This young musician is doing a lot of “nothing” — — quietly.
What Artists Should Be Doing When the World Thinks Nothing Is Happening.
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” — Ram Dass
Somewhere along the way, the music business decided that if you’re not constantly releasing, performing, posting, promoting, or announcing something, you must not be doing anything important.
What a silly notion.
We’ve created an industry where (constant) visibility is confused with success (read: Donald J. Trump) , activity is confused with progress, and artists feel obligated to remind the world that they still exist. Apparently, if you’re not feeding the algorithm, you’re falling behind. If you’re not announcing your next big thing, people assume there isn’t one.
I have a problem with that thinking, mostly because my own experience has taught me exactly the opposite.
The periods between my recording releases and major projects are often the busiest and most productive times of my career. While my public profile might appear relatively quiet, behind the scenes I’m rebuilding websites, rethinking my professional identity, developing business opportunities, exploring new technologies, strengthening relationships, and figuring out what comes next.
And some of the best ideas I’ve ever had arrived when I wasn’t doing any of those things.
In my work with artists through Artist Expansion (www.artistexpansion.com), I see how much important work gets pushed aside when everyone is focused on their next release, performance, or promotional campaign. The website needs attention. The artist’s story is outdated. The social media strategy makes no sense. Great opportunities are sitting unexplored because nobody has had the time to think about them.
These aren’t minor details. They’re the foundation of a career, and waiting until six weeks before an album release to address them is a terrible strategy. Also, with six weeks before a release you are not planning or are reacting which leads to poor execution from the jump.
For decades, the music industry worked around release cycles. Make a record, go on tour, hire a publicist, update your materials, generate some attention, and hope it all translates into sales, streams, or concert tickets. Once the campaign ends, everyone moves on until the next record.
That model is badly outdated.
Today, someone might discover your music through a recording you made fifteen years ago. They could find you through a YouTube performance, a playlist, a recommendation, or something completely unexpected. They don’t care whether you’re officially in a release cycle. As I have said many times, streaming music or video lives without time. A viral clip might live in the right now but 99% of what you post is warehoused in a kind of suspended animation until a listener or fan finds it.
They want to know who you are, what you’ve done, and why they should care. The question is whether you’ve given them a reason to stick around.
In 2026, I’ve been deliberately reducing my own social media footprint, focusing primarily on my website, Instagram, and YouTube. And here’s what I’ve discovered: when you stop trying to be everywhere, the places you choose to be become far more important. They need to tell a coherent story, represent your work intelligently, and give people a reason to explore further.
Right now, I’m writing and recording a massive four-hour musical project. But that’s only one part of what’s happening. I’m also rebuilding and expanding the next era of my professional life as an artist, content creator, coach, and entrepreneur.
Some of that work is inspiring. Some of it is tedious. And some of it makes me wonder why I didn’t tackle these things years ago.
From the outside, my career might look relatively quiet. Behind the scenes, I’m busier than ever.
But The Quiet Time isn’t just about getting more things done. Sometimes it’s about getting far enough away from the work to discover something you couldn’t see while you were buried in it. Perspective and distance are hugely valuable if you are being intentional about them.
In fact, two of the most important creative ideas I’ve had in recent years came when I was deliberately taking a break. And one of them happened a thousand miles from my studio.
A Thousand Miles from the Studio
In April 2024, I was on a cruise with my wife, relaxing and enjoying some much-needed time away from my regular routine. I wasn’t trying to develop a new recording project. I wasn’t sitting at a keyboard or thinking about my next release. And that’s when the idea for Heart of the Holidays came together.
I’d thought about doing a holiday album many times over the years. It was one of those ideas that kept coming back but never quite developed into something I was ready to pursue. For whatever reason, the concept, the approach, and the possibilities finally started making sense while I was on that ship, literally a thousand miles away from my studio.
That idea eventually became Heart of the Holidays, released in 2025, and one of the most successful albums of my career.
A project I’d considered for years finally found its direction when I wasn’t actively trying to make it happen. I had stepped away from the usual pressures of making music, and somehow that created the space for an idea that had been sitting in the back of my mind to become something real.
