It’s nice to have anyone pay attention to my music but it really doesn’t mean much unless those people become invested at some level. Most people that hear our music will listen once and never return to listen again. If they try to communicate with you, become a regular fan and/ or buy your music it is a much more positive sign that your music has struck a nerve. Music alone though doesn’t solidify the fan-artist relationship. Communication, storytelling, promotion, publicity and developing a relationship/ friendship with people will be what really keeps people coming back to your music. Think of any band that you really like, bands that you follow….You’re probably interested in what they have to say, what they look like, their live shows, their interviews (whether audio or video……probably more so video). Our music is just a part of the equation. People might get hooked through your music but almost everyone is looking for something more important. They want to relate to the artist in some way. You’ll have a hard time selling a country artist/ band to the country fan base if you dress the band up like a heavy metal band and if that country band behaves like a metal band also, the disconnect between the audience and the artist will grow even wider. It’s a hard concept for us musicians to really accept and work with. We expect the music to sell itself, but it doesn’t work that way and it never has. I’ve been struggling with this idea for years because my tendency is to just expect the music to do the talking. Managers and music biz people understand that the actual music is a relatively small part of building an audience, maintaining an audience, growing an audience and “selling” the music. It’s not how good the music is, it’s how good you are at convincing others to believe your music is good. The first step is to make people aware of your music, then you need to capture their interest AND maintain that interest. I wish it was as simple as creating good music but it’s so much more work than that.
That’s really cool, Dan! Small wins…
A couple of weeks ago, Igot a message on my Instagram page from Justin in Borås Sweden, which said this:
“Hello Fytakyte, I am a friend of Johan that has been writing to you. We are in the same class and today is a special day for the class. Today is our “ Student “ it’s basically a graduation and i would like to send you a video of the class jamming to ( in my opinion ) one of your best songs! BITTER!! The video is from our party at a classmates house a few hours before the real ceremony begins at the gymnasium
hope you enjoy it! We all love your music and everyone wishes you the best with your career
P.S you have been a big part of our three years together and our journey to our graduation and we are so grateful
”
Justin sent me this video:
It was pretty cool to hear a bunch of kids on the other side of the world singing along on the top of their voices to “Bitter” at a party!
Johan had sent me quite a few messages going back quite a while. His first message said this:
Hello Fytakyte! In my class of music production we use your song “Bitter” and we love it! We go along singing
So as I understand it, because I made the multi-track for “Bitter” freely and publicly available, this class of high school students had been using it as the part of their audio production course.
Johan later asked to play a cover of the song at a gig he was doing, and had a friend who asked permission to do a remix of it…
… so Sweden definitely is leading the tally in my Spotify plays, and “Bitter” is by far the most popular song.
That video is a helluva compliment! This is very inspiring and it must feel awesome to have connected to a group of people with your music. I love this !
I hear you. As someone who sifts through 100’s of new releases a week, I completely understand. I try to reach out to the odd band or artist if I fall heavily for their work. I think it means a great deal to both parties. Maybe I should take a few minutes each week to do that more!
Yep. I struggle with the extra stuff too. I am probably an exception in that when I delve into the depths of bandcamp releases, I am solely judging on the music and only sometimes, after a long time post purchase do I look into the artist further - you tube and the like.
Yeah, that’s awesome!
At the end of the day, there may be several folks doing this to some of our songs (as in, people’s songs from this forum) and we will simply never know. I’m cool with that. In the end, I am happy making the stuff, I just wish I had another me to work on the promo stuff full time. I literally spent 5 hours today making a video for my first single for Alien Lard. I didn’t intend to and my original plan went south, yet here it is.
I often don’t have the time or energy, but every now and then…
I’ll make another post to share as not to hijack this one. 
I can relate!
I’ve often thought that if I had a few duplicates of myself I might be able to actually accomplish most of the tasks that are required to achieve the kind of success that I desire. The one thing I’ve come to realize about myself is that I don’t have endless stamina and drive to keep pushing all the time. I used to lie to myself, telling myself that I was so passionate about being musically successful that nothing could stop me….and yet I would always go through phases of high drivenness and then extended periods of burnout. There’s just too many unforeseen circumstances that happen in life. Work, relationships, bills, housing, accidents, emotional lulls and physical lulls and a million other things. The best thing a musician can do is team up with at least one other crafty, industrious person with a similar vision. Behind every success story there is a team of people helping with the dirty work. Nobody is a big success on their own fully and completely. They’re just the “face” of that success and a portion of it.
You did great if it only took 5 hours to make a video! I made a video back in 2017 (it’s somewhere in BTR) and that took me more than a week of working on it for many hours every day. So much footage gets left on the cutting room floor. Just taking the footage took at least 7 hours minimum. Then I struggled with the editing software, Adobe Premiere. Choosing what needs to be cut and how you want it edited takes a long time too. I’m sure if I was always making videos I would get better and finish them quicker, but improving my video making just cuts into my music making time and my music promoting time (which is zero at the moment). 
Nobody ever told us that art/ music was going to be more labour intensive than a typical 9 to 5 job, eh ?! 
My mirror won’t even talk to me.
I’m pretty experienced with using Premiere Pro which helps. Also, I didn’t have to shoot any video. I just searched a public dimain site for a horror film that suited the feel I was going for and then started hacking away at it to tell a rough story. Taking away the filming side of things speeds it up enormously!
I’ve been planning to do something similar. A few months ago I got a lot of footage from a public domain site. I chose video footage that I thought might suit some of my heavier music especially. I grabbed so much video that my computer is bloated with it now. I had planned on mixing some of my own footage with some suitable public domain stuff, but seeing how yours worked out well, I may just use the public domain stuff alone. I guess I’ll experiment a bit to see if I can make something entertaining using both together first, but if my music video doesn’t look right I’ll leave out the video clips that I shot.
I agree, the filming side of video making can be tricky. Finding a suitable background, location, clothing, acting, trying to find someone to operate the camera when you’re the subject and you want movement in the scene. Only a very small % of the video that you shoot will be usable, often times. I’ve thought about renting a big, cool looking recording space to shoot footage. Maybe get friends to act like they’re playing drums and bass, and singing backup vocals.