I guess my question in all this is: do the people that "LIKE" the Reels, or the viewers... do they buy in? Have they bought an album or a shirt? Signed up for the newsletter?
I see a lot of bands and artist on labels with management and touring and press and... can't sell 500 albums week of release.
I feel like we're all feeding the machine of social media, making these videos and clips but... who are they for? And - not to get all KEVIN KELLY here - but do the TRUE FANS even know we have a new album out? Or an upcoming tour?
PS. absolutely love what you do, please keep it up, I hope you sell 10,000 copies of everything!!!
here's one thing which i thought about this morning -- the reels don't bring in a lot of new followers BUT they put my song in front of my existing followers. quite often you can bring out a new song and promote it, promote it, promote it, and people will be like 'oh cool,' but not even listen to the song. at least instagram video content allows snippets of my song to crawl into people's heads through repeated exposure, so that they're more likely to build a connection with it and then convert (put it on playlists, buy it, come to a show etc)
Yes, that's one of the biggest opportunities I saw on social media, that you could embed video / audio with every post, to get someone to listen right THERE on the feed, rather than having to click over to Spotify or something.
this is always on my mind too. Like there's audience and Audience. I had that weird experience with Tumblr where for some reason my stuff was really popular and I had tons and tons of followers but they never translated into anything else - weren't interested in art prints, in following me on other media, commissioning art, literally nothing but just seeing what I post on Tumblr. It made me realize that social media are a bit like casinos - whether we individually do well or not, it sort of doesn't matter - the house always wins. We're all feeding the beast and if we get some crumbs, we should count ourselves lucky.
I still haven't found a way to actually garner the sort of attention I need without doing the things I don't want to do (chase trends and 'popular' stuff).
Yesss! That’s what I feel with so many of this big big big IG accounts. Six figure followings and can’t get 15 link clicks to anything. It’s all fishy.
Also somewhat unrelated but sort of related - I used to once in a while buy something from Insta ads, and it would be an actual product made by someone, I got some good things. I made the mistake a few months ago of assuming that a business with a decent looking insta profile is an actual business, got scammed, never got the product. Then I started checking much more closely and whichever one I look at it comes back a scam..... Last week made mistake again, figured this one for sure looked legit.... nope, scammed again. So even the businesses are gone. It's just lies wall to wall.
the coveted Tumblr fame! back in 2017/2018 i had a small growing following on instagram for bullet journaling. it was about 8k but my growth was constant. unfortunately there i didn't know how to connect with that audience beyond photographs of my notebook pages. i sold a couple things on etsy and had some people send me stationery to feature on my page but that's as far as it went. i definitely had a 'formula' to posting and interacting on instagram, it was almost like a game.
I do make art. I do make auxiliary stuff to try and promote the art. Honestly neither has particularly taken off.
There is definitely an attention span issue and it is largely due to the fact that 90% of the people are barely keeping their heads above water. People are overworked, overstressed, in a complete panic over what the future brings. The last thing they want is more mental effort in their downtime.
It drives me to despair sometimes to realize that the things that draw millions of views are invariably things like made up AITA stories and slime squishing/ soap slicing/ cream pouring ASMR type stuff. Just a little brain scratch. Nothing too involved. Keep it flowing from one thing to the next. Tiny dopamine hits.
So it's a pretty serious chicken-egg question (just kidding, chicken-egg question was successfully resolved in favor of the egg. But you know what I mean). Do we chastise creators for making what people want or do we chastise people for wanting what creators make? Do we send everyone to art appreciation seminars where we teach them how to recognize the sophisticated listicles from the unworthy listicles?
I don't know, man. Maybe we look for some more interesting angles. And eventually realize that even if we figure it all out perfectly, there probably isn't that much we can do to change it.
'Do we chastise creators for making what people want or do we chastise people for wanting what creators make?' -- i love that, that's kind of one of the central questions asked here and in that 'feed me' article. i can experiment with a few different types of content but if you ever see me pairing my music with slime then please take my phone away from me
“barely keeping their heads above water.” I completely agree.
I discover Substack not too long ago. I did free subscriptions to oodles of lists… but it haven’t signed up for anything paid… because I haven’t even read more than a handful of anyone’s posts.