Something similar happened with the idea for my book. During another break, I started thinking about the lessons I’d learned from decades of making music, navigating the business, and working with other artists. I began putting together what I wanted to say and wrote an early draft of what became “10 Laws of a Successful Music Career”.
At that point, I wasn’t trying to write a book. I was organizing ideas that had been occupying space in my head. But once I started putting them on paper, the concept began gaining traction. One idea suggested another, and before long I could see the beginnings of something much larger.
Neither of these ideas emerged from a carefully scheduled brainstorming session. They came when I had enough distance from my normal routine to hear myself think.
That’s worth paying attention to.
The Quiet Time isn’t just about getting caught up on your business, improving your website, or preparing for another release. Sometimes its greatest value is creating enough mental space for an idea that changes everything.
I’m not interested in giving artists another lecture about posting more content, manipulating algorithms, or turning every waking moment into an opportunity to promote themselves. I’m interested in how we can use the time between major public moments to make our careers stronger, our work better, and our futures a little more interesting.
Here are ten places I’d start.
1. Your Website Is Probably Overdue for an Overhaul
When was the last time you actually looked at your website as if you were someone discovering you for the first time?
I’m continually amazed by artists who spend thousands of dollars recording and promoting their work but can’t be bothered to maintain a decent website. And I can say that because I’ve been guilty of letting my own website get stale over the years. I first launched my website in 1995 and it has gone through countless iterations.
For years, I had been updating essentially the same template on Wix.com for michaelwhalen.com. I’d change some photographs, add another album, update some text, and convince myself that everything was fine. But the truth was that the format was tired. It looked tired. It felt tired. And the more I tried to improve it, the more I realized I was just rearranging things inside a structure that had stopped serving me.
During a break from recording, I started exploring AI-powered coding tools that specialized in building and formatting websites. I wasn’t looking for another template or a slightly better version of what I already had. I wanted to see whether there was an entirely different way to approach the problem.
That exploration turned into a significant moment for me as an artist. I began thinking differently about what my website could be, how I could organize my work, and how much more control I might have over the experience I was creating for visitors.
And here’s the important part: If my head had been filled with solving musical problems, I probably never would have given myself the space to discover a completely new way of building my website.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about when I describe The Quiet Time. Sometimes you don’t just need time to complete a task. You need enough distance from your normal routine to question the way you’ve been doing that task for years. Tackling the new can take courage and enough bandwidth to start something that might fail. So many artists are terrified of failure — even from their own materials.
Now, imagine a music supervisor hears one of your recordings and wants to learn more. Or a journalist is considering an interview. Or someone is thinking about hiring you for a concert. They find your website, and the first thing they see is an announcement for a show that happened three years ago. The photographs are old, the biography is even older, and the contact information is buried somewhere nobody can find.
That’s not mysterious or artistic. It’s just bad business.
Your website is one of the few places where you have meaningful control over how your career is presented. You decide which work deserves attention, what stories you want to tell, and how someone moves from casual curiosity to genuine interest.
So use this time to get it right. Rewrite your biography. Update the photos. Organize your recordings and videos. Make sure your contact information is clear, your electronic press kit is current, and the whole thing works beautifully on a phone — that part is so important.
But don’t stop at making cosmetic changes. Question the entire approach. Are you using the right tools? Is your website organized around what visitors actually want to discover? Have you outgrown the technology or design decisions you made five or ten years ago?
You don’t necessarily need to learn how to code or use AI to create a better website. That’s simply the direction my own curiosity took me. The larger lesson is to give yourself permission to rethink something you’ve been doing the same way for years.
Sometimes the biggest improvement isn’t changing what you’re doing. It’s discovering a better way to do it.
2. Stop Trying to Be Everywhere
There’s a ridiculous amount of pressure on artists to maintain a presence on practically every social media platform ever invented.
You should be on Instagram. And TikTok. And YouTube. And Facebook. And whatever new platform somebody starts talking about next Tuesday.
Enough already.
Unless you have a team or a label helping you, keeping up with all of this can become a full-time job. The more time you spend maintaining platforms, the less time you have to do the thing that made you an artist in the first place.
