A thousand loyal listeners: niche fame and why it's enough for me

There's a theory that keeps coming up among people who make things on their own: you don't need millions of followers, you just need a thousand people who really love you. A thousand people who listen to everything you make, who come back, who tell a friend about it. With that, the theory goes, an artist can get by.

I don't know whether the number is right. I couldn't care less. What interests me about the idea is the change of perspective. It stops mattering how many people see you go by, and starts mattering how many people stay.

I'm not going to talk about my numbers, because numbers change every week and, besides, they're not what this piece is about. I want to talk about why I feel at home in a corner, and why that corner doesn't seem small to me.

Making pop for one part of the world

I make alternative, queer pop, I write it in Spanish, I give it humour and camp, and I leave it with a hint of copla. Read that sentence slowly and every word in it shrinks the possible audience. Pop, but alternative. In Spanish, which leaves out anyone who doesn't understand it. Queer, which makes certain people change the channel. Funny, and not everyone finds the same things funny. And with copla, which to a lot of young people sounds like Grandma's radio.

I could have filed down those rough edges. Written more generic lyrics, dropped the exes, toned down the camp. I'd probably have reached more people for a while. And I'd have lost exactly what makes someone laugh at «Mi novio de Albacete» ("My boyfriend from Albacete") and then want to hear another one.

The niche isn't an accident. I chose it every time I decided not to soften a title.

What a loyal listener gives you

There's a huge difference between someone who hears a song of yours because it came up on a random playlist and someone who comes to your website, looks up a specific lyric and downloads a whole album. The first lends you thirty seconds. The second lends you their afternoon.

With 273 singles released in two years, I know nobody is going to listen to all of it. I don't even expect them to. But it makes me very happy to think that someone has downloaded the GAYFOLK trilogy and listened to it in order, from the first album to the last, like a story in three acts. A passing listener doesn't do that. Someone who has decided to spend a while on my planet does.

That's why I give the albums away without asking anyone to sign up. I don't want loyal listeners to have to prove anything to get in. If you're already interested, the door is open.

Big fame scares me a little

I'm going to be honest about a contradiction. Of course I'd like more people to hear me. When «Tan Cateto» started doing the rounds on TikTok and so many people found me through that song, it was thrilling to watch something of mine travel on its own. I'm not going to pretend I didn't enjoy it.

But I noticed something else too. When a song moves that fast, many of the people who arrive know nothing about you. They listen for fifteen seconds, laugh or don't, and move on. Some stay, and they're a gift. Most pass through. And it's fine that they pass through; I'm not asking anything of anyone. But I learnt not to mistake that noise for an audience.

Big fame, the real kind, demands things I'm not sure I want to give. It demands pleasing lots of very different people at once. It demands that your songs work in any setting, in a shopping centre or an advert. And my songs about the nosy neighbour or the first drag queen aren't made for any setting. They're made for a certain kind of person who recognises themselves in them.

I don't want to romanticise scarcity either. A small corner also means less help, less noise in your favour and more ant-like graft to get a song to the people who'll love it.

Some artists change in order to grow, and it works for them. I'm not criticising them. It just isn't my path, or at least not right now.

There's something lovely about a niche when it crosses borders. I write in Spanish for people in Europe and Latin America. The crowd laughing at a cushion boyfriend in Madrid has cousins laughing at the same thing in Lima or Monterrey. There aren't many in each place, but together they make something like a neighbourhood scattered across the map.

That strikes me as more interesting than being on the front of everything. Knowing that, in cities I've never set foot in, there's someone who knows the title of one of my songs and finds it funny. I don't need it to be lots of people. I need it to be real people.

It's enough for me because I can keep doing what I do without betraying it. I write the lyrics I want, with the humour I want, about the things that matter to me: gay love, pride, self-esteem, everyday life. I direct the videos the way I like them. I run my label without answering to anyone.

And it's enough because a loyal listener changes the meaning of all the work. When I write a new song, I don't think of a faceless crowd. I think of one particular person who'll listen to the whole thing, who might read the lyrics and who might laugh out loud on the metro. I write better for that person than for everyone at once.

Maybe one day I'll change my mind. I don't rule it out, and if it happens I'll say so right here, just as frankly. Today, the corner feels like a good place to live.

My music and my lyrics are at mikesaintlouis.com, in case you fancy staying a while.