Independent Artist: You Are Losing More Fans Than You Can Imagine Because of One Bad Habit.

In 2025, IRL (In Real Life) discovery is almost nonexistent.

Ninety-nine percent of people discover new music on their phones, scrolling through an endless feed where everything competes for the same three seconds of attention.

If you want fans, you have to think rationally about:

how people discover you,

why they stay, and

what pushes them away before they ever hit play.

Most artists never learned this. If you never sat in a music business class or you haven’t been an active artist or biz dev for the past decade, you might not even know the term fan journey. Yet it is the core of everything: discovery, consideration, conversion, retention, and long-term loyalty. It is how a stranger becomes a listener, how a listener becomes a fan, and how a fan becomes someone who buys a ticket, merch, or joins your next release cycle.

This Is Simple Reality.

It is you vs. short attention span.

You vs. saturation.

You vs. a world that does not need a new artist.

And here is something many emerging artists refuse to accept:

Your audience did not live your journey. You must story-tell it.

They did not practice for thousands of hours with you, learn production with you, rehearse until 3 AM with you, or break down the craft of songwriting like you did.

They do not owe you attention because you worked hard and you have talent, it's about CREDIBILITY.

Your prospect fans owe you nothing and you have EVERYTHING to prove them.

Meanwhile the audience itself is becoming the creator. Everyone is posting. Everyone is making something. Everyone has a platform. And in this chaos, only one thing cuts through:

Branding, story, music, and the fan journey working together.

You are not Queen. You are not The Beatles. You are not your favorite major-label artist with private-equity budget and engagement farms (yes, they do exists).

You are an independent artist in a digital arena where perception decides everything, in SECONDS

And that leads to the one bad habit that kills more potential fans than anything else:

Your Follower Ratio Is Repelling People.

If you’re an emerging artist with fewer than 50 followers, and you keep your following count at zero because you think it looks “professional,” you are nuking your discoverability on sight. There is a difference between strategy and ego. This is pure ego.

It signals three things instantly:

1. You do not understand how social ecosystems work.

   
   

2. You are signaling status you do not have.

   
   

3. You are creating a wall instead of a funnel.

   
   

When someone lands on your page, they judge in under a second.

The Weeknd can follow nobody because millions already follow him. You are not The Weeknd.

If it looks haunted by DistroKid banners, empty posts, and a 0 following count, your credibility dies immediately. Fans do not take it seriously. Industry does not take it seriously. Labels do not take it seriously. You won't be taking it seriously and quit the page in less than 1 week.

Anyone, can only invest (time, resources, money, efforts) where momentum exists.

If you claim you “do it for fun,” that’s fine. People who do it for fun usually are not on Instagram trying to grow an audience. They just make music because they enjoy it. Trying to build a brand with a 0 following ratio is not “fun.” It is insecurity dressed as professionalism.

So the real question becomes:

Are you building a fan journey or protecting, building your ego?

Because you cannot have both. It is a very different industry now, and only engagement drives algorithmic discovery. Not just vibes. Not just aesthetics. That's fan-retention.

Not your “professional” zero-following look. Engagement. The system rewards activity, not ego. You can protect your sanity and your brand later, when your comment section is on fire with thousands of comments from real potential fans.

 Engagement is low unless you are rage-baiting, and if the only time you go viral is when people hate you, that is not a career. That is a bonfire. You got no fans there. You got spectators. Good luck monetizing them with direct-to-consumer sales when they don’t care about you, your story, or your music. Yes, you might get a few pennies from OTT platforms like YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram if your hate-bait clip runs long enough.

But pennies do not build a tour. Pennies do not build a merch line. Pennies do not build a legacy. Until then, you are not protecting your peace. You are protecting a perception that does not exist.

If you want fans, you need to act like an artist who wants fans.

The Fix?

Create content that people may want to see, Follow people. Participate. Engage. Funnel discovery. Build community.

Otherwise, stop calling it an artist career and just enjoy making music privately.

There is no shame in that. But pretending you are building something while sabotaging your own funnel is the habit that costs you the most.