Getting Your Music Heard
Getting Your Music Heard
[This article is an excerpt from a chapter of The Human Guide to Doing Music Online by @kit]
Now that your music is out there, and with the bulk of the money talk out of the way, all that’s left now is how to get your music heard. Well, heard by more than just your friends and family, that is. You’ve read this far, clearly that’s what you want, right?
If you think I’m about to start talking about promotion and marketing, though, hold your horses. We’re not quite there yet. There is still more to consider before we sell our souls to the game.
What Are Your Goals, Really?
Seems like an obvious question, maybe even something that should go without saying, but it’s important that you actually sit down, think about this, and come up with an answer that you feel satisfied with now. Don’t put it off.
Since we’re this deep into the post, things are starting to get pretty businesslike. While it’s entirely valid to have no interest in applying a businesslike mindset to your art, I’m going to be assuming from here on out that you do have that interest – at least a little bit – since you’re here.
If you truly don’t, though, then be aware that a lot of what is about to be talked about might not be especially valuable to you, and the entire next section about playing the game will definitely not be valuable to you.
So, you can stop here if you want to, but I’d recommend at least skimming the rest of this section to see if you think it might be useful to you, since a lot of what’s going to be covered here is more about building a stable and fulfilling foundation for yourself as an artist rather than a businessperson.
No matter what your ultimate goals are, or what your perspective on the business side of music is, there is one more thing that begs emphasis. You must recognize the difference between producing a commodity, and practicing an art. The goal of one is money, and the goal of the other is personal fulfillment and enrichment. You can do both, but they are separate activities, largely incompatible with each other. You can’t mix them, even if you can get a little money out of practicing art, and a little fulfillment out of producing commodities. Well, unless you’re a hardcore capitalist, I suppose. Then you might believe that producing commodities is incredibly fulfilling and find yourself wondering why your life still feels so empty and worthless two years later.
With all of that out of the way, there are still a lot of easy answers to this question. I want you to put them all out of your mind.
Here, take a look at this list of example invalid answers:
- “I just want to be popular”
- “I just want to be recognized”
- “I just want to get the attention of {person} or {company}”
- “I just want to make some money”
- “I want to get rich and famous and become cool and awesome”
None of these are invalid because of their intentions. The problem is that none of these are descriptive enough. It’s important when defining your personal goals to be as specific as possible in order to actually understand your motivations. So, let’s go through those bad answers and break them down into something better to illustrate what I mean.
“I just want to be popular”
Okay. How popular? Maybe you’re in a big Discord server and you want everyone in there to know you? Maybe you post your music on social media and you want at least a hundred likes on every upload? Maybe you want a million streams? Or ten million streams?
You have to quantify what “popular” means to you. Only after you do that, can you follow through with a plan to achieve your goal. If you aren’t planning for it, especially if you also think it’s very far off and hard to reach, that’s not a goal, it’s a milestone, and milestones are worth very little on their own.
Let’s continue with the social media example. If you want a minimum of a hundred likes with every new song, then you also need to specify what platform you want to achieve that goal on. On some platforms, a hundred likes is hardly anything, and you could probably achieve that without much trouble. On other platforms, a hundred likes is monumental and would take a ton of time and effort.
Let’s assume your platform of choice is YouTube. Getting a hundred likes per song on YouTube isn’t easy, assuming you’re starting from zero, but it’s still far from impossible. Forming a plan of action for how to actually accomplish that requires some research and a lot of determination, but the direction is clear.
The vague and directionless “I just want to be popular” instead becomes the specific and achievable “I want to get at least 100 likes on every song I upload to YouTube” and now has some amount of meaning that you can aim for.
“I just want to be recognized”
Okay. By who? What do you want to be recognized for? What does “recognition” mean to you?
Let’s assume that by “recognition” you mean that you want your work to be appreciated either for its technical merit or its emotional appeal, and you want to get this recognition from internet strangers, at least once every so often.
Good news! Literally just keep creating and sharing it, and this will happen eventually. It might be hard to believe, but people really do tend to actually like things sometimes, even if you don’t. Shocking, I know. Chances are, you already have this kind of recognition, you just aren’t being told about it, because that’s the real issue here.
Even when people really like something, they’re still not particularly likely to actually tell you that they like it. That’s why the ratio of comments to views on every uncontroversial YouTube video is so low, and why you might only get a small handful of replies on social media even with hundreds of likes and shares. But hey, if you really want that external validation, you can just ask for it. Invite people to comment! It works.
