So! My 2nd single “Kalimba in 5” is out now!
Listen to it here: https://hypeddit.com/searchingnowhere-feat-wuselwesen/kalimbain5
I wish I could say I couldn’t be happier about having released my 2nd piece of music to the world.
But in reality, I do have mixed feelings about it.
One the one hand, I do feel good about it!
I’m proud of the music that I’ve made, and I feel much lighter now after having finally started the process of releasing my music and walking the part of an artist again.
I’ve felt so paralysed about starting this journey again, and it’s taken me 7 years to release this piece of music.
I’ve had (and still have) a lot of fear associated with this path of the artist:
- Fear of failing again
- Fear of making myself vulnerable and dealing with that stress, only to have no one care
- Fear of falling behind with my business even more
- Fear of wasting my time
But I know now that this is important to me. I want to show myself, show up and be seen for my art, and for who I am.
So even just having started and continuing to walk feels so much better than further having to struggle with the decision of do or do not.
Now I have done! And I will continue to do!
And I will try to follow my own advice that I give to artists, which is not to expect to much from the first year(s), and to just keep going.
Developing an identity as an artist, and building a fan base takes time.
But I’m confident in my music, and that there are people out there who would connect with it deeply.
I’ve also gotten some very nice reactions from friends and family that went beyond the polite “yay! You made a thing. Good for you :)”.
So that’s nice, and keeps me motivated as well.
At the same time, I’m feeling a lot of things that offset the happy feelings a bit:
Needing to promote and share feels uncomfortable…
I’ve read plenty of self-help resources for artists over the years.
- “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon
- “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
- “The Way of the Artist” by Julia Cameron
- “f*ck it. Do What You Love” by John C. Parkin
One thing a lot of those books have in common, is that they say to just keep making your art and show it to the world.
Doesn’t matter what you do. Anything and everything made by your hands should be shared.
They say to forget all thoughts of worry, eliminate excuses, believe in higher powers of creativity, and just go for it.
Money, fame, recognition, etc. will come.
And yet, when I actually do that, it still occasionally feels like I have to beg people for favours to take a few minutes and listen to a song, and to click a like button.
Paying money for advertising to have my stuff shown to people who’ve never heard of me before, with a carefully crafted video for a chance to get noticed amid a sea of social media content, is one thing.
Needing to almost aggressively shove my stuff in front of peoples faces, be it whatsApp groups, Instagram or reddit forums, is an entirely different thing.
Especially if one of those groups then reprimands or punishes you for actually sharing.
It’s uncomfortable, anxiety inducing, and the icky feelings stay with me for such a long time.
But this is not a statement about people or the industry.
I understand why it’s like this.
At least online, I react the same way.
I don’t have time to do favours for strangers on the internet.
Nor do I want to see the same lame band spam a forum with their posts.
Attention is a very valuable resource in this world, and if I want some of it, I have to play the game. I know this. Better than a lot of people actually, having learned about marketing for more than 10 years now.
This is just me, acknowledging my feelings when it comes to this process of sharing art as a newcomer.
I’m so worried about doing everything correctly and not wasting money or engagement
Promoting stuff online can be such a clusterfuck. There is so much to know, and so much to pay attention to.
For example:
- Making sure you post on socials at the time they’re most likely online. If a post gets lots of good attention in the first 48 hours (depending on platform) then the platform will start showing the post to people outside of your circle.
- Covering all possible areas where a fan might discover you and making sure everything is up to date in all the places.
- Uploading all the videos you have to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, making sure that none of their mobile overlays cover anything important in the video.
- Making eye catching thumbnails that stop people from doom scrolling past your post.
- Pitching to Playlists, Blogs, Podcasts, Newspapers and more. Making sure to write the perfect headlines so that your pitching mails even get a chance of being read. Also customising your approach to each individual to avoid seeming like you don’t care.
- Making sure your landing page links load fast, so people don’t click away or close the tab before seeing the content.
- Setting up complicated tracking pixels to inform your marketing ads if a user shows interest or not.
- etc…
Just today I found out that I’ve wasted 20€ by sending meta ads to India.
I was getting HUNDREDS of clicks from there, for less than 0.10€ each.
Not just clicks on my ad, but actual clicks on the page they landed on (supposedly to go to the song URL on Spotify or other platform).
But… less than 5% of those clicks actually resulted in a stream or a save, which I could tell from my Spotify for Artists backend account.
I think those clicks came from crawler bots. Easy to write programs that just go through the internet and click stuff.
Why? Who knows, but it’s not uncommon.
But, I’ve changed it now and continue to watch my money drain out of my digital wallet, just praying it will lead to some good result.
And what makes it worse, is that the reporting platforms (Spotify, landing page analytics etc.) are usually a day or two late with their data.
So patience is required now.
I’m exhausted…
I hate having to make decisions… For me, with my AuDHD brain, decision making and worry are absolute energy vampires.
And with releasing music come so many necessary decisions and also boring work.
- Paid ads, or not? If paid, then how much budget? On which platform (TikTok, Reddit, Meta, Spotify, etc.) How many video variations should I make? What demographic should I target? For how many days?
- Make more social media content? How many posts? What topic? How much effort? Edit myself, or outsource? How much time do I dedicate to this? Worth my time right now? Should I make follow up content for new audiences? How can I make good content without burning out?
- Should I contact press? What outlets? Do they even care? What’s the story behind my song? How can I talk about it in an exciting way? Maybe blogs instead? Does anyone even still read blogs?
- Should I pay for playlist pitching? Or wasted money? Can I even afford that right now? Would it be a waste not to?
- How much time do I have for investing in this? Am I wasting my ad money by not having a follow up strategy? Can I meet my other work deadlines if I take some time for this?
- Should I rest? Or should I power through?
- Are my ads actually working? Is there something I need to change? What data do I get if I cross-reference all my analytics?
It’s always like this for me at the end of a project, when it’s time to promote it.
It keeps my mind busy (in a bad way), and won’t let me truly rest.
And especially now, where I’m already splitting up my limited time between my business Observant Sound and Searching Nowhere, I often find myself in a state of worrying.
I think I’m managing it better now than I used to though. Knowing myself better through the Autism diagnosis, and my meditation practice are helping me to not get stuck in worry and anxiety so much anymore. But it’s still present and appears often, but when it does I can (usually) recognise it, and be able to work through it, instead of pushing it away just to have it come crashing back.
So the release might not be going as well as I’d hoped at the moment, and I’ll doubt I’ll get any editorial playlist placements, but all in all I’m still glad.
I’m moving forward, doing the things that are important to me, and I’m also enjoying showing more of myself on a more semi-regular basis, even if it means more work.
So for now I’ll just wait and see how it goes.
My friend and co-writer is currently travelling and intends to show the song to a lot of DJ friends, so who knows what’s going to happen.
Plans for the Future
I have at least one more music project release planned for this year.
In 2024 I started making music for a small indie video game which is planned to release this year and I have an EP of film music, electronica, bass-music style soundtrack ready for when the game comes out.
It’s a very different genre than my first two singles, but when I created Searching Nowhere, I did so with the intention of not binding myself to a genre or style.
What’s most important is that I’m enjoying the music that I make. And from experience, that is usually the time where I get the most positive feedback.
Besides that I’m continuing to develop my first sample library VST for Observant Sound, and in September and October I’ll be busy working with Ethno Germany and Ethno Germany Studio. The later is a 7 day camp in a Studio in Limburgerhof – Germany, where I and a co-Mentor teach traditional folk music and recording/production to young musicians below 30 years of age (Go here to learn more and to sign up for this year).
