1. Excellence
If it's not great, don't release it. Put it up on YouTube, not the album, if you're trying to get everybody's attention, make sure your music deserves it.
2. Availability
Put your complete album on YouTube and all streaming services. That's where people discover your music. Your hard core fans will buy it, for now anyway, but casual users sample, and see if they're interested. There's plenty of money if you can get people to focus and continue to listen.
3. Be your own curator.
Don't put out ten tracks, call it an album and leave us to discover what's good. Sure, you can focus on a single, but too often it's trying to be all things to all people and is not great. So point us to the two or three tracks we need to listen to.
4. Trust your heart.
Don't listen to anybody else. Push the cuts that resonate with you, that make your heart sing, jump for joy and cry. People are drawn to emotion, they want to be touched. Don't second guess, unless you're playing the singles game, and that's a game controlled by the usual suspects, unless your track was made by Dr. Luke and Max Martin, don't bother.
5. Press is a circle jerk.
Kinda like the wannabes want to send a CD that the writer won't listen to in order to make themselves feel good, ancient acts believe if they get enough ink, TV and radio play that they've done their job, but the truth is they haven't even scratched the surface. It's a direct to fan era. Know who your hard core is and give them tracks for free, if they're good, they'll spread the word. Fire your PR person and read Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point."
6. Virality
Your goal is to keep your music alive. There's nothing more frustrating than spending a year on an album and then seeing it disappear in a month, never to be heard again as you ply the boards playing your greatest hits.
7. Reviews
Only matter if EVERYBODY says something is great.
8. Hunger
It's a conundrum, the audience has got no time, yet is desirous of something new and exciting that will not only satiate them, but they can turn others on to. That's your job, to feed this machine. Don't ask for the audience's time, don't put yourself above them, it's a privilege to be heard, your job is to serve the audience. Interestingly, the more you focus inward, on your art, the greater chance you have of succeeding. The two biggest left field hits in recent memory are all about the track, not the campaign... Lorde's "Royals" and Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know." The tracks infected listeners and they spread the word.
9. Sound
Don't master for radio if your track will never be played. Extreme loudness and compression is a disservice to your music unless you're playing the hit game.
10. Fame
Is no guarantee anybody will listen to anything more than a single. Which is why your single must absolutely kill. It's like your first line in a bar, if it's bad, you've blown your chance.
11. It's something you feel.
Great records cannot be described. They contain something that penetrates you in a way that stops time and you can't focus on anything but the pure sound and how it makes you feel. I still remember hearing "Sexual Healing" the first time...driving on the 10 East, between National and Robertson... Ha!
12. They call it show business.
But it starts with art. Business is easy, and always comes last. You can always hire someone to do your business, but you can't easily hire someone to create magic.
13. Don't fake it.
If you're losing your voice (or looks!) don't cover it up! The imperfections will appeal to people. Owning who you are is so enticing.
14. Artwork and album title and running order.
Are irrelevant. The art is a tiny square on a person's computer or mobile, and the title is only memorable if your album is, as for running order, no one listens that way anymore, if they listen to the whole album at all.
15. Don't pay attention to musos.
It's great people live for albums and music, but they vocally skew the discussion, the same way they've convinced everybody that vinyl is making a comeback, it's not, it's a pimple on the ass of the music business. Don't be afraid to alienate the holier-than-thou.