Dear indie friends,

Last week, we reached 100 editions of this strange little thing called Mitxoda Weekly.

One hundred Fridays.

One hundred excuses to talk about music, artists, frustration, discovery, algorithms, love, attention, radio, community, and occasionally the absurdity of trying to be heard in a world where everybody seems to be shouting at once.

So for #101, I don't want to start another hundred by talking about Spotify. Or algorithms or even marketing.

I want to go back to something much simpler.

A question that probably existed long before any music industry did.

Why do we still make music?

But first of all, let me wish a super happy birthday to the one and only Cinco Dave, the mastermind behind the splendid radio station On The Air Tonight OTAT 247!!!

Thanks to Dave and Lisa, I’ve been able to bring you a 2-hour indie show EVERY WEEK for nearly 70 weeks now!

Enjoy the read, and see you today in my Salon!

Love,
Mitxoda

Think about it. Why do we still make music?

Making music is not particularly reasonable. You spend hours trying to find the right chord. Then another hour deciding that the chord you liked yesterday is terrible. Right?

You record seventeen versions of something nobody else will ever notice. You move a snare drum by a few milliseconds. You rewrite a sentence because one word somehow feels dishonest. You forget to sleep, of course.

You listen to the same thirty seconds until you can no longer tell whether it is brilliant or unbearable.

Then, eventually, you release it.

And the world does what the world does. Maybe people listen. Maybe they don't.

Sometimes someone writes to you from the other side of the planet saying that your song meant something to them.

Maybe the algorithm gives you fourteen plays and quietly moves on with its day.

None of this makes much sense - IMHO.

And still...

Tomorrow, somewhere, someone will pick up a guitar, will open a laptop or sit at a piano.

Someone will hum a melody into their phone at 2:13 in the morning because they are terrified they will forget it.

Someone else who has never released a song before will press Record.

Or a nobody out there who has released fifty albums will do exactly the same thing.

But… Why?

We spend much of our lives being asked what things are for. What is the objective? What is the return? How many people will it reach? Will it perform? Can it grow? Can it be even monetised? (AHAHAHAHAHA!)

Can it become content?

Music has increasingly been dragged into that vocabulary too.

Streams. Followers. Conversion. Reach. Retention. Playlist placement. Monthly listeners.

(And we are going crazy, becoming content creators, unfortunately.)

And those things are not imaginary. Artists need listeners. Some need income. Most would probably prefer their new release not to disappear into a black hole twelve minutes after publication.

But none of that explains why music begins.

Because before the campaign, there was a sound. Before the release strategy, there was an idea.

Before that foolish analytics dashboard, somebody felt something worth turning into music.

That moment interests me much more.

That might be one of the strangest things about music.

A song doesn't need permission or any market study.

It doesn't even need to know who will listen. It can start because somebody is angry, in love.

Because somebody has lost someone.

Or when three people in a rehearsal room found a noise that made them laugh, with that subtile bass line appearing by accident, you know what I mean…

Because silence suddenly felt insufficient.

Sometimes the first audience for a song is simply the person making it.

And perhaps that is enough to begin.

At some point, we want somebody else to hear it. And this is where the story becomes more complicated, because creating music can be private.

Sharing music is an act of vulnerability.

You are saying: I made this. This mattered enough for me to finish it. Will you give it a few minutes of your life?

That is actually an extraordinary request.

And every independent artist making that request today is doing so in a world containing more music than any human being could ever listen to.

Which makes me wonder whether the real crisis in music is not that there is too much music.

Perhaps it is that we have forgotten how remarkable it is that people keep making it.

Not fame. Not numbers. Not playlists.

Not even success. What is success, actually??

Maybe people make music because there are things that cannot quite survive as ordinary sentences.

Because sometimes three chords can carry something that three pages cannot.

Because a voice trembling slightly at the right moment can tell us more than perfect production ever could.

And I often dream about that sound that lets us put a shape around something invisible.

Every now and then, something created in one person's room reaches another person's headphones and makes them think: Yes. I know that feeling.

Two strangers. One song.

Just for a few minutes.

BAM! Connection.

That still feels miraculous to me.

For the next few months, the Weekly is going to become a little conversation about music. Not the music business every week. But hell yeah, music itself.

Why we make it. Why we search for it.

Why we share it. Why some songs stay with us for decades while others disappear immediately.

And I honestly don’t have a clue… but I like that movement.

Why discovery matters. Why attention matters.

Why human recommendation still matters too (even if we think it’s fake or genuine)

And ultimately, what kind of musical world we actually want to live in.

But I don't want this to be only my answer. That I don’t have. Well, yes, I do have my idea, and if you follow me since the very first Weekly, I think you have entered a bit more into my mind, my garden, my salon…

So let's start with the simplest question of all:

Not the clever answer. No bad answer neither.

But avoid the promotional answer. I think we all want some true inside views, right?

The real one(s).

Read what other indie people answered, and add yours.

One word. A few clues. Your indie brain against the clock.

Play Soundcheck →

One word. A few clues. Your indie brain against the clock.

Vote in the Weekly 100 →

Help independent songs climb the community ranking.

Listen to Le Salon Indie →

Two hours inside the independent music world.

Submit a Song →

Making music yourself? Send it to Mitxoda.

Keep listening with intention.

And if a song matters to you today, perhaps send it to one person instead of posting it to everyone.

Sometimes that is how music really travels.

With love, always,
🖤 Mitxoda

Every Friday at 4:00 PM (Brussels time) a new episode of Le Salon Indie de Mitxoda will take place on salon.mitxoda.be, don’t miss it.

END 😆