The California producer emphasizes the importance of community when making your mark on a new platform
For Pelican, recognition was only a matter of time. While the 18-year-old producer has been making beats in his bedroom for the last few years, he only recently found his footing after stumbling upon Matter, a relatively new music streaming service that strives to put community first. On Matter, it’s hard to go a day without scrolling past Pelican’s name. His songs are always charting on the Hot 100 and the red rose emoji accompanying his username is always popping up in the Global Chat, but it’s the sheer size of his fanbase that really sets him apart from his Matter contemporaries. At one point in time, Pelican had nearly the entire active Matter community in the palm of his hand, and all it took was a little serendipitous timing, a feel-good Cali attitude, and the near-abandonment of DIY music’s most prominent platform: SoundCloud.
“With SoundCloud, you’re kind of like a drop of water in this huge ocean,” Pelican explains of his first major streaming platform. “Whereas on Matter, I kind of felt like I was a drop of water in a bucket.”
Like many Matter users, Pelican migrated to the platform about a year ago after SoundCloud announced restrictions that would limit free uploads. With his SoundCloud not bringing in enough traffic to justify paying for the upgraded space, Pelican hopped on the invite link of a new service that promised to “usher content creators into a new realm of possibility.” Matter claims to put artists first, focusing on unrestricted growth of both the artists’ creativity and the community that fuels their success. For artists hit with the abrupt betrayal of SoundCloud, Matter seemed like an enticing offer, despite the platform still being in beta at the time. However, soon after the public denouncing of SoundCloud and the equally as public migration to Matter, SoundCloud backtracked on its original proposal for restricting users, and like a dog with its tail between its legs, users came slinking back. Except, of course, for the few that stayed.
“It was this whole community that just disappeared. It was really weird,” Pelican recalls of the months following the major surge of disgruntled SoundCloud users that came and went while he remained. “I think I got kind of lucky with sticking around because by the time the second wave came I was already big enough that I was able to catch it.”
This “second wave” hit around the beginning of October 2020, and included many artists from the hyperpop community following a string of relentless SoundCloud copyright strikes. However, this time the move to Matter wasn’t entirely in response to SoundCloud’s shortcomings. As a means of attracting and engaging members, Matter ran a contest where users were asked to remix a song off of an upcoming project by the platform’s newly converted member, SEBii. The “GOLDFiiSH” remix contest was met with over 300 submissions, including a submission from Pelican that rocketed to the top of the Hot 100. Destined for success, the track gained over 200 likes over the course of a few weeks, but when it came to announcing SEBii’s Top 20 shortlist, Pelican was nowhere to be found.
While Pelican’s track dominated the contest in terms of community support, he admits that he “didn’t hit the vibes [SEBii] wanted,” and that’s okay. For Pelican, his focus has been firmly fixed on the community that surrounds him, which is why he continues to find success to this day. Sitting at close to 1,800 followers, Pelican’s Matter fanbase is over 1,000 members larger than the majority of the other charting artists on the Hot 100, with most artists boasting under 500 followers each. He attributes his numbers in part to his longevity on the platform, but more so to his community involvement utilizing Matter’s social tools that aren’t seen on many other major streaming services.
“The more people you know, the more knowledge you get,” Pelican explains. This is why he believes that networking through Matter’s Global Chat is integral to any artist’s success on the platform. The Global Chat operates like any unmoderated chat room would, giving users the opportunity to chat, promo, or spam, if they so please. But with music streaming services oversaturated with new users, Pelican believes that it pays to be a “personality, as opposed to just basically being a bot that posts [song] links.” Pelican spends his time in the chat connecting with new users, doling out advice, and “putting on” artists that are full of potential. His high follower count and pink star icon—that identifies him as an active community member—mark Pelican as a kind of Matter authority. While not officially endorsed by Matter, Pelican believes that it’s still his job to spread positivity and denounce hatred in the chat—especially since it appears on Matter’s homepage.
“The Matter community is so small that if you go into the chat with [negative] energy, It’s not going to get forgotten,” Pelican says. “People really do see everything.”
As an active community member, Pelican believes that in order to spread positivity, it’s important to give back to the community that built him up in the first place. All of the money that Pelican makes on Matter is filtered back into the community through donations. If Pelican sees an artist creating something worthwhile, he’ll toss them a few bucks. He believes that it not only “promotes the culture of donating” but also puts “weight behind a comment.” As someone who is big on community support, Pelican says that he’s made loads of genuine connections in the growing community, but while his Matter experience has been largely positive, it’s impossible to completely avoid the opportunistic ladder-climbers looking to network disingenuously.
“I’ve been complimented on my vocals, like, ten times this week,” Pelican laughs. “I don’t do vocals. So I know they’re not actually listening to me.”
Pelican’s fans know that his talents lie in producing rather than singing, though that doesn’t mean that all of his tracks are solely instrumental. Oftentimes, Pelican finds inspiration from the vocalists around him, including those he discovers on Matter. His latest track “MXSS: ESKA (PELICAN REMIX),” was conceived after Pelican stumbled across fellow Matter artist gltchgrrl, who created the original “eska” track. Inspired to amp up gltchgrrl’s vocaloid-esque stylings, Pelican approached her with the proposal of a bass-boosted remix and she agreed. Now, Pelican has plans to collaborate with gltchgrrl and other Matter users, including Kid Trash, in the future, solidifying his focus on the community.
Pelican’s collaborative and community-based approach to navigating the underground makes him a prominent figure in the Matter community. His enthusiasm for participating in community contests, collaborating with smaller artists, and getting to know new users in the Global Chat is something that has driven his success thus far. Sometimes all it takes is a positive attitude and a willingness to connect in order to create a dedicated network of fans to propel you to the top. But even at the top, Pelican remains humble.
“I don’t think I’m necessarily better than anyone on the platform,” Pelican says. “I just think that I have a platform on the platform. I’m just a guy; I make music. And I don’t want to let my platform down.”
Listen to Pelican’s latest release “MXSS:ESKA (PELICAN REMIX)” here.