My decision to reduce my social media footprint wasn’t about giving up on reaching people. It was about being more intentional.
I’d rather have a handful of platforms that are current, interesting, and genuinely useful than a dozen accounts I’m barely maintaining. But when you narrow your focus, the platforms you keep have to work harder.
For me, Instagram and YouTube serve different purposes. One allows me to maintain an ongoing conversation and share things happening in my professional life. The other gives me a place to present performances, longer-form content, conversations, and creative work that can continue attracting people long after it’s published.
Both lead back to my larger professional identity, with my website serving as a central destination.
And please, stop treating social media like a never-ending advertising campaign. Nobody wants to hear from someone who only shows up when they have something to sell. 90% of your social media posts should not be about selling, promoting or advertising.
Share an interesting story. Talk about a recording that almost didn’t happen. Introduce another musician whose work you admire. Show someone how you make something. Give people a reason to care about you beyond your latest release.
An audience isn’t just a number on a dashboard. It’s a collection of people who have decided that something about your work matters to them. Try treating them that way.
3. Figure Out What Your Audience Actually Wants
Artists spend an extraordinary amount of time worrying about how many people are listening and surprisingly little time understanding who those people are.
We obsess over streaming numbers, followers, views, likes, and other metrics that may or may not have much to do with building a sustainable career.
During The Quiet Time, take a closer look at the numbers. Not because statistics should dictate your creative decisions, but because they might tell you something you don’t already know.
Imagine discovering that one of your older recordings is attracting thousands of listeners in a country you’ve never visited. Or that a song you barely remember releasing is consistently outperforming the one you spent a fortune promoting.
Wouldn’t you want to know why?
Look at your streaming analytics, website traffic, video performance, and audience geography. Figure out which projects keep attracting people and which promotional activities have accomplished absolutely nothing.
You might discover an opportunity to perform somewhere new, create a video around an older song, or reconnect with an audience you didn’t realize you had. You might also discover that some of the things you’ve been doing for years are a complete waste of time.
That’s useful information, too.
The trick is knowing the difference between understanding your audience and letting your audience run your career. They’re not the same thing, and they never should be.
4. Get Your Business House in Order
This is the part where half the musicians reading this article will suddenly remember something else they need to do.
Nobody became an artist because they were excited about metadata, royalty statements, publishing administration, contracts, and spreadsheets. Unfortunately, the business doesn’t disappear because you find it boring.
Imagine you’ve released five albums over the past ten years. You’ve worked with different distributors, publishers, producers, and collaborators. You may have changed management or started releasing music independently.
Do you know exactly who controls your masters? Are your songwriting credits correct? Are your recordings properly registered? Have you checked whether you’re collecting the royalties you’re entitled to receive?
Are all your agreements and master files organized well enough that you could find them quickly?
If the answers are anything other than yes, you’ve got some work to do.
The Quiet Time is perfect for reviewing your catalog, updating your records, examining your expenses, and making sure your professional affairs aren’t being held together with digital duct tape.
In the United States, organizations such as SoundExchange and The Mechanical Licensing Collective handle different categories of music royalties. Understanding what each organization does, which rights you control, and whether your registrations are complete should be basic professional housekeeping.
And while you’re examining your existing work, think about what else it might be capable of doing.
Do you have instrumental mixes that could be useful for licensing? Are your recordings and stems properly archived? Have you considered alternate versions, new arrangements, or other legitimate ways to extend the life of material you’ve already created?
Your catalog is an asset. Treat it like one. It’s entirely possible to spend years creating valuable music and then neglect the business infrastructure that helps it work for you.
5. Tear Apart Your Live Show and Build a Better One
If you’ve been playing essentially the same live show for the past few years, this section is for you.
There’s nothing wrong with having a reliable set. But familiarity can turn into complacency, and audiences can usually tell the difference between a performance that’s alive and one that’s simply being repeated.
The Quiet Time is your opportunity to rethink the whole thing.
What would happen if you took a familiar song and completely changed the arrangement? What if you performed it with different instrumentation, a different tempo, or an entirely different attitude?
