Making Music Is Bad for Your Mental Health.

Making Music Is Bad for Your Mental Health.  

Songs need listeners, but most people are too busy scrolling nowadays.

You’ve just finished a new song. You love it! You’re beyond thrilled. You can’t wait for people to hear it, so you excitedly upload it and click publish. And you wait. And you wait some more. Then you refresh. Maybe it just needed a refresh. No. Still nothing. Ah! There’s a notification now. Jack192837465 gave it a thumbs up!

But, your song is five minutes long, and you uploaded it three minutes ago, so Jack192837465 couldn’t have listened to the whole song. Well maybe he’s loving it so much that he couldn’t help himself and simply had to hit that Like button mid-song. If he’s enjoying it that much, he’ll definitely leave a comment after he’s finished listening to the song. Definitely.

So you wait. And you wait some more. Then you refresh. Maybe it just needed a refresh. No. Still nothing. After another half an hour, you close your laptop and go eat chocolate. You’re defeated. What’s the point? Songs need listeners, but most people are too busy scrolling nowadays. And even if they do listen, they’re not paying attention, they’re just playing your song in the background while they scroll.

And that, my dear friend, is why making music is bad for your mental health. Technically speaking, it’s not the making music that’s the bad thing, it’s the sharing it with a world that doesn’t value music anymore. And to be clear. When asked, people will say they value music, but their actions say the opposite. And always listen to people’s actions, not their words. Because their actions reveal their true values. Remember that. Actions reveal values.

Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.

It seems that the first principle of philosophy in this brave new world is: “I scroll, therefore I am”. Any time the smartphone user is not scrolling, they feel like they don’t exist, or maybe they feel that the world doesn’t exist, or something like that. I don’t know, I deleted all my social media accounts 11 years ago, so I don’t scroll.

The bottom line is this: If you do choose to share your music, then don’t expect people to give it their attention. That’s exclusively reserved for their phones. The best you can hope for is that people listen to your music in the background while they scroll. That’s it. But how horrible is that? And it’s okay to admit it. We pour our heart and soul and mind into making a song (or a painting, a piece of writing, a garden, or whatever art you create), and then we share it with the world, only to be told through their actions that they can’t even give our creation five minutes of their attention.

The world’s indifference to our creation is a form of rejection. And it hurts. A lot. Indifference is arguably a worse type of rejection than someone not liking our music, because indifference leaves us with no hope, whereas rejection leaves us with the hope that people might like something we create in the future.

It’s vital to be gentle and compassionate to your inner artist in these situations, because rejection activates the same part of our brain as physical pain. The hurt is real. Rejection feels painful, precisely because it is painful, in the most literal way.

Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.

So what’s the solution? A time machine. Then we can all go back to before the smartphone zombie apocalypse. Remember when people actually walked around looking up? And even better than that, when people used to drive their cars and look at the road, instead of their phones. Aaah… those were the good ol’ days!

Okay, so while we wait for someone to invent a time machine, how do we cope with this rejection in the meantime? Great question. And please do let me know if you figure it out. I’m all ears! The only partial solution I can currently think of to prevent this rejection, is to avoid the cause of it. In other words, don’t share your music. Or share it, but don’t expect any response. The only thing you should expect is indifference.

That second option is way more difficult, though. Maybe impossible. I don’t know. Everyone’s different. Maybe you can share your music and not expect a response. I certainly can’t. The indifference is just too painful. A few years ago it sent me into depression, which I’m still struggling with. That’s why I took a break from making music, and focused my creativity on writing about music instead. But now, thanks to AI, it turns out that people no longer value writing either. So I’m currently thinking of becoming a baker. People still value bread, right? Well for now, at least.

Subscribe to get the latest posts in your inbox.

Anyway, I’d love to know how you’re coping with the pain of releasing songs into a world that doesn’t value music anymore, so please let me know in the comments.

And if you’re one of the last remaining humans in the world who’s avoided the smartphone zombie apocalypse and you’re actually still interested in creating (and not just consuming content), then please visit my website, as I have a whole collection of free resources for songwriters and producers at every level. If you’re a beginner, start by reading my free book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. If you’re intermediate, download the 30 free PDF tutorials. They cover many different genres and instruments: melody, chords, bass, drums, and more!

And if you’re too busy for all that, I’ve got just the thing for you! It’s a one-hour “crash course” where I teach you all the music making essentials in a series of short step-by-step videos. Imagine that, if you enroll now, you could go to bed tonight knowing how to make good music!

Thanks for being here, my friend, you are very much appreciated!

Ray Harmony :)

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich