I can totally understand your feelings. I am a musician and with my songs, I try to point on these problems and reach people from the emotional side as well. Staying in the animal welfare world, I want to share some experiences with my song “Number in a Cage”. The song is about a female chick that experiences the first hours of life, witnessing her brother to get shreddered. When we play the song on stage, I am acting what this little chick experiences and my whole band acts mechanical as the factory surrounding. Audience reactions are very diverse. 1) people who come to me after the show saying “Finally someone who understands that and points it out. I guess you are vegan as well?”—so those that feel seen. 2) people have trouble to digest the song. We often experienced people not clapping immediately after the song and trying to process what they just have seen. If things go well, they reflect and take sth out of it. If things go bad, they push it away and just continue their lives as if never been confronted with that. 3) people who avoid us due to our not so easy to stomach-songs. The worst was a concert where people became completely icy after that song towards us and when we continued with a song about tolerance and not letting refugees drown in the Mediteranean Sea you could feel the atmosphere was kind of hostile. We didn’t sell a single merch item that night. 4) people who don’t get it at all and just find the playful chick-motive funny, happily dancing around. For us, this led to discussions on which concerts we could play which songs without being so confrontational that we loose the audience completely. It is a serious problem. Both lyric-and musicwise, I want to be progressive, not just walk the “easy to stomach, easy message, easy, catchy hooks”-way. But if you are so out of the box for most of the possible audience, the reach is super low. Only to reach group 1 (and musically group 4) audience is nice for giving them hope and feel seen, but not the goal of writing such lyrics. I want people to think about the issue who aren’t on that path yet. But to create the group 2-environment and not loosing too much to group 3 feels like a hard to hit balanace. In addition, I often feel kind of desperate. I am doing the poisonous comparison to the reach of easy to stomach-songs vs my art. Even the comparison inbetween my songs—our love song always is spotify algorithms darling while those that feel really relevant to me have a way poorer reach. So it feels to me like: Do my thoughts and my art really have a resonance, a space here? Is it trying to move windmills with my breath? Is it kind of self-punishment to stay with my messages and believes, as I keep myself from more career success with restricting my audience? So I am in a constant back and forth between a fighting and a desperate spirit.
thanks Janika. I understand the dilemma. sometimes even just with social media posts, it’s the easy ones that go far and the ones that are deeper, more meaningful, more challenging… that don’t. (is there a video online somewhere of you chicken song?)
True, that social media frustration is very real for us as well. “Happy Christmas” and a picture with a friendly smile has more interactions than the new release we worked on for months and years or a more philosophical post. Feels completely stupid. If we would just constantely post bikini pictures of our female band members, we would definitely rise more attention. But we would also have a way lower/different connection to our followers. I think one shouldn’t just look at the numbers, but also how much is just social media noise and how much is a meaningful connection. How many people did you really touch and influence. In the end, those have a way higher value for the overall mission. Nevertheless, reach is a problem—when the meaningful content drowns in the noise, it is harder to reach the people. When paid ads are the only medicine to cut through, it binds ressources—and, in addition, companies also optimise your ad possibilities to their advantage. E.G. META used to have the possibility to cap how often one person gets the same ad and silently removed the function at some point because it resulted in ads that couldn’t be delivered when your targeting was narrow. As a result, you now pay for one person getting your ad 20 times in that scenario. Also filters don’t always work as you expect it—otherwise I can’t explain that band members get the ads delivered despite the configuration not to deliver to page followers or, my absolute favourite, me getting delivered my own ad and getting charged for it. Edit says: You asked for a video of the song, the music you find on any streaming platform, I link you the website as the lyrics are there as well: https://molllust.com/music/2015-in-deep-waters/ (Number in a Cage) Video: I realized that videos are only online from the acoustic version where acting is way less (especially due to me playing the piano all the time instead of running around on stage), but I found a small excerpt live in a best off-video of a show, I linked the time stamp:
I can totally understand your feelings. I am a musician and with my songs, I try to point on these problems and reach people from the emotional side as well.