Just be aware that there are also plenty of people who dislike things, and they’re much more likely to be annoying about that. Negative comments can outnumber the positive ones sometimes, especially when you’re starting from zero, but as soon as your audience starts growing into a large crowd, the positive will almost always outnumber the negative. Unfortunately, the human brain is very good at latching onto the negative and assigning more importance to it than is healthy, which is how so many online creators end up struggling with anxiety and low mood from reading their comments that, to the rest of us, usually seem very positive overall.
I’m not going to tell you to “just grow thicker skin” or anything, it’s never that easy, but it is imperative that you do whatever you have to do to prevent the negative comments from getting to you. Simply ignore them (if you’re lucky enough to be able to). Block them. Recontextualize them. Whatever works. Seek help if you need it, ideally before it becomes a serious problem. Some negative comments can even be quite constructive if you can handle them, even if the author was definitely not trying to be constructive, but if comments get under your skin, you’re better off without them, the potential to find something constructive in them isn’t worth more than protecting your mental health.
And with that, the vague and directionless goal has completely disappeared. There was never a meaningful goal here at all, only a desire for attention. Which is completely okay, by the way, so own it. Just keep it healthy.
“I just want to get the attention of {person} or {company}”
Okay. Why?
If you’re just trying to impress a person, then you might have some unhealthy brain stuff going on in that head of yours. It definitely feels good to impress a person that you look up to, or even just to receive praise or encouragement from them, but to make that your primary goal as an artist? That’s an issue. Perhaps you should step back and think about that for a while. Put yourself first.
If you’re trying to grab the attention of a company, however, it’s probably because you want to get paid. Maybe you want to get signed with a particular label that you like, or you want to get a studio you like to use your music in their next project. Unfortunately, a goal like that is setting yourself up for disappointment.
Not to say that you shouldn’t at all wish to one day work with a company you like – even if I do think that labels are more bad than good – but the best way to go about that is to simply keep creating. Make things that you want to hear, things that hold your attention, and keep improving. When you spot an opportunity to get your work in front of the right people, by all means, take it. Just don’t make that your primary mission.
Both versions of this goal are indicative of a problem of priorities, and once you solve that, the goal disappears.
“I just want to make some money”
Okay. How much?
With everything that’s been covered up to this point, you’re already set up to make money, and if you have a few friends that like your music enough to share it, you’re probably going to see at least a few bucks coming in relatively soon.
Of course, you probably want more than that. Maybe you just want to make enough to be able to buy yourself a treat every so often. That’s realistic, and very attainable if you live a modest lifestyle. Maybe you want to make enough money just to break even on your music making expenses. As long as you’re not an extravagant spender, that’s still pretty realistic.
Do you want to pay your rent with music? Do you want to make enough to never need a job again? Good luck with that. It’s not impossible at all, but you should probably temper your expectations heavily.
Obviously, the specific amount of money you want to make from music, and nothing else, is what determines how realistic this goal is. The bigger the number, the worse it is, and the scale is not linear – it’s exponentially less realistic to aim for higher numbers.
But still, this goal isn’t really invalid, it’s just unspecific. Instead of being vague about it, figure out a real number to aim for, and set it as low as you can bear. If it helps, think of this goal as a first target, rather than the only target. But you must also keep in mind that the higher that number is, the more time you will have to devote to business rather than art.
“I want to get rich and famous and become cool and awesome”
Okay. Well…
Bad goal actually, there’s no saving this one. Reevaluate your life choices.
Now, regardless of what your personal goals are, now that you (hopefully) have them refined to something specific enough to provide direction, let’s start talking about what you can actually do to get your music heard.
Make Friends, Find Community
The first, and probably most important step you should take to get people listening to your music actually has nothing to do with any kind of promotion or marketing. You need to be part of a community that shares your interest in music.
This whole post is directed at doing things online, but if you have the ability to go outside and find people in the real world, you should absolutely do that first and foremost. Not to discount the value of online relationships and communities at all, but meeting people offline carries much more potential for building resilient connections, if nothing else. So get out there if you can, find the community around you, and if there truly isn’t one hiding somewhere in the shadows of your area, make one yourself!
Online or offline, one of the most powerful aspects of real community is mutual aid. Don’t just treat the people around you as voices to chat with and ears to play your music into, you should support each other! Share knowledge, pool resources, help each other out with whatever is needed in any way you’re able. It’s not just about music, it’s about sticking together, even if you never get super close with any particular people in the group. Rising tides lift all ships, after all, and a strong, supportive community that you can rely on is one of the most valuable things one can have in life. Build these connections to last, and you will all benefit for years, even decades, to come.