I want to write and make and I am caught between that and “being productive.” G-damn capitalist mindset is in my bones, and my to-do list never seems to get shorter.
But, I’m always trying to be more conscious of what I’m choosing, mindful of what I’m reading (give me an article over a video, I’m too old for that TikTok crap!) or listening to, or responding to.
I loved your song! Added it to my library for whatever that’s worth. Beautiful!
thanks Jessie! i’m the same with paid subscriptions because there’s hardly any newsletters i read with weekly regularity. and thanks for listening to the song & adding it to your library!
Yap. I have been writing a lot and it has literally been in the face of constant criticism from everyone in my life that ‘I should be doing something more productive’ with that time. The struggle is real
The web, social media, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and smart phones have created the shortest attention span in human history. People can't concentrate for more than 20 seconds without needing another Dopamine hit. Short videos, Xitter, etc.
Can you imagine an English Victorian writer in today's world? George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, or the Brontë sisters with their lengthy tomes couldn't be successful today. What people want is celebrities, "reality television," and endless eternal bullshit sold as entertainment.
What do I do with my Substack? Whatever I want. Do I have a social media presence for my creative endeavors? No. I submit my musical recordings to a cheap distribution service and they end up on YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, etc and I make a couple of cents a year. Do I care? No.
I might as well be Emily Dickinson, who famously didn't share her poetry while she was alive. Her art became known posthumously.
I create because it's less boring that being a spectator. My Substack isn't for everyone's tastes. That's fine. I put it out there for those that do appreciate it, without pandering to the lowest, basest, common denominator.
i think for me it’s about a balance between making quality work and distilling it into quick dumb stuff (because i have the energy to), but not letting it overtake the actual art? i can’t lie that making art comes with the desire for it to be seen, which then will allow me to earn money from that art and be able to produce more!
I agree., music needs to be heard. I went to film school to learn screenwriting. Another art form that has to be seen. However, my creative writing doesn't necessarily need to be seen or promoted.
I have a profound mistrust of advertising and shameless self promotion, so I keep a low-profile. You're Instagram video for the earthquake song was cute. I couldn't do it, I'm not cute. No one wants to see this old white guy doing anything on video.
I appreciate this post very much. As an artist, it drives me nuts that the things I love to create, don't gain much attraction online but the BTS reels and the WIP or Talking In Front Of The Camera videos do gain attention.....I think people who aren't creative like to see the worlds of creatives, no matter how basic it may seem.
'no matter how basic it may seem' is the thing here, i think. people LIKE simple, basic stuff sometimes. it's frustrating because as artists we want to showcase the detail and complexity and beauty within our work but quite often that comes once a new audience member has been exposed to the surface level of our work enough and wants to go deeper.
I started off this year thinking I was finally going to get serious about my photography and try to make a transition into that as my full-time gig. I paid a marketing person, we came up with collateral and a marketing schedule, and when we were done, I…didn’t do anything. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to spend most of my time posting about my photography instead of actually doing the work itself.
So instead of doing all of the marketing on other platforms about my photography, I somehow ended up reviving my newsletter and spending a lot more time writing, but I’m writing about the things I want to write about. One of my newsletters each week focuses on images I’ve created and dives into what I like about them or why I edited them how I did. And I’m not doing it to be educational or ~provide value~, I’m doing it because I think it’s cool and I think being deliberate and reflective about my choices will make me better at photography. A reader gave me a great idea to post the original images as a comparison, and I thought that was a great idea, so I’m doing that too.
Photography still isn’t my full-time job (or even close; I don’t think I’ve even linked to my print site on my Substack) but at least I’m spending more of my time doing things that don’t feel like a huge drag and more of it working on my photography and sharing my art with people. I don’t want to make videos for people to tap past on Instagram. I don’t want to have to Show My Face to Create A Connection to try and get people to feel like they know me and want to buy prints of my work. I just want to make my cool stuff and share it on my own terms, and if that means I’m gonna have to work my email job until I’m 65, at least I’ll be happy.
it is funny how sometimes our brains/bodies just go “nope, i’m not doing this” and we have to follow suit! i love that you’ve come to a place where you can share authentically on your own terms
This resonated so much with me. I used to post A LOT on social media, believing it was necessary in order to sell books (I'm a writer). I do think some people know who I am who wouldn't have otherwise because of it (MAYBE??), but ultimately I just couldn't do it anymore. It was taking all the time away from actually writing books, plus it made me so fragmented-feeling. I very occasionally post on Instagram (mostly if I have a book to promote) but I had to really step away in order to get back to writing. And sometimes I'll think, "oh, I could post a series of videos on Reels to promote this book!" and then almost immediately I'll have a physical reaction of NOPE.
