2025 – Expanding the Universe

Another year flew by so quickly – and it has been one of my busiest. While I made significant strides in growing my audience and navigating the music business, I faced a major setback in my creativity. Here is my annual recap for 2025!

A year in review

All songs that I published in 2025

My musical output this year has been extremely versatile and wild. Who could have guessed that I jump from deep house to metal to gospel? “Caoineag” and “Fading Light” have been written and produced within a few days. “Nocturnal“, “Aeronaut“, “Midnight” and “Nightfall” are singles from the album “Nightflight” which have been written in 2004 but were on hiatus for 20 years (more below). “Dystopia – Remixed” consists of electronic remixes by The Primary Phase Principle and The English Assassin, because the original song has been from 2007. All other songs were written many months and sometimes years ago, but took some time to find the right collaborator and mood.

In this annual recap, I cannot say what has been my favourite collab, but I was in the mood for metal, and super happy that we created and finished some songs. “Embrace the Storm” and “Backwards” were very well received by the audience, while the lyrics of “Into the Abyss” and “Beneath the Shell” became deeply personal. Last but not least, there was some adult pop music again with “Auf Wiedersehen“, “Carry Me Home“, and “Isn’t It Haunting?“. Big hugs and thanks to everyone I collaborated with. It was an honour to work with you.

Nightflight – A lost album from 2004

In November 2024, I found a floppy disk with a dozen MIDIs drafts of an unpublished album. I considered it to be a good idea to turn these drafts into full production, but I completely underestimated the emotional weight. It is hard to produce a genre you don’t enjoy and listen to any more, and it took me months to step back and say: You’ve done it – it’s great – never again.

Your Remixes

In this annual recap, I realized I’ve been so focused on releasing and re-releasing songs that I had no time to create any new remixes myself. Fortunately, I received some fantastic remixes from other artists – tracks that deserve more plays. Below is a list with links to each platform. Please stream them and support these talented creators!

• Nocturnal (The Primary Phase Principle)
• Aeronaut (DJ Kenneth A Remix)
• Frozen (Naviára Remix)
• Dystopia (The Primary Phase Principle Remix)
• Dystopia (The English Assassin Remix)

There are still some remixes in work. If you want to remix something, just contact me, and I can see what we can do. I will not be able to publish your remix as a single, but I might compile another remix album in 2027. Some songs are not re-released yet, so there is a small chance to become part of the official release, that will be dated back to the original release date.

Go Streaming!

As some of you may know, I was never a big fan of music streaming. I still collect CDs, and if it’s not possible, I buy high quality files from Bandcamp or Amazon. But as my social-media audience grew, so did the demand to put my music on streaming platforms. So I gave in and spent the last 1.5 years planning how to bring my large YouTube, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp catalogue to Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, and more. With help from a few friends, I tested several distributors and finally found an affordable option that also lets me properly credit collaborators. It has been a huge amount of work: remastering old tracks, creating missing artwork, and cleaning up metadata. By the end of this year, I manage to move everything up to 2021. Only four albums remain, that are scheduled for next year.

Late summer, the first results appeared. I was added to indie playlists worldwide, received over 40 radio plays, and reached 50,000 streams. I still invest more time and money than I get back, but I’ve reached a completely new audience. Last year I had about 30 superfans; now there’s a core group of around 100 listeners across Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Pandora, plus a larger group of 200–500 occasional listeners. While the comments on YouTube and SoundCloud significantly decreased, I was able to get airplays in Australia, Canada and Belgium – That’s a big win!

The results exceeded my expectations. My only wish is that some more people comment on SoundCloud and YouTube, because these platforms enhance direct communication. If you plan to leave Spotify, please consider streaming my music on Qobuz, Apple, Amazon or Deezer – I could definitely need some listeners and playlists there.

Bandcamp Subscription

Another big topic this year has been the Bandcamp subscription. Two things motivated me to use Bandcamp as a fan service platform. First, distributing and hosting my songs costs way more money that I’m making – second, Bandcamp does not offer a technical solution for big discographies and multi-collaborations (more over here). For an annual fee, subscribers get my singles as soon as they’re published, plus some b-sides and unpublished remixes. I am happy to announce that two of my biggest costs are covered, with a few more, I can fully break even. Thanks again for your support!

Supporting indie music with Mitxoda

I am sorry to say, that producing and publishing music became too easy. The market is flooded with AI generated slop, and I have a hard time finding new artists worth listening and supporting. This year I teamed up with the Belgian artist Mitxoda, who is running the “Mitxoda Weekly” indie music newsletter, and also a French radio show called “Le Salon de Mitxoda” running every Friday 4pm CEST. If you want to listen to some great music that doesn’t have thousands of plays, this is your way to go. Every week I recommend one artist who writes superb music and would get lost in the sea of releases. I will have a break for a few weeks, but I will be back soon with new recommendations.

If you love music as much as I do, please spend your time listening to independent artists. We don’t get support by the industry. There is no service, sponsor or label that helps us with recording, artwork, promotion, playlists, radio shows or booking. Indie artists do everything on our own, and many of us pay subscriptions to make their music available. In times, where 100,000 songs are published every day, and 1000 streams to get 1 USD, any kind of support is helpful. Go to concerts, buy merch, use Bandcamp Fridays, put us into a playlist among your favourite bands, drop a comment. Many artists are struggling, because they do not only compete against fellow artists, but also against AI. In my humble opinion, being 1 of 1000 active listeners means more than being 1 of 1,000,000 people who stream the top 40. Don’t forget, even your idols started small.

Statistics

No big song statistics this year – I’m still migrating my discography, so it’s hard to keep track what happened where. For now, I can just say that “Embrace the Storm“, “Backwards” and “Caoineag” have been your favourites from this year. All three songs got more than 1200 streams on Spotify and reached more than 250 clicks on YouTube and SoundCloud both. “Isn’t It Haunting?” was not part of the statistics any more, but it’s also taking a huge leap forward! Thanks to everybody who listened and shared my music!

Preview to 2026!

Hitting the wall – part III

As mentioned above in this annual recap, being an indie artist is a constant struggle with social media and streaming services. But now AI entered the place and made creative life even more ridiculous. What is the point in creating music and art, when some people prompt something mediocre within a minute? A survey recently said that 97% of all people can’t tell human art from AI art. The fight against technology demands all willpower and stamina. As somebody who started their journey more than 20 years ago, learned instruments and signal theory, I can’t just stop here. I will continue making music, but I’m currently not in the mood for it.

If you read the annual recap from the very beginning, you might see that I am busy with re-releases and paperwork. But I also counted more than a dozen half recorded songs that we wrote in the last five years. In this particular situation, it is pointless to think about collaboration and songwriting. My aim for 2026 is to finish off this pile, even if it means that I will not release a new album. It is better to compile these when it’s clear what finishes and what doesn’t. I may update my collaboration list when some instrumentals finished so we can get them done and published next year. It’s possible that multiple albums drop in 2027, as I may know which songs could be used.

Big secret plans for next year?

While taking a break from songwriting and production both, there is a huge project running in the background for quite some months. What will it be?! Wild guesses are welcome!

Thanks for your support

Once again in this annual recap, I would like to support everybody who streamed my music, read and interacted with my social media channels, aired my music on the radio, added it to playlist, helped me with artwork and photography, found the right words at the right time or simply appeared. The biggest thanks go to my collaborators and subscribers. Without you all this would have never happened!