the prepared. You can have the best strategy, budget, and relationships in the business, and none of that guarantees a hit. Sometimes a song just connects at exactly the right moment. Where the machinery really earns its keep is after that happens: catching it early, getting it in front of the right partners, and making sure the people who just found the song can find the rest of the artist. Lightning strikes on its own. Keeping it from being a one-week story is the job.
Is the Algorithm Really the Boss?
Keith: Labels can call a programmer or a DSP editor and pitch a song, but nobody can call an algorithm. What can a smart label do to influence algorithmic discovery? Does it require an entirely different marketing strategy, and how much of it is really about manipulating a system?
Alex: You can’t pitch an algorithm, and it certainly doesn’t care how impressive your marketing deck looks. What it does care about is how people behave once they hear the song. Do they save it, add it to their own playlists, come back to it, go check out the artist’s other songs? Or do they skip it in the first few seconds? So the marketing isn’t entirely different, but where you aim it matters more than ever. Put a song in front of the wrong audience and the engagement will tell the story. Get it to the right listeners, and they can do more for you than any marketing deck. I wouldn’t call that manipulating the system. It’s knowing your audience.
A Hit or Just Activity?
Keith: A song generates 20 million playlist-driven streams, but searches, followers, merch and ticket sales barely move. Is that still a hit? At what point does a label stop celebrating big consumption and realize it has unfortunately just rented an audience that didn’t convert?
Alex: I’d gladly take the 20 million streams, but I wouldn’t necessarily call that a hit. Are people telling their friends about it? Singing it back at shows? Eventually filling arenas? That’s the kind of success we’re chasing. But if those playlist streams aren’t translating into listening beyond the playlists themselves, that’s when you start asking some tougher questions. If the audience disappears the moment the playlist support goes away, you’ve got a great stat, but not a hit.
From Social to Actual Listening
Keith: A song may appear in thousands of TikTok or Instagram videos without necessarily creating meaningful streams or artist awareness. How often does widespread social media usage convert into intentional listening, followers or sales — and is getting creators to use Glassnote music now a standard part of a release strategy?
Alex: Not nearly as consistently as the numbers might suggest. It really depends on the artist, the record, and what’s driving the trend. We once played the top 10 songs on TikTok for our interns. They recognized every single one, but couldn’t name the artists behind them. Sometimes the song goes viral, but the artist doesn’t.
Creator partnerships are pretty standard practice at this point, and they can be incredibly valuable when there’s a natural fit. The real question is whether that exposure gets people interested in the artist behind the song.
When the Scoreboards Disagree
Keith: Radio and streaming can tell completely different stories about the same song. When radio strongly embraces a record but streaming remains soft — or vice versa — which result carries more weight, and what determines whether you stay the course or change the plan?
Alex: I’d give streaming the edge because it lets us see whether listeners are actively seeking out and returning to a record. Radio remains one of the most powerful tools for breaking a song. It reaches a lot of people who will never open a streaming app, and when a format really commits to a record, nothing makes a song part of people’s daily lives faster.
If a record is getting great radio support and streaming isn’t following, I want to know whether we’re building an audience beyond the rotation. If we are, we stay the course. If not, it’s time to reassess the approach. On the flip side, we could have a seven-minute ballad that’s streaming like crazy, and I’m certainly not pulling back just because it doesn’t fit a traditional radio format. Not every great record is a radio record.
The First 72 Hours
Keith: Streaming can provide signals in the first few days that may take radio several weeks to produce — and neither is guaranteed to predict long-term success. Has the industry’s obsession with speed and immediate data made it harder for slow-building records to survive long enough to become hits?
Alex: The first 72 hours can be a helpful indicator, but I think we’ve blown their importance a little out of proportion. That’s largely an industry obsession, not a fan obsession. Fans aren’t grading a record on its first three days. Some of the most enduring hits take months, sometimes years, to find their audience. HOLYCHILD’s “Bathroom Bitch” took off on TikTok six years after it came out, and it’s still streaming beautifully today. Nobody would have predicted that from its first weekend. Early data should help shape the strategy, not determine whether a record gets a chance. You can’t develop an artist on a three-day return policy.
Is It Harder Today?
Keith: More new music is released every day than programmers, DSP editors and fans could ever digest. That makes it easier than ever for an artist’s music to be “available,” but has it made it far more difficult for a great record to get noticed?
Alex: Absolutely. And listen, I’m all for anybody on the planet being able to create a song and share it with the world. But that doesn’t mean every song is a great record.
Last I heard, we’re up to about 150,000 new tracks being uploaded to DSPs every single day, and a growing number of those uploads are AI-generated. How much of it is actually getting a fair listen? And how many Bob Dylans, Dolly Partons, Nirvanas… or Pitbulls are we potentially missing because they’re getting drowned out in this ocean of new music, human or otherwise?
So to all the programmers, all the curators out there: you’re doing the Lord’s work. Keep it up.
The West Coast Difference
Keith: As the business becomes even more digital and national, do the West Coast and East Coast still require different strategies — and if so, what makes them different enough to need their own?
Alex: I don’t think the East Coast and West Coast necessarily require different strategies anymore, especially on the streaming side. Radio programming has become increasingly centralized, too, but that doesn’t mean local audiences have become interchangeable. Out here, the noncomm community has a long history of championing artists before the rest of the country catches on. What works in LA might not work in NYC or Miami, and our approach needs to reflect that. At the end of the day, it’s less about East vs. West and more about understanding that a national audience is really a collection of local audiences.
Which #1?
Keith: You can have a #1 airplay song for a week at the artist’s primary radio format or the #1 song on the streaming platform of your choice for a week. Which do you choose, and why?
Alex: Give me the #1 song on streaming. That’s some pretty powerful ammo to help us get #1 at radio, too. Two birds, one #1.
The Blank Slate
Keith: Last question — blank slate. Say anything you want to any sector of the industry. What do you want them to hear?
Alex: We have more data at our fingertips than ever before, and that’s a great thing. But the next great artist isn’t always going to show up with a dashboard full of green arrows. Sometimes somebody has to believe in the music before the numbers catch up. I’m fortunate to work with and learn from Daniel Glass, Chris Scully, Michael Starr, and an incredible team at Glassnote who believe in exactly that. I’m equally grateful to the artists who trust us and our partners across the industry who continue to take those chances and break new artists with us.
I was going to leave you with something profound about the future of music, but then I remembered I work in promotion… Danny Griffiths “Lightweight Champion”
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