Could you create an intimate version of your show for smaller venues? A completely acoustic performance? A multimedia presentation combining music, video, and storytelling?
Could you develop a 45-minute festival set and a 90-minute theater show that felt like two genuinely different experiences?
Record rehearsals. Watch yourself. Be critical about pacing, transitions, presentation, and the things you say between songs. If something is boring, fix it.
And experiment with material you wouldn’t ordinarily include in a concert. An unfamiliar cover, an unfinished composition, or a new arrangement might lead somewhere unexpected.
Rehearsal shouldn’t just be about making sure you don’t screw up. It should be about becoming a better performer.
6. Make the Calls You’ve Been Putting Off
Every artist has a list of people they want to work with someday.
A producer they’ve always admired. A musician whose work they find fascinating. A filmmaker, visual artist, writer, or performer they met somewhere and promised to contact.
Then life gets busy, deadlines arrive, and the conversations never happen.
Pick up the phone. Send the email. Arrange the coffee. Seriously. Do it.
Some of the most important opportunities in my career have developed through relationships with other creative people. And those relationships don’t always begin with a specific project or business proposition. Sometimes they start with a conversation.
At Artist Expansion, one of the things I enjoy most is helping artists look beyond the obvious possibilities for their careers. A songwriter might have something interesting to explore with a choreographer. A composer might develop a relationship with a documentary filmmaker. A singer might discover an unexpected partnership with someone working in electronic music.
The best collaborations aren’t necessarily the ones that provide immediate exposure or access to a larger audience. They’re often the ones that force you to rethink what you do.
Make a list of ten people whose work genuinely interests you and contact a few of them without trying to sell anything. Some won’t respond. Some conversations won’t go anywhere. But a few may open doors you didn’t even know existed.
7. Make Something Nobody Asked You to Make
Here’s a radical idea for a working artist: create something that doesn’t have a deadline, a marketing plan, or an obvious commercial purpose.
No release date. No promotional campaign. No expectation that it needs to become anything.
We’ve gotten so used to treating every creative act as the beginning of a product that it’s easy to forget how important experimentation can be.
Imagine you’re a songwriter who’s spent the past decade writing in one particular style. What happens if you spend a few weeks composing instrumental music? Or write for a completely unfamiliar ensemble?
If you’re an instrumentalist, try learning something outside your usual vocabulary. If you’re a producer, experiment with recording techniques you’ve never used before.
Revisit the pieces you abandoned because you couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Some deserve another chance, and others might contain one interesting idea worth stealing from yourself.
I’ve always believed that creative growth comes from putting yourself in situations where you don’t already know the answer.
That’s uncomfortable, particularly for successful artists who’ve spent years developing an identifiable sound or style. But doing only what you’re already good at is a great way to stop growing.
Not everything needs to be released. Some experiments should remain experiments, and that doesn’t make them a waste of time.
8. Learn Something That Makes You More Dangerous
I don’t mean dangerous in the literal sense. I mean becoming the kind of artist who has more skills, more options, and fewer excuses.
The Quiet Time is a terrific opportunity to learn something that could change how you work.
Maybe you need to become a better video editor. Maybe you should learn more about arranging, lighting, live sound, music production, or how the publishing business actually works. Maybe you’ve been depending on someone else to handle something you could learn to do yourself.
I’m not suggesting that artists need to become experts in everything. That’s another excellent way to waste time. But there’s real value in understanding the tools and processes that shape your career.
Take artificial intelligence, for example. You don’t have to love it, use it, or agree with everything happening around it. But if you’re a working artist, it would be foolish to ignore the ways AI may affect music creation, attribution, licensing, and the larger creative economy.
Learn enough to make informed choices about the tools you adopt and the rights you’re being asked to grant.
The same principle applies to video production, marketing, financial planning, and the countless other disciplines that now intersect with an artist’s professional life.
Choose one skill that would make a meaningful difference in your work and give yourself a few months to improve it. You’ll be surprised how much more capable you can become when you’re not trying to learn everything at once.
