By Emma Schwichtenberg

At 23 years old, Yonathan “Yonny” Daniel is no stranger to pursuing music in the digital age.

“I grew up on the internet,” Yonny said. “YouTube, iPads, I was watching all kinds of videos from other content creators just by being on Instagram all the time.”

From the Lynnwood area, or FTLA, as he coined it, Yonny first started promoting his music on Instagram on July 18, 2023. Although he may have been late to the social media game, he is well aware of its crucial role in promoting young artists.

In the digital age, young artists are required not just to create and produce music but also to understand how to market that music online. Yonny is not only a singer-songwriter, but also a social media content creator. His song “City in Motion” was released in February and has since garnered 40,000 streams.
“That was the first time I went as hard as I did on Instagram,” Yonny said. “Instagram is the new music promotion place now. You could start a career off of Instagram if you get the right video to hit, so music creation is definitely a mix of the song style and then the promotion online.”

After his initial boost from “City in Motion” on Instagram, his earlier videos started to receive hundreds of thousands of views, further boosting the song.

“Before that, I had gotten a couple of songs on Spotify playlists; they were in double digits, maybe about 40,000 streams,” Yonny said. “Now, I've gotten more streams in the last three months than I've gotten in the last year and a half, two years of a release.”

Each song he releases requires a new set of promo; his new song “Rich in Melanin,” he described as a 180-degree turn from “City in Motion.” For him, this means new posts, new videos, new captioning—a full-time job accompanying his music career.

“For posts and stuff for social media, I get a lot of inspo from honestly just scrolling through reels and finding videos that are in the same vein of music promotion or making cool art,” Yonny said. "A lot of that stuff I save and I'll send to my videographer that I work with.”

Videography is a major aspect of Yonny’s platform; he works closely with two different videographers to create his video content. His style is reflective of his music, clean with a slight edge waiting underneath the surface. His videographers, Nash Pearson and Finn Baker, work bouncing ideas off one another, leaning on iconography inspired by cultural icons in the genre.

“We have a bond that lets us bounce ideas off of each other,” Yonny said. “It’s the best feeling when an artist is able to say the craziest stuff, and they take it all in and ask, ‘Can we do this?’ That's what they do—it's super easy to work with someone that you can call a friend; it makes it a lot easier.”

For Yonny, inspiration is found in the sounds of Anderson .Paak's rolling fusion of R&B and roots rock. He discovers beats that lie somewhere between the sun-soaked rhythms of West Coast hip-hop and the gritty bustle of East Coast hip-hop. The influence of singers like Erykah Badu and Michael Jackson lace his lyrics, enveloping his voice before he even opens his mouth to sing.

“I like to ask, ‘What makes that sound?’ and ‘How can I utilize that?” Daniel said. “Whether it's how I inflect it on my voice, or if I want to use guitars and live instruments in a song—what makes that sound so good, and how can I make my own version?”

Crafting a song is akin to painting a picture; it requires both the right blend of sounds and the perfect visuals to be complete.

“If I don't have anyone to shoot a video, the song is just gonna stay a song. Even the cover is just as important to the song,” Yonny said. “It needs to be said that a lot of artists could benefit from talking about the people that make the art too because it's not just us; there are way more pieces to the puzzle.”

When he was creating content for “City in Motion,” he made new edits every day. His posts began to receive 50,000 likes as soon as the video posts, and he began to get caught in the momentum. 

“I just thought that if I didn't make another post, the momentum would stop, which wasn't true but kind of tricked me during that time,” Yonny said.

While most artists experience the pressures of releasing their creative passions to the public, it's never guaranteed how social media will change the effect. For Yonny, it began to affect his songwriting process. Before he began posting on Instagram, he focused on TikTok, making songs that he believed were easily digestible.

“I realized that it's really hard, at least for me, to write something that you're not genuinely into,” Yonny said. “During that time, I was struggling with an identity crisis on why I'm even making music if it's not going to be the stuff that I want to make, or the story that I want to tell.”

The irony of this crisis occurring just as he reached the four-month mark of his venture into being an artist was not lost on him.

“I just sat with myself for a while and just thought it was so funny because it's such an early time to have a crisis like that,” Yonny said.

"Rich in Melanin" emerged as a result of Yonny forcing himself to take a step back and reignite his creativity. The lyrics for that song came before the beat, and he described their original form as almost like a poem—just writing, without even a chorus. Then, the song's first lines came to him: “My skin is beautiful, non-removable.” When Yonny showed it to his producer, the response was, “Alright, we're back on track. Let's work.”

“It’s important to be able to overcome the notion that one must create something entirely original each time,” Daniel said. "That is the reality for 99% of artists—they are inspired by others and reinterpret that inspiration in their own unique way."

He wants his style to have room to evolve and grow, to not be simply classified as one thing. As of late, he's been focused on completing songs and polishing his visuals.

“I think your best feed is if you're able to create good music and have the visuals match that,” Yonny said. “It only elevates it at the end of the day, and it's something that a lot of people don't immediately have access to in terms of starting a career in music. Having high-tier music and then high-tier videos to throw out is so important, and to make sure that the product is good.”

As a young artist, Yonny's goal is straightforward: to keep pushing forward, never glancing back.

To watch out for new songs from Yonny, find him at @yonnyftla.