If you don't seem to be going anywhere, should you just stop making music?

[HunterKiller]

Mate you need something to cheer you up, if it's not music right now, it's not music.
Find what it is. Find what inspires you. Find what makes you alive.
Then you will have no choice but to creatively express yourself again, whether through music or not.

[vata44]

Mate you need something to cheer you up, if it's not music right now, it's not music.
Find what it is. Find what inspires you. Find what makes you alive.
Then you will have no choice but to creatively express yourself again, whether through music or not.

+1

[JJBiener]

Ghettosynth has a point even if he is a bit blunt in his presentation. Here are some things to consider when examining your place in the music world.

First, are you an expert in what you do? Malcolm Gladwell is well known for popularizing the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of work to become an expert in a given field. That translates into about 10 years of focused effort. If you haven't been making music for 10 years, how do expect to compete with those who have.

Second, does you music really stand up against your competition? This doesn't mean that you listen to your music and other music in your genre and they sound kinda the same. What it means is have you made a serious study of your genre and developed a clear understanding of why some songs hit and others don't?

Third, have you made a concerted effort to market your music? Do you have a marketing plan either in your head or written down? I know taking time to market music takes away from time from making music, but no one is going to buy you music if they don't hear your music. No one can hear you music if they don't know about you. No one will know about you if you don't have a plan to get people's attention.

[V0RT3X]

Ghettosynth has a point even if he is a bit blunt in his presentation. Here are some things to consider when examining your place in the music world.

First, are you an expert in what you do? Malcolm Gladwell is well known for popularizing the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of work to become an expert in a given field. That translates into about 10 years of focused effort. If you haven't been making music for 10 years, how do expect to compete with those who have.

Second, does you music really stand up against your competition? This doesn't mean that you listen to your music and other music in your genre and they sound kinda the same. What it means is have you made a serious study of your genre and developed a clear understanding of why some songs hit and others don't?

Third, have you made a concerted effort to market your music? Do you have a marketing plan either in your head or written down? I know taking time to market music takes away from time from making music, but no one is going to buy you music if they don't hear your music. No one can hear you music if they don't know about you. No one will know about you if you don't have a plan to get people's attention.

I dunno about that 10,000 hour rule.. I've been doing music for almost 10 years and I am nowhere near an expert in whatever it is I do. I still have SO much to learn.. and i am not following any system, im basically creating my own as i go.

Also I think lots of people fail to see the other things that they have become "good at" during their attempt at becoming something else.

[maschinelf]

Keep travelling, go on a backpacking vacation for a few months.
Try some mind-body balancing activities like yoga.
Get a LOT of sunlight.

[Jesse Gorter]

I think it's difficult to influence inspiration, it just comes and goes.

Most of the time I just don't worry about it, it seems to come by a lot lately. And if you don't like to write music, then don't. If you only write when you are excited to, you'll always be inspired. And when you don't feel like to, you aren't torturing yourself by forcing to do something you don't feel like to.

hmm I hope that came out right :)

and if the stuff is just collecting dust for two years, yeah, absolutely sell. Unless you can afford to keep it and occupying space.

I have a spanish guitar I wanted to learn since 2007, have hardly touched it. But still, I'd like to give it a go soon. Seems like a good idea, so I keep it around :)

[ghettosynth]

Ghettosynth has a point even if he is a bit blunt in his presentation. Here are some things to consider when examining your place in the music world.

First, are you an expert in what you do? Malcolm Gladwell is well known for popularizing the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of work to become an expert in a given field. That translates into about 10 years of focused effort. If you haven't been making music for 10 years, how do expect to compete with those who have.

Second, does you music really stand up against your competition? This doesn't mean that you listen to your music and other music in your genre and they sound kinda the same. What it means is have you made a serious study of your genre and developed a clear understanding of why some songs hit and others don't?

Third, have you made a concerted effort to market your music? Do you have a marketing plan either in your head or written down? I know taking time to market music takes away from time from making music, but no one is going to buy you music if they don't hear your music. No one can hear you music if they don't know about you. No one will know about you if you don't have a plan to get people's attention.

I dunno about that 10,000 hour rule.. I've been doing music for almost 10 years and I am nowhere near an expert in whatever it is I do. I still have SO much to learn.. and i am not following any system, im basically creating my own as i go.

Also I think lots of people fail to see the other things that they have become "good at" during their attempt at becoming something else.

Yes, but remember, there are roughly 2000 hours in a work year and you must spend much of that time doing things tangential to your area. So, 10k hours over ten years is essentially four hours a day five days a week. I've been playing guitar for a long time, but there is no way that I've consistently put even an hour a day for five days a week, let alone four hours. Sure, there were times when I spent hours every day with guitar, but it's one thing to do something for a few months and another thing entirely to do it for years.

Also, it's a rule of thumb. I don't think that it takes ten years to become an expert at picking your nose and it might take more than ten to become a concert pianist.

