Every now and then, an artist seems to come out of nowhere and rocket to superstardom overnight. In 2011, Skrillex showed up out of thin air. In 2015, a mysterious new producer named Marshmello took over the scene.
Who is the most recent artist to seemingly come out of nowhere? An artist that all of a sudden, they are everywhere.
Right now, that artist is John Summit.
In just four years, John Summit went from a local DJ and accountant in Chicago to one of the most sought-after house artists on the planet. His music is everywhere. He’s playing everywhere. And his social media presence is captivating, even if it’s not to everyone’s liking.
How did he achieve such rapid success? Was it the music, the social media, the relentless touring, or something else?
We’ve collected and analyzed data from social media platforms, streaming services. And live performances to uncover the secrets behind John Summit’s meteoric rise.
How did John Summit become a household name seemingly overnight? We believe it was a magical combination of consistency, quality. And one hit record.
Prioritizing Music Over Followers
John Summit has put out a big catalog over the years, including several EPs on respected house labels in 2018 and 2019. Early on, his music caught on with DJs, not fans and casual listeners. He made a string of club tracks for labels like Mark Knight’s Toolroom Records, Claude Von Stroke’s DirtyBird, and Lee Foss’s Repopulate Mars.
These songs sold well to DJs on Beatport, but they never broke through to a wider audience. So his Spotify numbers stayed pretty flat in 2018 and 2019, even as DJs kept charting him on Beatport.
The Power of a Hit Record
It wasn’t until the summer of 2020 that John Summit had a breakthrough release.
In June 2020, “Deep End” dropped on Defected Records. It became an anthem for an unforgettable summer. SIDEPIECE remixed it that October, and that remix is still John Summit’s most-streamed song on Spotify, with tens of millions of streams.
At the beginning of 2020, John Summit had 33,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. By the end of the year, that number had skyrocketed to over 2 million.
After 2020, though, his growth slowed down. It took two more years to add another 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, hitting around 4.3 million by the end of 2022.
The growth was slower, but it never stopped. Through 2021 and 2022, John kept posting great social content and putting out solid music.
Gradual and Steady Social Media Growth
A hit record (with a hit remix) catapulted John to commercial success in 2020, but his social media reach lagged behind. His social growth that year ran at less than 10% of the rate of his streaming growth.
His average Instagram engagement grew about 7x during 2020 (compared to over 75x on Spotify!), from an average of about 600 likes per post to about 4,000.
One figure floored us during this analysis: John Summit’s social media engagement rate. According to experts, any Instagram account with a like-to-follower ratio above 6% has a “very high engagement rate.”
John Summit’s engagement rate has consistently exceeded this threshold throughout the years, as far back as we could gather historical follower data.
Throughout 2022, John Summit maintained a like-to-follower ratio of at least 12% consistently. In 2023, he even reached a ratio as high as 15%!
After his hit record in 2020, John kept posting highly engaging social content for two straight years. His following grew steadily because of it.
Consistently Releasing Music
While John Summit had some successful records in 2021 and 2022 (most notably La Danza, released in March 2022), none of them achieved the same level of commercial success as the Deep End EP.
To be precise, he put out 14 original tracks and remixes in 2021, then 10 releases in 2022, counting others’ official remixes of his songs. He didn’t have a major hit in this stretch, but the steady stream of releases kept the momentum from 2020 alive. So his streaming numbers grew steadily over these two years.
Beyond the steady releases, John kept a busy touring schedule. When live events came back in 2021, his shows ramped up fast. He averaged 8 shows per month in the second half of 2021, then powered through a grueling 132 shows in 2022.
2023 and Beyond
In 2023, John Summit landed his second hit record. “Where You Are” feat. Hayla dropped in March 2023 on his own label Off The Grid. It blew up, and it’s now John’s second most-streamed release of all time.
The song kept climbing, hitting a rating of 80 on Spotify’s popularity index and reaching over 80 million users through playlists.
That tells you playlist curators had been featuring “Where You Are” for months. And a popularity rating of 80 beats most songs by Fred Again.., Disclosure, or FISHER.
How Does John Summit Stack Up Against Other Artists?
John Summit’s growth has been extraordinary, but how does he compare to bigger electronic artists? From the start of 2021 on, his Spotify numbers have tracked close to Australian sensation Rufus Du Sol.
