The Rise of Fan-Driven Discovery

How Playlisters Like Carly B Became Music’s New Tastemakers (+ insights from my Gen Z readers!)

From Dorm Room TikToks to Industry DMs

“I was just a girl in my college dorm posting videos with absolutely no connections to the music industry,” says Carly Bogdajewicz, a 26-year-old music curator who started posting on TikTok in 2019, right before the platform’s pandemic-induced boom.

Suddenly, record labels and artist managers were reaching out to Carly for guidance on how to navigate TikTok, “I was like, ‘Why are you asking me for advice when I'm just a big fan?’”

Carly is more than the archetypal “lean-forward” listener, she’s a professional superfan who has built a community around her passion for indie folk and pop music: with over 83k followers and 6.8M likes on TikTok and over 66k followers on Spotify. With her audience of music lovers comes influence and a direct relationship to the music industry.

The Rise of Fan-Driven Discovery

Carly’s story represents a broader shift from centralized music gatekeepers to fragmented, fan-driven discovery. Curators like Carly—armed with a playlist and a camera—are driving streams, building communities and shaping taste.

TikTok is the top of the funnel for music discovery for many listeners: 82% of Gen Z discover music through social media or user-generated content, compared to just 33% via recommendations on streaming music services (Source: Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Media Trends study).

In some ways, TikTok has become less of a social media app and more a new kind of entertainment platform. Music marketers are increasingly reliant on influencer campaigns and user-generated content to go viral and break new artists.

The paradox is: The same formats that can flatten music into anonymous soundbites and background noise for trends can also be used by passionate tastemakers like Carly to build interactive communities around music discovery.

The next generation of independent music tastemakers

Building a Taste-Driven Music Community

Carly’s content is less focused on trends and more on taste and connection.

Most of her TikTok videos center around the over 280 public playlists she’s curated on Spotify, using her own comprehensive syndicate system: her playlist of recent discoveries filters into genre specific playlists including indie pop or alt/pop. Then she sorts tracks into color & mood inspired playlists like viridian hue or chartreuse. Some of her most followed playlists are themed lists like cherry / wine (42k saves), black coffee drinker’s ego (18k saves) and cool girl on aux (7k saves).

If you are also a person who makes lots of playlists, I’m working on something I’d love to show you! Reply to this email or DM me on Substack 👀

On TikTok, Carly shares videos to promote her prolific and hyper-specific playlists, but also posts vinyl unboxings, lists of artists she thinks are about to blow up, her favorite lyrics, concert vlogs and interviews with artists including FINNEAS, Flipturn, and Maude Latour.

She’s been early on artists like Leith Ross, who she first posted about in 2021 when they had one EP and 57k monthly Spotify listeners (now at about 2M) and Samia, whose song “Pool” is currently going viral on TikTok, an artist Carly has been playlisting and championing since seeing her open for Hippocampus back in 2019.

“It means the world to me when people tell me I helped them discover one of their favorite artists,” says Carly. “[There is] no better feeling in the world than discovering your favorite music.”

Carly also curates a newsletter for the music festival All Things Go called Dear Besties, that keeps fans up to date with new music, fashion, and pop culture. “The artists that All Things Go book align with my music taste (Lucy Dacus and Clairo are headliners this year), and they're also huge advocates of the LGBTQ+ community, which is important to me.”

Getting Paid Without Selling Out

Carly is part of a long lineage of tastemakers who sit between the artist and the listener: radio programmers, music magazine journalists, MTV VJs, bloggers. The job has always involved walking the line between organic coverage and payola, editorial and advertising. One constant is there is always clear demand from artists and marketing teams to get heard, and audience demand from listeners for discovering new artists.

The big question is: Who pays for music curation? Music marketers? Brands? Platforms? Fans?

“The main way I monetize is from TikTok videos,” Carly says, through a combination of the creator rewards fund (“I don't get much because they've changed it a lot over the years,”) paid partnerships with brands and “artists reaching out to me to promote their songs.”

That model comes with ethical friction. She’s cautious about what kind of promotion she accepts and works with her manager to filter through submissions and negotiate rates. “It's been a learning curve of what I feel comfortable doing and what feels authentic to me,” she says. “A lot of times it's a small indie artist reaching out and I don't want to take your money when you're a struggling artist.”

“Something I've always really valued with my platform is trying to be as authentic and genuine to what I like to listen to and what I want to promote,” she says. “Not to make content just to get views. But I also have to monetize it to some extent to make it worth my time. It’s tricky.”

