Here's what I learned from analysing my visitor data.

Getting positive feedback as a living composer is not easy. Most avenues for sharing new compositions or arrangements are closed to us, buttressed with stern warnings against self-promotion. Sharing our work is often considered spamming and that's before we get to the personal doubts about not wanting to share our work with friends and colleagues lest people feel beholden to respond in a complimentary manner whether they feel that way or not. This leaves us in a difficult quandary.

I recently read a FB post about a composer of brass band music who felt completely ignored by potential customers at a recent convention. I felt his angst. Worse than just being overlooked, I've occassionally met incredibly hostile reactions to sharing my scores (despite them being 100% free). It's a sobering experience.

I've been collecting data on traffic to my site for several years. I don't use cookies, just a simple script that captures referring url, IP address + time & date, url visited and user agent (type of device & operating system). Other than a basic count of visitors, I'd never really looked into this data. So much of my energy was spent writing, producing and publishing my music that there wasn't much space left in my head to wonder what people were actually doing beyond simply visiting my site.

I recently made the momentus decision to publish the MuseScore files behind my scores both individually and in a zip file containing all (original & public domain) scores. Originally I put the folder on Google Drive as it seemed easiest to update it by uploading each new or edited file to the folder there.

A few weeks down the line I began wondering if anyone had actually been downloading this file but there was no way to know. I began wondering about the PDF files as well, and whether downloading them was something people did? I actually had no idea! In the years I have been hosting my musical domain, I've received very little feedback in regard to my music so I had no insight into what was really going on with my music.

This year I began recording my own playing weekly for the first time and this added a large new commitment of time and energy to my music production process. It occurred to me that it would be useful to have feedback to help guide my future decisions about what people gravitated towards or away from, rather than investing my time in things that people weren't likely to engage with.

As it turned out, my foresight in collecting that basic information meant that these answers were waiting for me in the data on my site, but I could only count downloads by the links entered into my database when someone clicks on a particular url. This is why I moved the folder of all MuseScore files away from Google drive to my site and made the download a clickable link I could track in my data.

I also moved the PDF score download trigger to the initial link so that just clicking the score link forced the downlaod of the PDF and I could count that as the download. By inserting new code to count visits to each url I now see feedback on my efforts for the first time since I began composing during the lockdowns.

I discovered that people are on my site downloading scores around the clock. I was pleased to see that people are downloading the zip file with all the MuseScore files. It helps me feel that I'm not wasting my time managing this new resource. Knowing that people do appear to be using my music has helped me build confidence that I'm doing something right, confidence that can't come when you have zero feedback about your own work.

Downloads by Day

In adding analytics into the site for everyone to see means all I have to do to view activity is visit my site. I don't have to log into anything - something I really appreciate on a personal level. I wrote new code to chart downloads by quarter as well as ranking the top 100 scores (pdf and MuseScore versions are counted separately).

I've actually made a number of significant changes to the site recently, including putting the Terms of Use on it's own url so I can count people visiting it and adding a date each time I make a change to it so people returning to my site can see if they up to date. Today I'll be adding a privacy section to that page to show people the data I collect from their device. I've also added a newsletter signup for anyone who wants a monthly summary of the scores and blog posts made.

Even with all this data I can analyse, I think it's important to consider the influences on visitation to my site such as whether it says something about the particular score or whether it says more about which scores I've shared on social media. I don't do a lot of sharing because I don't have a lot of time and because, as I described earlier, there's not a lot of places composers can freely share work.

The point is that my data might just reflect my own preferences or activity moreso than anything particular to the specific score. I'm hopeful that over time, as I make the effort to more regularly share my scores/recordings and focus in on the type of scores that get more engagement than others, that I will be able to grow my audience in the direction that people most want.

But I have another card up my sleeve: a user survey. I realise that rather than trying to interpret data that may or may not mean what I think it does, I can simply ask people. Hopefully people will see a benefit in letting me know what it is they most want so my choices are not left entirely to guesswork.

With that thought in mind, I invite you to fill out the very basic (2 min) survey!