Dear indie friends,

A strange thing happened to music. We have never discovered so much. And we have never forgotten so much.

Every day, thousands of songs pass through our ears. Recommendations.

Playlists. Algorithms. Social media clips. Friends sharing links. Radio shows. Weekly releases. Infinite streams of sound arriving from every corner of the world.

And yet...

How many songs from last week can you actually remember?

Welcome in this 91st weekly, I enjoy you reading me. I hope you will appreciate this piece, again.

I will also explore new sounds today during my 60th episode of Le Salon Indie. You are more than welcome, it’s really open to everyone. No exceptions, no rules. Only love.

Greetings from Brussels,
Mitxoda

I call it Disposable Discovery

A song appears. You listen. Maybe you even enjoy it. Maybe you click "like." Maybe you tell yourself you'll come back later.

And then... It disappears.

Not because the song was bad or the artist failed. Simply because something else arrived five minutes later.

And then something else. And then another thing (again).

Discovery has become continuous. Memory has not.

For most of human history, finding new music required effort. You borrowed an album. You bought a CD. You waited for a radio show. You attended a concert. You invested time before hearing the music.

Today, hearing a song costs almost nothing.

Ironically, that may be part of the problem.

For indie artists, Disposable Discovery creates a particularly painful illusion.

You see streams, listeners and clicks with numbers moving.

And yet... Nothing seems to stick.

People listen. Then vanish.

A song receives attention for a day. A week if you're lucky. Then the timeline moves on. The feed refreshes and the next release appears.

Even the next trend arrives.

Meaning the next distraction takes over.

Many artists start believing they must constantly release something new to survive. A new single, a new video, a new teaser, a new post, annoucement.. whatever…

Only because yesterday's song already feels old.

Not old in years but in hours!

The danger is obvious. Music becomes disposable.

And eventually, artists begin feeling disposable too.

Streaming didn't create this problem alone. The entire digital world contributes to it. Every platform competes for attention and every application fights for seconds.

Notification interrupts something else and patience has become a rare resource.

Many songs are judged before their first chorus, and some of them even before the first verse, the first sentence.

I think the listener is not cruel, he is “just” overwhelmed.

He/she is swimming in an ocean of content.

So does everything else. The competition is no longer between musicians, but between music and the entire internet.

Something precious disappears when discovery becomes disposable. Anticipation. Attachment. Even relationship.

Many of our favorite albums were not instant loves. They required time, multiple listens, bad speakers. long bus rides. headphones before sleep.

Some songs reveal themselves slowly.

But a culture built around instant decisions rarely gives them the opportunity.

The result?

Music increasingly rewards immediate impact, but depth often needs time.

Fortunately, not everything is moving in that direction.

Every week, I encounter listeners who prove the opposite. People who still sit down and listen, replay an album, return to a song months later.

People who also send messages saying: "I wasn't ready for this the first time." or: "This song suddenly made sense."

Those moments matter.

More than most statistics ever will, because it happens away from the feeds.

This may sound strange, but indie artists possess an unexpected advantage. They are often discovered more slowly.

And slower discovery sometimes creates stronger connections.

A listener who actively searches for your music, who joins your newsletter, who attends your show, who buys your album, who shares your song with a friend.

That listener is doing something algorithms cannot manufacture.

They are investing attention.

And attention remains one of the most valuable gifts a human being can offer.

Not everyone who hears your song will remember it but the few who do may carry it for years.

Perhaps we have been measuring the wrong thing. Maybe success is not how many people hear a song.

Success could be how many people keep carrying it after the music stops.

A viral hit can disappear in weeks. A meaningful song can live inside someone for decades.

One creates noise, and the other creates memory.

And memory has always been the stronger force.

This week’s Top 10 isn’t about winning prizes, it’s about love, support, and staying in it together.

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.

The world encourages us to discover faster. Maybe the real challenge is learning to discover deeper. Not every song deserves a second chance.

But some of the most important songs in our lives needed one.

With love, always,
🖤 Mitxoda

END 😆