Brands became bands.

Rick Beato just posted a video about why bands have disappeared from the charts, replaced by solo artists and collabs between solo artists.

Before recorded music gained mass popularity in the 1950s, music branding was all about individuals. As the industry became a well-oiled machine with global distribution, bands became what you shopped for: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, Metallica, etc. This lasted decades.

As distribution and marketing became democratized by the Internet, bands started to disappear and individuals became the brands people consumed — once again. In fact, there’s only 1 band formed this decade that appears anywhere in Spotify’s top 250 streams.

The band is dead as a brand.

I believe this is natural order of things. People trust people more than faceless brands. It’s how we evolved.

Companies are bands.

Inc. just published an article about why Now is the Best Time to Start Your Newsletter Business, and it was another example of the most splashy newsletter brands getting all the attention. I know some of the people at these newsletters. I like them. I trust some of their opinions. I do not know or trust their newsletter brands.

There are far greater successes in newsletter publishing to mention these days — both from B2B and personal publishing — not dependent on sponsors, paid subscribers, or ads. Corporations and titled newsletters will realize, as the ad economy continues to dry up, that you can’t buy the trust people place on people.

There’s a far larger universe of branding and publishing out there that’s never discussed. But one principle remains universal: As long as there are humans reading and buying, solo artists will eventually win.