Paid marketing campaigns on TikTok have become standard for the music industry, but are often undisclosed to the listener. According to a digital marketing agency CEO interviewed by Billboard, payment can range from $25 for a micro creator (at or below about 10k followers) to $10,000 or more for larger creators.

The FTC requires consumer disclosures like “#ad” when brands pay influencers or give free products in exchange for product placement in online content, but that isn’t the standard for the paid promotion of songs. When Billboard asked a representative from the FTC about song recommendation promotion specifically, they declined to comment on whether or not disclosure is needed.

Limited Tools for Music Curators

Streaming services like Spotify don’t offer monetization tools for music curators. Independent playlisters like Carly have tens of thousands of followers on the platform, but no way to reach them, attribute streams, or directly monetize their playlists.

“It’s a weird place of being so reliant on Spotify and also being very independent from Spotify,” says Carly. “[Spotify] does do some creator outreach” but they don’t do much in the way of influencer brand deals, partnerships or share ad revenue with curators.

The disconnect between TikTok and Spotify is also frustrating: If a TikTok user wants to check out a playlist she talks about in her video, they have to go to her TikTok profile, click the link in bio to get to her directory of links, find her Spotify profile and find the playlist among 280 others.

And vice versa, many of her Spotify followers do not know her TikTok exists: “I'll get comments a lot of the time like, ‘Oh my gosh, I follow you on Spotify. I didn't realize you had this whole other page!’” She is excited about a new TikTok feature that enables users to save a song from a video directly to Spotify, Apple Music or Soundcloud.

With limited feedback from Spotify beyond playlist saves, “TikTok is the biggest indicator of [what music my audience likes] just because you actually get feedback and comments. You can see what does well and what doesn't based on how you promote it or post it.”

A More Inclusive Era of Music Media

The decentralization of tastemaking is creating space for voices that historically have not had as much representation in traditional media or industry roles, especially women, queer people, and people of color.

Carly’s favorite part of what she does is connecting with fellow music fans: “It’s fun to give all these young teenage girls more of a voice and make them feel like their opinions, passions, and all the things they really love are important and meaningful and valid.”

“That drove me forward,” she says. “[They] were so excited to see someone like them talking about the music they liked, from niche indie artists to Harry Styles and Taylor Swift.”

“I realized how little women in the industry actually get heard and how many artists with a lot of female fan bases get undervalued or seen as less of serious artists. How teenage girls liking these artists made them seem less cool or serious”

Carly doesn’t position herself as a critic or expert—“I think first and foremost, I'm a big music lover. I'd like to think of myself as a tastemaker. It is an interesting place of being, kind of an influencer, but not an influencer.”

“Becoming a [curator] is a lot more accessible now,” she says. And that’s a good thing.

Continue reading below for more Q&A with Carly + a bonus section of insights from my Gen Z readers!

Deep Cuts with Carly:

Advice to artists trying to break through on TikTok?

Carly: I get so many song submissions, I can always tell when an artist is just trying to become viral or get those sound bites. It's really easy to tell when an artist is actually being authentic to themselves. And that's something I really value. All of my favorite artists who have blown up from TikTok, it's because they've built this brand that is true to who they are and isn't trying to make trends.

Favorite album of 2025 so far?

Carly: Jake Minch’s George. It's produced by Tony Berg, who produced Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers, my favorite album of all time. His vocals are so raw and stripped and the production creates this crazy atmosphere that I just love, love, love.

Do you and your peers pay attention to how artists are making a living?

Carly: I've seen a lot of conversations about how especially small artists don't make a lot of money from Spotify. That was something a lot of people were really surprised about, because how does that make sense? How do you not get money from people listening to your music? But I don't know if people are super aware. Before I started doing music curation, I didn't know any of that and I wouldn't have unless I followed these [artists] who talk about it.

What’s next for you?

Carly: I've recently taken a step back from [working as a chemical engineer] and I'm starting to look at jobs in the music industry. I am taking my influencing career more seriously and seeing what I can build from that. Getting to share all the music I love in a bigger way through an artist interview show is definitely the big dream.

Before doing all this, I knew absolutely nothing about what kind of jobs you could even get [in the music industry]. I'm leaning towards digital marketing because I love that side of it all: social media, making videos and spinning things to make people engaged and interested and have it be relatable. I'm also interested in scouting or A&R because finding new artists is something I'm already doing.

How is Gen Z’s relationship to music different?

Carly: The relationships between artists and their fans are so different now because fans have so much more access to [the artist] that they almost feel entitled to it. It's a weird mix of artist and fan relationships getting more parasocial, but also because there's so much access to music, [fandom] can be spread out across lots of artists.

