Putting your heart and soul into something you’ve created, posting it, then earning no immediate reaction or engagement can be discouraging and can soon lead to burnout.
In addition to my career in communication, I have worked in the music industry for most of my life, for both fun and work. These days, the bulk of my work in music is in the world of music licensing.
When you compose and produce music for licensing, there are many paths you can follow, and one of those is to submit music to music licensing companies. These companies review your submissions and either accept or reject your music.
If you are accepted, the licensing companies work with you to rename tracks, direct you on the different versions they need, catalog, tag, add metadata, and other technical formalities before placing the music in their catalog. After this process is complete, you wait. With no guarantee. You are hoping that someone will eventually use your music.
But the time between your music being accepted by a licensing company and getting a placement/receiving a royalty can take years. Because, even if someone selects your music relatively soon after you submit it, they still need to finish whatever production uses your music. Then, they need to fill out cue sheets and complete all the necessary paperwork to notify your PRO (the agency that ensures songwriters and publishers are paid for the use of their music by collecting royalties on behalf of the rights owner). After this, the production using your song still needs to air the performance, and then it could take over a year from that air date to see a royalty payment (which may be the first time you discover that someone used your song).
This process and timeline can be maddening and demoralizing for music producers.
There is a motto many of us who work in music licensing live by that goes: write, mix, submit, forget.
The idea is to create your composition, get it mixed, submit it to the licensing companies, and completely forget about it, i.e., move on to the next song.
But I believe this motto transcends music licensing.
Growing anything takes time and patience. But the addiction to the dopamine release from likes and engagements with your content makes us all extremely impatient. And it’s demoralizing when none of your followers engage.
That’s why I believe it’s helpful to adopt a similar philosophy of create, post, forget.
Reciprocate any engagement with your content, but post your content and move on. Once you stop focusing on likes, you’ll lower your stress and limit burnout.
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Ok, that’s all for today. Good luck out there!
#CreateSomethingGreat
Photo by Cristian Dina from Pexels
