This guy does it all alone, never gets hardly any recognition and yet he's still pumping out great songs after a bunch of years:
The question is a good one. How does one differentiate themselves from the pack. The same goes for just about any art form today. There are so many artists and so many works, many of them good enough to tickle your fancy and yet the majority of them will only get a tiny fraction of the consideration they deserve.
I would love to publish music or books, but I know that given my dysfunctional relationship with social media, that I am just about wasting my time doing any of the above, even if I had a shred of talent.
The arts have to be their own reward. If you're making art for money, and not the love, it's probably not worth doing.
For better or worse, the marketplace is finally realizing this.
I'm saying that if money is the dominant motivating factor in producing art, expect to be disappointed. Technology has reduced many costs of artistic production and has led to an oversupply of "content." To the cold, uncaring marketplace, you're effectively being compensated by those good feelings involved in the process of imagining, producing, and sharing art.
Even so, I draw and record music for my own enjoyment, and to collaborate with friends.
But surely you could organize your own precision-strike book or album release via targeted online ads. I'd be surprised if there weren't lots of companies trying to sell this service.
That's called marketing, and it's something the major labels are exceptionally good at.
The world today is still kind to the western developer, but how do we solve this problem for developers now so that we don't have to figure it out in the future?