The crowd was exiting through a single door at the end of an ADE night. Cloakroom line, slow shuffle, calm energy. I looked up and realized I was standing next to Guy J. The moment did not feel dramatic. It felt normal, which is the only detail that matters.
I said a simple thank you. I meant it. No pitch, no request, no follow up. He smiled in a way that said the appreciation landed, and there was a brief physical gesture of warmth. Then the line moved and it ended. It should have dissolved into the noise of the night, but it did not. It stayed. Not because it was big, but because it was small and clean.
Why did that stay with me longer than some much bigger encounters? Why did a few seconds carry more emotional weight than the longer conversations where I was trying to be memorable?
The Problem
The music industry is not made of flyers, algorithms, or label catalogs. It is made of people, and people are sensitive to intent. We forget that under pressure. We turn interactions into tiny worthiness tests.
If you have ever frozen before saying hello to someone you respect, you have felt this system. The loop is familiar. What do I offer? What if I waste their time? What if I am judged? The loop is not rational, but it is loud. It turns a human interaction into a performance with invisible scoring.
This is not only about idols. It shows up in studios, in DMs, in green rooms, in comment sections. We say we want community, but we approach the people in that community like they are vending machines. It is hard to do otherwise when status is the air everyone breathes.
I have seen how this pressure changes people. Musicians who are bold in the booth become hesitant in the hallway. Producers who can shape a whole night with music can barely look up when the crowd filters out. It is not because they lack character. It is because the industry quietly teaches them to turn every moment into an opportunity.
When every encounter is a negotiation, you stop being present. You start trying to be worth something in the eyes of the other person, and your nervous system becomes a pitch deck.
So here is the real problem: we are taught to treat people as roles first, and people second. The moment you do that, the room narrows. You miss the chance to connect, and you carry a quiet shame that compounds over time.
I have written about attention and social systems before in Presence Beats Reach: A SoundCloud Retrospective. The same principle applies here. Presence is not a tactic. It is an inner posture. It is what tells the other person, I am not trying to take from you. I am trying to see you.
The Solution
The solution is simple and difficult. Treat people as people before you treat them as doors.
That is not a nice sentiment. It is a strategy for sanity. It removes the internal negotiation that makes your body tense. It replaces the question, what can I get, with a more honest one. What do I actually feel right now? If the answer is gratitude, say that. If the answer is curiosity, ask a question. If the answer is nothing, let the moment pass without punishing yourself.
This is not a moral purity test. It is a practical reset. When you take extraction out of the interaction, the other person can relax. The conversation does not need to go anywhere. It can be complete in ten seconds. Most people in the industry are carrying enough noise already. A clean moment is a gift.
The other subtle change is that this shifts the burden of belonging. You stop asking for permission to be there. You allow yourself to be there. That removes the taste of desperation that makes even a well worded compliment feel transactional. It also protects you from the opposite trap, the one where you are so afraid of being opportunistic that you become silent. Silence is not noble. It is just fear with good lighting.
There is a cost to this approach. You might miss a few opportunities. You will certainly miss a few chances to leverage. But you will gain a quieter conscience and better relationships. You will also gain a sense of agency. The industry stops feeling like a maze of gatekeepers and starts feeling like a collection of humans, some open, some tired, some kind, some indifferent. That is reality, and reality is easier to navigate than fantasy.
This also changes how you interpret silence. If you say a kind sentence and there is no follow up, you can let it be complete. You do not have to convert it into a thread, a partnership, or a deal. That alone reduces the internal pressure that makes musicians spiral.
If you are in a season of overthinking, revisit how you handle uncertainty. The fear of being judged is the same fear that keeps you stuck in other parts of life. I wrote about that mindset in The Pandemic of “uncertain”. The cure is not bravado. The cure is clarity.
The most radical move in a status room is to behave like you already belong.
Conclusion
The moment at ADE did not give me a contact. It gave me a perspective. It reminded me that the industry is not a hierarchy, it is a room. And rooms respond to presence more than they respond to positioning.
If you want a small practice, try this. The next time you are near someone you admire, reduce the interaction to its simplest honest form. A thank you. A sentence of appreciation. No hook. No follow up. Then walk away and let it be complete.
You might be surprised by how much weight a small, sincere moment can carry. And you might discover that the simplest form of confidence is not bravado. It is the willingness to be a person in a room of people.