Rufus Du Sol runs a totally different release model. They drop an album every few years instead of constant singles. Even so, the band has grown its streaming numbers steadily too.
John Summit kept similar streaming numbers to Fred again.. until July 2022. That’s when Fred again.. released ‘Turn On The Lights again..’ with Swedish House Mafia and Future. His streaming numbers shot up, proving the power of a hit record all over again.
Illenium has stood in a class of his own, combining five albums with a handful of singles over the years. His releases follow an album cycle, but he keeps pulling singles from those albums to maintain a steady stream of releases.
Across every artist in this comparison, the pattern holds: consistent output builds the foundation, and a hit record accelerates everything.
Let’s analyze the data:
- Consistent music releases: John has consistently released music since 2018, although his early releases didn’t see much commercial success. Still, he garnered support from DJs in the early days.
- Engaging social media presence: John has consistently maintained a highly engaging social media profile, posting regularly on multiple platforms. His engagement ratio is exceptionally high, contributing to his growing popularity.
- Capitalizing on a commercial hit: In 2020, John finally had a commercial hit with “Deep End” and the “Deep End SIDEPIECE Remix.” It put him in front of a much larger audience. He ran with that exposure, kept releasing music regularly, and kept posting engaging social content.
- Consistent touring and live performances: John’s consistent touring and live shows helped him achieve steady, modest growth throughout 2021 and 2022.
With his second hit record under his belt, John Summit’s trajectory only continued to climb.
John Summit has had a recipe for success since 2019: consistently releasing good music and posting great social content. However, it wasn’t until he had a major hit that he was able to expose this winning recipe to a larger audience. Once that breakthrough hit, his fanbase, streaming numbers, and social presence had all been climbing for years. They became unavoidable to electronic music fans.
If you’re a producer, what can you learn from John’s story? Here are three takeaways:
- Consistently release music. Since 2019, John has averaged almost exactly one new song per month. That’s a great target for any producer. Not every track will land like “Where You Are,” but you have to release regularly to stay on your fans’ radar.
- Be active (and engaging!) on socials. An active and authentic social media profile is the secret sauce for connecting with fans. Even if John Summit’s elevated-frat-bro persona isn’t your style, you can’t deny his authenticity. Don’t be afraid to step in front of the camera and be yourself.
- Make a hit record. Easier said than done, of course. But to reach the level of success John Summit has, at least one hit record is crucial. Sometimes we don’t even recognize a hit when we have one. Releasing consistently raises the odds that one of your songs catches fire and becomes that hit.
Pro Tip: You can’t plan a hit, but you can plan the volume that makes a hit possible. Set a release cadence you can sustain (monthly is a great target) and treat every release as a real release, not a throwaway.
What John Summit’s Story Actually Proves
John Summit’s rise shows the power of consistent output and dedication. He kept releasing quality music and kept engaging his audience on social media. That steadily built his fanbase and created the openings for his music to get heard.
My sense is that we’ve only seen the beginning, and that many more hit records are on the way.
Data Collection Methodology
Data was collected and analyzed from the following sources:
Soundstats: We manually pulled data from the Soundstats web interface to support most of the findings in this article. We collected historical data on Spotify monthly listeners, Spotify playlist reach, Spotify popularity, Instagram followers, TikTok videos, and Soundcloud monthly streams.
Instagram: As far as we know, there’s no public data source on historical Instagram engagement. So we estimated it ourselves. We randomly sampled three posts from the @johnsummit account for every month between October 2021 and June 2023. For each month, we took the average likes across those three posts as of June 21, 2023.
This method has two likely sources of bias, and both probably push the engagement rate slightly high. First, we likely overestimate older posts. They’ve been online longer than recent posts, so users have had more time to engage with them.
That assumes a user is more likely to like a year-old post than to unlike one they liked a year ago. Second, we may also overestimate newer posts, this time because of bots.
New bots probably interact with new posts and inflate their engagement numbers. We figure the bots that hit older posts are more likely to have been removed by Instagram by now. And once an account goes, its likes go with it.
Songkick: We collected historical performance data from Songkick. We probably underestimate the total number of shows, since Songkick doesn’t index every performance an artist plays.
Beatstats: We collected historical Beatport chart positions.
