Focusing too much on low plays as a musician

In a recent post about struggling with music I talked about my past history of mental health issues and how its inhibited my ability to get off the ground with my music career.

One area that I always struggled with was judging myself (and the success of my own career) against others. There was a period that I was very jealous and spiteful of other people who were able to "make it."

The thing I focused on a lot was the amount of plays (or in my case the lack of plays I had). On the surface it seemed liked a very easy number to track and use as a measure of progress against others.

I would work furiously on a song for months, go through all the production and multiple rounds of mixing, then release it out into the world.

Unfortunately, for me this was followed by a period of silence where I got little to no plays for everything I shared, and it would devastate me. This cycle continued for many years and took a toll on my sense of worth and belonging.

Plays on the surface is just another datapoint but because I was focused solely on the number and nothing else so it became a representation of my validation seeking.

The dark side of plays is that they are so visible and inherently quantifiable, so they were easy to use as a measuring stick that made me feel less than as a musician.

Looking back though I realize I made a fundamental flaw. "Plays" as an arbitrary measure of progress is quite limited and was probably one of the worst ways to assess my progress since I didn't account for all the factors that contributed to my stinted growth as a musician.

Now that I'm restarting this journey with a new focus on mental health and authentic expression, I've revisited this notion of plays, and I am starting to think about things a lot differently.

Instead of a single number I've come up with 4 success factors that I'll be assessing myself against. To me, these pillars are way more meaningful than the amount of plays I get for any song or project.

1. Craftsmanship - Does my work represent the highest quality of craft I'm capable of creating? Have I dedicated myself to learning and practicing the skills it takes to compose, produce, mix, master, write and sing on a professional level?

2. Passion - Am I fully engaged and motivated from a place of joy and excitement? Do I give back to the world for deeper self-expression?

3. Exposure - Am I taking the necessary steps to share my work more broadly? Am I utilizing the appropriate strategic techniques for promotion and marketing, such that I'm no longer sharing in an isolated way?

4. Expectation - Am I outcome independent and completely accepting of the results and maintaining a high self-worth no matter what happens with my musical career?

As you can see, these 4 pillars add a lot of depth to notion of "success". In the past when I was so play focused I had pretty bad marks for all of those pillars.

In fact, I had...

• marginal craftsmanship (especially with my mixing and singing) which led to mediocre quality of songs
• shaky passion and motivation due to my severe perfectionism
• severely limited exposure and audience reach due to fear of rejection and tendency to isolate
• lots of expectation and jealousy of others

So now launching into this new journey instead of worrying about plays, I'm going to work on each of the 4 big pillars so I stay grounded and keep my ego in check.

Instead of focusing on plays I'm going to focus on the contributing factors behind the plays. In this sense plays is just a symptom of something much deeper.

In the future I'll dig into each of these topics at bit more, for now though I'll say if you're struggling like me, perhaps this an opportunity to also reexamine your relationship with plays and what they really mean to you.