“Iñigo Quintero will sign with us in March 2023. One of our groups tells us: Iñigo is very cool,” says Esteve Lombarte, founder of Acqustic, label and manager of Quintero, the 22-year-old young man from A Coruña and resident of Madrid, who has one of the most incredible with his song Si no estars has produced hits of recent music. At the time, he had 30,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Now, seven months later, it has 16.5 million monthly listeners around the world. His song is now in fourth place in the music application ranking with more than 102 million listeners, ahead of most of the songs from the new Bad Bunny album and global artists such as Taylor Swift, Drake or Doja Cat. It was number 1 in Germany, Holland and Belgium and appeared in 30 global charts.
Quintero has only released three more songs and is not granting interviews for the time being. In August he was a completely unknown child. His life is a mystery, apart from the fact that he is known to have studied there Religious School of Fomento Peñaredonda in A Coruña. On Saturday he will sing Si no tú at the Wizink Center in Madrid, in a community concert organized by Cadena 100. “I can confirm that we have many requests for interviews,” says Lombarte. And he adds: “But now is not the time for a press or concert tour.” What we have to do with Iñigo is to prepare more songs, the live show and the tour. We also have a lot of requests from record companies around the world who want to work with the best producers and do remixes and everything else.”
Quintero released his song in September 2022. But global success came a year later. These 12 months have seen a number of milestones related to the virality of the current era, where TikTok recommendations and small influencer playlists on Spotify play a key role in shaping tastes. Then, as in this case, the magic of virality happens. “Two or three weeks ago the curve started growing and did what we’ve seen with other artists: from 30,000 to 50,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, from 50 to 80, from 80 to 100 and one day it suddenly went up from 100 200,” and you say, “That’s a big jump,” and it goes from 200 to 300,” Lombarte explains. And it hasn’t stopped yet.
This is rare, but in the music industry we are used to seeing these phenomena at different scales: “Today we are more used to seeing such rapid growth,” confirms Chiara Hellquist, director of Vevo Spain, a music video platform. “When you have a viral video, you stand out and become a one-hit-wonder phenomenon more quickly.” [artista de un solo éxito]there is no time to assimilate it,” he adds.
A Catalan startup
However, it seems difficult to reach the viral curve of Quintero’s success. At Acqustic, a Catalan startup founded in 2017 with 10 employees, they have experienced similar but smaller cases among their musicians such as Guitarricadelafuente, Besmaya, Paula Koops or Malmö 040. Their business model has changed: they started organizing and coordinating concerts for emerging artists and have evolved into a digital label that thrives on the rights.
Acqustic does what they call “SEO and SEM on Spotify.” They are two strategies linked to Google. Its goal is to promote websites so that they are preferred when someone performs a search, be it organic or paid. Lombarte explains: “When more than 50,000 songs are uploaded worldwide every day, the question for us is: How do I attract traffic, i.e. fans, to my song?” This SEO and SEM can involve payment agreements with influencers and other creators act, but there are also many organic actions that allow the platforms’ algorithm to be activated.”
In order to create the song, it must first be distributed everywhere: Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Shazam [una app que sirve para identificar canciones], Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music. In the case of Iñigo Quintero, the distributor is Believe, a company that works with Acqustic. By analogy with the 20th century world, Believe would have been the one to distribute the CDs to physical stores. Acqustic leads the singers’ marketing strategy and is their manager. Together they try to get the platforms to place their songs on playlists.
The most important trick today is to create playlists and place them on lists of small users or influencers. The obsession of musicians is to sneak into famous Spotify lists like “Novedades Viernes” or “Exitos España”, the biggest in the country. “But to put an end to that,” admits Lombarte, “so that Believe can call Spotify and say, ‘Put this on Éxitos España,’ you first have to have gone through smaller playlists, that it worked and that there are people who do it Save song.” . in your library.” For Spotify, a key metric is checking how many people are saving that song to their respective lists. In Quintero’s case, that number was extraordinary, according to Acqustic.
