Hi,

One common pitfall I see with artists and creators is their perception of how big they think they are compared to reality - many fall victim to a concept called “illusion of scale”, which has the potential to stunt their growth and career.

Let’s explore below.

Let’s dive in ⬇️

Let’s start with a quick story to illustrate this concept.

This past summer, around May or June, I started spending more time learning about AI. I dove in head-first: experimenting and testing different AI platforms like Lovable and Emergent, reading AI newsletters, and following AI creators online.

When I opened social media, particularly Twitter, it felt like “everyone” was talking about AI. As I scrolled my timeline, AI news and information dominated my feed and started creating the perception that everyone was talking about it. That everyone was aware of the tools and concepts I was learning and that I was late to the party.

As I kept scrolling though, I saw more and more tweets highlighting how early it still was in the AI world. Early to be learning about these platforms, testing these tools, etc and that most of the general population hadn’t caught up yet. They were still trying to figure out how to use ChatGPT.

In my mind, I wondered how it was possible to be so early if it felt like everyone on my feed was talking about it.

Wasn’t this mainstream already?

Didn’t most of the world know about this?

Then I realized something - while it felt like a lot of people were talking about the same thing, if I actually counted the number of accounts, pages, and people that were talking about it, it was maybe 50-100.

It felt like a massive number when scrolling because seeing 10-20 accounts in a row talking about the same thing feels like a lot but when I actually zoomed out of that small pocket, in the grand scheme of things, 10-20 accounts wasn’t that much. Even 50-100 accounts in the context of the internet was barely anything.

It was then that I realized my perception was off. Illusion of scale was at play.

Simply put, illusion of scale is a psychological effect where dense, concentrated attention is mistaken for widespread attention or impact.

It’s the same concept that so many artists and creators experience and in that moment, I finally understood why.

For artists & creators

For artists and creators, it’s when a smaller but engaged group (whether online or in real life, maybe in their hometown) feels like a massive audience even though the actual reach is fairly limited. When a few people make noise, it tricks you into thinking the whole world cares.

It explains why so many artists who have some notoriety or status in their hometowns or cities where they live often think they’re bigger than they really are. For example, imagine walking down the street and getting recognized - having people walk up to you and ask for pictures.

Sitting down at a restaurant and having the restaurant owner comp your meal because they’re fans of you. As I experienced, some of this also takes place online. People DMing expressing their love and support and what might be 40-50 people can feel like hundreds or even thousands.

Or maybe there’s demand for performances in their city and they assume that being able to sell out a venue in their city means there’s demand in other cities.

Those little moments and interactions (fans walking up to them, recognizing them, asking for photos or showing love, etc) create an illusion of scale.

It’s such an easy trap to fall into because our brains confuse that dense + concentrated attention with widespread attention. If there’s a lot of attention here, they must be big right?

It’s why artists think they are bigger than they really are and get reality checks once they leave their hometown.

It’s why creators fall into the trap of never expanding their content / growing a business and remain stagnant.

This perception affects decision-making and how people approach their careers.

“I don’t need to play a 50 person show in another state because I can play a 200 person venue in my own city”.

Every decision that gets made is from the illusion of scale.

Okay Mike…that’s all well and good, and it’s great that we’re aware of this concept (and it’s unfortunate that it exists) but how can we combat illusion of scale to actually get a better perception of where artists and creators stand?

It’s a hard concept to combat but here’s a few ideas.

1) Look at your social media + streaming demographics

The first way to get a sense of how wide your reach actually is, is by looking at your social media analytics. What are your top cities and states?

If 90% of your audience is coming from your hometown or the city you live in, it may be an indicator that your audience is densely populated into one small area. If the percentage is somewhat equally spread out amongst multiple cities, that is more of an indicator that you may have a bigger fanbase in other places.

Same thing with looking at your audience demographics on Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists.

2) What do sales look like?

It’s easy for people to follow creators & artists they’re not actually that crazy about. In fact, it’s a very passive action - we just move our thumbs, click “Follow”, and engage with a couple posts when we feel like it.

Another level of investment is required to actually further support that creator by purchasing merchandise, products, or tickets.

If you’re a creator, are people buying your course or products?

If you’re an artist, are people buying your merch or show tickets? If you do a free show as a test, how many people are willing to leave their homes to come see you?

3) Shows in other states

If you’re an artist, try performing in cities or states close to where you live.

Are you able to bring people out? If it’s flat, it may mean most of your audience is concentrated in that one city.

Another concept at play

Another element at play that very few people talk about with artists and creators are “long tail events”. Long tail events are events or moments that are infrequent but cause a disproportionate outcome or impact.

An example of this would be an artist’s song going viral, becoming the highest streaming song in their catalog, and significantly outperforming the other songs in the catalog. It’s the entry point for most of the artist’s fan base and without the artist even realizing it, most of their audience knows them for that one song and very few are familiar with other songs.

An example of this with creators can be a piece of content. A TikTok video, Instagram Reel, or YouTube video goes viral and significantly overperforms compared to their other pieces of content. That one piece of content becomes the top of the funnel for new fans and is essentially how most of their audience discovers them.

If those fans don’t take the time to watch the other videos or consume the other content, the fans are basically fans of that one piece of content, not the creator as a whole.

This is another concept to be aware of - are 1-2 of the songs or concent pieces in your catalog carrying your entire catalog? If so, there’s a chance the bulk of your audience is in love with those songs and content and maybe not converted to you as a full blown brand yet.

One of the ways to fix this is to continue releasing music + content but also building your brand (having consistent visual identity etc).

The illusion of scale can sneak up on you but if you’re aware of it, you have a chance at navigating it accordingly and not letting it cloud your judgement.

Hopefully this was helpful on your journey.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

_{The Vault}

 1) Emergent - my cousin actually introduced me to this one! It’s similiar to Lovable, a platform that can be used for building web applications with AI but Emergent has more integrations. For example, it recently just integrated with Claude Sonnet 4.5 More info HERE