He Posted 1800+ Shorts in 6 Months & it 10x'd His Career

This case study challenges the traditional "quality over quantity" mindset

When an unsigned artist can generate 3 billion views in six months using nothing but repurposed content and strategic persistence, it can be dismissed cynically as a gimmick, but you can choose to view it as the new age of sync.

Artists no longer have to beg music supervisors to have their songs played in ads, movies, shows and sports - artists can now create sync themselves.

That’s what artist NXCRE has done, and it 10x’d his career. 

This case study challenges the traditional "quality over quantity" mindset in content creation. NXCRE posted over 11 Shorts per day - a volume that would make most artists break out in hives. Yet the numbers are undeniable: 525 videos with over 1 million views each. That's not luck; that's marketing via algorithm.

This article was originally published in The Hobby Letter, one of the most insightful social media marketing newsletters I subscribe to. You should follow the founder Buster on socials, he’s a social media genius.

The Timeline

NXCRE posted his first Short on January 4, 2023. He didn’t post his second one until August 14, 2023. It took an entire year, before this strategy started to work. He made two changes in his approach that allowed his channel (and music) to to take off:

• He changed from doing Shorts of vintage WWE compilations to more general pop culture and sports videos that had already gone viral on other platforms.

• He drastically increased his posting rate.

• From August 1, 2023 - July 31, 2024 he posted 95 Shorts.

• Since August 1, 2024 he has posted 1858 Shorts.

• That’s posting more than 11 times per day.

via Social Blade

YouTube Shorts Performance

Some of NXCRE’s top performing Shorts have between 25M-75M views each!

• Out of the 1858 Shorts that he’s posted, 525 of them have at least 1M views.

• Since August 1, 2024 his channel has amassed over 3 BILLION views.

• This is getting his music in front of hundreds of millions of people who had never heard of him

• And it took him less than six months!

Screenshot via NXCRE YouTube

The Results

Since the revamp in his strategy NXCRE’s social metrics have only done one thing… go up and to the right.

• On YouTube, he went from 17.1K subscribers to 1.01M.

• He’s grown to close to 800K monthly listeners on Spotify.

• His songs have gained millions of views on YouTube and Spotify.

• Not to mention the billions of listens he gets through including them in YouTube Shorts.

Fan sentiment

If you click on NXCRE’s recent videos, some of the top comments are people saying how they are there because of YouTube Shorts:

• “After hearing it on a million shorts, I decided to check out the full song. Well done gentlemen, killed it.” — 49K Likes

• “Bro harassed us on shorts enough to where we had to check it out😂😭” — 24K Likes

• “Who came from YouTube shorts” — 23K Likes

• “the marketing of these guys with the shorts is crazy” — 7K Likes

• “The amount of YouTube shorts I’ve skimmed through watching someone do something bad ass while this song plays in the background is absurd. But instead of hating the sound bite, I started to love it.” — 3.3K Likes

• “Whoever came with the idea of advertising this songs using the meme in yt shorts, seriously needs a raise” — 876 Likes

• “bro, I found this gem watching a shorts video, finally something a short is useful for, crazy world we live in.” — 803 Likes

• “Dude, I randomly found these songs on several shorts and I have to say THEY GENUINELY ROCK WITH THESE SONGS” — 743 Likes

• “Bro became a YouTube shorts legends and now he lives rent free in my mind” — 370 likes

This case study was first published on The Hobby Newsletter.