I've used the 70/20/10 rule when talking to artists about marketing for years, and eventually I liked the principle enough to name my consultancy after it. My version is pretty simple: roughly 70% of what an artist communicates should reveal personality, 20% should be sharing and engaging with the world around them, and only 10% should be directly selling something. So the majority is who you are, what interests you, what you stand for, what influences you and why you make the music you make. The 20% might be other artists, records you love, books, films, places, people you're working with or things you've discovered. Then there's the 10%: stream my song, buy my ticket, come to my show, pre order the record.
The percentages aren't a science and I've never intended them to be. They're a way of thinking about the relationship between an artist and an audience. Too often, particularly with developing artists, social media becomes a noticeboard: new single out Friday, here's the artwork, here's the pre save, here's another clip, tickets on sale, here's the link again. The problem isn't that artists shouldn't promote themselves. Of course they should. The problem is expecting people to respond to the call to action when you've given them very little reason to become invested in the person making it.
There is some useful evidence behind that thinking. Research into musicians and online fan engagement has identified authenticity, intimacy and insider commentary as important elements in developing long term fan communities, while academic research into parasocial relationships shows that audiences can develop a genuine sense of connection with musicians through repeated exposure and interaction. More broadly, the 2025 Edelman Brand Trust research, based on 15,000 respondents across 15 countries, found that 73% said their trust in a brand would increase if it authentically reflected contemporary culture, compared with 27% when it ignored culture and concentrated solely on its products. It's not music specific research, but I think the parallel is interesting.
For artists, I think this matters even more because the artist isn't simply selling a product. Music carries identity, values, taste, community and culture with it. Fandom is rarely just “I like this song, therefore I will buy a ticket.” We become interested in the world surrounding an artist: where they came from, what they listen to, what they care about, their humour, their influences, their visual language and the other people and ideas they introduce us to. That's also why I encourage artists to develop content pillars rather than continually asking themselves, “What can I post today?” The aim is to create a rounded picture of who you are, what you do and why you do it, rather than allowing promotion to become your entire public personality.
I've always liked the phrase “to be interesting, be interested.” For me, that's probably the simplest explanation of 70Twenty10. Show people who you are. Be curious about the world around you. Share things because you genuinely find them interesting, not because somebody told you that you need to “make content”. Build a world that people might actually want to spend some time in. Then, when you do say “the record's out today” or “tickets are on sale”, you're talking to people who already have a reason to care.
