5Q: Sara Pi

Barcelona, Spain-based Sara Pi released her album Burning late last year, but for some reason it rose to the #2 spit in iTunes Spain in July. We had to ask how she did it and what she’s up to now.

DOWNLOAD: Burning

You reached #2 spot on iTunes Brazil with your current album, but it launched in October of last year. How do you explain that late rise?

Well, so far we’ve been in charge of absolutely all the process that implies releasing an album. From the first steps of composing the music, arragments and lyrics to what has to do with the latest stages of cd mastering, distribution and promotion. It’s only the two of us involved in all this tremendous amount of work and, let’s face it, we’re musicians, so we had to learn many things in order to make a living out of this album. Luckily, few months ago, one of the most reputed radio programs in our country commented about us in a very enthusiastic way. Aparently, one of their listeners had shared one of our songs in their Spotify suggestion inbox and they loved it. After that, it seems like the whole machinery started moving. 

How would describe the satisfaction of selling the 2nd most albums in your country for a week?

Obviously, we feel extremely happy. We are aware that doesn’t mean much though, as this could be just a peak and that’s it. But still it’s a wonderful gift that some sort of recognition comes after so much work, mostly when it reflects that people likes your music.

What have you done to push your album?

Well, apart from trying to get gigs in as many places as we could, so people could get to know us, I think the internet media has been the key to our initial success. Since the beginnings, we’ve been available on Spotify, iTunes, MySpace, and also in my web page www.sarapi.com. We think that people must have an easy access to listen to you, that’s definitely what we wanted from the start. In this sense, when the spotlight hits you, as the case of the radio we just mentioned, all the information was already out there.

What’s more time-consuming? Making music or selling it?

No doubt: selling it! Composing, arranging, is kind of natural to us. That’s what we like doing, we love music. Also, we live together, so it’s even easier as we play, around all the time with each other’s ideas, singing in the kitchen, in the living room… That’s what we can do. Selling is a whole different story though. Making your music accessible to the audience is certainly another job.

What’s the average career life-span for a DIY artist? How many albums do you foresee in your future?

I don’t have a clear answer for this. I think it depends on the kind of music you do, but perhaps even more on who is taking care of your product and how. In our specific case, we’ve already started working on our second album and we would like it to be the second of many more… But again, it depends on so many factors we can’t really control that we prefer to stay focused in making the music we like and, hopefully, the rest will eventually come.