An enthusiastic audience during a performance. Photo by Danny Howe, courtesy Unsplash. Creative Commons License.
MANHATTAN, NY
“I love songwriting because it comes naturally to me, but I love performing because I love connecting with people,” said Heather Duhmario, an up-and-coming musician from New York. Heather is one of many younger artists starting out. She makes pop music with a jazz influence. Her inspiration comes from artists like Regina Spektor, Amy Winehouse, and Lily Allen. She writes songs, plays at gigs, and plans to record music sometime soon. But standing out in the music scene is not easy.
The bar for entry into the music business is lower than ever because anyone can write, record, and share music with their phone, and there’s a lot of competition. For independent artists, the biggest challenge is getting noticed. It’s hard to book gigs, find an audience, and find the right collaborators, especially as a new musician.
While performing can help gain exposure, many artists want to release their own music. But recording in a studio has its own challenges. “For me, I think the most difficult part about organizing that [recording in a studio], is finding the right space and finding a good producer who you can collaborate with and whose vision you trust…”, Heather said. She emphasized the importance of finding someone with the same or a complimentary vision. She thinks it can result in a unique product. She points to Amy Winehouse, who worked with hip-hop producers to release her album Back to Black.
Heather Duhmario, poster for a performance at The Berlin
It’s important to find the right people and the right space for other reasons, too. As a young woman in a male-dominated field, Heather has had difficulty being taken seriously. “I’m here because this is what I care about and I want to meet people who are doing the thing that I aspire to do,” she said. Not everyone sees it that way, as she has found some male professionals come on to her instead of collaborating on the music.
Booking gigs is also a challenge. Venues prioritize musicians with bigger followings when they book performance slots because they bring in a bigger audience. Since newer musicians don’t have a big following, it’s hard to get attention and be considered by a venue. To build the audience needed to get good gigs requires marketing. But a lot of people aren’t interested and don’t like being approached in public about events. “I’m just trying to find the balance between connecting with people enough to get them interested in what I do without making them feel like I’m overtly trying to market to them,” said Heather.
Social media is a must when building a following. Many artists have capitalized on it to achieve fame. It has issues, though. You have to post engaging content consistently to get noticed by the algorithm and get people’s attention. It’s a good strategy to experiment with different types of content to see what sticks and gets engagement. Heather emphasized the importance of posting content, and not getting in your head about whether people will like it. “I really believe in ‘build it and they will come’… finding a way to express these ideas that you have in a way where other people can see what’s going on up there. You’ll find the people that resonate with that and want to see more of that. I just hope that people see me live and have a good time.” Heather said.
