How Do You Promote Music When You Don’t Particularly Want to Talk to Anyone?
I have discovered a flaw in my approach to music.
Apparently, after making it, you are supposed to tell people it exists.
This seems unnecessarily complicated.
I can write the songs.
I can record them.
I can spend several months adjusting a vocal by fractions of a decibel until both the recording and I have lost all sense of proportion.
I can build a website.
I can upload the music.
I can write about what the songs mean.
Then comes the part called marketing.
I despise marketing.
Not because I think musicians should somehow be above it.
That would be convenient nonsense.
If nobody knows the music exists, nobody can listen to it.
The problem is much simpler.
I do not know anybody.
And nobody knows me.
The Comfortable Problem
This is largely self-inflicted.
I like isolation.
Quite a lot.
There are people who describe isolation as though it is automatically a tragedy.
For me, it is usually Tuesday.
I like being self-contained.
I like working alone.
I like not having to explain where I am going, what I am doing, why I am quiet, whether I am enjoying myself, or what I thought of somebody’s holiday photographs.
Solitude removes variables.
It is peaceful.
It is predictable.
It is also, as it turns out, spectacularly inefficient when attempting to build an audience.
The qualities that make it possible for me to sit alone for hours writing, recording and producing music are almost exactly the qualities that make promoting it difficult.
That is mildly inconvenient.
Apparently You Need People
The usual advice is reasonable.
Build relationships.
Engage with the community.
Network.
Start conversations.
Reach out.
Be visible.
Interact consistently.
All very sensible.
Unfortunately, each instruction appears to contain people.
This creates complications.
I do not naturally walk into a room and begin introducing myself.
I do not do the digital equivalent particularly well either.
The internet is often described as easier for people who dislike social interaction.
Perhaps.
There is physical distance.
There is time to think before responding.
Nobody is standing three inches away holding a drink and asking what I do for a living.
These are all improvements.
But the underlying system is still social.
You are still expected to approach people.
Respond correctly.
Join conversations.
Know when to speak.
Know when not to speak.
Be interesting without appearing to try too hard.
Promote yourself without appearing to promote yourself.
Apparently the rules followed us online.
They simply acquired buttons.
The Strange Position of Wanting to Be Heard
This is where the contradiction becomes interesting.
I do not particularly want attention.
I do want the music heard.
Those are not the same thing.
I have no great desire to become publicly familiar.
I do not want strangers knowing every detail of my life.
I do not want to manufacture a version of myself designed to be constantly available.
SHANNOW exists partly because boundaries are useful.
There is the music.
There are the words.
There is the stage identity.
That should be enough.
And yet I still want somebody to hear what I made.
Anybody.
Not because I require approval.
That distinction matters.
If somebody dislikes the music, fine.
If they disagree with the lyrics, also fine.
I am not looking for permission to believe what I believe.
But music is communication.
Eventually communication requires somebody at the other end.
Otherwise I have spent several months sending extremely elaborate messages to a hard drive.
The hard drive has offered very little feedback.
Marketing Feels Like Asking for Attention
I think this is the part I dislike most.
Promotion often feels like standing in a room and announcing:
Please look at me.
I have spent most of my life attempting the opposite.
Now I am supposed to interrupt strangers repeatedly to explain that I have released something.
Listen to this.
Read this.
Watch this.
Pre-save this.
Follow this.
Subscribe to this.
Here is another photograph of me reminding you about the thing I mentioned yesterday.
I understand the mechanism.
Repetition creates awareness.
Awareness creates familiarity.
Familiarity may eventually create interest.
Unfortunately, from inside my head, repetition quickly starts to feel like harassment.
I mentioned the EP on Monday.
They know.
Marketing apparently responds:
Mention it again.
This feels unreasonable.
Marketing does not appear troubled.
Nobody Is Waiting
There is another fact worth acknowledging.
Nobody is waiting for my record.
That is not self-pity.
It is mathematics.
I am an independent artist without a large existing audience.
Nobody has been watching a countdown clock for six months.
There will not be crowds outside record shops at midnight.
There are barely record shops.
If I release Fat-Cat Democracy quietly and tell nobody, the world will continue with remarkable composure.
That means I have to create the first bit of attention myself.
This is where people sometimes suggest confidence.
