Even after a song has gone viral, some musicians say it can be hard to promote subsequent releases and sustain a career. A platform like TikTok isn't set up to boost artists, it's there to create viral moments around a single song.

"It's easier [today] for folks to be passive fans," noted J Erving, the founder of Raye's distribution company, Human Re Sources, in a recent interview with Billboard, external.

"For you to consider yourself broken [as a mainstream artist], people need to care about you beyond the song. Where is the connectivity? Are people really dialled in in a deeper way?"

It's a problem the music industry is keen to tackle.

Oliver Schusser, the Head of Apple Music, says his streaming service is working to champion "tomorrow's artists" in its curation.

"You know, we do the Super Bowl halftime show, we need to make sure that we still have performers in 10, 20, 30 years," he tells BBC News.

"Because if you look back at the performers we had in the last four years, they all started somewhere before they got to the world's biggest stage."

Other organisations like Sofar Sounds work exclusively with grassroots musicians, putting on intimate pop-up gigs in cities across the globe.

This October, its Shoreditch Sofar Fringe festival showcased a whole host of artists like East London rapper J Casa.

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