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Music Promotion and the Star-making Machinery
Songs become hits due to relentless industrial music promotion: major label ownership and manipulation of song hosting platforms, artist charisma, fandom on social media, etc—but not song quality.
So ... never mind the heavy music promotion of the star-making machinery that creates the Billboard charts. Focus on song quality instead. Unless you’re only interested in commerce and fashion. In which case, you are not an artist. You are a hack.
But hey! It ain’t so bad, being a hack. Woody Allen recognized the value of art to those who would seek immortality:
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.
Mind you, look at Elvis. He actually achieved immortality by not dying. He’s been spotted thousands of times since 1977, when he decided to retire to a more normal life. He's been spotted driving a cab in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Every so often he makes a public appearance, such as the time in 1979 he entered an Elvis impersonator contest in Wichita, Kansas, and came in third.