This indie artist has over a billion streams on Spotify. 10 years ago, a record label told him his music was 'unreleasable'

Music Business Worldwide

Welcome to the Music Business Worldwide podcast supported by Voly Music.
How big can an independent artist get without help from a major record label?
It’s been a fierce source of debate at this point for 20 years ever since the likes of TuneCore launched in the early to mid-noughties.
These days, though, we have the receipts to answer the question.
Take Bruno Major, a fully independent artist and our guest on this episode of the MBW Podcast.
Major, who released his music via AWAL and owns his own recordings, has comfortably more than a billion streams on Spotify, with two of his tracks – Nothing and Easily – racking up over quarter of a billion streams each.
He recently released his latest singles, We Were Never Really Friends and Columbo, ahead of his third studio album – also called Columbo – which will be out later this summer.
Major is a successful live act, with a tour of Asia, Europe and North America recently confirmed. He's previously toured arenas with Sam Smith.
He has a particularly interesting history with the record business: Major started out in the music industry by signing (and then leaving) a major label deal with Virgin Records, then owned by EMI, in Los Angeles.
On this podcast, Major discusses his experience of being signed to that major record company as a young man, how that experience has help fuel his career ambitions ever since, and how he keeps himself creatively motivated as an independent artist…

The Music Business Worldwide Podcast is supported by Voly Music.