As artist, we all may be familiar with the feeling. You’ve just written and recorded an awesome new single! As the file uploads, you’re full of excitement at the prospect of gaining new fans, and getting feedback from your close friends and family.

The moment arrives. The artwork is done and the song is posted online. You tag all of your friends and family, sit back, and wait.

Only to find that…nothing happens.

That person you just messaged who seemed excited about the song? Didn’t even like the post. Your friend who said they were awaiting the new single after a day hasn’t even left a comment. Days pass and your excitement about your new music starts to fade as the news sinks in. The song isn’t connecting, and worse, it doesn’t look like people are paying attention much at all now. Before self-doubt starts to sink in and you start to wonder;

Is it me?
Is the music not good enough?
Am I not good enough?

I urge you to consider that there may be more to the issue. You may, in fact, need better promotion or management, but you could also be dealing with a psychological phenomenon I’ve named Hometown Silence.

I started to notice this after I released my first few projects back into 2009. I received pretty good a reception and was getting feedback at first. People would like and share my songs, and tell me what I needed to work on. As time went on, I noticed that some of those familiar faces and voices had gradually gone silent. I’ve since expanded my fan base, but there are still times where I will post a new song and the people from my hometown are the last ones to interact.

This can be detrimental to the self-confidence of an upcoming artist, and even at higher levels of entertainment, this can be devastating to the mental state of the musician in question. So what is it? Why do some of our closest friends and fans seem to be the last ones to the party when it comes to our music?

The answer is more of a psychological one than you may think. First and foremost, it has to be said that they could’ve just forgotten. I can’t tell you how many times I get online and get tagged in a song, only to forget it later. It`s important to be realistic about factors such as this. People can be forgetful.

The other reason I’ve noticed has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the mental state and happiness of your listener. It is unfortunate, but many times when people have known a person for some time, they have to internally rationalize how far may be regarding their own dreams when you begin to succeed. In other cities, the same content would be met with praise, interaction, and shares, but in my hometown, it was met with a wall of silence.

My advice to any upcoming artist who is experiencing this kind of silence in their area is to branch out do not keep trying to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Many famous artists have struggled with the wall of silence and even describe having the most issues in their hometown do not let this slow you down there are billions of people waiting to hear what you have to say get on that road and do not doubt your gift.

I attempted to fight the silence and win over as many as I could one by one. I cannot tell you how many vital years were spent trying to fight the silence coming from my hometown. I still have a solid support base in my hometown of Jackson Michigan but by far the support that I get from the surrounding areas even just 20 to 30 minutes up the road is resoundingly much much more noticeable.

There are many other factors that come into play when building a successful career as an artist promotion doing shows and staying active the right way on social media are all parts but specifically regarding the wall of silence that you may be facing the best strategy is to gain new fans who will interact and slowly but surely the ones who were late to the party either have to will show up or they’ll miss out.

Keep making great tunes!

This guest blog post was written by Justin Davis who runs the indie music blog GETxUP – Music Made to Move Change.