Of course, actually building a whole community that turns out as idealistic as that is not an easy task, which is why friends are a separate part of the equation. Communities drift apart all the time, it’s only natural considering the difficulty of building a strong one. But the friends you make will stick with you, even when the rest of the community goes their own way, and even if you don’t find a new community any time soon. Really, all of this should go without saying, but these are facts of life forgotten depressingly often in the 21st century.
So, how do you find these mysterious “friends” and “communities” the myths speak of, then?
Offline, you’re on your own, I don’t know anything about your life and I know even less about where you’re from. But online, they are everywhere if you’re looking for them. There are many subreddits for this if you’re tragically still a Reddit user, and there are hashtags and groups for this all over social media, whatever the platform. Most of what you see will be people just trying to promote themselves, but keep looking and you’ll eventually find something more meaningful.
Much better than that, however, would be forums. Forums are still around, and there are some pretty active music production forums out there, so consider signing up on one of them and participating there. Aside from generally being far more meaningful on average, rather than being completely saturated with shallow self-promotion efforts, forums are probably the most resilient communities on the internet right now, because they are open, (usually) free from corporate interests, and built by and for communities. The regulars of forums often form very tight knit communities, so even when forums do disappear, those communities stick together and quickly find or build a new platform to meet on.
For a sort of middle ground, you can try browsing YouTube and Twitch for musicians doing livestreams, and jump in those for a while. Maybe you’ll make friends with the streamer over time, or if you join bigger streams, they’ll probably already have a little community of other musicians built up around them. Some streamers do regular community events and stuff like that, so get in there and participate!
Unfortunately, if you’re hoping for advice on how to actually make friends with people, or how to communicate at all, you’re very much in the wrong place. I’d love to help you, but this is one of my biggest deficits. But I will at least wish you the best of luck in your journey.
To close this point, I’d like to emphasize one more time that friends are truly invaluable. Just five supportive, genuinely interested, true friends will be worth more to you than even 1,000 followers on any given platform will ever be. Even if those friends aren’t musicians themselves. Depend on each other, help each other out with whatever you can. Keep those relationships close to your heart and work continuously to keep them healthy. Your life will be better, and to hamfist this back to music again, a better life means you’ll be making more, better music, for longer.
Social Media, But Actually Though
In the third decade of the 21st century, this is unfortunately the primary method to growing an audience for just about anything done online. Nobody wants to hear that, nobody actually likes social media, right? Tons of people, and more every day, are realizing that all the time they spend on social media is doing a real number on their mental health, after all. Doomscrolling is a concept that exists now. A lot of the content on social media is either outright propaganda, or part of misinformation or disinformation campaigns, whether or not the people posting it are aware of that. Every popular platform is awful in their own special ways, and the biggest ones are genuine Nazi bars at this point. What is a well adjusted person to do?
Good news. Social media isn’t actually inherently evil. Nearly all of the problems that get blamed on the generalized concept of “social media” are more specifically caused by predatory, addictive design. Doomscrolling exists because it’s profitable, moderation is bad because it’s profitable, and conversations are often polarized and hostile because discovery algorithms prioritize “engagement” over all else in the name of profit, which has also empowered political groups and state actors to spread propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation like never before. With enough willpower, and maybe a browser extension or two to hide or remove as many of the predatory parts of a given platform as possible, you can avoid almost all of those problems.
You can also avoid those problems by simply not using mainstream corporate social media at all. The fediverse is nowhere near as large as the mainstream options, but the people using the fediverse are much more grounded, much more engaged, and much more interested in things on average. If you want to play the numbers game, it’s not outlandish to say that 100 views on the fediverse tends to generate engagement about equal to what 10,000 on mainstream social media would generate. There is no discovery algorithm there, so hashtags are the primary method of sharing, searching for, and discovering posts, so seeing artists and musicians posting things with ten or more hashtags at the bottom is normal and expected, with no negative connotations. I would highly recommend you research the fediverse a little bit and consider joining it.
This isn’t a guide to the fediverse at all, though, so aside from encouraging you to do your own research, I will only offer two pieces of specific advice here.
