Hinterland Open Up About The Harsh Realities Of The Music Industry

Hinterland have taken to social media to talk about the realities of the music industry.

“It feels like artists aren’t allowed to talk about their disappointments and down times, lest we spoil the illusion of excitement and #bigthingscoming and whatnot,” Hinterland shared on social media.

“It’s been 6 months since our last single release which, in the Aussie independent country music scene, might as well be 5 years. And truth be told, our last single Strings Attached didn’t do as well as we’d hoped. It was our lowest streaming and charting single by a large margin, and this left us wondering what we did wrong.

“The truth is, we didn’t do anything wrong - sometimes songs just don’t connect, or they get overlooked by one playlist or station and it trickles down, and that’s ok. We also had to cancel a few shows because we just weren’t selling enough tickets. However, we’ve played some truly awesome shows (and some crappy ones!) and recorded new music for our next chapter, but we’re still in a weird place with the industry as a whole.”

Hinterland later updated their post to add, “This post isn’t supposed to be about Strings Attached and feeling it was a failure… it’s actually done really well in some spaces, and we love it! In truth, we’ve been reluctant to ‘play the game’ and probably very complacent whilst other artists charged ahead with their efforts. We’re all human beings and sometimes you can’t give your entire self to your art, and it takes time to build up that passion again.

“We’ve resisted the TikTok trend videos because they just don’t feel right for us. We don’t want to worry about whether a song is too country or pop or rock or not enough in whatever sub-genre the algorithm fancies that week. We just want to make the best music we possibly can.

“Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be sharing details and snippets of our upcoming single which is our most personal yet. It was written by me, Jesse [Emmanuel], in the midst of a great deal of soul-searching. I think it’s the best song I’ve ever written and, obviously, I’m very proud of it. What kind of content would you like to see? What gets you interested in/excited about a new song?”

The post was accompanied by a series of memes including: “Lord give me the confidence of a local band on social media announcing ‘big things coming soon’”, “Me getting ready to drop another dumb post to add to my digital footprint” and “If you want things to get better you have to make changes.”

The post also received comments from fans praising their honestly about the fickle music industry.

The Gold Coast-based trio is comprised of Rachel Bostock on the violin and vocals, her brother Robbie Bostock on lead guitar and vocals and Jesse Emmanuel on rhythm guitar and vocals.

All 3 members are award-winning songwriters for previous projects – Rachel and Robbie’s family band The Bostocks, Jesse’s solo albums and also collaborations with fellow artists. They’ve been making quite the mark in country music since bursting onto the scene in 2020. The band have had a massive couple of years with no less than six Countrytown Hot 50 Country Airplay Chart hits.

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