<story><title>The modern trap of turning hobbies into hustles (2019)</title><url>https://repeller.com/trap-of-turning-hobbies-into-hustles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>insickness</author><text>I make electronic music. Last year I invested in learning promotion. I spent about $1500 and now I have about a thousand followers on Spotify. Every time I release a song, I get a couple hundred listens. I don&amp;#x27;t do it for the money. The return on a it is a meager. My &amp;#x27;day job&amp;#x27; makes me pretty good money.&lt;p&gt;But it got me thinking: what does it mean to me to have listeners? It&amp;#x27;s great when people &amp;#x27;like&amp;#x27; my music, but in a lot of ways, it&amp;#x27;s just numbers on a screen. What difference would it make if I had 10,000 or 100,000 listeners instead of 1000? Maybe it would be cool if I were in a store and hear a song of mine playing on the radio or watching a movie and it was playing as a sound track. The validation I&amp;#x27;ve felt from similar successes is great but it is fleeting. Ultimately, the most joy I get out of it is being able to sit down and create music that I myself enjoy and respect.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>riebschlager</author><text>I think you nailed it in your last sentence. Hobbies are our chance to create without the baggage of external requirements or external validation.&lt;p&gt;Being in that creative flow state is the &lt;i&gt;best&lt;/i&gt; feeling. If someone else appreciates what you made, that&amp;#x27;s just the icing on an already tasty cake.&lt;p&gt;I post my silly art projects on Instagram for 30 or 40 likes. Would I love more? Well, yeah. Endorphins and all that. But I can&amp;#x27;t stop making this stuff because I just really, really enjoy the moments of making it.</text></comment>
<story><title>The modern trap of turning hobbies into hustles (2019)</title><url>https://repeller.com/trap-of-turning-hobbies-into-hustles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>insickness</author><text>I make electronic music. Last year I invested in learning promotion. I spent about $1500 and now I have about a thousand followers on Spotify. Every time I release a song, I get a couple hundred listens. I don&amp;#x27;t do it for the money. The return on a it is a meager. My &amp;#x27;day job&amp;#x27; makes me pretty good money.&lt;p&gt;But it got me thinking: what does it mean to me to have listeners? It&amp;#x27;s great when people &amp;#x27;like&amp;#x27; my music, but in a lot of ways, it&amp;#x27;s just numbers on a screen. What difference would it make if I had 10,000 or 100,000 listeners instead of 1000? Maybe it would be cool if I were in a store and hear a song of mine playing on the radio or watching a movie and it was playing as a sound track. The validation I&amp;#x27;ve felt from similar successes is great but it is fleeting. Ultimately, the most joy I get out of it is being able to sit down and create music that I myself enjoy and respect.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mjr00</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m in the same boat, making electronic music as a hobby. I don&amp;#x27;t think there&amp;#x27;s anything wrong with wanting fans of your music, even if you have a day job and have no desire to make it a career. As fun as the creative process is, if you&amp;#x27;re making (good) music there will probably be things about it that you don&amp;#x27;t enjoy, whether that&amp;#x27;s sound design, tweaking effects chains to get something to sound right, banging your head trying to figure out why your track doesn&amp;#x27;t sound like your reference, mixing, mastering, etc. If you&amp;#x27;re putting in that effort, it &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; nice to see some validation, even if it&amp;#x27;s just in the form of &amp;quot;likes.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Promotion is a different story, though... I don&amp;#x27;t think it makes sense to throw real money (aka more than like $20 on Submithub&amp;#x2F;Labelradar, which I consider more paid feedback than promotion) for a release unless you&amp;#x27;re planning to get an actual return on investment there. At which point it crosses the line into &amp;quot;hustle,&amp;quot; for me.</text></comment>