Doing it by the numbers?

A couple of days ago I talked to a friend who some years ago sold around 100 000 albums in Japan. He said that it was rather difficult to relate to that number. Sounds like a lot of albums of course, and a lot of yen, but emotionally it was hard, and much easier for him to connect to a letter he got from a fan in Portugal, the fan writing that he’d listened to the music for years and so on.

And it’s rather obvious when you think about it; you create your art and ship it with the intention to touch a person, an individual, and in that context masses of people in numbers, loose meaning.

Numbers can be fun, and quite useful sometimes, but for the creation of art they’re pretty much useless. I think the day that an artist start relating to numbers and not people it becomes a different game; then it’s not art anymore then it’s fabrication.

Does it matter? Yes, it does matter, a lot. The reason for doing what we do, the intention, matters; not only for ourselves, but also for those we’re doing it for. I think it shows through everything we do.

We’ve just had our songs aired on a radio, Butterflies radio in Florida and I have no idea how many listeners they have, and i don’t care. We’re happy that they like our music so much they want to put it on rotation, and that some more people will get to hear it, people we can connect with.

Well I do care if they are doing fine or not, and I hope that they get loads of listeners so that they kan keep doing their dedicated work they’re doing. And it’s good stuff, much better than most radio channels we have here in Sweden, and with a large influence from the listeners who can ask for songs to play and communicate directly with the radio. Impressive. They send from both Florida in the US and from Australia. You can find them on Facebook and Twitter too.

We’ve also had the honour of being played on some podshows lately. We have Indie Music Sampler where “The Big One” was aired in the latest show. Well, Indie Music Sampler is not only a podcast it’s an Internet radio too, sending live 24/7!

Bugcast is a podshow where each episode is recorded live in Butterflies radio. Each time they record they have a live chatroom where you can discuss the show and the music with the hosts and other guests. Great stuff.

John Reade from The Johnnyrockin’ Music Show had us wake up happy on Sunday with his latest show where he played “The Big One”. It was even more pleasing when we discovered that a friend of ours, Asatron, happened to be played in the same show! Good company indeed, also considering all the other great music on the Johnny’s show.

Finally, tonight My Pocket Player played “The Big One” on the show. It’s a show in Polish, and it gives me this magic feeling again I talked about the other day.

Well, we have a lot to be grateful about today, and we are indeed. I have also discovered some shows I will definitely get back to, to discover new music. /Pär