9. Get Ready for Opportunities That Haven’t Happened Yet
One of the things that drives me crazy is watching artists scramble to prepare materials for opportunities they should have anticipated.
A concert presenter wants a current live video, but the artist doesn’t have one. A journalist asks for new photographs, and the only available images are ten years old. A music supervisor requests an instrumental mix, but nobody can find the session files.
Suddenly everyone is in a panic over something that could have been handled months earlier.
The Quiet Time gives you the chance to get ahead of these problems.
Create an organized library of photographs, biographies, videos, artwork, recordings, technical information, and business documents. Prepare materials for different situations, from a concert booking to a licensing inquiry.
Make sure you know where everything is and that other authorized people working with you can access what they need.
Then look further ahead.
If you have a recording project in development, start thinking about the story behind it before you’re ready to release it. What makes this project interesting? Why are you making it? How does it fit into your larger body of work?
Begin developing the visual identity, narrative, and supporting content while you still have the freedom to experiment. Don’t wait until your release date is six weeks away to decide how you’re going to explain what you’ve spent two years creating.
And if all of this seems overwhelming, it’s worth remembering that you don’t have to figure everything out alone.
This is a big part of why I created Artist Expansion (www.artistexpansion.com). I genuinely enjoy helping artists step outside the day-to-day demands of making music and take a fresh look at the bigger picture. Sometimes that means strengthening their professional identity and digital presence. Sometimes it’s developing a strategy for a new project, finding opportunities they haven’t considered, or simply figuring out what deserves their attention next.
It’s the kind of work I do constantly in my own career, and I love having the opportunity to help other artists do it in theirs. If you’re looking for some perspective, a few new ideas, or help figuring out your next chapter, that’s exactly the kind of conversation I enjoy having.
The goal isn’t to predict every opportunity or create an elaborate plan for every possible scenario. It’s to make sure that when something interesting happens, you’re not starting from scratch.
10. Decide What the Next Era of Your Career Looks Like
Most artists are reasonably good at thinking about their next project. The next album, concert, collaboration, or release. Far fewer spend enough time thinking about the bigger picture.
What kind of career are you actually trying to build?
I ask myself that question frequently, particularly now as I work on a major musical project while also developing other areas of my professional life.
I’m not interested in simply repeating the same cycle of recording, releasing, promoting, and starting all over again. I want to consider how the different parts of my work — as an artist, content creator, coach, and entrepreneur — can support one another.
That requires making decisions about what deserves my attention and, equally important, what doesn’t.
It means looking at projects I’ve outgrown, opportunities I should be pursuing, and areas where I want to challenge myself. It also means recognizing that an artist’s professional identity isn’t something that needs to remain frozen in time.
If you’ve been making music for twenty years, why should your career look exactly the same as it did ten years ago?
Maybe you want to perform less and compose more. Maybe you want to teach, produce, write, create films, develop an educational platform, or work with artists in ways you never previously considered.
Maybe your next great project has very little to do with the kind of work that made people notice you in the first place. That’s not abandoning your identity. It’s allowing it to evolve.
And there’s one other thing worth mentioning: you don’t have to turn every available hour into another professional obligation.
I keep thinking about that cruise in 2024. If I’d spent every afternoon checking emails, making calls, or worrying about everything waiting for me at home, I might never have given that holiday album idea enough room to develop.
There’s a lesson in that, and I’m trying to remember it myself.
Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is step away. Spend time with your family and friends. Travel. Read. Listen to music without analyzing it. Experience things that have absolutely nothing to do with your career.
The purpose of The Quiet Time isn’t to create another exhausting list of things you should feel guilty about not doing. It’s to give yourself enough perspective to decide what actually matters.
“The Quiet Time” Checklist
40 Things To Do During “The Quiet Time”.
You don’t have to do everything on this list, and you certainly don’t have to do it all at once. Pick the things you’ve been avoiding, the opportunities you’ve been overlooking, and the ideas that might make the biggest difference. I have been working through this list myself and it is transforming my career. Imagine transversing this list and what life might look like afterwards. Amazing, no?
Your Website & Professional Identity
- Review your website as if you’re visiting it for the first time.
