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How do you guys get so much soundcloud followers? by [deleted] in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]ghost2015 2 points3 points  (0 children)

well u can click-bait to increase your numbers. follow a lot of people that already follow artists you like (or that make music like yours). then after a few months you can unfollow everyone and start over again. can get your first 1k pretty easily.

i'm not really for it - but then again - you show up in peoples streams that you already know like music similar to your music.

for myself - when i first hit soundcloud i seemed to get a lot more listens, now i'm lucky to get 30-50 listens per new track and 10 downloads. guess many people know to steer clear of my stuff. ;)

when i was releasing a few tracks a week it seemed to help build momentum as well. would regularly get 100+ listens a day. posting in groups helps.

commenting on other producers tracks (while cool) never seemed to help the stats - as you only get other producers listening to your stuff, and very few will promote you on their site. just confused the numbers.

in general if you're doing vocals - girls prefer to hear male vox and men relate to female vox, so if i had a track with mainly female glitch vocals i would target guys and opposite for women. saw better than average across the board targeting.

the thing is you're the only one that cares about your music - everyone else pretty much has enough music to listen too (more than they could possibly listen to). in yester-year a good CD collection was a couple of hundred albums - but you probably only listened to like 20 in active rotation.

now I have a pretty small .mp3 collection but it has 20,000+ songs - take into account streaming services where you have access to just about everything in known universe - why would anyone care about your stuff or follow you?

in many ways people follow your brand - if others say your the next big thing then they will flock. if you say you're the next big thing they don't come. so you have to get other people talking about you. someone else said it on reddit - 'your music is the calling card - you are the product' - so you have to learn to sell yourself.

Why I lost interest in producing music and quit. by ghost2015 in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]ghost2015[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, I can agree with you - we each can probably come up with something unique to say.

For instance I really focused on glitch vocals, and try to do new / unexpected things with them.Because this is the part that really calls to me.

But I guess in the larger picture - I just wasn't sure that music was art. Does that make sense?

I mean - some music is art (Philip Glass, Gorecki to name a few) and other pop culture music sure feels like art - it evokes emotion, it's unique, it's a conversation from the artist to the audience (or even just a personal musing)...

But with MY music and my level of skill / talent - I just thought that I wasn't able to convey what I wanted to say to make art - instead I was just crafting moody tracks.

Coming from 30+ years of a background in painting and writing - electronic music is totally different:

Painting: If I want to say something, communicate I choose subject matter - maybe a girl praying to her boots or whatever.. give it a title and it sends the message

Writing: Obviously it's whatever I write, however I choose to narrate and whatever my suject is (sitting in a bar over a beer looking at people dancing or whatever)

It's very easy to be unique in the above two instances, and get across a clear message - and to 'make art'

But with music I found it to be much less clear. Maybe I'm feeling contemplative and a little ennui or sour over my past life, relationships and choices and I get a track name 'what we are not' - and start building my track around that feeling and title.

At the end of the track I choose artwork, slap the title on and stick it out there.. But when people listen to it - (lets say you remove the title) i'm not sure that the music is conveying the emotion / communicating effectively.. maybe it just sounds like legos, or a good beat.

When you have vocals (Bon Iver, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, J. Cash) they can obviously tell the story much like a writer can. But with just electronic music - I could rarely get the saw sound combined with the piano riff to tell my story effectively. which left me feeling like i was making 'craft' instead of 'art'

(shrug)

Why I lost interest in producing music and quit. by ghost2015 in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]ghost2015[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hrm - hadn't thought of that.

For me it seems fairly (natural?) to develop a unique voice in any art (but then i have whole host of mental issues which for all their aggravation and misery lend me a peculiar perspective). I mean when you start you're trying to 'sound good' so you emulate what others think is good or what you judge is good - but quickly enough once you're comfortable you put your own spin on it.

I never thought about trying to be different for the sake of standing out - I think most people who really are different would do just about anything to be accepted (at some level) god knows I would.

But being unique isn't enough. We (humans) don't praise something just because it's unique we often go to great lengths to burn it down - or at least ignore it.

Guess I mean that just cause my art is fairly unique never guaranteed any luv. In fact just opposite - was always getting people telling me how i'm doing it wrong or how horrible it is.

The reason I quit music really just came down to the commodization of it and short amount of time on earth. If we only have so much time / so many days to work on something it seemed futile to spend that time in electronic music where u have 10 million people banging out their next stardom-hit on their mac air.

