Yes, every time you see a new superstar they just appear. Or it seems like it. Most of the time they have been around for years. In the industry, you usually hear about the next star a year ahead. Before it was usually three years ahead, but things are going faster without internets no borders. Still, it never happens overnight, and it never happens as fast as you think.

Just a couple of examples. I had a meeting with Avicii:s manger at least two years before he even became big on the DJ market. After he became big there it took at least two to three years before he went on to the normal big pop market. My guess is that I knew the name at least five years before the coolest mainstream started to recognize him.

Halsey, we got from out American record label they where friends with Haley’s manager and they told us she was going somewhere. She just released Badlands and was going well. I guess the mainstream here in Sweden really does not know her yet.

2011 we had a band opening up for our band in New York it was their first NYC gig I think even their first gig out of the state. Really nice people, and now they are famous as HAIM. Took though at least four years after I saw them on in the media.

The new technological things are tempting to use. Right now, everybody is talking TikTok, and yes, they produce a couple of stars. So did Myspace also and Snapchat. Still these new ones are easy since they are relatively easy to cheat on. And cheating is not going to get you a career. There is no way Doja Cat will be as big as the Beatles. My guess Doja Cat is gone in five years.

Why? She came through TikTok, cheating we don’t know it was a new medium and she maybe was really good on it. The Beatles came with “She loves you” after spending two years playing live in Hamburg Germany. They played over 250 nights in the seedy seaport city, and venues often demanded they play four or five hours a night. The shows were not glamorous. That made them live experts and when they got their hit. They knew how to get the audience to listen and also how to make everything work.

Today the average mumble rapper is giving out songs then cheat by buying streams to get to the top chat. Suddenly they get their 15 minutes in the spotlight. They have no live training, no media knowledge and everything they have done can be traced by social media. It is all over before it’s over. You can’t build a sustainable career on these premises. 

But all artists just carve that everything goes that fast. Witch is impossible. Even with a world hit, you cannot be booked to all festivals. There is no way you can schedule that many concerts. To just handle the first success, you are doomed to be out for three years to cover them all. Also, that is hard work if you haven’t toured before and are through upon a big stage there is really no chance that you would do that stage justice. 

These years that you need to do is called the dog years. You need to learn for a small audience when and the technical difficulties to handle the big stages. That is why tv shows like the voice or x-factor seldom work. Here they put them on the big stage directly and then they go back to the small ones. There is no build-up by knowledge on how to handle your fans or audience.

Right now, I see so many artists just looking for shortcuts in the form of platforms or bad tv formats thinking they can build a career. Cheating is a part of that. Yes, Spotify we know that you can stop cheaters. The likelihood that an unsigned criminal rapper for a suburb in Stockholm has 7 songs on the top fifty charts outdoing Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s new hit with two songs and Drake is not just plausible. And not that guy has never done a live show and will probably never be able to make it.

No, the shortcuts will not make you a star. The digital things are just new tools that replaced the fan clubs.