When you look at why, the same picture keeps coming up. New producers are overwhelmed before they’ve really begun. The most common struggle people name isn’t a technical skill at all, it’s simply not knowing where to start, lost in an ocean of tutorials and conflicting advice. Then a bit further in, progress stalls. They’ve learned enough to throw together a loop, but they can’t seem to get better, the early buzz fades, and the time they spend slowly dwindles to nothing. A lot of them are also fixing the wrong thing: pouring hours into the mix when the real problem is the arrangement or the sound selection, so nothing improves and they decide they’re just not talented. And underneath all of it sits a definition of success that’s almost designed to disappoint, since fewer than 1% of artists ever “make it” in the way people quietly mean by that word.
None of that is a character flaw. It’s a completely understandable response to a hard, slow, badly-signposted process. But it’s worth understanding, because almost everything about quitting is front-loaded, and almost everything about succeeding is just being one of the few who didn’t.
The drop-off isn’t spread out. It happens almost entirely in year one.
1. It’s hard, and it’s supposed to be
Making music is hard, and there’s no version of it that isn’t. The people I know who are really good at it are good because they treated it like learning an instrument. It doesn’t happen overnight, it doesn’t happen in a month, and the gap between what you can hear in your head and what comes out of the speakers stays open for a long time. The ones who make it through just have more grit. That’s less romantic than “talent,” but it’s closer to the truth.
There’s a well-known idea that fits this exactly, from Seth Godin’s book “The Dip.” You start something new and there’s a natural high, a buzz, loads of dopamine, and you put in hours on end. Then the buzz wears off and you hit the long slog between the easy beginner stage and actually being good. That valley in the middle is where it stops being fun, and it’s precisely where most people quit. Not because they’ve failed, but because the reward went quiet and they assumed it wasn’t coming back.
The buzz fades, the work gets hard, and that’s the exact spot people walk away.
People don’t quit because they’ve failed. They quit at the bottom of the valley, right before the climb.
2. Most people are fixing the wrong thing
A huge amount of the frustration that pushes people out comes from working on the wrong layer of the track. Someone’s tune isn’t landing, so they reach for EQ, then compression, then a new plugin, convinced the mix is the problem. Most of the time it isn’t the mix. It’s the arrangement, the sound selection, the chord voicings, the melody. They polish and polish the balance, hear no improvement, and quietly conclude they don’t have what it takes.
That’s a brutal place to be, because the effort is real and the conclusion is wrong. You’re not out of talent, you’re working on the layer that wasn’t broken. Stalled progress usually means you’re solving the wrong problem, and once you find the right one, the track moves again.
The mix is the usual suspect. It’s usually innocent.
3. What actually separates the ones who stay
So what keeps the few going? Partly it’s grit, plainly. But I’d add something I believe more strongly the longer I’m in this: the path is different for everyone. I’ve met so many people in music, and not one of them took the same route or landed in the same place. So I’ve come to think of these journeys as a series of doors. Doors open, sometimes when you least expect them, and your job is to walk through the ones that do.
That cuts both ways, and it’s the one place I’ll gently disagree with the “never quit” crowd. Trying to shove something heavy uphill for years when you’re not enjoying any of it is probably a mistake, and there’s no medal for grinding at something that’s making you miserable. The trick is telling the difference between that and the dip, which is the hard-but-temporary stretch you do have to push through if you want any kind of prize on the other side. Get through that bit, as long as it’s a bit that actually leads somewhere.
The other thing that keeps people in is that the doing itself pays you back. Give a lot of time and energy to something difficult and there’s a real benefit to your mental wellbeing and your overall sense of fulfilment that has nothing to do with charts or streams. That’s a far healthier reason to keep going than “making it,” and it’s available to you on day one.
There’s no medal for grinding at something that makes you miserable, but the dip is the hard bit that actually leads somewhere.
4. Where gear and plugins actually fit
People love to say gear doesn’t matter. I don’t fully buy that. You do need good tools, ones that actually do the job you need and help you work fast. And honestly, a lot of people buy plugins because they’re inspirational, because they reach a sound they couldn’t get to before. I hear this constantly: someone was stuck trying to get a result, found a tool that fit their level and the way they think, and it clicked. That’s a real and valuable part of progress, not a guilty secret.
Some gear acquisition is part of moving forward, whether that’s headphones, monitors, or acoustic treatment. The failure isn’t buying tools, it’s buying the wrong ones, or buying instead of doing the work. You need some tools. You just have to make sure they’re the right tools for where you actually are, not where a YouTube ad says you should be.
5. I nearly quit. Repeatedly.
I’m not speaking from the cheap seats here. When I started Mastering The Mix it was really difficult. I spent £5,000, which was a huge amount for me in my early twenties, on acoustic treatment, monitors, a desk, a basic studio. I was working twelve or thirteen hours a day on the website and chasing clients, DJing a few nights a week to cover rent, completely obsessed. I read something like a hundred business books that year.
After twelve months of trying as hard as I possibly could, it hadn’t clicked. I’d made a grand total of £600, from two clients, which on the face of it was a complete disaster. I tried to give up more than once. What stopped me was my then-girlfriend, now my wife, who kept pushing me to keep going. I’m so glad she did, because the plugins side of Mastering The Mix went on to change my life entirely, and it was right there on the other side of the bit where I wanted to stop.
The reason I could push through is that I’ve always been obsessed with music. I’ve played drums since I was two, I’ve got a degree in drumming, I ran open mic nights, I DJ’d for ten years before any of this. My first DJ job paid me £3.50 an hour and the barman let me drink for free, which to a sixteen-year-old felt like a fortune. I did it for the love, because I don’t know that I could have done anything else. That’s the part that carried me through the year that looked like failure.
Success was sitting just past the point where I kept wanting to give up, which is usually where it sits.
Where I land on it
So here’s what I’d actually say to someone in the thick of it. The reason most people quit isn’t that they’re not good enough. It’s that the drop-off is front-loaded into the hardest, least rewarding stretch, and most people are measuring themselves against an outcome almost nobody hits. Treat it like an instrument, expect the dip, fix the right layer instead of polishing the wrong one, buy a few good tools, and find your reward in the doing rather than the “making it.”
If you’ve got real love for it, the kind that means you’d do it for £3.50 an hour and a free drink, then pushing through the hard part is worth it. Watch for the doors, walk through the ones that open, and don’t mistake the dip for a dead end. The people who got good aren’t the most talented ones you’ve heard of. They’re the ones who were still there in year two.
Written by Tom Frampton.
Tom Frampton is the founder of Mastering The Mix, where he builds audio software used by producers and engineers around the world. He started the company to make pro-level mixing and mastering decisions easier to get right, without taking the producer out of the driver’s seat.
Sources
• Year-by-year producer drop-off (61% year one, 8% year two, 5.3% year three) and “don’t know where to start” as the top struggle: EDMProd survey of 1,000+ producers.
• Fixing the mix when the real issue is arrangement / sound selection: EDMProd.
• “The Dip”, the slog between the beginner stage and mastery: Seth Godin.
• Stalled progress and perfectionism as common quitting triggers: Abstrakt Music Lab.
• Fewer than 1% of artists reach mainstream success (~90.7% undiscovered, 0.2% megastars): Hyperbits / MixElite.
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