RE: Are you writing for your audience?
I see this a lot with music producers over the last 8 years on all social media where a simple "new track, listen link" post doesn't get much of a response and in the end a load of spam messages appear in my DM. Safe to say, I either block, ignore or forget the message was sent by that person.
A lot of content creators do struggle with the marketing side of it. But marketing, branding and all that stuff are skills that can be learnt IF you want to.
For some I know, and I can only speak for those I have come across in music communities not just on steem but elsewhere, the just make music as a hobby, churning out tunes and dropping links everywhere.
Fine.
But then don't go complaining to me that you're not making money from it and no-one is listening and labels are shit because they don't promote and blah blah blah...
You can't have it both ways.
I get the difficulties content creators have with marketing though. It's tough when you spend hours and hours in the studio (for me, weeks and months sometimes) to create a track that you just sometimes want to post and then you don't do any hype, no clips, you just want to get it out there.
But I learnt blogging by coming to steem, joined a great community to see if I could improve story telling to help my music travel... Turns out, there just isn't as big an interest in Drum & Bass music as I had hoped so what it forced me to do was make a change...
I started doing travel blogs and embed a track at the bottom of mine with a little story behind it... Turns out that was a good move and went through a HUGE rebranding on my socials, now I'm getting noticed a bit more which is cool.
I'm sure there was a point to what I started saying - maybe to be a bit more open to change of how you portray yourself and think about what's important to you as a content creator but I mostly agree with what you're saying too!
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Yep I fully agree with you here and know it depends on each person’s goals. It your goal is to get noticed then you have to write (or produce) something an audience wants to see. If your goal is to write and produce just as a form of self expression and don’t care about being notice - that’s totally good too.
This.. such this. As that is what I see a lot - people upset they aren’t getting the response they want without attempting to actually make anything anyone would want to see. OR to go out and find the audience that would want to see it.
I respect those that are creating for their own fulfillment and for them an audience may come naturally at some point.. but those expecting (and complaining) about the attention have a responsibility to put some effort in.
I love how you combine your music with your travel blogs btw
It's SO simple. If you want to make money from it, you're making a business out of it. If you don't, it's a hobby and something of passion and anything that comes from it should be considered as a bonus, not "income" in the traditional sense.
If you go for the former, well, there's a whole lot of things to learn about setting up a business such as goal setting, you as a brand, your product, market research (who do you sound like), the kind of people who will buy your music, what makes them tick... That's just to get started, maybe 5-10% and it's a forever evolving thing.
This is where I am at (the latter - serious hobbying). I did entertain the business element, purchased a few music marketing courses and found out a lot about my own goals, motivations and what's realistic (arguably being realistic was the most humbling experience that I had!)
The realisation I had was, "I make music to escape so if it becomes my sole source, what am I going to do to escape?"
I've loved being on steem and meeting loads of different people, forever learning, as well as the chance to earn something from what I still consider to be a hobby but something I put everything into (gotta love perfectionism sometimes)!
So I'm with you on the complainers and have wanted to vent about it myself for sometime so reading your post prompted it 😂
And thanks a lot for the support you guys in the c-squared community have given me btw
(and sorry for an outburst on a previous post where I was supporting the leader of another community I am in. I since found out the full story and saw you had replied to me but then removed it)