[JJBiener]

Here is something I thought was interesting and relevant to this discussion.

http://dottedmusic.com/2013/marketing/niche-tours/

[jancivil]

Why would you go unrecognized today? Are you ahead of your time? Really?

You have revealed to us, multiply, that you have no idea at all of what would be ahead of this or another time. Here you are taking the opportunity to project yourself, and the fact that owing to your own lights, if you gave it your all and didn't get something back (in place of the experience of the music itself) you would be depressed. You do not grasp that everyone is not so restricted as you, to require the cart of approbation of their 'peers' to pull the horse of what they choose to do. and worse, pull the horse of what they think of themselves. It's as though one cannot have an honest self-assessment outside these determinants. Believe it or not, some people can have self-awareness, the self-appreciation beside the self-critique.

Why did Ives choose to form an insurance firm? He was ahead of his time, wildly so. For that matter Erik Satie was in certain cases doing things people didn't catch up to for over half a century. He was marginalized and considered a crank, an eccentric because he was_not_interested in being limited to what the press, et al, thought. The historical weight these names accrued can't have been well-predicted.

Don't you think that if you really were a genius, that you could/would get someone's attention? We aren't living in the 19th century, it's pretty damn easy to get your music in front of people's faces.

So you have some facile idea that the self-promotion available today, 'anyone can post an mp3 all over the internet' and keep hammering at that changes the essential reality, that the by far larger percentile of people that are not comfortable with things that are new to them equals a situation where there is music that just isn't very commercial? That's so glib. I don't think you've thought this through at all, yet here's your exceeding confidence. Fatuous is not too strong a word for that I think.

The more people that are exposing themselves, the more noise there is making a static. I don't think I'm an outlier in that the more that's in my face the less I want to be engaged.

All you demonstrate with this rhetorical gesture here is that you completely confuse genius at music or an art with genius at getting noticed; which is less relevant today than it ever was.

Suppose you are a genius, then don't you think that you could articulate why your music is genius material?

For you, and I have ample evidence of this, language supersedes music. I kind of can't be arsed to check who that is directed to, but for me, I don't enjoy reading, let alone typing about music. Music is music, it's made to be heard and the music I have time for is made to be listened to. There are people that have a certain gift for verbalization about such things, but per the actual music it might be total bullshit, and we will have to check it against the music. Or a person interested in this music qua music will. A whole lot of people must be led by words, and be told why something is good. You've come at my music, which you lack the equipment to understand in the least, hoping it could be dismissed by the most superficial language that addressed music not at all. This is your issue, it doesn't have to be an issue for a person.
This sums up your approach and all of your rhetoric:

It's just naive to think that music isn't a popularity contest.

"Music is about popularity".
Some people approach music qua music rather than this need for approbation as a determinant. The rhetorical question above per Charles Ives: he must have understood on an objective basis he was doing things - doing them on purpose, to hear the result - that were not going to amount to remuneration, or particular encouragement in the press or even the academy. So he built a substantial day job for himself. Is Puccini a better musician than Ives? That would be up for debate, perhaps but I'm never going to grant publishing sales or newspaper reviews as a criteria for that.

[jancivil]

the points per Ives, and Zappa there is a difference between making music because you want to hear it and making music for money first. the people whose names have accrued historical weight as genius in the sense they were ahead of their time, these people encountered resistance. some of them did fail to make money at it. OTOH Igor Stravinsky was very good at influencing people and being a celebrity. And understood the publishing game.

the chances for a Zappa or a Stravinsky today are not the same as it was in their times, however.

I think that downloads and 'file sharing' means one has to be a lot more commercial to have sales. In any case though, sales have always been driven by appearances in public. I've made profits on tee-shirts. They looked great. What we did mattered less than that. True story.

[jancivil]

Words have meanings.

Sorry if people take offense, but if you are working in LA in "food service" trying to become an actror, then, well, you are professional waitstaff and, at best, an amateur actor.

Yes, I get it. You are a hard-nosed realist who will countenance no prevarication or self-deception.

I was responding to what I interpreted as an attempt to blur the distinction.

So, although nobody's suggesting that you must sell music to be a "legitimate" musician...

Now this is where it gets a trifle contentious, because I believe that many people 'suggest' this over and over again.

"Interpretation" puts a certain face on 'cherry picking to suit my stance' doesn't it. I indicated some nuance. Words have meanings and connotations above them. In the context of a forum at KVR, and in marketing lingo all over that provide the context for a KVR, "Pro" connotes knowing what you're doing. It is a term vis a vis 'professional', which as I indicated has a pretty common and non-contentious meaning. I think the former brings connotations with it here that aren't objective, cf., "amateur"s pejorative sense.

That's what I was getting at when I said it would depress me to imagine myself a pro, go to school to be that person, work most of my life at it, and then fail to achieve even a modicum of success. Music is not my entire life, it's just a small portion of it and I'm ok with the similarly small, ok tiny, minuscule even, success that I've had.

