Sounds like you have talent but lack focus. You touched on this a few times throughout; how you do multiple things - podcasts, music, fiction - but think it's too much effort to separate things on different accounts etc to help the algorithm.

How many successful artists do you know who are musicians, writers and podcasters all in one? I'd bet either not many, or zero. Personally I'd make a decision on which one should be the main focus for success, and which two should be relegated to hobbies/passion projects. Then work your ass off for the one.

Unfortunately, art is as much of a business as it is an art. What is often never shown is just how much musicians work on the business side of things, analysing and studying algorithms, calculating finances and return on time investment, studying the markets to see what's in or out, crafting and compromising their own art to find a balance between filling a niche, and filling a demand.

For example, the 'short form' curse on our culture thanks to things like TikTok is what people want nowadays. How can one make this work in their music career without making any compromise? Well, they can't. Compromise is necessary whether it's short form or anything else that changes in the coming years such as whatever apocalyptic results come from AI's new domination.

But there are ways to make the short form work, as a form of advertisement to bring people to your channel. As long as I watch something to the end, whether I like it or not, I'm gonna see more of it for the next few days unless I start skipping quickly.

So logically you just need to make something that keeps people engaged for at least 15 seconds or whatever.

If music; what kind of visual element can complement that? Is a new skill needed such as motion graphics, photoshop? A LOT of musicians have these skills now because nobody wants to discover music that isn't a meme at this point.

What else can one do with a podcast to make short clips, other than simply cutting out an interesting segment and posting it?

It goes on.

In short: Find out what people want, what the algorithms truly want, and how you can apply your work to those without sacrificing your own style.

Focus on one. The rest can come back later if needed.

Work out how much time - perhaps even to the minute - you can reasonably dedicate to that one, and maximize it.

Perhaps more importantly, don't stop. Some of the huge influences out there got barely no attention for 10-12 years before they blew up