An insight into my creative world, sharing my knowledge and experience, to help artists, songwriters and producers take their careers to the next level.
why most listeners never become fans.
|
i think one of the hardest things about releasing music is knowing what to measure. everything is numbers. streams. followers. views. playlist adds. and naturally, those become the things we chase. and i get it. i’ve done the exact same thing. for the last few years, most of my artist releases have been through labels. and when a song comes out through a label, you get used to a certain process. the song goes live. the playlists start moving. the numbers start climbing. and without realising, it becomes really easy to judge the success of a release based on those numbers. but releasing independently has started to change the way i think about that. getting someone to listen is not the same as getting someone to care. someone can discover your song in a playlist. listen. enjoy it. and then move onto the next song without ever knowing who made it. that doesn’t mean those moments aren’t important. they are. getting your music heard matters. but the real challenge is turning attention into connection. the person who listens again. the person who follows the journey. the person who remembers your name when the next song comes out. those are the moments that build something bigger. and they’re harder to measure. i think a lot of artists struggle with this. because deep down, i don’t think most artists are chasing numbers just for the sake of numbers. they’re chasing what those numbers represent. a sign that something is working. that the hours spent creating something alone actually meant something to someone else. and that’s the difficult part. the things that make us feel like we’re moving forward aren’t always the things that are easiest to measure. a playlist might give you a listener. but the song, the story and the connection are what create a fan. and i think that’s the balance we’re all trying to figure out. the goal was never just attention. it was connection. |
Rich Pilkington.
An insight into my creative world, sharing my knowledge and experience, to help artists, songwriters and producers take their careers to the next level.
when I first started making music, I thought getting better meant learning more. another tutorial. another plugin. another songwriting technique. another mixing trick. and to be fair, all of those things helped. they taught me how to create. but over the last few years, I've realised the biggest breakthroughs in my career didn't come from learning new techniques. they came from learning how to think differently about the techniques I already knew. this really hit me over the last couple of...
lately i've been thinking a lot about creativity. not creativity itself. but the way we talk about it. i think we've romanticised the idea that great work arrives out of nowhere. one perfect idea. one magical afternoon. one moment where inspiration suddenly strikes. and then somehow... you create something incredible. if i'm honest, i used to think like that too. i'd wait until i felt creative. until i felt motivated. until it felt like the right day to write. but over the years, i've...
lately i've been thinking a lot about attention. not how to get it. but who it's actually coming from. everywhere you look, someone is trying to grab a few seconds of your time. another reel. another ad. another "you need this." and if i'm honest, i catch myself doing it too. trying to find better hooks. better ways to get people to stop scrolling. because that's the game now. attention feels like the currency. but i'm starting to wonder if we've become so obsessed with getting attention that...