Acqustic has had several successes, but they say, “They don’t have the Coca-Cola formula of virality.” They own the rights to 2,500 songs from around 400 artists. They have more than 20,000 emerging artists in their database where they can see how their songs are “attracting” on the platforms. “We look at numbers on a very small scale, we see things. Of course, if there is nothing at all, just a song, we won’t work miracles,” he adds.
The “magic” of TikTok
In the case of Quintero’s virality explosion, they discovered that the origin was on TikTok. “There it arises organically on the one hand and through the work done on the other. Apparently there are discussions with TikTok about promoting it too. There’s a very simple trend emerging where people who aren’t famous are uploading the song ‘When you’re not in a photo album with your partner, in a carousel,'” says Lombarte. These videos, created by small accounts with about a thousand followers, are starting to go viral. Up to 50,000 are created per day, today there are 2.5 million and the song’s hashtag has 500 million views.
A spokesperson for TikTok in Spain says such success only comes about in an organic, natural way because of the “democracy of content.” But in January, Forbes published that TikTok has a “viral button” that can boost any trend as much as it wants. The spokesman did not provide any further information about this case. EL PAÍS has consulted other music industry sources who confirm that TikTok receives suggestions and can help a trend become organic: “When we see them gaining momentum, we activate the whole machinery,” says Lombarte.
“We call on all platforms to position themselves and scale. TikTok says it works, it gives it priority in recommended songs. Spotify also sees it and starts putting it on important playlists. Part of the magic of our work is that you need the product you are teaching to function organically. When they see that it really works, they create a snowball effect that fuels the whole thing because it creates interactions,” he adds.
This human intervention is something that platforms can try to reduce, but it is still crucial. “Here is the human editorial factor. Algorithmic support is very important, but showing love to a playlist curator shows a lot. Everything has algorithmic support, but the human factor is still very important,” says Hellquist. Then there is human judgment combined with the algorithm. Spotify has a system called Discovery Mode that allows them to display more songs in radio mode. This is what happened to Quintero.
In addition to working on platforms, there are also other more traditional attempts to make yourself known. Acqustic purchased promotional content about its singers on the digital medium Yorokobu.
The new life of Christianity
The virality wasn’t just musical. As the song was already uploaded, a huge debate began on TikTok about whether the song referred to human love or God’s love. This second life made the song even more viral: “You dream high of the strength they gave you from heaven,” it begins. And there are other ambiguous clues. Lombarte wants to leave the question open: “When something is a trend, people start talking,” he explains.
In recent months, Christian gatherings animated with modern music have been very successful on TikTok. Could this be another example of this trend? “It really has nothing to do with the boy,” Lombarte said. So is it a heartbreaking song? “In the end, everyone interprets it the way they want. The song became famous because people used it in their regular love albums. “Iñigo made the song back in September and now we’re all trying to find a great twist on it,” defends Lombarte.
But is it then or not? “We have our interpretations, there is no clear and obvious answer. If you ask him, he is shy on the subject. As an artist, you expose a part of your private life, be it sentimentality, doubts, how you feel about a subject, and suddenly people are singing it, enjoying it, adopting a part, a phrase or whatever. Now that it’s so viral, we want to know what every sentence means,” he concludes.
The Instagram account of the religious school Fomento Peñarredonda, where Quintero studied, published in 2018 its version of the song G&t’s by Sofia Ellar, which also leaves details of Christian ambiguity. At the time of publishing this post only had five likes.
A new current
There are other factors that contributed to Quintero’s success, apart from the fact that Acqustic, as digital natives, knows each platform individually. In addition, there are random factors that seem to give momentum to something that already exists. As the trend was underway, a story from influencer María Pombo appeared on Instagram: “Pombo also uploads a video and, like many other influencers, tries to appropriate the trend,” says Lombarte.
The second factor is that they have noticed a certain fatigue with reggaeton, according to this professional: “We are working on a new artistic trend. We went from a very powerful era of reggaeton and urban music to a very clear trend change.”
There is a third factor, namely the artist’s accompaniment. “They are all very young, 18 to 22 years old, and we have to see if they want to pursue a career. If not, it could happen like in the urban area, where there were more hits than artists. “You have to remember that this is someone who is 20 years old and who a million people listen to every month,” warns Lombarte. Or like Quintero, 16 million. Currently.
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