We Science the Hell Out of Music Marketing

Music Marketing, Actually Explained

Most music marketing agencies charge thousands while hiding exactly how they work. We do the opposite.

Barely NYC applies engineering principles to artist growth - controlled experiments, attribution modeling, real-time optimization. Every campaign is transparent. Every strategy is data-driven. Every dollar is tracked.

We're not a traditional agency. We're music marketing engineers.

From PhD to Brooklyn Studio

Barely NYC was founded by Adam Barito, a materials scientist who spent years optimizing molecules in research labs. PhD from University of Michigan. Double major in Physics and Mechanical Engineering. Research Fellow at NIST. VP of Engineering at a clean energy startup.

He thought he'd spend his career perfecting atomic structures.

But Adam had a problem.

He was also a musician. And his albums got tens of listeners. Not thousands. Tens.

The turning point came in 2020.

Adam applied his engineering training to marketing Proper Youth's debut album "So Close to Paradise." The hit single "Off My Mind" went on to gain 1.8M streams - not because the music suddenly got better, but because he finally understood how to optimize the system around it.

Word spread. Every artist who reached out had been burned by the same expensive failures - playlist pitching services, publicists who delivered nothing, pay-for-play schemes, fake streams. They'd spent thousands with nothing to show for it.

By 2022, Adam realized he was more excited about fixing music marketing than working on materials. The problem was the same - incredible potential getting lost in inefficient systems. The difference? In music, no one was applying engineering principles to solve it.

So he left his VP role to science the hell out of music marketing.

Open Source. By Design.

Instead of building another black-box dashboard, Adam built barely.ai completely open-source. Artists can see exactly how everything works - the code, the strategies, the attribution models.

Every campaign is treated like a controlled experiment. Every assumption gets tested. Every result gets measured.

This isn't feel-good marketing advice. It's engineering.

Building From Brooklyn

In 2023, Barely NYC set up shop in Brooklyn - where music and technology collide, where the indie spirit drives innovation.

While the agency is based in New York, the artists we work with are everywhere: LA, Nashville, Cleveland, South Wales, Paris. Our data-driven approach translates across time zones and genres.

Good science is universal.

Transparency Over Mystique

The music industry loves mystique. Secret playlists. Industry connections. "Trust us, it just works."

We take the opposite approach:

• ✓Open-source platform - See exactly how campaigns operate
• ✓Real attribution modeling - Know what's actually driving growth
• ✓Honest reporting - No inflated metrics or fake guarantees
• ✓Scientific method - Hypothesis → Test → Measure → Optimize
• ✓Educational approach - Understand the "why" behind every strategy

We show our work. Always.

Building the Indie Middle Class (The Honest Timeline)

What does success look like for an indie artist? Real income from music - enough to eventually quit the day job.

But here's the reality most agencies won't tell you: Year 1 is about building your customer base, not getting rich.

Take Proper Youth as an example. Monthly revenue grew from $112 to $3,170 over 6 months - but that required $3k/month in ad spend toward sales campaigns. Roughly break-even, maybe slight losses when you factor in all costs.

But here's what matters: they now have a base of paying fans. Real customers who've already bought once and can be marketed to again. That's when the economics flip.

Our 2026 goal: $1M in combined client sales revenue and 20M streams.

That's not about 20 artists quitting their jobs Year 1. It's about building the foundation for 20 artists to own their future by Year 2.

No fake promises. No overnight success. Just transparent methods that compound over time.

That's the indie middle class we're engineering.