Confidence is not the issue.
I believe in the record.
I know why I made it.
I know what the songs are trying to do.
The difficulty is converting:
I made something I think is worth hearing
into:
Hello, stranger. I have decided that your afternoon requires my music.
There is a social step between those statements that I do not naturally possess.
The Algorithm Is Not a Friend
There is always the algorithm.
A wonderfully reassuring word.
Apparently if I post consistently, use the correct formats, encourage engagement, choose suitable hashtags, maintain retention and satisfy several other requirements known only to a server farm, the algorithm may show my work to somebody.
Possibly.
This is a peculiar relationship.
I make music about human behaviour.
Then I present it to a machine in the hope that it will introduce me to humans.
Progress.
The machine also prefers engagement.
So once again we arrive at conversation.
There appears to be no escape.
I Can Explain a Song. Selling It Is Different.
Give me a lyric and I can tell you why the line is there.
Ask me why White Gloves is written through Iago and I can explain it.
Ask why the portrait in Inheritance begins by assuming its suffering must be deserved and I know exactly what interested me.
Ask me about the anger in Fat-Cat Democracy, or Kat and Pete refusing to bend in Tramlines and Teeth, and there is something to discuss.
That feels natural.
Because there is a subject.
“Buy my EP” contains considerably less intellectual material.
Perhaps that is the solution.
Maybe I should stop trying to become good at marketing.
Perhaps I should become good at explaining why the work exists.
Those are not quite the same thing.
I Can Do This Part
I can write.
I can explain.
I can make observations.
I can show the machinery behind a song.
I can discuss lyrics, production, characters, mistakes, decisions and the occasional plug-in that appears to have been designed by somebody with a personal objection to accessibility.
That I understand.
If somebody discovers the music through one of those things, good.
If ten people read a post and one listens to the record, that is one person who was not there before.
Perhaps audience-building does not have to mean becoming socially omnipresent.
Perhaps it can mean leaving enough evidence in enough places that somebody eventually finds it.
That sounds more manageable.
Less networking.
More breadcrumbs.
The Uncomfortable Requirement
I still have to make myself visible.
There is no clever philosophical argument that removes that requirement.
If I want the music heard, I have to tell people it exists.
More than once.
I have to tolerate the possibility that nobody reacts.
Then post again.
I have to accept that silence does not necessarily mean rejection.
Sometimes it simply means the post disappeared underneath a photograph of somebody’s dinner.
The competition is formidable.
And I have to interact occasionally.
This is perhaps the most alarming development.
Somebody might comment.
I may have to answer.
Fortunately written language contains a useful invention called the full stop.
SHANNOW Is Both the Problem and the Solution
SHANNOW is comfortable alone.
That is part of him.
It is not branding.
It is not cultivated mystery.
If nobody spoke to me for several days, I would not necessarily identify a problem.
But SHANNOW also makes music.
And making music while insisting that nobody come near it is slightly absurd.
So there has to be a compromise.
I do not need to become an influencer.
I do not need to pretend I enjoy networking.
I do not need to document breakfast.
I do not need to manufacture enthusiasm every morning.
I can simply keep putting the work where people might encounter it.
A song.
A lyric.
A thought.
A photograph.
A blog.
Another song.
Repeat.
Not because I enjoy marketing.
Because I want the music to have a chance of reaching somebody other than me.
Somebody, Somewhere
I do not know who will listen to Fat-Cat Democracy.
Perhaps very few people.
Perhaps more than I expect.
Perhaps somebody finds one track six months from now at two in the morning because an algorithm finally became useful.
I cannot control that.
I can only make the record available.
Explain why it exists.
Keep pointing towards it occasionally.
Then hope that somewhere there is another person who likes heavy music, uncomfortable questions, strange narrators and songs that do not explain themselves immediately.
I do not need everybody.
I am not entirely convinced I would know what to do with everybody.
Somebody will do.
Then perhaps somebody else.
That appears to be how audiences begin.
One stranger at a time.
Which is unfortunate.
Strangers are people.
Still, I made the music to be heard.
So I suppose I had better mention it.
FAT-CAT DEMOCRACY
14 October.
Four songs about power, manipulation, survival and consequence.
This has been marketing.
I apologise for the disturbance.
— SHANNOW