Thursday 31st March, 2022
My leg bones are shaking, every step sends another shock through my body. I am spent & life is beautiful…
So, we’ve got some things to talk about. ‘23rd of March’ Nathan feels so innocent right now. He had no idea what was about to happen. If you’re not up to date on the Nathan vs Distrokid saga, on Thursday morning at 6.30am I woke, & looked at my phone to see a lovely message. “Nathan, you’re song is out. It sounds great!”
This compliment tipped me into a panic, earlier in the morning than I would’ve liked. Immediately I snapped out of that half morning stupor & checked every streaming platform & my distrokid details… it’s true. ‘Broken & Beautiful’ was out a day early. Now what do you do?
To be fair, I wasn’t the most prepared muffin with this release. Life had a way of derailing things… but life always derails things. I quickly make a silly poster, making a joke about my song coming out a day early, & why I need some extra help on the track because of it. (best of a bad situation) If I leverage the mistake, it might work out for the best. I head into the city, print some posters off, & make my way to college. That Thursdsy I also had an assignment due… in my ‘releasing music’ module no doubt. (the irony isn’t lost on me)
Since then, a lot of the PR work I did has kicked in… playlists, blogs, etc, have been popping up. I’ve been getting into instagram reels (which keep crashing the app), & I’ve even begun my TikTok journey (for the third time). Being really honest, this has been one of the weaker release weeks… not having broke even 1000 streams (of which we’ve done in a day or two before). What’s the difference? Is it how busy I’ve been with life? Almost all of my other releases happened during lockdown. Maybe it’s because I’m not just pushing Spotify, & trying to branch out a little bit… Or could it be that the friends who would stream the song on repeat have left it alone this time? This one seems the most plauseable. The listener to stream ratio is much closer togetger this time around.
Over the years I’ve figured out that your daily listeners is ome of the few metrics that give you an actual idea of how you’re doing. (that is only if you’re not on a massive playlist… then your daily liateners mean next to nothing). Once again, we never know just how well we’re doing. It drives most of us mad.
On the back of all the madness, I was able to play a featured slot in the Circle sessions (my little open mic home in Dublin). Four songs, accompanied by my backing tracks: the new stage set up. Without a microphone it didn’t blend all that well, & being in charge of my own sound means that I can’t tell if the track is too loud or too low. No matter, the crowd were brilliant, I had fun, & I took one more step down a long road to my live performance dreams. Someone tip off Cirque du Soleil… Nathan Mac is gunning for that collab.
So, where does one go from here? Has the dust settled? Is it time to move on?
Yes & no… (sucky answer)
I will need to get around to finishing our next track. Brian & I have been hard at work for a long while on everything. Soon we’ll have a very special guest in the studio with us. The artwork needs to be created, & the release plan needs some formulating.
At the same time, I can’t move on. There are still videos & information I want to put out there about Broken & Beautiful. So for the next month or so, I’ll be fleshing out the release that little bit more. Reminding you to stream & share Broken & Beautiful!
Until next week m’dearie,
Nathan