I'm also not sure I've actually sold a book from posting about it on social media. Probably a few. Three books, maybe. I still post a little in the quickest way possible to do it and still make it decent. I've spent the last four years or so trying to manage my relationship to the internet, and I feel a little silly about it, but my people pleasing brain keeps coming back. If I lived 100 years ago I would have spent hours every day writing letters to people or bringing pies to friends instead of writing.
What I post on Substack isn't art but even I have noticed that the pieces I spend the longest on, with the most research behind them and the most information that I find incredibly valuable perform the worst. It's very dispiriting but also incredibly noticeable which makes the kneejerk "how dare you!!" responses to the discourse to be weird. It seems pretty obvious that it is a problem that all of us have to contend with and figure out how to balance.
totally. lol i keep trying to type a longer comment than just ‘totally’ but i honestly don’t know what the solution is to create more of a buy-in for those longer pieces. apart from, like, adding in more emojis and headers??? dancing cat gifs???
I often think about how most people know Julia Cameron as the author of The Artist's Way/creator of morning pages, but very few can name one of her books, plays or poems!
I have found this to be very true on all social media platforms… except this one. But that is because I am a writer and Substack is built for us. Elsewhere, everything that does well for me is peripheral to the art. Here, it’s the actual art that gets appreciated, and the occasional semi-viral note works in actually driving subscriptions and thus appreciation of the actual art within a short time. I’m not sure if it can work so well for musicians. But you perfectly encapsulate the problems creative people face.
I feel your pain, Olivia. Back in the day when I used to write songs, I loathed the marketing side. I wanted my work to sell itself, and that was in the days when there wasn't the social media distractions there are today. I say distractions because it is seems like these are distracting you from your true creative purpose. Any marketing of your music needs to be directed at getting it in front of your audience, while maintaining your integrity. I did live gigs, busking on the underground, open mic nights, flyers, promo tapes (those were the days!) and gave them away to producers at TV shows, managers at gigs, record companies. It wasn't glamorous, and took a lot of guts! I once got through to Simon Cowell when he was an A&R man and he was an absolute b*st8rd and ripped me apart for calling. But I wasn't compromising my art. I was starting at the bottom and trying to find my audience for my Art, not wasting effort on gimmicks that wouldn't appeal to them anyway. It led to other professional music opportunities and my song was featured on BBC Radio 2's Steve Wright Sunday Love Songs Show. Hth and good luck Olivia!
"Does this just mean that the art I’ve been making isn’t good enough for people to get excited about it?"
I haven't seen it, but if you're talking about Instagram, don't sweat it. Lemme tell you, one time, Ara Malikian, a famous,virtuoso violinist who has played in symphony orchestras all over the world, went down in the metro and played for a few hours. He made like 2 dollars. There are other people who make money down there., but it can always be for reasons that have nothing to do with music. Social media is exactly like this now.
I've made visual art, I've done writing; everything I do is about my life- it's personal- so it was scary to jump to the big pond of Substack where it felt like a wide open horizon of everyone watching, but realistically that's not the case.
Art is what we do and what we can't stop doing, art is what we swim in inside the always- online offline and everything: what we show online can only ever be a tiny fraction of the enormity of process. I think of the Art itself as a byproduct. Honestly it's kind of like shit. I mean that in a good way. The art- the product, what people see, is a byproduct. The process- the Way- that's the art. We the artist are the art.
So I think of putting art online as launching paper planes into the void. I throw them and then they're out of my hands. My job is to keep making planes and keep on throwing them. Maybe someone picks one up, maybe my idea sparks something for them, maybe they throw one back, maybe not, whatever, it's not my problem any more at that point because I'm busy on folding the next one up, working on my origami, trying to make it better.
