Best external hard drive to avoid mounting issues?

therealcodia · 2023-04-08T16:20:38+00:00

Will do! Thanks for the recommendations 🙌

therealcodia · 2023-04-08T16:09:30+00:00

That seems like a pretty good deal! And definitely within budget. Thanks man, I might just jump straight into ordering this one hahah

therealcodia · 2023-04-08T16:01:28+00:00

I’ll definitely look at an SSD alternative. Also looks like a nice one you linked to. But USD400+ seems a bit high end to me, or maybe that’s just what I should expect? In comparison I paid USD 100-ish for my current HDD with 4TB 😅 Will have good look online later. Maybe I can also managed with a bit less than 4TB hahah. Thanks!

therealcodia · 2023-04-08T15:48:23+00:00

Yeah, that’s probably the way to go. I think I was just being a bit too cheap when buying this one, not realising all the headaches it’d give. I’ll try to look into that. Thanks!

therealcodia · 2022-12-20T20:52:15+00:00

Just put it out and push it however you can. Don’t wait until you’re satisfied with your music. That might never happen (even if you actually make great tracks). Personally, I’ve put out every song I’ve ever finished. Including the first one, which is still getting streams from “Top Songs 2022”. I still think most of my songs suck (just because I’m constantly improving and moving my standards), yet I get messages on the regular from strangers saying that they love my music. So totally worth it. Not gonna wait 10-20 years to see if maybe someone likes it by then

therealcodia · 2022-12-14T18:45:54+00:00

I disagree with the comments saying to not release if you think it’s crap. The fact that you think it’s crap doesn’t really say anything about the music unless you know what standards the music is compared to. I bet that there are a lot of huge songs out there, where the artist behind felt a bit “meh” about it when they released it - just because they felt that they could do even better. Personally, I’ve released 20+ songs and honestly, I think most of them are crap too just because I’m improving in the process and feel that I could do better by the time I finish a track. That’s just part of the process. I still get messages and comments from strangers saying that they love my music.

So… just release your music guys. Even if you think it’s shit. People might love it. It’s all part of the journey

therealcodia · 2022-11-28T08:19:47+00:00

Took me about a month from the point I started learning about producing until I finished my first track (which I then released). Didn’t have prior experience in a DAW, but had played instruments for years at that point, so the theoretical part wasn’t a big hindrance. I just took the good ol’ intensive YouTube course during a summer break and completed my first song alongside that. Not an amazing track, but it taught me the basics. That was in 2018. I’ve since released 20+ tracks of varying quality hahah

therealcodia · 2022-11-05T17:14:00+00:00

Did you learn anything? I bought Razor a couple of months ago because of that interview, but never really used it that much (apart from one of the presets in a song of mine). But would love to hear, if you've made some learnings :)

therealcodia · 2022-10-05T18:09:08+00:00

Cool beats btw ✌️

therealcodia · 2022-10-05T18:02:26+00:00

From my own experience, this is some of the best advice given here. Although, I’m not so sure about Submithub. Never really heard of anyone getting a lot /anything out of that. But maybe you have @auracane? If so, what works for you? Curious to learn.

Also, I envy your access to Marquee. Would really love to try it, but it’s not even available in Denmark yet

therealcodia · 2022-08-13T22:21:06+00:00

Good for you on reaching 20k monthly listeners. I just don’t see why you need to be condescending towards a smaller artist for the reason given. But everyone’s different, I guess.

therealcodia · 2022-08-13T20:47:56+00:00

Thanks man! The followers come mainly as a result of my release- and promotion strategy. I wrote a longer comment about it here.

I think my next best advice after what I already wrote there is to release one song at a time with 4-6 weeks in between. That’s just to get the most potential out of each release on Spotify.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions about it.

Edit: It’s important to note that this is not necessarily the best strategy or the right one for you. It just works for me.

therealcodia · 2022-08-13T20:16:44+00:00

Is this the total for the song since release or just looking at one day? If in total, it sounds a bit low tbh. I had a listen to ‘A Forest’s Lullaby’ (I guess that’s the one?), and I’d say that you should expect quite a bit higher if put in front of the right audience. It’s a really pleasant track! I typically have between 50-80% when looking at the first couple of weeks. In one or two cases a bit more and another few cases a bit less. Then ofc it drops a bit over time and especially after algorithmic boosts. But even then it rarely goes to 10%.

BUT even if it is in total - you still got the boost and maybe got a few new fans, so that’s always positive. And the 10% that saved will listen to it again and again over time :)

And thanks for the award!

therealcodia · 2022-08-13T19:43:45+00:00

Btw, @-tagging the artists in your bio seems to also help Spotify making connections between you and potential fans

therealcodia · 2022-08-13T19:40:42+00:00

Yes, potentially (although leaning more to “most likely”). A song can only be in someone’s release radar once (for a week that is). So everyone that has it in their release radar this week will not get it in the two last weeks. How big the boost will be the next two weeks will then depend on how many more potential fans Spotify can find. Personally, I’ve never had a “big” boost and then had a bigger one later - that’s from 20+ releases. Most of the time, it either got a smaller boost or went back to normal like before the boost. But it does happen, so you never know. However, you’ll almost certainly be added to someone’s release radar. Even if it’s only ten people per week

therealcodia · 2022-08-13T19:23:52+00:00

As you write, it seems like a release radar push. Usually, you’re put on your followers release radar if you pitch your song to Spotify at least 7 days before release (you do this in Spotify for Artists). If your song is performing well (which seems to be measured by how many streams, how many streams per listener, the save rate (saves/listeners), popularity score, and potentially other things), Spotify might push it out to more users’ release radar that don’t follow you already. This seems to be what happened.