First, please stay off of the giant, major instances, like mastodon.social. Chances are good that whatever unpleasant things you may have heard about the fediverse are actually pretty specific to those instances. Choose a smaller one instead, maybe one with between 500 and 5,000 users – although if you’re interested in an even smaller instance, that’s fine too, it just might take longer for you to find people in that case – and preferably not one running vanilla Mastodon. Remember to give the rules a quick look before signing up anywhere, though. If you end up not liking the instance you chose, don’t be afraid to migrate your account to a different instance at any time. You’ll figure out what works best for you as you settle in.
Second, if you find yourself struggling to find people to follow, simply follow everyone who seems even mildly interesting as you come across them through hashtags or the global timeline, and once your timeline gets lively, you can start muting or unfollowing people freely to curate your timeline. There is no stigma against this, and it’s not rude or in any way uncouth. If you want an even quicker kick start to building your following list, try checking the following lists of the people you follow and following a bunch of people that way, or check out projects like fedi.directory, trunk, and fediverse.info. A particularly great resource if you want to find other musicians and artists to follow is IndieArt.Support, so maybe give that a look before anything else, and get yourself listed there too once you settle in.
Bluesky is also a semi-popular alternative to more established mainstream social media, but I personally do not use it (and have no interest in it at all) so I have very little to say about it. All I’m going to say is that if you choose to use it, you should follow @ap.brid.gy, and strongly consider learning how to self-host your own PDS. Following @ap.brid.gy creates a bridge between your Bluesky account and the fediverse, allowing the people on the fediverse, like me, to see and interact with you, and enables you to be able to interact with them too. You can learn more about that here. Self-hosting a PDS allows you to fully own your data, which is important and valuable in this day and age, but not worth diving any deeper into here.
Ultimately, I don’t care what platform (or platforms) you choose to use, even if I and many others will judge you harshly if you choose one of the Nazi bars. Unless it’s one of those, where you choose to establish your presence doesn’t matter nearly as much as how you maintain and conduct said presence. So, what do you actually do with social media, then?
Simple. Be social.
Seriously. Use it like a regular person. Don’t treat it like a marketing project, don’t treat it like advertising, don’t treat it like part of your career, and definitely don’t treat it like a potential source of income in any way. Just be online, posting stuff you like, stuff you make, and stuff you do. More importantly, follow like-minded people that you find interesting, and socialize with them. You don’t have to be super extroverted, you just have to be there. Reply thoughtfully to their posts, be fun, and be present. Be human.
That’s what social media is for, and that’s how it helps you. This isn’t about making yourself seen, it’s about making yourself available. Even if you don’t make any friends on there, by just being an easily accessible regular person on the internet and maintaining a relatively consistent presence, people will find you. People will begin to associate you with things. People will begin to remember you for things.
This will absolutely not grow you a huge audience that will make you money, and that’s fine, that’s not what social media is for. Your following will also definitely not grow fast, it can take years. What you get in return for this is a dedicated following that follows you for you. If you’re on a platform that allows you to truly own your data and freely migrate your account elsewhere, like the fediverse, then the majority of that following will even follow you across websites without you having to lift a finger. If you have your own personal website, though, then even if all social media disappeared, that following you built would still know where to find you. And hey, blogs count as social media too, so bonus points if your personal website is also a blog that you post stuff on sometimes.
Much like how true friends are far more valuable than followers, dedicated followers like these are far more valuable than the passive sort of followers you would build up through typical marketing efforts. 50 of these are better than 5,000 passive followers. Which I suppose is another way to say, don’t worry about how big your numbers are. Numbers don’t matter. Meaningful interaction does. You might even make a few new friends this way. Play some games together from time to time or something.
But never mind that, would you like to know how to take advantage of these followers to get more people hearing your music? You can do that with this one simple trick that they don’t want you to know!
Just ask them to share it. Seriously. Sharing with friends and followers is the most valuable thing a person online can do for creatives of any kind, but people don’t tend to share things unless they really wow them. Unless, of course, you ask. There’s a reason virtually every YouTuber verbally tells their audience to like, comment, and subscribe at least once per video. Gently remind your followers that you would appreciate it if they shared your work with others, and a lot of them will do so. You can even share your own posts containing that call to action again a few times to remind people they’re there, and account for visibility in different time zones. Getting people sharing your work is how your audience really begins to grow, even if it may still be a slow process.
Naturally then, you should return the favor. Share stuff made by fellow small creators with your followers! Often! Do it unprompted! Be the change you want to see in the world. If you use social media like a regular person and you often share stuff like this, people will probably get an even better impression of you than they otherwise might have, and who knows, maybe that’ll increase the likelihood of later getting your stuff shared too. Community, and all that.
[Read The Human Guide to Doing Music Online in full]