Every artist is constantly deciding how willing they are to be flexible with their intended vision and style to reach more people and get paid, or stay true to themselves at the risk of less impact and attention but with the utmost fulfillment.
Can satisfaction be found only in the making if barely anyone sees or hears? Can it be found in making a hit if you can't stand what you make? Those are the extremes and we have to find our place in the in between, through lots of trial & error. It's tiring to hear people emphasize or deride one path over the other—it's a constant calculus of values and choices, all of which are incredibly personal choices.
I really do sympathise with anyone that is trying to develop a career through a form of creative expression at a time when there is glut of stuff out there vying for the attention of an overwhelmed public. Solidarity from a writer's perspective.
Documenting your process and opening a little window up to your world from time to time are great ways to build a community around you. (Laura Marling does this with well on her Substack but who knows if it's affecting the bottom line.) Some may evolve into a paying supporters but it's so important to protect the art itself – cordon off space to create it – and not derive too much validation from the metrics around marketing.
In terms of time spent, I can't put a figure on it. It's so subjective, right. But if artists can slip into play mode, try a few things, instinctively so, and see what gains traction, that might help them to find a rhythm without feeling bound to a marketing or content 'strategy'.
To be completely and utterly blunt, to the point that I’m afraid it might hurt your feelings, but also fuck it, lean into the fear…
TLDR: keep going, think about it less, write whatever you want. Make more music. Also, yes, you kinda suck too but it seems like you’re having fun so who cares.
How I found you: I follow you on notes, because 1/100 things I see you write is funny. That’s ok, you can’t be amazing every time, often it’s refinement, and you can’t get feedback without sharing. Also it’s probably 1/10 but it feels like 100 cause I see your name a lot. That’s good! Maybe? It means people are seeing you. But also you’re not as funny as you think you are, and I can tell you think you’re pretty funny (I do think you’re pretty, so that’s probably a win for the popularity game).
The bad: seeing you writing makes me want to read your stuff, not listen to your music. Most of your commentary isn’t even about music, it’s stupid little quips or culture commentary. Do you want to be a musician or a Substack personality? If the former, why not put little one liners from your songs? Why not share about other musicians that you are vibing with?
The good: you’re a decent writer, and people seem to connect with that. If you are willing to be a multi-disciplinary artist, then write stuff AND record your music. They can be exclusive pursuits. You don’t have go funnel all your art to one talent. It seems like people like you, and your opinion, so whatever, you do that also.
The blunt: enough with the identity crisis. Jeez, you’re doing great. You make good music, people like your opinion, and you’re enjoying the process. Ride the joy train, this “success” metric we all are so obsessed with makes me sick, and I hate when I see people I like fall into that trendy trap.
What I do: I started sharing my art on a separate publication than my “community” site, just as a place for it to have a free home, without the ties to my public persona. Obviously I’m still tied to it, but people have to really want to find it. I wish I could find another site to host it, cause this one is making me sick. I’ll likely remove my fiction writing from Substack, as I feel the platform is degrading into a self absorbed commentary machine which has people talking about ‘all of you’ as if it’s not themselves they are talking about. Like that one article. I think I read one paragraph and was like… oh this again? It’s just fucking boring and loud, something I was trying to run from in the other social media platforms. I will admit that I went to the comment section to giggle abt people who felt offended that they got called out for how bleh they are, and tried to defend their mundane existence. Jesus, are we all so insecure about our internet personas? People like other bore-sacks to whine with about how uneventful their life is, and to add meaning to the meaningless blip that is one human lifespan. So what? That’s 99% of us. Get over it.
In summary: I read your whole thing, so you’re probably more interesting than some of the other bore-sacks, even though your title, and most of your titles, make me gag. I probably won’t subscribe to you, but I’ll probably listen to your music soon, so maybe that’s a win for your efforts to direct these things to the one specific art form you identify with.
I guess my question in all this is: do the people that "LIKE" the Reels, or the viewers... do they buy in? Have they bought an album or a shirt? Signed up for the newsletter?
I see a lot of bands and artist on labels with management and touring and press and... can't sell 500 albums week of release.
I feel like we're all feeding the machine of social media, making these videos and clips but... who are they for? And - not to get all KEVIN KELLY here - but do the TRUE FANS even know we have a new album out? Or an upcoming tour?
