Before she found a better way, Anja Kotar was doing it manually.
Reaching out to creators one by one, building spreadsheets, trying to get her music into the right videos. Not exactly the image people have of an independent artist. But she had a reason for all of it that went deeper than reach.
“I make music as a way to document my life,” she says, “almost as proof of having lived, and as a way to leave something behind long before I’m gone.” Eight years of music from San Francisco, each song a record of who she was at a specific moment. “In a way, I think of my catalog as a diary that will outlive me.”
That is a different place to start from than most independent artists. The music has to matter before anyone hears it – and keep mattering even when nobody does.
Who Is Anja Kotar?
Anja describes her sound as “whimsical, cinematic, and uplifting – songs that feel like little films.” Romantic, nostalgic, visually vivid, but still honest and relatable. Music made for specific kinds of moments: the ones most people feel but can’t quite name.
When she started, she was much more focused on metrics – streaming numbers, follower counts, what might have the widest commercial appeal. That version of her work exists in her catalog. But a catalog built as a diary has to eventually become honest. She has been moving steadily in that direction ever since.
Getting there has required something most people don’t associate with making beautiful music. It has required a lot of grinding work.
The Administrative Reality Independent Artists Don’t Talk About
There is a version of the independent artist story that looks clean from the outside: make beautiful music, find your audience, grow. The reality Anja describes is messier – and more honest.
“The hardest part is how little of the job is actually making music,” she says. “People imagine that being an artist means writing songs all day, but so much of it is administrative – answering emails, scheduling releases, pitching, organizing assets, following up, planning content, handling uploads, checking metadata, coordinating everything yourself.”
And even after all of that – after the song is made, mixed, distributed, scheduled, and launched – there is the moment it goes live. Which, for Anja, has never gotten entirely easier.
“It feels strangely permanent and fragile at the same time,” she says. “When I release a song, I’m not just putting out a piece of music, I’m putting out a piece of my life. There’s always this vulnerable moment where something deeply personal becomes public, and I have no control over whether it will actually reach anyone.”
What she has learned to hold onto, in that moment, is a longer view. “Songs can have very long lives. Sometimes they find people slowly, over time, in ways you never could have predicted. So the feeling is a mix of fear, hope, and trust.”
That trust has been hard-won. And the project that taught her most of it was one she made with no expectation of reach at all.
The Year She Turned Her Life Into an Album
In 2022, Anja released the 12 Months series: one song for each month of the year, each built around a classical melody woven into something new.
No commercial logic supported it. You can’t pitch a twelve-part series to a Spotify curator. But Anja made it anyway, following production choices that felt personal and beautiful to her rather than what she was hearing in the mainstream.
“Those songs connected with people more than I expected,” she says. “That project changed the way I think about making music. Since then, I’ve been making songs that are much more specifically tailored to my own preferences, almost like creating a soundtrack to my life.”
It also crystallized something she had been working toward. “Once a song is released, it exists forever, which is a dramatic thought, but also kind of literally true. Because of that, I’ve become very focused on making songs that really reflect my worldview, my experiences, the people I’ve met, and the person I was at the time I made them.”
The 12 Months series proved that out in practice. “December” kept finding new listeners in Vlogmas content. “April” became one of her top streaming songs. The months kept arriving in new places long after 2022 ended. All twelve months are available as Thematic Exclusives – and they’re still being discovered.
She Was Already Pitching Creators. Just One at a Time.
It belonged inside someone’s video – under footage, inside a specific mood, as the thing that makes a moment feel like it means something.
She had the insight. What she didn’t have was a way to act on it at scale. So she built one herself.
“Back in 2020 and 2021, I spent hours every day researching Instagram and YouTube creators, collecting their contact information in spreadsheets, reaching out directly, and offering my songs for free to use in their videos as long as they credited the music properly and there were no copyright issues for them,” she says. “At first, I didn’t mind the hustle, but eventually the workload became huge.”
The logic was right. What she couldn’t solve manually was scale – there is only so much you can do one email at a time.
When she found Thematic, she recognized it immediately. “Joining Thematic didn’t feel like giving up control,” she says. “It felt like finding a much more scalable version of something I was already trying to do on my own.”
The Vlogmas Video That Made Her Streams Spike in Real Time
The moment that made that infrastructure feel real came from Nicole Laeno, a creator with a significant following who used Anja’s song “December” in her Vlogmas series.
“Suddenly I noticed the streams rising really quickly,” Anja says. “I remember trying to figure out what had triggered it, because the jump felt too sudden to be random. I traced it back to Nicole Laeno using the song in one of her Vlogmas videos, and that was such a surreal and exciting moment.”