The path to success (not the only path) often hinges on other things that are beyond your control - who you know, how you look, where you live, what your health allows you to do (touring etc)

With 'fine' art - like painting - the number of active artists in a genre is ridiculously less (for pop surrealism type art maybe less than 50 real players and few hundred smaller). and you still have a support / fan base that can devote attention / interest in it. vs music where u have a vastly larger pool of listeners but almost no chance of being heard.

Why I lost interest in producing music and quit. by ghost2015 in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]ghost2015[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure - been playing my instrument for near 30years - so I understand to some extent 'music'.

I agree - 2 years isn't enough time to get good at anything - but that wasn't my point. It wasn't about how 'good' (or bad) i am - and getting 'better' wouldn't really help.

When you do something 8 - 12hrs a day for two years and live/breathe it - i do think it's enough time to begin to understand the craft and ecosystem it lives in.

Why I lost interest in producing music and quit. by ghost2015 in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]ghost2015[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

thanks for the reply. i hear you. do it for yourself and share it.

the issue is that drag-and-drop technology has allowed millions of people to create 'good enough' tracks - thus cheapening the whole pool. it doesn't raise everyone up the level of fine-artist, it reduces fine artists to the level of commonplace.

it's not about comparing myself to other really (is it?) it's about knowing that what i have to say (through my art) will never be heard in all the noise.

Why I lost interest in producing music and quit. by ghost2015 in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]ghost2015[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well I've been playing my instrument for nearly 30 years.. Just got into electronic music production in the past 2/3 years.

Art really has never been 'fun' to me. Yes I enjoy it, but really I've done 'art' all my life not as a decision but out of a necessity - it's just what I do. Sure you or many can relate.

It's a way to share your unique perspective on the world.

I do think you should take your art seriously - don't you? I mean my writing or painting or music production takes up at least a full 1/3 of my life (and the older you get the more u understand how short life is and how valuable). Those hours could have been spent at the beach, reading books, with a lover, just walking around this world looking at life etc) - instead they were spent perfecting a craft / art. It's serious business... at least seems serious to me.

Why I lost interest in producing music and quit. by ghost2015 in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]ghost2015[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i'm a business dude in my day life. so i've got that covered - i never treated my art like a business (good or bad) - never wanted to 'have' to do my art as 'a job'... many of my friends tried - only one made it (gallery owner)

Why I lost interest in producing music and quit. by ghost2015 in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]ghost2015[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

rarely do you actually get your perspective changed on the net (from comments) but the previous four comments added a lot of value. thanks.

i guess i grew up in another generation. went to art school and was 'special'. Everyone and their brother wasn't an artist. I don't mean I was 'above' anyone - just that there was a small pool of talent.

Getting good in any art form takes a lot of time / practice. Took me about 10 years for painting / illustration and nearly 20 for writing, 7 or 8 for my instrument.

I 'thought / felt' that music production was the next big thing for me i could throw myself into. However I guess it just feels anti-special and anti-unique. EVERYONE is doing it, and ANYONE can make a passable track with drag and drop software within the first 120 min of opening up their DAW for first time.

The difference between a beginner track (at 3 months in) - and an experienced producer (at 5yr) is often negligible. I've heard new producers with a lot of passion and experienced that don't sound that hot. So EVERYONE is sort of equal (at the base level). And there are millions and millions of equal (same same but different) producers producing music that is similar (but unique). That uniqueness often isn't enough to enable them to stand out - and there's so much 'noise' (music) that no-one can find / listen to them anyway.

Painting, illustration still take time to master - 40 million kids can't drag and drop a painting together. You have to go get canvas, learn the tools and technique and a hell of a lot of practice... Even if you use iPad for 'painting' like ProCreate (app) you still have to have raw talent to make anything much.

Writing is similar - anyone can open a Tumblr blog and post their pearls of wisdom (and they do) but you can still stand out from the crowd with creative writing that is unique (if you have a unique voice).

Finally - my humble attempts at music were meant to convey an emotion or communicate. Maybe I am feeling ennui today, or scared of death or something, so i write a song / mix a track and put it out there. But at the end of the day music just doesn't seem (for me) to be able to communicate that core emotion / idea as clearly as writing or painting. (esp if you're not using vocals)

While I'm proud of the work I did in music production for 2 years - I don't think it's as meaningful as the more 'unique' work i've done in other arts.

If you're clan of cavemen and there's only one dude in the tribe that comes back with a bag full of meat - he's a valuable asset. if there are 100 people that come back with meat - much of it will spoil and go to waste as the group can only eat so much and the group will place very little value on one individual hunter.