PS. absolutely love what you do, please keep it up, I hope you sell 10,000 copies of everything!!!
here's one thing which i thought about this morning -- the reels don't bring in a lot of new followers BUT they put my song in front of my existing followers. quite often you can bring out a new song and promote it, promote it, promote it, and people will be like 'oh cool,' but not even listen to the song. at least instagram video content allows snippets of my song to crawl into people's heads through repeated exposure, so that they're more likely to build a connection with it and then convert (put it on playlists, buy it, come to a show etc)
Yes, that's one of the biggest opportunities I saw on social media, that you could embed video / audio with every post, to get someone to listen right THERE on the feed, rather than having to click over to Spotify or something.
this is always on my mind too. Like there's audience and Audience. I had that weird experience with Tumblr where for some reason my stuff was really popular and I had tons and tons of followers but they never translated into anything else - weren't interested in art prints, in following me on other media, commissioning art, literally nothing but just seeing what I post on Tumblr. It made me realize that social media are a bit like casinos - whether we individually do well or not, it sort of doesn't matter - the house always wins. We're all feeding the beast and if we get some crumbs, we should count ourselves lucky.
I still haven't found a way to actually garner the sort of attention I need without doing the things I don't want to do (chase trends and 'popular' stuff).
Yesss! That’s what I feel with so many of this big big big IG accounts. Six figure followings and can’t get 15 link clicks to anything. It’s all fishy.
totally, you don't know what's real anymore.
Also somewhat unrelated but sort of related - I used to once in a while buy something from Insta ads, and it would be an actual product made by someone, I got some good things. I made the mistake a few months ago of assuming that a business with a decent looking insta profile is an actual business, got scammed, never got the product. Then I started checking much more closely and whichever one I look at it comes back a scam..... Last week made mistake again, figured this one for sure looked legit.... nope, scammed again. So even the businesses are gone. It's just lies wall to wall.
oh no, I'm so sorry you got ripped off!
the coveted Tumblr fame! back in 2017/2018 i had a small growing following on instagram for bullet journaling. it was about 8k but my growth was constant. unfortunately there i didn't know how to connect with that audience beyond photographs of my notebook pages. i sold a couple things on etsy and had some people send me stationery to feature on my page but that's as far as it went. i definitely had a 'formula' to posting and interacting on instagram, it was almost like a game.
Absolutely love your take.
I do make art. I do make auxiliary stuff to try and promote the art. Honestly neither has particularly taken off.
There is definitely an attention span issue and it is largely due to the fact that 90% of the people are barely keeping their heads above water. People are overworked, overstressed, in a complete panic over what the future brings. The last thing they want is more mental effort in their downtime.
It drives me to despair sometimes to realize that the things that draw millions of views are invariably things like made up AITA stories and slime squishing/ soap slicing/ cream pouring ASMR type stuff. Just a little brain scratch. Nothing too involved. Keep it flowing from one thing to the next. Tiny dopamine hits.
So it's a pretty serious chicken-egg question (just kidding, chicken-egg question was successfully resolved in favor of the egg. But you know what I mean). Do we chastise creators for making what people want or do we chastise people for wanting what creators make? Do we send everyone to art appreciation seminars where we teach them how to recognize the sophisticated listicles from the unworthy listicles?
I don't know, man. Maybe we look for some more interesting angles. And eventually realize that even if we figure it all out perfectly, there probably isn't that much we can do to change it.
'Do we chastise creators for making what people want or do we chastise people for wanting what creators make?' -- i love that, that's kind of one of the central questions asked here and in that 'feed me' article. i can experiment with a few different types of content but if you ever see me pairing my music with slime then please take my phone away from me
slime music would get views tho :)
oh it WOULD
“barely keeping their heads above water.” I completely agree.
I discover Substack not too long ago. I did free subscriptions to oodles of lists… but it haven’t signed up for anything paid… because I haven’t even read more than a handful of anyone’s posts.
I want to write and make and I am caught between that and “being productive.” G-damn capitalist mindset is in my bones, and my to-do list never seems to get shorter.
But, I’m always trying to be more conscious of what I’m choosing, mindful of what I’m reading (give me an article over a video, I’m too old for that TikTok crap!) or listening to, or responding to.
