i think another part of it, if you’re trying to get people around you to like your stuff (i don’t think you are but still) is that for whatever reason the bar is just pretty high in terms of production value, people just seem to have some sort of ear for it (insofar as they seem to like it when its loud e.g. the loudness wars). loudness and clarity and then pleasing hooks and whatnot. its actually crazy how much of music is just formulaic based on what people have seemed to like and what’s pleasing to the ear and figuring out what is in fact pleasing to the ear… 
There are basically only two options:
- You’re playing your music to the wrong crowd. -> Find your real audience.
- Your music sucks, for real. -> Take your time and improve your skills.
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Like almost everyone else has said - you make music for yourself. Anything extra that comes from it is a bonus, but it shouldn’t be your primary goal. In my own experience I throw things out on YouTube as something of my own journal to go back to and listen as time passes. If someone finds it somewhere down the road that is the bonus. Having someone leave a comment months or years down the road, that is pretty gratifying. If I build an organic audience long term over time, cool, but my mentality has always been and always will be that I do what I want with no pressure whatsoever.
If you are looking for constructive criticism or feedback that should be explicitly stated.
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That artist guy clip is great, is it real and who is it? I’d love to see the video.
I make music for me, not anybody else.
Imagine if someone came round and you handed them your latest crochet creation and stared them intently while insisting they evaluate it in silence.
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I no longer care.
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Care minus one.
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It’s Fred Rogers, but the image is edited to parody Tim Buckley’s Loss comic.
Here is the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKUQ0Gq39N4
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If I had to choose the most effective relationship between someone making something and people liking it, I might say ice cream. Mix cream and sugar, add some flavor, serve as a treat. Logically, it doesn’t seem like much can go wrong. But I get to the ice cream parlor and half the flavors don’t interest me. A few even sound unappetizing. I’m told there are even people that don’t like ice cream. Those that do like ice cream would claw each other to death before conceding that one flavor might be the best.
If a certain flavor of milk and sugar has trouble winning some people over, I don’t feel bad that my music has trouble with that too. Same thing if you base it on merit. The top 40 songs are always cooking with what they perceive to be cream and sugar. Some of those are the best thing that’s ever gonna come out of a room of lifelong pros who have studied and experienced crafting popular songs from every angle. And it might do absolutely nothing for a lot of us music geeks.
If you can’t count on logic or even merit, you really don’t have much you can count on. You can do everything right and still not connect with someone. That would be depressing if it weren’t one of the coolest aspects of music. If music ‘worked’, most of us would spend our whole lives listening to just Elvis and Mozart. One of my favorite albums is Happiest Nuclear Winter by the Brobecks. Small project no one has even heard of, not even maintained on streaming services, but the singer went on to have global success in Fallout Boy or Panic at the Disco. I don’t remember which, I didn’t like those. By every measure of logic or merit, I’m supposed to like those two instead. And by those measures, the Brobecks did it wrong. Given our shared interest in bleeps and bloops, I think most of us are ultimately very glad that music doesn’t work all that mechanically. But that’s also an unspoken promise to ourselves that the satisfaction we get from making music will be mostly internal.
Also, developing an idea, crafting an entire arrangement, and turning that into a good recording is rarely simple. Even people with incredible natural talent for writing do so as part of a team or spend decades honing these skills. Many of us aren’t that lucky and the learning curve is long and difficult. Even after a point where I’ve created some recordings I’m very happy with, there were times after that when everything that came out of me was crap. As long as 2 years. The only path forward for me was to keep making crap for a while. All the time learning more, taking new approaches, focusing on areas where I didn’t feel as confident, etc.
Eventually, it comes together. Some good ideas, some hard work, some happy accidents, a lot of knowledge. You can’t believe you made this thing you’re hearing. It’s new, it’s perfect, it’s what you wanted and more. It’s 45 seconds long and you listen to it on repeat for hours until you get sick of it and can’t ever listen to it again. I believe that every single person who spends enough time writing music will find this eventually. And once you’ve felt that, it’s easier to just keep working. It doesn’t happen every time. It’s special. That’s OK. If you manage to develop this idea and make a good recording, you can put it out there, and someone might feel the same way about it that you did. A lot of people won’t. That’s even more special, more exciting. I think once that happens, you’re stuck for life.
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I love the end of that clip, where he says “It feels good to have made something.”
BTW, Fred Rogers is the guy who would care if you played him your music. We should all strive to be that guy.
He’d ask you all sorts of questions about your music that would reveal something about what it means to you. And he’d never say even things like “I might not put that on when my mother comes for tea.”
That’s because he knows that it feels good to have made something, and he would not want to take that away from you.
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Yes it does. For those that take from the earth there should be those that give back to it. Fred Rogers was definitely one of those people who gave more than he took. Consumer versus creator philosophy.
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This doesn’t sound so unreasonable to me.
Tons of my friends have totally different interests to me, and I’ve got zero interest in those things, they’re just not part of the reason we’re friends.
Plenty of them are into things like football, golf, choir singing, sculpting, juggling, running, etc., which we just don’t talk about since they’re not a shared interest.
Me sharing music with friends/family is the equivalent of someone sharing their 10k run stats with me - I’m happy that it makes them happy, but they know I’m not into it, so why share it?
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I believe what the OP, and others, are experiencing is called freedom.
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I agree. The majority of ‘hits’ are very simple tunes with a stupid annoying hook and a sequence of chords. Add some Reverb and let it ride.
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Absolutely this…
I have very few friends, friendships since 20 years ago, like brothers for me. We have same interests, science fiction, horror, etc, and I don’t talk too much about music with them (with them I refer that there are friends of mine that hasnt interest in music so, I don’t talk about music and don’t send anything about music almost always)
But there are friends that are into electronic music and they are my target when I send them messages. Not the ones that don’t have interest in music.
So my target and friends that love music and electronic music are totally silent. My guess is that or my work it’s too bad, or they are very busy or they don’t understand what I do.
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I want to thank you all of you for the posts you have been made here 
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…this feeling of “no one cares” is another highly subjective feeling in this uberinflationary times…
everything’s on demand…common folks have no chance anymore to even know what they might like…
so, first and last line of defense is always U…
create ur very own kind of music independantly from any outside opinionoids…
just do it it for ur very own satisfaction and unlock if from all sorts of outside grattitudes…
if somebody can smell that level of independance, they will let u know how much they appreciate ur efforts for sure at some point…
and from that point, it’s not far away anymore 'til somebody really loves and enjoys ur sonic content, even in this whole pop will eat itself mess we’re all living in…
vast majority never ever cares…while a few always will…
don’t search for them, they’ll find U…
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One of the problems is that sometimes I need a physical person to share my happines about a finished song or album or whatever or simply to talk about music we love. And I have friends like that. I’m very happy I found this forum, its simply awesome, but sometimes I want to speak with people in real world about music
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…yup…i hear/feel u…
it’s fun to create…but at some point u also need the satisfaction to share it with others to continue with further creation…
when i listen to my music with others, i can hear my stuff with their fresh ears…that’s priceless…
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