This seems to match how music is consumed as well. You can release a great EP or album, but unless you're a marketing savant or you're well connected to someone who has a large following, your work will not be discovered or listened.

There's simply too much music being released every day for anybody to discover it, so your best bet is to target a rather slim niche where you might have a chance to come to the surface with a small clique of rabid fans of the genre, and slowly build mass appeal one fan at a time.