I loved your song! Added it to my library for whatever that’s worth. Beautiful!
thanks Jessie! i’m the same with paid subscriptions because there’s hardly any newsletters i read with weekly regularity. and thanks for listening to the song & adding it to your library!
I think about half of my paid subscriptions are for Substacks that are primarily podcasts, now that I think about it.
Yap. I have been writing a lot and it has literally been in the face of constant criticism from everyone in my life that ‘I should be doing something more productive’ with that time. The struggle is real
I'll weigh in.
The web, social media, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and smart phones have created the shortest attention span in human history. People can't concentrate for more than 20 seconds without needing another Dopamine hit. Short videos, Xitter, etc.
Can you imagine an English Victorian writer in today's world? George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, or the Brontë sisters with their lengthy tomes couldn't be successful today. What people want is celebrities, "reality television," and endless eternal bullshit sold as entertainment.
What do I do with my Substack? Whatever I want. Do I have a social media presence for my creative endeavors? No. I submit my musical recordings to a cheap distribution service and they end up on YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, etc and I make a couple of cents a year. Do I care? No.
I might as well be Emily Dickinson, who famously didn't share her poetry while she was alive. Her art became known posthumously.
I create because it's less boring that being a spectator. My Substack isn't for everyone's tastes. That's fine. I put it out there for those that do appreciate it, without pandering to the lowest, basest, common denominator.
i think for me it’s about a balance between making quality work and distilling it into quick dumb stuff (because i have the energy to), but not letting it overtake the actual art? i can’t lie that making art comes with the desire for it to be seen, which then will allow me to earn money from that art and be able to produce more!
I agree., music needs to be heard. I went to film school to learn screenwriting. Another art form that has to be seen. However, my creative writing doesn't necessarily need to be seen or promoted.
I have a profound mistrust of advertising and shameless self promotion, so I keep a low-profile. You're Instagram video for the earthquake song was cute. I couldn't do it, I'm not cute. No one wants to see this old white guy doing anything on video.
I appreciate this post very much. As an artist, it drives me nuts that the things I love to create, don't gain much attraction online but the BTS reels and the WIP or Talking In Front Of The Camera videos do gain attention.....I think people who aren't creative like to see the worlds of creatives, no matter how basic it may seem.
'no matter how basic it may seem' is the thing here, i think. people LIKE simple, basic stuff sometimes. it's frustrating because as artists we want to showcase the detail and complexity and beauty within our work but quite often that comes once a new audience member has been exposed to the surface level of our work enough and wants to go deeper.
I started off this year thinking I was finally going to get serious about my photography and try to make a transition into that as my full-time gig. I paid a marketing person, we came up with collateral and a marketing schedule, and when we were done, I…didn’t do anything. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to spend most of my time posting about my photography instead of actually doing the work itself.
So instead of doing all of the marketing on other platforms about my photography, I somehow ended up reviving my newsletter and spending a lot more time writing, but I’m writing about the things I want to write about. One of my newsletters each week focuses on images I’ve created and dives into what I like about them or why I edited them how I did. And I’m not doing it to be educational or ~provide value~, I’m doing it because I think it’s cool and I think being deliberate and reflective about my choices will make me better at photography. A reader gave me a great idea to post the original images as a comparison, and I thought that was a great idea, so I’m doing that too.
Photography still isn’t my full-time job (or even close; I don’t think I’ve even linked to my print site on my Substack) but at least I’m spending more of my time doing things that don’t feel like a huge drag and more of it working on my photography and sharing my art with people. I don’t want to make videos for people to tap past on Instagram. I don’t want to have to Show My Face to Create A Connection to try and get people to feel like they know me and want to buy prints of my work. I just want to make my cool stuff and share it on my own terms, and if that means I’m gonna have to work my email job until I’m 65, at least I’ll be happy.
it is funny how sometimes our brains/bodies just go “nope, i’m not doing this” and we have to follow suit! i love that you’ve come to a place where you can share authentically on your own terms
This resonated so much with me. I used to post A LOT on social media, believing it was necessary in order to sell books (I'm a writer). I do think some people know who I am who wouldn't have otherwise because of it (MAYBE??), but ultimately I just couldn't do it anymore. It was taking all the time away from actually writing books, plus it made me so fragmented-feeling. I very occasionally post on Instagram (mostly if I have a book to promote) but I had to really step away in order to get back to writing. And sometimes I'll think, "oh, I could post a series of videos on Reels to promote this book!" and then almost immediately I'll have a physical reaction of NOPE.
