The State of Play for Amateur Musicians

The amateur music world seems to be in a state of flux at the moment. With the rumours of the demise of SoundCloud doing the rounds on the various social networks and the increasing difficulty of attracting new listeners (or any listeners at all) times seem rather unsettling for amateur music makers.

I've used the term amateur, mostly as a label for myself, although this seems to be a contentious label in some quarters. I've seen arguments on social media sites about whether someone should be labelled "amateur" or "professional". To me it seems clear-cut: I'm an amateur (from the French meaning "one who loves") because I don't do this full-time and I don't get paid to do it (generally not anyway). It's that simple. If you don't do it as a living then you're an amateur. Sure, you production may sound professional, you may use professional gear and your approach may be professional, whatever that means, but if you have a full time job and only do music in the evenings or weekends then you're still an amateur.

But the hardest part of being an amateur musician/composer/producer or whatever else you want to call yourself is being heard. We don't have the PR, promotion and money of the major (or even minor) labels to push our music. We have to find the time to do it ourselves and time is the big issue. It's finding the balance between actually making music and promoting it. This is a balance I've yet to find: once I've finished an album and put it on Bandcamp I'm usually moving on to the next project. The whole promotion thing is a) boring, b) time consuming and c) often seems like a waste of time.

I can't speak for other musicians of course but I do know many who are in the same boat as I am. I post on Facebook and all the groups I belong to on there. I post on Twitter and Instagram and on my own website here. There's also Google+ and a few other lesser known social media platforms as well. I also put a preview track or two on SoundCloud.

Over the last few years one learns a thing or two, hopefully. I've learnt that the most successful place to post new releases is Facebook. Twitter's fine but if I post a new piece there it generates no interest most of the time and the post is quickly lost in the torrent of new tweets. Putting a preview track with a buy-link on SoundCloud has been a complete waste of time. No one seems to be interested in following the links on SoundCloud, or at least not in my case.

Part of the problem is, of course, the amount of new music being released every minute globally and it's nigh on impossible to stand out from the cacophony. Some people manage it, most don't. Also the type of music you produce has a lot to do with it. The music I produce is never going to be mainstream or terribly popular. That's fine because I knew that going in. Of course that doesn't mean I don't want to sell more albums because I do, naturally.

So how does one stand above the crowd? I have no idea. Promotion doesn't seem to work, not in my case or the for many other musicians I know. Luck probably has a part to play. Being in the right place at the right time. Blah-blah-blah.

Here's an interesting if unsurprising aside. When I started putting my albums on Bandcamp three or four years ago I used to have them as "pay-what-you-like". I used to get huge amounts of downloads and yet virtually no sales. After a year or so of this Mrs H says "Why don't you charge? Painters, sculptors, potters and writers don't give away their stuff." Which was a good point. They don't. It seems it's only musicians who are daft enough to do it. I pointed out that the music industry has changed a lot whereas the other artistic industries seem not to have changed as much. Yet.

So I thought "bugger it" and started charging a fiver for each release. £5 seemed a reasonable amount for a release which could be an hour long or more. And here's the bit which actually surprised me: each year sales have increased. Not much and the figures are hardly Earth-shattering. Far from it. But the gambit did work. Sure downloads have dropped from hundreds to a trickle but people are buying the releases. Not many - less than ten per release, usually five or six per release on average (I've yet to get a second line of "supporters" on Bandcamp).

The biggest lesson I learnt from switching to charging for a release is people don't want to pay for music, which is an insane idea to me. But the music industry has created the climate for this with free streaming and downloads. It's a concept I still struggle with because I think that there were all these people who obviously liked my music in the beginning and downloaded the albums but as soon as I started charging they all but disappeared. Weird. Well there it is. So in the meantime us amateur musicians continue to release albums which go largely unheard and try and think up new ways of attracting a fan base.

On some forums and Facebook groups these things are discussed fairly regularly. One thing always emerges: you've got to build a fan base. This is true of course but quite difficult. The only solution often given is to gig and tour local clubs. Get your name out there. Not as easy especially if you're not set up for playing live and can't afford the gear needed.

It's also not as easy if you don't produce music that's "easy" to listen to. A friend tried starting a musical happening a few years back. He booked a hall, produced leaflets and flyers, booked a few musicians and no one turned up. He tried again and the same result. No one in his area wanted to hear the music he was promoting. He gave up as it was costing too much.

That's the problem with where I live - the sort of music I do isn't the sort that you can play in a pub or hall. Who'll come? No one. That's why there's nothing going on where I live apart from cover bands and the usual jazz, rock, blues, pop gigs.

So playing gigs is out. Promotion doesn't seem to help much. What's an amateur musician to do? I don't know. I have no solutions so I give a Gallic shrug and carry on. That's all any of us can do: carry on. Often it takes one lucky break to change everything and no one knows where that break will come from. For many it never will but for a few it might.

And the problems SoundCloud is having in the news at the moment isn't helping. Other the last couple of months I've noticed the amount of plays I'm getting weekly has been consistently dropping. I used to get a couple of hundred plays a week but that's dropped to around twenty to thirty now. At first I wondered if it was because of SoundCloud's problems but other friends have said they are still getting the same amount of plays. It's enough to make one paranoid!

But SoundCloud's problems are a serious blow to amateur musicians but it is of their own making. Getting rid of groups was the final straw for many, including myself. If SoundCloud goes what will replace it? There are many other music sharing platforms out there but none with the clout of SoundCloud, even in its wounded state. I belong to a few and the amount of plays is minuscule.

I think the main problem is this: the majority of the ordinary listeners don't use SoundCloud, Bandcamp or the other services. They use iTunes of course and one or two others. Most of the people I know outside of social media who like music have never heard of Bandcamp and have no interest in it either. Most people like the music they do and aren't interested in exploring new music. That's always been the case of course. Most of them no longer pay for music.

It may sound bleak and I suppose it is, in a way. However to balance things a little, a few years ago most of us wouldn't be making the music we do, or making music at all. Technology has enabled us to have a musical voice and to get it out into the wider world without resorting to record labels.

The cost of synthesizers and recording gear is a lot cheaper today (even if it is still beyond a lot of our pockets) and one can build a studio which the electronic pioneers of the 50s, 60s and 70s might have envied. We can produce sounds no one has ever heard before fairly easily. Computer technology has made it easier with a myriad of DAWs on the market.

Perhaps the price of the democratisation of electronic music is to be lost in the noise of releases, to be largely unheard amongst the thousands of other amateur musicians. There's always a price to be paid.

Anyway these are my rambling thoughts about it and other musicians will probably have different experiences.