I agree that you are not cut out for the life of someone like Schoenberg or Bartok or Webern or Ives or Ruggles or Nancarrow or Varese or Cowell or Russolo or Satie.

Or get the point.

Was it Jobs who said "real artists ship"?

Van Gogh didn't ship/Van Gogh was not a real artist. See you tried to prevaricate, but you revert here. Seems like I already said this, but do we grant the value of Van Gogh's paintings to the Art Marketplace, were they of no value when he could sell none of them? Was he ahead of his time. Was there a ghettosynth type at the time telling him he was delusional since he couldn't sell.

[Skorpius]

So, it's years and thousands of dollars invested and all I have to show for it is a free Soundcloud page. I really don't feel I have the 'fire' I had when it comes to making music. Nobody buys anything. Barely comments are posted and I feel -for what?
I don't even feel I know music anymore. The stuff I hear I loathe and I've always just made music I like, and not cared what anyone else thinks.
So it begs the question, do I try and sell what I can to recoup some of my huge investment? What if the muse strikes again later?
I don't know if it's just the time of year or the mood I'm in, but I just feel aimless and restless and nothing makes me happy anymore.
Maybe it's just one of those 'life changes' everyone goes through.
WTF knows....

Ooohh - I know exactly what you're talking about. I was in exactly the same situation about 14 years ago. I had invested tens of thousand of bucks - with hardly any commercial results worth talking about. I had met the wrong people before, hadn't been in the right place at the right moment, etc. Totally frustrated, I sold nearly everything I had at that time, and that was quite a lot of gear. The only thing I kept was a couple of guitars, but they remained untouched for years.

Eventually I convinced myself I didn't need to make music anymore, and that the main reason I ever started it was fortune and fame. Which of course was only half the truth.

I started writing a book and doing other things, until - about nine years later - the fire began to creep up my veins again. So, after nearly a decade, I finally realized that I couldn't possibly live without music. So - here I go again.

There are very wise comments in this thread, and I agree with many of them. However, one thing was not considered in any of them: If it satisfies you to make your own music and listen to it, regardless of what others are saying, and regardless of any commercial success, take a break of, say, a year or so, don't sell your stuff, and then sit down again when you feel it's time to get going again.

If however, you have a deep feeling inside that you're also in it for the fortune and the fame, sit down and compare your music to that of other artists. Ask yourself a couple of questions:

- Is the music I'm making really different to what I hear elsewhere on the radio or the Internet?

- Is the music I'm making unique and recognizable?

If you answer any of these questions with "No", you should consider selling everything. Or maybe change your style.

If you answer any of these questions with "Yes", you should definitely keep in mind that - as opposed to the 70s, 80s, and early 90s - each and every person can release their stuff on Soundcloud or elsewhere these days. There's way too many people nowadays releasing mediocre stuff in increasing amounts on the Internet. We're talking about a media overkill, where it's getting harder and harder for unique and individual music to even be found among millions of meaningless tracks that sound like ten thousand others you've heard before.

If you feel you're changing, consider changing your music as well.

[bailees7irish]

So, it's years and thousands of dollars invested and all I have to show for it is a free Soundcloud page. I really don't feel I have the 'fire' I had when it comes to making music. Nobody buys anything. Barely comments are posted and I feel -for what?
I don't even feel I know music anymore. The stuff I hear I loathe and I've always just made music I like, and not cared what anyone else thinks.
So it begs the question, do I try and sell what I can to recoup some of my huge investment? What if the muse strikes again later?
I don't know if it's just the time of year or the mood I'm in, but I just feel aimless and restless and nothing makes me happy anymore.
Maybe it's just one of those 'life changes' everyone goes through.
WTF knows....

I go through this exact same phase at least 1-2 time a year! I think it's a pretty common thing for artists!

It may pass - it always does for me - but if it doesn't for you in time, then perhaps it will be time to quit. If I were you, I wouldn't be hasty in selling all of your music equipment. If the "fire" comes back, you'll really wish you hadn't...

[schnapsglas]

It's incredibly difficult to cut through the noise right now. Noise started out as a hum and it's now a pink noise that's clipping all the way.

Maybe should try something ultrasonic...

[AstralExistence]

one simple bit of solid advice. unless your 100 percent sure that your even better at something else, DO NOT sell your gear. because you will come back. better to to do something badly yet know how to do it badly, then try to do something completely different that you don't even know how to do either good or bad. in which case, once you do know how to do it, you will realize that you suck even worse at your new hobby.

been there, done that, spent a couple thousand in hobby experiments only to realize that this IS my hobby. stick with what you know man because if you don't you will just waste lots of money trying to find that holy grail hobby. which in most cases doesn't exist because you already found it. and the reason why you found it, it BECAUSE you have talent in it.

that doesn't mean you will find success. if it just pasts the time for you, thats exactly what it does. except it at that. and be satisfied