It is like a physical reaction! Just total dread at the idea of creating that content for a platform that won’t show it to anyone anyway.
I'm also not sure I've actually sold a book from posting about it on social media. Probably a few. Three books, maybe. I still post a little in the quickest way possible to do it and still make it decent. I've spent the last four years or so trying to manage my relationship to the internet, and I feel a little silly about it, but my people pleasing brain keeps coming back. If I lived 100 years ago I would have spent hours every day writing letters to people or bringing pies to friends instead of writing.
What I post on Substack isn't art but even I have noticed that the pieces I spend the longest on, with the most research behind them and the most information that I find incredibly valuable perform the worst. It's very dispiriting but also incredibly noticeable which makes the kneejerk "how dare you!!" responses to the discourse to be weird. It seems pretty obvious that it is a problem that all of us have to contend with and figure out how to balance.
totally. lol i keep trying to type a longer comment than just ‘totally’ but i honestly don’t know what the solution is to create more of a buy-in for those longer pieces. apart from, like, adding in more emojis and headers??? dancing cat gifs???
I often think about how most people know Julia Cameron as the author of The Artist's Way/creator of morning pages, but very few can name one of her books, plays or poems!
I have found this to be very true on all social media platforms… except this one. But that is because I am a writer and Substack is built for us. Elsewhere, everything that does well for me is peripheral to the art. Here, it’s the actual art that gets appreciated, and the occasional semi-viral note works in actually driving subscriptions and thus appreciation of the actual art within a short time. I’m not sure if it can work so well for musicians. But you perfectly encapsulate the problems creative people face.
I feel your pain, Olivia. Back in the day when I used to write songs, I loathed the marketing side. I wanted my work to sell itself, and that was in the days when there wasn't the social media distractions there are today. I say distractions because it is seems like these are distracting you from your true creative purpose. Any marketing of your music needs to be directed at getting it in front of your audience, while maintaining your integrity. I did live gigs, busking on the underground, open mic nights, flyers, promo tapes (those were the days!) and gave them away to producers at TV shows, managers at gigs, record companies. It wasn't glamorous, and took a lot of guts! I once got through to Simon Cowell when he was an A&R man and he was an absolute b*st8rd and ripped me apart for calling. But I wasn't compromising my art. I was starting at the bottom and trying to find my audience for my Art, not wasting effort on gimmicks that wouldn't appeal to them anyway. It led to other professional music opportunities and my song was featured on BBC Radio 2's Steve Wright Sunday Love Songs Show. Hth and good luck Olivia!
"Does this just mean that the art I’ve been making isn’t good enough for people to get excited about it?"
I haven't seen it, but if you're talking about Instagram, don't sweat it. Lemme tell you, one time, Ara Malikian, a famous,virtuoso violinist who has played in symphony orchestras all over the world, went down in the metro and played for a few hours. He made like 2 dollars. There are other people who make money down there., but it can always be for reasons that have nothing to do with music. Social media is exactly like this now.
I've made visual art, I've done writing; everything I do is about my life- it's personal- so it was scary to jump to the big pond of Substack where it felt like a wide open horizon of everyone watching, but realistically that's not the case.
Art is what we do and what we can't stop doing, art is what we swim in inside the always- online offline and everything: what we show online can only ever be a tiny fraction of the enormity of process. I think of the Art itself as a byproduct. Honestly it's kind of like shit. I mean that in a good way. The art- the product, what people see, is a byproduct. The process- the Way- that's the art. We the artist are the art.
So I think of putting art online as launching paper planes into the void. I throw them and then they're out of my hands. My job is to keep making planes and keep on throwing them. Maybe someone picks one up, maybe my idea sparks something for them, maybe they throw one back, maybe not, whatever, it's not my problem any more at that point because I'm busy on folding the next one up, working on my origami, trying to make it better.
