After months of procrastination and self-doubt, I’ve finally done it – I released my first nature album. To push myself over the finish line, I set a deadline and told people about it, hoping public accountability would force me to follow through. I think also the fear of being seen as just another ‘gunna girl’ really made me want to succeed. But more importantly, I realised I needed to start somewhere to build my professional identity – something tangible that others could see and experience.
For months, I’ve been my own worst enemy, hitting mental roadblocks at every turn. The doubts were relentless: I wasn’t good enough, they were “just” nature recordings, and honestly, I wasn’t sure if anyone even wanted to hear them. Plus, I had no idea how to actually go about releasing an album.
When I finally decided to release my recordings, I started researching how others present their work to the public. That’s when the self-doubt really kicked in. The more I read about other people’s approaches to post-production and albums, the more I questioned my own methods. Everyone seemed to have their own specific way of doing things, and my approach didn’t match what others were writing about.
The market saturation didn’t help my confidence either. The world hardly needs another nature sound recording, right? I discovered that even most music distributors won’t touch them – iTunes flat-out doesn’t allow them. That was a huge discouragement.
Then came the practical hurdles of releasing an album. Physical or digital? While a good chunk of my target audience wanted CDs, the logistics of selling physical products while traveling made it impossible. So digital it was – or so I thought, until I learned that many music distributors don’t handle nature sounds. I found this out the hard way after signing up for Landr.
Feeling defeated, I circled back to where I’d started two years ago: Bandcamp. Sometimes the first instinct is the right one.
Another challenge that kept me stuck for months was deciding what nature sounds people actually wanted to hear or buy. After much deliberation, I settled on “Coastal Birds Vol. 1.” My reasoning was simple – people love birds, people love the ocean, so why not combine both? While I’m still not entirely sure what people want, I figured this was a safe bet to start with.
Despite all the mental barriers and physical challenges, I managed to push through and get this first release out there. I realised that if I kept waiting for everything to be perfect, I’d never start at all. And without starting, there’d be nothing to build on. It might not be perfect, but it’s done, and that’s what matters. More importantly, it’s just the beginning. Now that I’ve broken through that initial barrier, I’m already planning future releases featuring oceans, rivers, birds, rain, wind and more. Having this first album out there makes the next ones feel more achievable – they’ve been brewing in my mind for weeks already. And just maybe it might lift my confidence just that little more so I can release my music too.
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