Wanting Fans Is Not Wanting Validation.

Wanting Fans Is Not Wanting Validation. Music is social. No fans = No relationships. My previous essay, titled “Making Music Is Bad for Mental Health”, was a kind of eulogy to the pre-smartphone fan. You know, that person who used to listen with all their attention. Nowadays, people don’t really do anything with all their attention, and this indifference is why us creatives are struggling so much with our mental health. It’s painful to share our art with a world that’s too addicted to their phones to even give our work a few minutes of their attention. And while I did receive comments from people who were feeling the same, I was rather surprised to see so many comments from people telling me that I was seeking validation, and that I should be happy to make music even if nobody listens to it. This saddened me. Deeply. Because it revealed how isolation is considered to be totally normal now in every part of life, even the parts that were previously considered to be social events, like playing and listening to music. Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. So, this post is to set the record straight. For all those people who think that it’s perfectly okay for music to be an isolated experience, please understand this ancient fact: Music is communal. And it always has been, up until very recently. For evidence, please read some anthropology books to see the role that music played (and still plays) in the lives of hunter-gatherers. Then, please read some history books to see the role that music played in society through the centuries. Whether it was singing around a fire or in a church, whether it was listening to music in a concert hall or in a pub, music was always communal. Thinking of music as an isolated activity is like thinking of a tree falling in a forest when nobody is around to hear it. Did it make a sound? No. And just like that falling tree, when our songs don’t have listeners to hear them, they don’t make any sound either. This is not poetic. It’s literal. Human ears transform our songs from mere vibrations in the air into music. But here’s the catch: Those ears need to be attached to a human who’s actually paying attention. We’ve all experienced that bizarre phenomenon of talking to someone who’s scrolling on their phone, only to realize later that they didn’t actually hear anything we said to them. No attention, means no listening. Therefore, without someone’s attention, our music does not exist. And, the beautiful human connection we could have enjoyed from feeling the music together, never happens either. This is tragic. Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox. So, as artists, it’s okay for us to want people to give our creations their attention. That’s how human cultures have always connected. So please, don’t let anyone gaslight you. And don’t gaslight yourself. Don’t convince yourself that this is the “new normal”. Even if it is, we’re creative people, so let’s use our imaginations and keep pretending that we live in a world where people value art and creativity. And I mean human art and human creativity. It’s crazy that we have to say that nowadays, but there you go. If enough of us imagine the world we want, maybe, just maybe, we can change this simulation. Lastly, if you’d like me to keep doing this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on my Substack, or making a one-off donation. If you can’t afford to at the moment though, no problem, you can give the podcast a 5-star rating in your app. That helps a lot, too. And be sure to grab your downloads of my Free Book and Free PDF tutorials. Thanks for being here, my friend, you are very much appreciated. Ray Harmony :) Donate. Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat. Photo by Mart Production About. Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more. Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 255,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs! Everything here is 100% Human and 0% AI. Photo by Matheus Bertelli Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK". Podcast. Listen below, or on any podcast app.