Here's a question most artists run away from. Is my song actually any good?
Not "do I like it?" Not "did it feel amazing to make?” Those are easy. What's harder is opening yourself up to the vulnerability of asking a stranger for their honest opinion.
I've been writing and producing music for a couple of decades now. Started as a teenager messing around on a computer with floppy disks, trying to figure out how a song even gets built. Back then I recorded onto 2-inch tape. Now it's DAWs, plugins, VSTs, AI tools, whatever you want. The gear changed completely. The hard part never did.
And the hard part isn't the gear. It's knowing if the thing you just made is any good.
The skill nobody talks about
People think the key to making it is talent. Or better melodies. Or networking, or grinding, or knowing the right people. Sure, those help. But what really separates an artist with ok tracks from an artist with top-notch music?
It's simply Self Awareness; I'll just call it SA to avoid typing it all over again in this article.
SA is your ability to step outside your own head and judge your work honestly. To hear your track the way a random listener would, not the way your ego wants you to. Song, beat, melody, or a half-finished idea, doesn't matter. If you can see it clearly, you can fix it. If you can't, you think everything sounds like a top-notch hit; this means you're stuck.
Not everyone is born with this. I sure wasn't. My first songs were terrible. The embarrassing part is I thought they were hits. Genuinely believed they belonged on the charts. They did not.
Took me years to get honest with myself. Years.
Why your gut lies to you at the start
You just finished a song. You're buzzing. Of course you think it's great.
That's the problem. You're emotionally wrapped up in it. You sat there for hours, maybe days, and that closeness messes with your judgment every single time. Beginners almost always overrate their own stuff. Statistically the song isn't a hit. But it feels like one, so the brain fills in the rest.
This is exactly where SA has to kick in and ring the alarm. It's not just a question of artist skills; it's also a question of your personality.
Stop falling in love with your own track
Pretty much every artist I've worked with has done this. They fall in love with their creation.
And love makes everything look perfect. Suddenly the chords sound like angels, the mix sounds huge, and you're already planning to conquer the big stages. I've been there too. So before you decide it's done, sit down and actually interrogate it. Out loud if you have to.
Is the chorus boring? Are the vocals strong enough or are you just used to them? How's the mix? How's the master? And the melody, is it actually sticky, or does it just feel sticky because you've spun it 400 times? Be honest there.
You started making music recently and you already think it's top tier? I'll be straight. You're probably not there. And that's totally fine. Everyone starts there.
Use references. They're free and they don't lie.
This one's simple and most people skip it. Find songs that live in your genre and sub-genre. Pick a few that are clearly working. Then go back and forth between your track and theirs. Your song, the reference, and your song again.
What's the reference doing that yours isn't? Where does yours suddenly feel small or flat or amateur next to it?
Producers and mixing and mastering engineers do this constantly, but it could work for songwriters too. The knowledge is sitting right there in other people's records, totally free. Steal the lessons, not the song.
Listen like it's somebody else's song
Here's a trick that takes a while to get good at. Pretend it isn't yours. Eyes shut. Imagine some artist you never heard of just hit play on this. Total stranger. Now kill the attachment, all of it.
Forget the late nights, forget how proud you are of that one transition. Just listen, cold.
When you can actually do this, things jump out. The weak bar. The lazy second verse. The hook that doesn't really hook. You start hearing what a normal listener hears, and that's gold.
It's hard. Took me ages, but once you master this ability, your songs will improve dramatically.
Get real feedback from the right people
Be open to it. Always.
But be picky about who you ask. Feedback's only worth something if the person actually gets what you're going for. And knows enough to say why a thing works. Or why it doesn't. Your mom? Not that person.
Neither is your neighbor. They love you, they'll be nice, and that's the problem. They don't have the tools to tell you your master bass frequency is muddy or your arrangement drags in the bridge.
There's a Lewis Capaldi documentary where he and his mom are sitting in the kitchen and his mom hears a new song and gives him pretty bad advice.
And look, that's mom being mom, but for a young artist who isn't sure of himself yet, that kind of feedback can be ten times more confusing than no feedback at all.
So find people who get it. A producer you respect. An engineer. Another artist who's further down the road. And when you’re ready to test your music outside your personal circle, run proper research to find the best music promotion services for your genre, budget, and career stage. That kind of feedback is worth more than a hundred “yeah it’s fire” comments.
+Read more: "The 88% Problem: Why Most Music Fails Before Anyone Hears It"
SA isn't only about the music
This part trips people up. Knowing if your song is good is one thing. Knowing where you are in your career is another. Both come from the same place.
Say you dropped your second single and the streams are trickling in slow. That is not the moment to email Universal Music Group. Trying to submit music to record labels at that stage is mostly a waste of everyone's time, yours included. Give it room to grow first.
We always get emails at One Submit from artists asking if we can submit their music to Universal Records.
You don't look for Universal Music. They will find you if you reach the right place in your career. The same honesty you apply to the track, apply it to the plan. When the timing's right and the numbers back you up, then you push. Until then, you build.
There are plenty of Spotify promotion services and tools out there to help you promote your music and grow an audience the smart way. Use them when it makes sense, not before.
Don't spend all of your funds on one track, because....
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
This is a long road. Get comfortable with that now.
Look at the artists you admire. A lot of them grinded for years before anything popped. Every small win is just a step toward the next one. The trick isn't a shortcut. The trick is improving faster, because the faster your SA grows, the faster you get good, and the shorter the road becomes.
If I wrote a list of what it takes to make real art, self-awareness would be number one. "Work hard" would be number two. They go together.
Finish what you start
One last thing, and it matters more than it sounds. Always get to the finish line.
If you start a song or a production and bail halfway, you get nothing out of it. No track, no lesson, no progress. Just time gone. So quit scrolling. Quit worrying about what everyone else is dropping. Finish the thing in front of you. Do that again, and again, and you get better. Simple as that.
Your career is only a song away. Make sure it's a good one. And now you know how to tell.
Good luck out there.
+Read more: "What Are Music Curators Actually Looking For? Insights From 100K Submissions"
Oren Sharon is the Founder of OneSubmit, an independent music promotion website dedicated to helping independent artists submit music to curators. The site offers Spotify promotion for artists, blogs, online radio, YouTube, and TikTok music promotion.
