Bethany Cosentino Opens Up on TikTok

Man, I feel this hard.

 

Her record is very good and people should listen to it.

 

It's so crazy what artists, especially small artists, have to do just to get anywhere these days. Not only do you have to write/record/perform the best music ever but you also have to be your own label, be your own PR person, your own filmmaker, graphic designer, tour manager, social manager, art director, marketing director... everything! You basically have to be your own profitable IP before anyone will take a chance and help you out or put you on a label. All while trying to believe in yourself haha!

 

i love her, but i did only listen to her solo album one time, i fuckin love best coast, but for me her new album didn't have much replay value, but i agree with her with selling yourself and making all the fuckin promo videos, artists and bands gotta whore themselves out these days to sell their music..

 

I hate that the general response to this across the internet seems to be "Lol, she should have made a better record!" As if no great albums get passed over in exactly the way she's talking about every single week. I think a lot of people still somehow believe that if the music is good it will get heard and the artist will make a good living, but in our "move on to the next thing immediately" industry, that just isn't the case at all. We spend 4-6 months building up toward albums that are treated as old news by the Monday after they drop. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm annoyed at the response to what she had to say.

 

Everyone who is critical of her response has never put out music of their own. It really does suck in exactly the way she described it and as okaybrian said, it's f-ing depressing how anyone who puts out music has to wear 1000 different hats these days to get the smallest bit of attention to their music.

That said, I remember when she put out her first single which I'm assuming was for this in the last year. I checked it out because I liked a bit of Best Coast's first record, and I specifically remember thinking it was very average and forgettable and that caused me to skip listening to anything beyond that.

Actually I just looked it up and yeah it was May of this year; I heard about it from this website and I was the only person who commented on it, and I said basically the same thing then.

So for me personally, that first impression was everything and maybe there were others who felt the same way.

But still, it's rough being an independent artist these days.

 

I remember the days where you could put a video on YouTube and it would get views just from being on YouTube. Definitely not the case anymore and all of this reminds me of that fact.

 

100%. You have to be on your game at ALL. TIMES. If you release a dud, to the point above, that could turn people off from anything that follows. Which sucks. Baseball players can bat 300 and be great. If you're an artist and you hit 300 with your songs, you'd be irrelevant.

And that, folks, is my sports analogy for the month. Quota reached!

 

I respect her honesty and there's no shame in venting once in a while.

But... yeah? The music industry has never been "make album you think is great = success". And yeah, it's probably as hard as ever these days because all of our attention spans are the size of gnats these days...but its the reality of the world.

She needed to lower her expectations though. Best coast has a decent following and I'd consider them a mild success overall. A solo album released independently isn't going to exactly set the world in fire no matter how amazing it is. Id hope she made it because she had a passion for it and in the end, if she's proud thats all that should matter. A passion project. There are a lot more well known artists that have done similar and still found miniscule success.