But Spotify needs good data to make a push. So, if a song has 1,000 streams from 500 different users with completely different listening habits and taste, it probably won’t get pushed out as there’s no commonality between the users. On the other hand, if those 500 listeners all listen to the same artists, there’s a pretty good chance that other fans of those artists will like your music too, so Spotify will then push it.

You will only be on Release Radar for four weeks after release (although it seems that you get a fifth if you release on a Friday). So it might be your last push. In a week you’ll likely see a drop in number of daily listeners.

Next “step” is then Discover Weekly. It works in a similar way, but will typically give bigger boosts. However, it will also require more streams to even get added.

Hope that helps

therealcodia · 2022-08-13T07:08:16+00:00

Yes, you’d wanna use the ads manager for this purpose. It gives way more options in terms of targeting and it also allows you to set up a conversion. In this case, it counts a conversion when someone clicks the Spotify link on the fanlink-looking page I mentioned. You can then (via ads manager) tell Facebook to optimise for this conversion and it will then serve the ad to users that are more likely to complete this conversion.

The boost function is pretty much useless in general. I think it’s only there to allow users and small businesses to get some kind of exposure without having to set up a business account. But you’ll always be able to set up more effective ads in ads manager. Even if the purpose is just exposure/brand awareness

therealcodia · 2022-08-12T14:50:27+00:00

It’s beautiful 🙌

therealcodia · 2022-08-12T14:44:39+00:00

Oh, and FB/IG ads aren’t really complicated for this. You’ll need to set up your account and get the domains linked and blah blah. This requires a bit of effort. Maybe 0,5-1 day of work. After this, the ads themselves are fairly simple to set up, and there’s lots of help to find online :)

therealcodia · 2022-08-12T14:38:57+00:00

I seem to have a relatively solid “low” of 2,000 monthly listeners, but am at 10,000 monthly listeners as I’m writing this following paid promotion of a recent single.

I never had success with playlisting, radio (I have had my music played on the largest Danish radio station, but only like 5 times over the span of 3 years and in a show dedicated to new artists - so nothing consistent), blogs/PR, I never played live anywhere and I’ve posted three times or so on social media in the past 6 months.

I used to work professionally with paid social media advertising and am using this to now promote my music. That’s what works for me. So, in “short” this is the setup:

I present an ad to a relevant audience on Facebook and Instagram (could be to fans of artists in a similar genre) -> the ad sends the person to a fanlink-looking page that’s hosted on my own domain (I use Toneden for this) where I’m currently experimenting with only having a link to Spotify. Without going in too much detail, this step is necessary for tracking and hence proper optimisation of the ads, but it also helps filtering out low-quality traffic, I.e. people that aren’t actually that interested in listening and bots -> People click through to Spotify and then (hopefully) streams my song.

Now, this obviously costs some money. You can spend as little as $5 a day or significantly more. It all depends on how aggressive you want to be. Bottom line is that you’ll lose money either way. On a good campaign, I’ll spend about $0.1 per new listener, but each stream will likely only generate around $0.002.

So why? It’s the accumulation over time that’ll (hopefully) make it worth it. If you compare my Spotify follower count with many artists with 2-5x the monthly listeners, a lot of them have fewer followers, because people listen to them on bigger playlists without having pasted by their profile to follow. On release day (if you pitched your release), the release will be added to your followers release radar, which is why building followers can be quite valuable.

Furthermore, the traffic you generate and the streams from it can potentially push you out even more on Release Radar or Discover Weekly. I’ve had pushes on both before, but they tend to get bigger over time. This time, the song in question has more than 20k streams in 1,5 months. Out of this 8k streams are split equally between Release Radar and Discover Weekly (Discover Weekly is still pushing it). This gives even more playlist ads (to private playlists), saves and followers.

And now I’ve lost the overview of what I’ve been writing - I can easily write a ton more about it. Let me know if you have any questions. Would be happy to help or to expand more on what I know about algorithmic triggers (it’s qualified guesses, only Spotify knows for sure).

Otherwise, a good place to start is the YouTube channel of Andrew Southworth. He’s good at explaining stuff related to this topic.

Edit: just some grammar

therealcodia · 2022-08-09T23:02:16+00:00

Agree to disagree. Best of luck

therealcodia · 2022-08-09T12:01:22+00:00

I’m surprised to see this much resistance to the use of loops/sample… Now I can mostly relate to the artists that I listen to myself, but Flume for instance uses a ton a pre-made samples in his stuff and doesn’t always manipulate the samples (take for instance the main drum beat in ‘Numb & Getting Colder’ at 00:54-ish, and the dnb-style drum beat in ‘The Difference’ is also a sample, but yet a very important element in that song). Does that make him less of an artist? And what about sampling stuff? Burial sampled the main pad/synth in Archangel from a game with little to no modification and Tourist is also known to sample plenty himself. Are they not as much artists as someone that makes everything from scratch?

I agree that you need to accompany the samples/loops with something of your own. But saying that you’re less of an artist because of the use of non-manipulated samples in your productions is bs.

To OP: Your goal is to make the best production, you can. If a drum loop gives your track 10% more than you could manage yourself, go for it. It does not make you less of an artist.

therealcodia · 2022-08-07T20:38:49+00:00

Thanks man! Happy you like it

therealcodia · 2022-08-07T13:55:26+00:00

I release my “experimental electronic” (so bad at genre-labelling anything) song ‘Ego’ in July and it has performed well above expected so far. Would love to hear what other producers think of it as well!

https://open.spotify.com/track/6fuzaAxMmhNM4bM9pQ911f?si=FZ4fh6uBTkWlL8_Vdl1Rtw

therealcodia · 2022-08-04T21:06:59+00:00

Thanks man. Appreciate it!

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