Adventures in the DIY Music Industry

Drab Habit
Sep 2, 2018 · 7 min read
The artwork for my latest release, “Progress”.

I released my second EP last month, “EP” being the designation applied by the likes of Spotify, iTunes and Tidal. It’s my second attempt at music publication, the first coming in December 2016. I would be lying if I said either have taken the world by storm, but then, I would also be lying if I honestly considered them to be the finest work I am capable of producing. No, these works are more of an experiment in music publishing, in learning what exactly it means to be a published artist in 2018.

So far, not much, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I went to the trouble and I am glad that, after all my years of putting together not-quite-ready-for-anyone-to-hear demos on my trusty 8-track recorder, I finally have “finished” works that I can point to. I can actually tell people they can find me on Spotify, or iTunes, or Tidal or whatever. But I don’t. Because I am absolutely terrible at self-promotion and this, I have found, is most likely why I will never be an even semi-famous musician.

“Why?”, I almost certainly don’t hear you ask (because the answer is somewhat obvious).

The Boss BR900CD — my recording tool of choice for many a year.

Well, when I released my first EP, I was genuinely surprised how easy it was to have my music distributed to every streaming service in the known universe — it really isn’t any kind of achievement. I distributed my music through CD Baby and I was rather naively expecting to be given all kinds of reasons as to why <insert name of streaming service here> couldn’t possibly accept my single because the artwork was not up to scratch, or the production quality on the record was poor, or the second track has too many vowels in the title. But no, accepted everything they did, with nary a hint of objection. And why wouldn’t they? Idiot that I am, I’m paying them to put my music in their catalogue!

So what does any of this have to do with my aversion to self-promotion? Well, what is proving even more difficult than expected is getting people to listen to it. I’m not talking about expecting people to promote it. Hell, I don’t even expect them to like it. But just getting people to even listen to your music is incredibly challenging.

This is where my self-promotion-ophobia is a major handicap.

I guess it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that, given how ridiculously easy it is to have one’s music distributed (I encourage you all to test this hypothesis), my music is but a drop in the proverbial ocean. A needle in the all-too-often-referred-to metaphorical haystack. Tools such as digital audio workstations (DAWs, Pro Tools perhaps being the best-known example) have become extremely affordable, such that virtually anyone can become a recording artist from the comfort of their own home. There’s even a browser-based DAW — pretty cool stuff.

Audiotool is a free-to-use, browser-based digital audio workstation.

Now, based on my extensive reading (and I have been doing A LOT of reading of pretty much every piece of advice there is out there for DIY musicians), the absolute number one recommendation that virtually everyone seems to agree on to get things off the ground is to share your music with friends and family. But, the term “friends” is potentially somewhat broad here — are we talking absolutely anyone, from your bestest of best buddies, to that guy you friended on Facebook after you shared what seemed at the time to be a deep and meaningful conversation in the bathroom of your local bar.

Regardless, this brings me to my second major obstacle (which is not altogether unrelated to the first): prior to the release of my first single, I was not a social media user. Pretty much every article I read not only emphasises the importance of being omni-social (that is, being on all the social networks all the time. ALL OF THEM), but also harnessing the promotional power of your existing social network. In other words, spam the absolute fuck out of everyone you have ever met with your music, whether you think they’ll like it or not. There are even “cheat sheets” out there to get you started:

I have two problems with this approach. The first one is obvious — my absence from social media has left me with a social network of infinitesimally small proportions. You can see the chicken and egg dilemma here — in order to get followers (or fans, as they were once called), you need to have followers.

“But you have email contacts, right?”

Well, yeah, I do of course, but here’s my second problem with this approach: would you really want your friends emailing you for a sympathy vote every time they recorded new music? Or uploaded something to YouTube? Or posted an article here on Medium? Or made a sandwich and put a picture of it on Instagram for reasons known only to them?

But let’s assume that, somehow, one has somehow acquired a large following (the aforementioned articles on DIY publishing are strangely quiet on how one reaches this point). Now it’s time to morph into some sort of automated social media marketing guru, constantly putting out content that your loyal subjects will find interesting, amusing and possibly arousing. But, most importantly, content that both demonstrates that you’re human, and not a self-obsessed narcissist, and also promotes your music and/or artist image at the same time.

Now, those last two in particular would seem somewhat contradictory, so far as my, admittedly limited, understanding goes. How does someone vigorously posting stuff (sorry, “content”) on social media, with the sole (implicit or explicit) intention of self-promotion, not come across as utterly self-obsessed with ulterior motives? And how are their minions persuaded by their incessant ramblings to listen to their music? Maybe this is the part that escapes me . Being a non-social media user for most of my life has left me without what has seemingly become a semi-important life skill — manipulating people.

There is of course another possibility that must be considered. Even the greatest PR & social media strategist in the world can’t help you if your music is just plain rubbish. It is entirely possible that my music falls into this category. It is entirely possible that nobody likes it and, therefor, nobody has any interest in following me on social media. I accept that it’s not amazing and I accept that it’s not going to be for everyone — there would be something wrong if everyone liked it. But, I’m pretty confident it’s not bad. Well, not terrible anyway. Why? Well, because, first of all, I trust my own judgement and I am definitely a harsh critic of my own work.

Secondly, there’s Radio Airplay, a tool for independent artists like myself to market their music to potential fans. So far, I’ve managed to rack up a decent number of approvals and a number of fans I have collected have shared their email addresses.

Radio Airplay, a partner of (among others) Jango Radio, allows independent artists to showcase their music to potential new fans.

Then there’s ReverbNation, a tool that’s been around for about 12 years or so, aimed at musicians to aid them in managing their careers, but also at fans and industry reps interested in discovering new music. ReverbNation has offered a Crowd Review service for a number of years now, allowing musicians like myself to receive anonymous reviews of our work from an unbiased “crowd” source. I submitted all of the tracks on my most recent EP for crowd reviewing and the results were extremely positive. So positive in fact that I’m going to be featured on ReverbNation’s home page for one month from mid-October.

ReverbNation’s Crowd Review service allows musicians to recieve honest, unbiased feedback on their work.

But, more importantly, I have submitted both of my releases to a number of fairly high-profile music blogs and the feedback I received was, in general, quite positive. Surprisingly positive actually.

I expected a lot more “what were you thinking sending me this?” kind of dismissals

But, a few exceptions aside, people were actually pretty cool and supportive. A number of bloggers have either published positive reviews or, in the case of my most recent release, included me on their Spotify playlists. As a result and thanks to Spotify’s new Spotify for Artists tool, I can see my tracks’ stream count ticking slowly (but steadily) upwards. I even got some radio airtime. Well, a small, web-based radio station. Still counts. The point here is that people who know music appreciate my music, so I have good reason to believe my work is not without it’s potential fans. The question remains — what is the best way to reach and engage with them?

So, there you have it — is there a place for the introverted artist in the modern world? How do we succeed? And by “succeed” I mean, get recognition. And by “recognition” I mean laid (kidding — I’m married).

Drab Habit

Written by

Musician • Scientist • Beer Enthusiast • Human Male

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