Dear indie friends,

A question has been following me for quite some time. When did musicians become full-time marketers?

Somewhere along the way, creating music stopped being enough.

Now we are expected to become photographers, video editors, graphic designers, community managers, short-form video experts, advertising strategists, SEO specialists, copywriters, newsletter publishers, social media entertainers.

And somewhere between editing a thirty-second clip and writing tomorrow's caption... there is still a song waiting to be finished.

Let’s dig this one together!
Mitxoda

I call it the Promotional Treadmill.

A treadmill has one peculiar characteristic. You can spend hours running... without actually going anywhere.

Promotion can feel exactly like that.

You post. You reply. You record behind-the-scenes videos.

Then, you thank your listeners and update your bio.

You create vertical videos. You schedule another post. You redesign your artwork. You check the numbers.

You answer messages, then you wake up the next morning... and the treadmill starts again.

Promotion itself isn't the problem. Artists have always promoted their work.

They printed posters, played interviews, visited radio stations, met audiences after concerts.

The difference today is scale.

Promotion never sleeps anymore., neither, sometimes, do artists.

The greatest danger isn't exhaustion. It's substitution.

Little by little, promotion begins replacing creation. You tell yourself you'll finish the song tomorrow.

First, you need content. The chorus can wait, but the algorithm can't.

One more reel. One more teaser. One more countdown. One more "Don't forget to pre-save."

Days become weeks. Weeks become months.

Eventually, something strange happens.

You're talking about your music more often than you're actually making it. The artist slowly becomes the spokesperson for work that no longer has enough time to exist.

And that's heartbreaking.

Because nobody started writing songs in order to spend their evenings optimizing engagement rates.

Most indie musicians aren't chasing fame. They're chasing visibility.

Those are very different things.

Visibility has become the entrance ticket. But if nobody sees your work... how can they ever hear it?

So artists feel guilty every time they stop posting. Every silent day feels like disappearing.

And the platforms quietly encourage this feeling.

Consistency, frequency.

Daily content, constant presence.

Always active, always available, always visible.

But creativity doesn't work like that. Songs don't grow on publishing schedules. They grow in silence. In boredom. In walks. Even in mistakes or unfinished notebooks.

In moments when absolutely nothing seems to be happening. Ironically... those are often the moments when everything important is happening.

Music has always required empty space. Silence isn't the enemy of creativity. It's one of its ingredients.

The melody that appears during a train ride, the lyric that arrives while washing dishes. The harmony discovered by accident after playing the wrong chord.

None of those moments can be scheduled into a content calendar.

Creation is wonderfully inefficient. Promotion demands efficiency.

The two are necessary.

But they don't always speak the same language.

Fortunately, I'm starting to notice something encouraging. Many listeners are becoming tired too.

Tired of perfect branding. Tired of constant promotion.

Tired of endless announcements.

Increasingly, people seem to crave something simpler, like authentic conversations, honest newsletters, independent radio, Bandcamp Fridays.

Communities where music arrives before marketing.

Where songs aren't interruptions between advertisements. They're the reason everyone gathered in the first place.

That gives me hope.

Perhaps audiences miss sincerity as much as artists do.

Independent musicians possess one freedom that no algorithm can measure.

They can choose their own rhythm. They can disappear for a while. Experiment. Fail.

And then, begin again!

Write a song that doesn't fit the current trend. Release an album that takes two years instead of two weeks.

Not because it's strategically optimal.

Because it's honestly finished.

That freedom may be one of the greatest luxuries left in modern music. And perhaps one of the greatest reasons listeners still seek out independent artists.

Not for perfection.

For humanity.

Promotion matters. It always will.

People cannot discover music they've never encountered.

But perhaps promotion should remain what it was always meant to be: a bridge.

A path leading toward the music, not a substitute for making it.

The most beautiful post in the world cannot replace one unforgettable song.

Fortunately... it doesn't have to.

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.

I hope you find a little time this week to close the analytics.

Silence the notifications. Ignore the algorithm for an afternoon. And return to the reason you started all of this.

The next post can wait.

The next song probably can't.

With love, always,
🖤 Mitxoda

END 😆