In my previous post, I shared the journey of creating and releasing my first song, I Will Be There. I was incredibly motivated and full of anticipation about its initial reception. I diligently posted everywhere I could, announcing my first official Eurodawn release, sharing it with friends and family. I set up my Facebook and Bandcamp pages, and really tried to kickstart my online presence as an independent music producer. Soon after, I dove straight into my second track.
Motivation Meets Disappointment
Typically, a specific song inspires what I’m currently writing. For I Will Be There, it was Ace of Base’s “Beautiful Life.” My second song, which slowly began to take shape, was titled Children of Summer and drew inspiration from Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”. The main melody came together relatively quickly, and within a few days, the initial arrangement and instrumentation were complete. At the time, I even uploaded a short video of my home studio setup running the song to TikTok, which surprisingly got a lot of views.
Meanwhile, I kept a close eye on how my first song was performing. Unfortunately, the interest was very low. Out of hundreds of my friends, fewer than 20 followed my pages in the first few days. The song itself barely hit 10 streams on Spotify, a few on YouTube, and none at all on Apple Music. I don’t know why I expected a better reception, or on what basis, but I was still disappointed. I did have a few streams on Amazon Music, but they were all from my two daughters, who excitedly listened to “Daddy’s song” on Alexa, amazed that it was already available there. Their pure delight was incredibly touching and gave me the strength to continue.
A New Voice, An Uplifting Vibe
The new song really captured a summery atmosphere. When I showed the instrumentation to my friend, Brother Belmont, he imagined a bittersweet lyric for it. He was quite surprised when I showed him the uplifting, feel-good lyrics I had written – a true positive dance music track about speeding into summer with someone you love. Some of the instrumental parts even took on a tropical feel. Soon after, I found an African singer who agreed to lay down the vocals. Her voice was a perfect fit for the song, and she added beautiful ideas of her own to the vocal production.
Gaining Confidence in the Mix
Unfortunately, the recording itself wasn’t the best from a technical standpoint. However, I managed to get the maximum out of it during the mixing and mastering phase, and overall, I felt the song turned out much better than the previous one. I was genuinely pleased that I spent less time on the mixing and that I was beginning to build confidence in myself. Of course, I’m still very far from saying I’m an expert in mixing and mastering, but at the time, it felt good to experience that improvement. It showed that my hours spent with online music production resources, YouTube tutorials, and music production blogs were paying off.
Release and Shifting Perspectives
This song was uploaded and a Pitch sent to Spotify a few weeks before its release, although I already knew there was little to no chance of it being placed on an official playlist. Upon release, I shared it everywhere again, but with significantly lower expectations this time. The song, despite being of better quality than the first, performed worse, but it didn’t bother me in the same way. I learned to accept that I need to work hard for any potential success and instead focused on finding joy in the process. I enjoyed listening to both songs, and my daughters were even prouder that Alexa now knew two songs from Dad. For a while, I accepted that I wouldn’t find immediate success, and that was okay.
The third song, however, unexpectedly became relatively successful compared to the previous ones – but that’s a story for the next post.