Staying in the animal welfare world, I want to share some experiences with my song “Number in a Cage”. The song is about a female chick that experiences the first hours of life, witnessing her brother to get shreddered. When we play the song on stage, I am acting what this little chick experiences and my whole band acts mechanical as the factory surrounding.
Audience reactions are very diverse.
1) people who come to me after the show saying “Finally someone who understands that and points it out. I guess you are vegan as well?”—so those that feel seen.
2) people have trouble to digest the song. We often experienced people not clapping immediately after the song and trying to process what they just have seen. If things go well, they reflect and take sth out of it. If things go bad, they push it away and just continue their lives as if never been confronted with that.
3) people who avoid us due to our not so easy to stomach-songs. The worst was a concert where people became completely icy after that song towards us and when we continued with a song about tolerance and not letting refugees drown in the Mediteranean Sea you could feel the atmosphere was kind of hostile. We didn’t sell a single merch item that night.
4) people who don’t get it at all and just find the playful chick-motive funny, happily dancing around.
For us, this led to discussions on which concerts we could play which songs without being so confrontational that we loose the audience completely. It is a serious problem. Both lyric-and musicwise, I want to be progressive, not just walk the “easy to stomach, easy message, easy, catchy hooks”-way. But if you are so out of the box for most of the possible audience, the reach is super low. Only to reach group 1 (and musically group 4) audience is nice for giving them hope and feel seen, but not the goal of writing such lyrics. I want people to think about the issue who aren’t on that path yet. But to create the group 2-environment and not loosing too much to group 3 feels like a hard to hit balanace.
In addition, I often feel kind of desperate. I am doing the poisonous comparison to the reach of easy to stomach-songs vs my art. Even the comparison inbetween my songs—our love song always is spotify algorithms darling while those that feel really relevant to me have a way poorer reach. So it feels to me like: Do my thoughts and my art really have a resonance, a space here? Is it trying to move windmills with my breath? Is it kind of self-punishment to stay with my messages and believes, as I keep myself from more career success with restricting my audience? So I am in a constant back and forth between a fighting and a desperate spirit.
thanks Janika. I understand the dilemma. sometimes even just with social media posts, it’s the easy ones that go far and the ones that are deeper, more meaningful, more challenging… that don’t.
(is there a video online somewhere of you chicken song?)
True, that social media frustration is very real for us as well. “Happy Christmas” and a picture with a friendly smile has more interactions than the new release we worked on for months and years or a more philosophical post. Feels completely stupid. If we would just constantely post bikini pictures of our female band members, we would definitely rise more attention. But we would also have a way lower/different connection to our followers. I think one shouldn’t just look at the numbers, but also how much is just social media noise and how much is a meaningful connection. How many people did you really touch and influence. In the end, those have a way higher value for the overall mission. Nevertheless, reach is a problem—when the meaningful content drowns in the noise, it is harder to reach the people. When paid ads are the only medicine to cut through, it binds ressources—and, in addition, companies also optimise your ad possibilities to their advantage. E.G. META used to have the possibility to cap how often one person gets the same ad and silently removed the function at some point because it resulted in ads that couldn’t be delivered when your targeting was narrow. As a result, you now pay for one person getting your ad 20 times in that scenario. Also filters don’t always work as you expect it—otherwise I can’t explain that band members get the ads delivered despite the configuration not to deliver to page followers or, my absolute favourite, me getting delivered my own ad and getting charged for it.
Edit says: You asked for a video of the song, the music you find on any streaming platform, I link you the website as the lyrics are there as well: https://molllust.com/music/2015-in-deep-waters/ (Number in a Cage)
Video: I realized that videos are only online from the acoustic version where acting is way less (especially due to me playing the piano all the time instead of running around on stage), but I found a small excerpt live in a best off-video of a show, I linked the time stamp: