I want to begin this post with an Emily Dickson poem. I'll just paste in here.
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
By Emily Dickinson
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Recently, I have witnessed some setbacks for some musical peers. One band was planning on a big gig - quite important to them. They were promoting it all over social media and on Youtube. Suddenly, the club cancelled the date. They wisely did not hold it against the club. Business is business, and the music business can be quite dicey. The situation, was indeed, due to circumstances beyond their control. I also just heard from a band leader that I know and respect, that he is considering hanging up his/her band altogether. I hope he/she doesn't as they have built up something quite beautiful.
My own circumstances offer challenges on a daily - heck- HOURLY basis. Situations like these can often cause feeling of great discouragement. However, you must NOT give into those emotions. Certainly, if your conditions have changed and you feel the need to move to something else, so be it. But this shouldn't be because you are just "bummed out."
The first crew has stepped up their efforts on YouTube and Instagram, in spite of the cancellation. Frankly, the sudden surge in YouTube posts might be BECAUSE of the cancellation. I think this is extremely wise. I would encourage them to post as much on YouTube as possible.
I have been in the music business since 1980. I actually have to process that every time I think of it. However, things have changed dramatically since then. One thing that has NOT changed is the fact that huge "viral video" style success is elusive. When you consider the big band era, there were wildly successful (Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, et al...), yet the sidemen in those bands more often than not had to scratch out a living. The same is true today. It is a rare sideman that can make a living simply being a sideman on one band. Most "in the trenches" category of players are doing a variety of work - churches, schools, teaching, jobbing - whatever it takes to pay the mortgage.
As to being an ARTIST.... Well, the atmosphere gets even more rarified. It is hard to tell if your art is good enough when getting exposure is so difficult. Even if your art is truly worthy of consideration, it might not get the exposure it deserves. Once again, do NOT yield to discouragement.
I have been on YouTube since 2007. My channel has received 1,015, 573 views as of this writing. While that MIGHT sound impressive, do the math. That amounts to just under 60,000 views annually - hardly viral. When I first joined, my videos would get thousands of views, one getting well over 100,000 views. However, NOW, my videos rarely get more than three or four hundred views. I will not be deterred, however.
I have long figured that the internet would level the playing field for independent musicians. This has proven to be true. However, one unexpected consequence (though I SHOULD have seen it coming), is that with the leveling of the playing field the shallower and more spread out the talent pool. Where there were hundreds of content creators early on, there are now millions! MANY, are quite good.
So this means that the noise level is so huge that getting your work heard above the din can be extremely difficult.
Now, with this blog post, I am NOT going to try to tell you how to make your music stand out among all the rest. If I had a formula for that, I most certainly would have done it myself. What I WILL suggest you do is to think of YouTube as a "performance space," of sorts. Keep putting your content out there. Keep tweaking it. Think of it as a place to SHARE your music with the whole world.
You might only reach a few hundred people, but they "showed up" to HEAR YOU, not just get a little tipsy at a bar with some friends, and, "oh yeah, there was a nice band, too." Harking back to the Dickson poem I opened with, even if you only touch ONE SOUL with your music, you have won the moment. Everything else is icing on the cake. Keep on doing what you have to do to survive - teaching, jobbing, whatever - but NEVER yield to discouragement about your art. With YouTube, your art is OUT THERE, for anyone.
There is another great quote attributed to Johnannes Kepler, when he was questioned about why he sought the secrets of the cosmos. "What profit doeth the little bird ask that it may sing?"
Keep the faith in the face of adversity. Be that little bird. Heck, be a darn magpie!!!