She had described “December” as her Christmas-themed track – and here it was, landing in Vlogmas content at exactly the right moment of the year, reaching an audience she hadn’t been able to build through her spreadsheet.
“It wasn’t just a spike in numbers,” she says. “It was seeing a real trail of discovery happen in real time, and realizing a creator had helped introduce the song to an entirely new audience.”
(Creators: “December” is available to license on Thematic.)
How Her Songs Started Living in Other People’s Stories
The Nicole Laeno video was the most visible moment. What has stayed with Anja most is everything that came after – quieter, more scattered, and in some ways more meaningful.
“What has felt most meaningful is the range of contexts my songs have been used in,” she says. “I’ve seen them in travel vlogs, get ready with me videos, family vlogs, book reviews, and so many other kinds of content, and that’s the part I find most beautiful. As an artist, it’s really special to watch one song take on all these different little lives. Each creator adds a new layer of meaning to it, and over time it starts to feel like a mosaic made up of all these different moments and people.”
One creator she follows closely is mbclje – videos that are “deeply comforting and joyful, finding magic in the simplest moments,” as Anja describes them. Watching her music appear in that world feels less like a placement and more like recognition.
But the moment she keeps returning to isn’t a view count or a notable creator. It’s a playlist title.
“What has felt especially magical is seeing my songs show up in personal, themed playlists with titles like ‘picnic on a spring afternoon,'” she says. “Moments like that stay with me. That kind of discovery turns a number into a real human being, having a precious moment in their life soundtracked by something I made in my bedroom.”
She also hears directly from people who found her through creator videos – and those messages land differently than any stream notification.
“What actually leads someone to it can be hearing it underneath a vlog of someone going to a bookstore or visiting a new city,” she says. “I love that. It reminds me that songs can travel in ways you never could have planned, and that they can become attached to very real, everyday moments in someone else’s life. Those comments always make the song feel bigger somehow – like it’s no longer living only in my world, but in other people’s worlds too.”
Why She Stopped Making Music for the Widest Possible Audience
Eight years of releasing music – watching some things connect, watching others land quietly, adjusting what she measures and what she ignores – have brought Anja to a clear creative place.
“I no longer start from ‘what would have the widest appeal?’ and instead start from ‘is this true to my taste, my life, and what I actually want to leave behind?'” she says. “I spend more time making sure a song really reflects my worldview and experiences, because I know it may keep finding people for years.”
How she judges a release has shifted just as much.
“I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that a song’s value is not defined by how loud its first week is.”
Every new release goes on Thematic as soon as it’s out. The rest, she has learned to leave to time.
What She’d Tell an Artist Who Feels Like Nobody’s Listening
“Don’t assume silence means failure,” she says. “A lot of music connects slowly. People might hear a song months after it comes out, in a playlist, in a creator’s video, or at a moment in their life when they’re finally ready for it. Release week is only one tiny part of a song’s life.”
But the more important piece of advice, she says, is about the frame you bring to the work before any of that.
“I also think it helps to be very honest with yourself about what success you’re actually chasing. If your only metric is immediate numbers, you’ll probably feel disappointed most of the time. But if your goal is to make something meaningful enough to last, then the timeline looks very different. Focus on making songs you’re proud to have representing you years from now. Build a body of work, not just a moment.”
And for artists hesitant about platforms like Thematic – worried about control, rights, or whether it’s worth the effort:
“I understand that hesitation, because I was skeptical too. Before Thematic, I was doing creator outreach manually myself. So for me, joining Thematic didn’t feel like giving up control. It felt like finding a much more scalable version of something I was already trying to do on my own.”
She has watched that scalable version do something her spreadsheet never could: take songs made in her bedroom and place them into other people’s lives – a playlist, a stranger’s afternoon, a moment she never could have planned for.
“I want the songs to keep existing, keep traveling, and keep finding the right people in unexpected ways,” she says.
Get Your Music Heard by 1M+ Creators
Anja’s story is not about a breakthrough moment. It’s about what happens when music made honestly – made to last, made as proof of having lived – finally finds the infrastructure to reach the people it was made for.
Thematic connects independent artists with a community of 1M+ creators across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more. Your music, in real videos, reaching real listeners – the ones who find you in the middle of their own life and go looking for more.
Listen to Anja Kotar
Spotify: Anja Kotar on Spotify
Instagram: @anja.kotar
Thematic profile: Anja Kotar on Thematic
✨ Creators: Anja’s full catalog (including all 12 months of the 12 Months series) is available to license free at the link above.
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