One thing is crucial.

I just got a newsletter from an artist that I'm following. I really like this band, they are nice good live and working their asses off. Unfortunately, they are based in the USA so really can't work with them also their genre is not an area I'm good at.

Still, I want them to succeed. They do everything by the book. Have all their channel correct, take all right steps. In a way that should be paid off. So I took some of their music and sent off to a couple of good people in the industry in that genre they are playing that works in the USA.

What I got back was that well it didn't trigger any sparks for any of these people. They said, yes it was good, but not exceptional. Also, they had so many bands at that level that they would be drowned in the competition.

I was a little bit like the parents of artists that come in. You think your kid is so good since you are close and you really don't know whats out there. same for me I can't read this genre, they were better than many of the acts I have seen, but I'm not seeing the best in this line of music.

This is a problem that is not easy to fix and probably the hardest problem to have. You are not good enough. You are good so in your local town you are the hero, but nation wide you are just one out of five hundred. There are only two ways to fix this problem. Change your things so you become unique. This is really hard. In away you already tried it, you think you are unique.
The other one is to work so hard and create a fan base so big that people can't ignore you.

This has been done, there is a famous case called Nickelback. Not so special, just mediocre but the fan base was so big that they couldn't be ignored. You have to work uphill though, no one in the media likes you and you get nothing for free, it's easy to quite there.

The crucial is to have that "it" factor. If you don't have that it's gonna be harder in a really hard game. How do you get that "it" factor? Hard to tell. In many cases you just have it. In some cases, you can build it up. Some will never have it.