life as an independent artist has sucked this month.
Normally I like to keep things positive on here. There’s so much negativity floating around on the Internet and in traditional media, so I like to always be a dissenting positive perspective, sharing thoughts and insights and news that’s, well, good. But I have to be honest about my life as an independent artist this past month: it has sucked. I’m releasing a new song as WILDWOOD on Friday called “Shattered” that I wrote and co-produced, and it’s hands-down the most interesting, inventive track I’ve ever created. Its blend of Americana roots and pop elements makes it genre-defying, and I’ve been so excited to share it with the world. (You can go ahead and pre-save it to your preferred music streaming service by clicking here if you’d like.) But preparing for release day has been frustrating and disheartening.
If you’re not aware, as an independent artist, you not only write the song, create an arrangement for the song, produce the song, and record the song, but then you are also the person creating the album artwork, coming up with a marketing and distribution strategy, and serving as your own publicist, reaching out to bloggers, online magazine contributors, playlist editors, and radio promoters in hopes of getting the song and its story shared. As an independent artist, you don’t have a team of people to do any of this hard work for you. It’s all on you.
That being said, at the end of September, I did all the things I was “supposed to do” as an independent artist with an upcoming release. I submitted my song through my distributor 5 weeks in advance of the release date; submitted it to Spotify playlist editors through the proper channels (plus sent a few personal emails to some of my contacts); reached out to 50+ bloggers and online magazine editors with personal emails and follow-ups for potential coverage; submitted my songs to SubmitHub, a site where you actually pay to guarantee bloggers will check out your music for consideration. And here I am now, a week before the song comes out, with nothing to show for my efforts. Every single blogger on SubmitHub declined the opportunity to share my song on their blog. And not one person I reached out to via email, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook even wrote back to my messages. It’s been complete radio silence.
For a song you’ve poured your heart and soul into to be met with this sort of apathy is discouraging at best and downright depressing at worst. The logical side of my brain knows these people receive hundreds, if not thousands, of music submissions every day. I’m just a speck in an oversaturated market. But these are some of the same people who have supported my music in the past with raving reviews and enthusiastic encouragement, so the human side of me is saying, “What the heck?! Do you not see me? Am I invisible?” Not being responded to over and over and over again starts to make you feel a little less than human. Rejection is a part of this business, for sure. Not everyone is going to like me or my music. And that’s ok. But being rejected (especially on such a massive scale by people you thought were on your team) hurts. (Was I pre-destined for heartbreak with a song called “Shattered” about a heart that’s so broken it’s in a million pieces beyond repair? Maybe. Funny joke, universe.)
What I’ve taken away from this is a bit more positive. Today’s digital age makes it easy to ignore a message or an email - it just seems so harmless. That can’t be a real person with real feelings on the other end of that laptop, right? Wrong. Even more, my generation has started a new trend of not “showing up.” In a world where we are seemingly more connected than ever, we somehow don’t connect. We don’t write back. We don’t show up. Last week, my friends were shooting a music video and asked a bunch of friends to come be extras in a wedding scene. I told them I would go, so I drove 40 minutes outside of town, in traffic, to be there for them. I got there, and I was the only friend who showed up. The only other people who showed up were their bandmates, and the video crew had to jump in to make the scene work. Witnessing that reminded me that this whole not responding to people issue is way bigger than me not getting responses for my little song coming out next week. People today don’t value writing back or showing up. Why establish real human connections when we can scroll through social media feeds and like photos and comment?
My takeaway from all of this both as an artist and as a human is this: In a world where no one writes back, write back. In a world where no one shows up, show up.