 Is Gen Z more community oriented or individualistic in fandom?

Carly: Technology is obviously such a critical part of Gen Z. It creates community because you're finally able to connect with people who you can relate to or see yourself in that you might not have met in your day to day or in your small town. But also because people are spending more time on their phones, trying to build their own brands it also creates a sense of individualism. It's a weird dynamic.

Bonus: The Gen Z Perspective

I asked some of my Gen Z readers for their opinions on music discovery, trends and AI music. Here is what they had to say (emphasis is my own):

Do you spend money on music? How?

“The top two things I spend money on music-wise are Spotify and Suno. I use both apps everyday. Spotify because listening to my favorite artists elevates me emotionally. And Suno because creating music has unlocked a new kind of therapy for me.”—Meena, New York City, 27

“I spend a lot of money on concert tickets and vinyl. I do this partially because I know this is the best way to support artists, but also because I love the experience of live music. It's a feeling streaming could never replicate. I love collecting vinyl. I feel like my record collection is an extension of my personality. It's one of the first things I show off when I have new people coming over. The joy of finding a gem in those crates gives me a dopamine hit that's hard to replicate. I don't really listen to my vinyl records, but only because I don't currently have a working turntable.”—Nena Veenstra, the Netherlands, 25

“The most I spend on [music] right now is Spotify Premium, because I want to be able to listen to albums in order.”—The Songstress, Nigerian-American, 16

“I currently have 14 records total. Listening to records is a whole other experience in which you set time aside to sit and listen through an entire album and take in the vintage and raw sounds of a needle's feedback and the quirky audio warping of a disc”—Daniel White, Syracuse, New York

“I spend money on music via a Spotify Premium subscription, a NTS Radio subscription, and vinyls”—steph, New York City, 22

What do you think of AI generated music?

“I think it sucks. It turns music into this moneymaking machine, rather than the art it's supposed to be. AI music isn't created out of a love for music, but out of greed. The intention is just to make Muzak, background noise that only exists to generate streams. I feel like virtual artists are a different breed, though, like Hatsune Miku? That's an AI voice, that's actually being utilized by people in a really creative way. I think that's fine, as long as the intention is to have fun making music.”—Nena Veenstra, the Netherlands, 25

“From the perspective of making music I love it (...) I understand it’s way easier to make a song with AI, but what’s beautiful to me is the accessibility of pouring your emotions into music and sharing that widely. The downside is the industry is going to be flooded with AI generated music. But the artists that will stand out are the ones that create community for their listeners, have standout performances, and create a compelling visual world with their music.”—Meena, NYC, 27

“I am absolutely against AI-generated music. It's not about whether there is creativity in curating elements using AI or not, it's about not taking the time [to] sit with one's self to learn the skill to create.”—The Songstress, Nigerian-American, 16

“AI can be used in healthy, creative amounts to produce good results (i.e. The Beatles) as well as used in heavy, semi-abusive amounts to generate milktoast results (i.e. Playboi Carti). Will [AI] 102% dominate the music industry and throw all human artists in the gutter? No. But do I believe it will take part in shifting the landscape of music in a lot of ways, both good and not-too-good? Most totally.”—Daniel White, Syracuse, New York

What is different about how Gen Z connects with music compared to older generations?

“I encounter a vast amount of [GenZ music fans] that sing and do trends with [music] without even any knowledge about who made the song or even what it's called. But on the other [hand], I see a smaller, but bigger than previously, number of [GenZ music fans] that engage with music like I do: immerse into the quality of a song, explore and keep in touch with the entirety of their career and discography, build a collection of personal favorites, and search for opportunities to experience these artists in real time”—Daniel White, Syracuse, New York

“The "mainstream" doesn't really seem to exist anymore. Everything is niche, and nothing is niche at the same time. I might find an artist I'd never heard of before, and they turn out to have millions, if not billions of listeners. TikTok has created this new dynamic in music, and decentralized it basically.”—Nena Veenstra, the Netherlands, 25

“I love seeing Gen Z’ers remix songs that go well together and then pairing that with visuals to post on social media. For example, when folks remixed Taylor Swift songs with the 1975 songs, it unlocked a whole new understanding of her album TTPD for me. I felt more emotionally invested in the storytelling.”—Meena, New York City, 27

“The music we listen to has increasingly become something we choose to display—whether in the background of social media posts, reflected in the ways we dress, or through the concerts and festivals that we attend. There are many ways to visibly share what we’re listening to online—think of Spotify’s “Friend Activity” feature, and other social apps like Airbuds and Superfan.”—steph, New York City, 22