- Rewrite your professional biography in short and long versions.
- Update your photography, press materials, and electronic press kit.
- Remove outdated announcements, broken links, and irrelevant content.
- Make sure visitors can easily discover your music, videos, and other work.
- Review your visual identity and make sure it reflects who you are today.
- Create or improve your email list and direct communication with fans.
- Back up your website, important digital files, and professional materials.
Your Audience & Digital Presence
- Decide which social platforms actually deserve your time.
- Update your profiles, images, links, and descriptions.
- Review your streaming and audience analytics for unexpected opportunities.
- Create a small library of useful photos, stories, and videos.
- Revisit older recordings and consider new ways to introduce them.
- Experiment with a recurring video or storytelling format.
- Reconnect with your audience without trying to sell them something.
- Identify promotional activities that aren’t working and stop doing them.
Your Creative Work & Live Performance
- Rework an older song or composition in a completely different style.
- Develop a new live set or alternative performance format.
- Film a rehearsal and critically evaluate the performance.
- Revisit unfinished songs, compositions, or recordings.
- Create something that has no commercial objective or release date.
- Explore a new instrument, production technique, or musical approach.
- Develop a creative project outside your established genre.
- Identify one artistic skill you want to improve over the next six months.
Your Business & Professional Relationships
- Review the registrations, credits, and ownership records for your catalog.
- Examine outstanding royalties and royalty-collection arrangements.
- Organize contracts, recording masters, stems, artwork, and other assets.
- Review recurring expenses, subscriptions, and business overhead.
- Research new licensing, commissioning, teaching, or performance opportunities.
- Reconnect with five professional contacts you’ve neglected.
- Approach three potential collaborators whose work interests you.
- Update your professional materials so you’re ready for unexpected inquiries.
Your Future & The Bigger Picture
- Write down what you’d like your career to look like three years from now.
- Identify projects you’ve outgrown or commitments that no longer make sense.
- Consider a new professional direction beyond your established artistic work.
- Choose one business or technical skill worth learning.
- Develop a realistic plan for your next major release or project.
- Create three specific professional goals for the next 90 days.
- Make time to experience things completely unrelated to your work.
- Give yourself permission to do absolutely nothing once in a while.
The Work Nobody Sees
I’ve spent enough time in the music business to know that careers rarely develop in the neat, predictable ways we imagine they will.
The project that changes everything may begin with an experiment nobody was supposed to hear. An important collaboration might start with a conversation that seemed completely inconsequential. A new business opportunity may develop from a relationship you’ve spent years building.
Or an idea for one of your most successful albums might arrive while you’re sitting on a cruise ship, a thousand miles from your studio, thinking about something entirely different.
That’s what happened to me with Heart of the Holidays. And the beginnings of my book came during another period when I finally had the time and perspective to explore ideas I’d been carrying around for years.
Those experiences have convinced me that there’s a lot more to building a creative career than the hours we spend making things. Sometimes the most valuable work is preparation. Sometimes it’s experimentation. Sometimes it’s having a conversation with the right person. And sometimes it’s giving yourself permission to stop working long enough for a really good idea to show up.
When my current four-hour recording project is finally finished, people will hear the music and see the results of that enormous creative undertaking. What they probably won’t see are the hundreds of decisions, improvements, experiments, conversations, and changes I’ve been making alongside it.
But those things are just as important to what happens next.
I’m not simply working on another release. I’m creating the next era of my career, and I’m not particularly interested in waiting for the world to notice before I get started. Artists do not wait for permission or agreement. They take action.
That’s the opportunity The Quiet Time presents to every artist, whether you’re just beginning or you’ve been doing this for decades.
Stop measuring your progress entirely by how much attention you’re getting. Stop assuming that if you’re not constantly announcing something, you’re somehow falling behind. And stop treating the spaces between projects as if they’re empty.
The public sees your career in moments. You have to build it in the time between those moments.
Want help in doing the checklist? Want to do it in 90 days? Go to: www.artistexpansion.com and contact me.
Remember, you don’t have to be making noise to be making progress…
