There is a particular kind of psychological torture involved in being an independent musician in 2026. You release an album. You pour your savings, your time, your heart and an unreasonable number of hours into it.
You get it mastered. You get the artwork done. You upload it to the streaming platforms. You make the videos. You send the emails. You post the bloody thing all over social media.
And then you wait.
You open Spotify for Artists.
87 monthly listeners. You almost know them by name.
Ouch.
Maybe next week it’s 94.
You get excited.
Then it drops back to 82.
And however rational you know you should be about it, there is still that little pit in your stomach.
Is anyone listening? What´s the bloody point of it all?
Because we are constantly being told that these numbers matter.
Monthly listeners. Streams. Followers. Saves. Playlist placements.
Numbers everywhere.
And when you’re an independent artist without a record label, a PR machine or thousands of euros to throw at advertising, it is very easy to start feeling like you’re shouting your songs into the wilderness.
Except…
I don’t think I am.
Because then I play a gig. I connect with my audience. I joke, I chat, I sing for them. I cheekily warn them that I won´t do an encore if they don´t buy my album. And after the last song, people come over to the merch table.
They want to talk. They tell me which song they liked, or how much they loved the tunes, the guitar solos, the melodies.
Someone says they recognised themselves in one of the lyrics, another was even singing along to the chorus. Someone else tells me they have been listening to the album in the car.
And then they pull out their wallet.
Five CDs.
Or five vinyl records. Sometimes more. And a tote bag, because I have those too. They all want their albums signed by me, and they leave happy.
At pretty much every gig, I sell a minimum of five physical albums.
And suddenly Spotify’s 87 monthly listeners don’t seem quite so important.
Because those five people have just done something that an algorithm can’t measure.
They have heard the music and decided that it is worth owning.
They are taking it home.
They are going to put it on.
They might read the lyrics in the booklet.
They might play it to their partner.
They might tell a friend.
And, crucially, they have actually given me money.
This is the slightly absurd bit.
After a year of having my album available on streaming platforms, DistroKid currently owes me roughly $5 in streaming royalties.
Five measly dollars.
I can sell five CDs or vinyl records after one concert and make considerably more than I’ve made from a year of people streaming my music.
And I know which one feels more meaningful.
Because streaming is invisible. A stream comes and goes, and you don’t know who was listening. You don’t know whether they listened because they genuinely connected with the song or because an algorithm threw it at them while they were making dinner.
But when someone stands in front of you after a gig and hands you €25 for a vinyl record, you know exactly what happened.
They heard something.
It meant something to them.
They wanted to take it home.
That is an audience.
And maybe this is something we need to remember in an industry that has become obsessed with metrics.
A monthly listener isn’t a fan.
A stream isn’t a relationship.
A follower isn’t necessarily an audience.
And a small number doesn’t necessarily mean that your music isn’t making an impact.
Don’t get me wrong. I would bloody love Spotify to discover my music. I’d love thousands of people to find my songs. I’d love to see those monthly listener numbers climb until I no longer have to brace myself before opening the app.
But I’m increasingly suspicious of the idea that the number on my Spotify dashboard tells me how well I’m doing. Because my actual life as a musician tells me something different. I see it when people sing along. I see it when someone drives all that way to come to a gig. I see it when somebody brings a friend next time.
I see it when five people stand at my merch table with cash burning holes in their pockets because they want a piece of the music they have just heard.
And I see it in that beautiful, slightly old-fashioned moment when someone walks away carrying a record.
Something physical.
Something they paid for.
Something that exists outside the algorithm.
So yes, I will continue trying to grow my Spotify audience.
I’ll keep releasing music. I’ll keep pitching. I’ll keep posting. I’ll keep trying to get my songs heard beyond the little corners of the world I’ve already reached.
But I refuse to let a number on a screen convince me that nobody is listening.
Because they are.
They just aren’t necessarily showing up in the place the industry has taught us to look.
Spotify says 87.
The merch table says otherwise.
And right now, I’m inclined to believe the people holding the records.
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