Every artist is constantly deciding how willing they are to be flexible with their intended vision and style to reach more people and get paid, or stay true to themselves at the risk of less impact and attention but with the utmost fulfillment.
Can satisfaction be found only in the making if barely anyone sees or hears? Can it be found in making a hit if you can't stand what you make? Those are the extremes and we have to find our place in the in between, through lots of trial & error. It's tiring to hear people emphasize or deride one path over the other—it's a constant calculus of values and choices, all of which are incredibly personal choices.
Why would you hate self-promotion? Love yourself. Be yourself, unapologetically.
This reminds me of the viral article about the tyranny of the personal brand and how so many artists find themselves spending time promoting their art instead of making it. https://www.vox.com/culture/2024/2/1/24056883/tiktok-self-promotion-artist-career-how-to-build-following
I really do sympathise with anyone that is trying to develop a career through a form of creative expression at a time when there is glut of stuff out there vying for the attention of an overwhelmed public. Solidarity from a writer's perspective.
Documenting your process and opening a little window up to your world from time to time are great ways to build a community around you. (Laura Marling does this with well on her Substack but who knows if it's affecting the bottom line.) Some may evolve into a paying supporters but it's so important to protect the art itself – cordon off space to create it – and not derive too much validation from the metrics around marketing.
In terms of time spent, I can't put a figure on it. It's so subjective, right. But if artists can slip into play mode, try a few things, instinctively so, and see what gains traction, that might help them to find a rhythm without feeling bound to a marketing or content 'strategy'.
To be completely and utterly blunt, to the point that I’m afraid it might hurt your feelings, but also fuck it, lean into the fear…
TLDR: keep going, think about it less, write whatever you want. Make more music. Also, yes, you kinda suck too but it seems like you’re having fun so who cares.
How I found you: I follow you on notes, because 1/100 things I see you write is funny. That’s ok, you can’t be amazing every time, often it’s refinement, and you can’t get feedback without sharing. Also it’s probably 1/10 but it feels like 100 cause I see your name a lot. That’s good! Maybe? It means people are seeing you. But also you’re not as funny as you think you are, and I can tell you think you’re pretty funny (I do think you’re pretty, so that’s probably a win for the popularity game).
The bad: seeing you writing makes me want to read your stuff, not listen to your music. Most of your commentary isn’t even about music, it’s stupid little quips or culture commentary. Do you want to be a musician or a Substack personality? If the former, why not put little one liners from your songs? Why not share about other musicians that you are vibing with?
The good: you’re a decent writer, and people seem to connect with that. If you are willing to be a multi-disciplinary artist, then write stuff AND record your music. They can be exclusive pursuits. You don’t have go funnel all your art to one talent. It seems like people like you, and your opinion, so whatever, you do that also.
The blunt: enough with the identity crisis. Jeez, you’re doing great. You make good music, people like your opinion, and you’re enjoying the process. Ride the joy train, this “success” metric we all are so obsessed with makes me sick, and I hate when I see people I like fall into that trendy trap.
What I do: I started sharing my art on a separate publication than my “community” site, just as a place for it to have a free home, without the ties to my public persona. Obviously I’m still tied to it, but people have to really want to find it. I wish I could find another site to host it, cause this one is making me sick. I’ll likely remove my fiction writing from Substack, as I feel the platform is degrading into a self absorbed commentary machine which has people talking about ‘all of you’ as if it’s not themselves they are talking about. Like that one article. I think I read one paragraph and was like… oh this again? It’s just fucking boring and loud, something I was trying to run from in the other social media platforms. I will admit that I went to the comment section to giggle abt people who felt offended that they got called out for how bleh they are, and tried to defend their mundane existence. Jesus, are we all so insecure about our internet personas? People like other bore-sacks to whine with about how uneventful their life is, and to add meaning to the meaningless blip that is one human lifespan. So what? That’s 99% of us. Get over it.
In summary: I read your whole thing, so you’re probably more interesting than some of the other bore-sacks, even though your title, and most of your titles, make me gag. I probably won’t subscribe to you, but I’ll probably listen to your music soon, so maybe that’s a win for your efforts to direct these things to the one specific art form you identify with.
Sent with love, the grating honest kind.
Lee
I do make art but my marketing efforts are ancillary. Better for me to spend time getting better at art.