He was about to finish his Computer Science degree when he realized he couldn’t.
Not couldn’t finish – he was close enough. What he couldn’t do was keep pretending that was the plan.
“Right as I was about to get my degree, I just felt this undeniable pull towards music and I physically couldn’t do anything else,” he says.
He had studied CS because it made practical sense. His family and friends had been discouraging about music – not out of cruelty, but out of care. “I think they genuinely wanted the best for me and didn’t think music would make a viable career path.” So he listened.
And then, at the edge of the thing that was supposed to work out, he stopped.
Who Is Mykyl?
Mykyl (Michael Van Wagoner, based in Nashville) has been releasing music since April 2020. In that time, he has grown from around 30,000 monthly Spotify listeners to nearly 200,000, built an audience across countries he had never targeted, and watched his songs travel in ways he could not have engineered. He did it without a label, without going viral, and without becoming Justin Bieber.
That last part, he would point out, was never the goal.
His sound is, in his own description, “like Lauv and Ed Sheeran had a baby”: indie pop built around emotional honesty, songs that begin from something he needs to say. Sometimes an idea arrives in a dream and he recreates it on waking. Other times it’s a message he’s not hearing anywhere else – “at least not in song form” – and he builds outward from there. One song every four to six weeks, building slowly.
Why Independent Artists Are Measured Against the Wrong Standard
There is a version of the independent artist story that is relentlessly romantic. Mykyl’s is more honest than that, and more useful.
“Music is one of the only careers where people’s only understanding of success is becoming an A-list celebrity like Justin Bieber,” he says. “They don’t get that you can be a working-class musician with a modest fanbase and make a decent living.”
He has an analogy for how strange this is:
“If you wanted to be a plumber and you never became a household name, people wouldn’t consider that to be a failure. But with music, I feel like I constantly have to prove that the path I’ve chosen is worthwhile.”
That pressure – not from the industry, but from people who know him – has followed him through years of releasing music. The industry measures things imperfectly, but at least it measures the right things. The people who care about you are often measuring something else entirely.
The Honest Truth About Releasing Music
Here is something most artists will not say out loud. Mykyl said it anyway.
“I know that the ‘correct’ answer should be, ‘I don’t write music for anyone else, I write it for me. So even if no one else listens, mission accomplished,'” he says. “But if I’m being honest, I care a great deal about if people hear my music or not. Again, I’m self-aware that this is an unhealthy mindset, but I attach a sense of self-worth to the reception of my work. My songs are little pieces of my soul, and for them to be ignored feels like the deepest sense of rejection.”
Most artists default to the version where they create for themselves and the rest is a bonus. His version is truer, and more useful, because it explains what actually keeps someone going through years of quiet.
“The upside to this tortured mentality is that when songs perform well, when fans sing them back to me at a concert, it’s the best feeling in the world.”
He has experienced that feeling performing for thousands across the country. Those moments don’t exist without everything that came first.
What Playlist Pitching and Daily Posting Couldn’t Do
Mykyl tried the standard music promotion playbook.
Social media: posting on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube every day for years.
Playlist pitching: a few indie playlists picked him up, but they barely moved the needle.
A handful of Spotify editorial placements – New Music Friday Netherlands, New Music Friday Belgium, New Music Friday Luxembourg, Soda – gave temporary boosts that faded.
“Nothing has ever really taken off,” he says. He kept going anyway.
What began to shift things was different: independent creators using his songs, one video at a time. Micro-sync, as he calls it. A real person, in a real video, with an audience that already trusted them.
He found Thematic through a music industry newsletter – an ad on Digital Music News. The model made sense: open to independent artists, low barriers, creators who were actually making things people watched. And one other thing drew him in.
“I’m also a big fan of getting in on something early as opposed to waiting to hop on the ‘tried and true’ train.”
How a YouTube Creator’s Outro Sent Thousands of Listeners to His Channel
One day, “How To Live” (an older track) began doing something it had not done before. Streams were moving in a way that didn’t feel typical.
“It seemed pretty random, so I looked into it and saw that on my lyric video on YouTube, there were a bunch of comments saying, ‘I came here from Ally Sheehan!'”
A popular YouTube creator had been using “How To Live” as her outro. Her audience heard it, went looking, and found his lyric video. Comments stacked up. An audience he had never tried to reach was finding him anyway.
“She loves Taylor Swift and so much of her content is built around being a music fan,” he says. “So it’s an honor to be included in that process, and I’m grateful for her helping me to access a group of people who have a shared love for the craft.”
Another creator he follows closely is SevinJ, who has used his music across several videos over the years. What keeps him coming back to her channel is the tone: genuine vlogging that makes viewers feel like they’re part of her life. “I want my listeners to connect in that same way with my music,” he says.
(Creators: How To Live is available to license on Thematic. Browse Mykyl’s full catalog on his Thematic profile.)
From 30,000 listeners to 200,000
The geography surprised him as much as the total. Australia showed up strongly – he suspects the Ally Sheehan effect, given her audience. The Philippines less so: he speaks Tagalog fluently and has built some Filipino-language content, so those listeners made sense. What struck him was how much of the growth arrived through channels he had never mapped out.
Six times the listeners he started with is real. But the moment that actually landed was something else.
“The number that meant the most to me was when I was asked to headline a small music festival in Utah, and I ended up performing an hour set in front of 4,000 people and the audience was craaaazy, people dancing, singing along, etc. It’s amazing how uploading my songs on the internet turned into a tangible moment that I’ll cherish forever.”
He also found something smaller, and just as telling. Someone made a one-hour loop of Mykyl, Mason Murphy – Wrong Direction and posted it to YouTube.
“I just think it’s funny and awesome that somebody liked my song enough to make an hour long loop of it,” he says. Not a milestone. Just a real person who liked a song so much they wanted it not to end.
Why Collaboration Built His Audience Faster Than Promotion
Years of consistent releasing have produced one clear lesson, and it is not the one Mykyl expected.
“I honestly feel like I don’t have anything figured out,” he says. “My whole career I’ve just thrown stuff at the wall hoping something will stick, and somehow miraculously all the little things added up.”
The thing that added up most was collaboration.
“If I could pinpoint one thing that’s probably helped the most, it’s collaboration with other artists in my genre. It’s a great way to connect with new fans, and to share fans with your friends. Music is such a collaborative art, and when one of us grows, we all grow together.”
What Happened When Someone Stole His Music
Most independent artists don’t think about this part until it happens to them.
At some point, someone illegally ripped Mykyl’s songs from Spotify, uploaded them to a fake artist project under different names, and began trying to copyright claim them.
“I may not have even caught it if Thematic hadn’t flagged it and told me about it,” he says. “And then they gave me a spreadsheet with every single song that had been stolen and helped me take ownership back.”
He is direct about what this means for any artist still deciding where to put their music.
“Your music can be stolen anywhere now. I’ve literally heard of TikTokers sharing a clip of their song and some loser making a fake AI version and trying to ride off the virality. The truth is, if you’re putting your music online, there’s always an inherent risk. But Thematic not only does their best to mitigate that risk, in my personal experience, they helped me catch it and sort it out when it happened to me.”self. 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.”
What He’d Tell an Artist Who Feels Like Nobody’s Listening
“Collaborate with other artists in your genre and keep showing up consistently,” he says. “Release music every 4-6 weeks collaborating often with other artists, and over time it’ll build into something awesome. Remember it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”
For artists skeptical about platforms like Thematic:
“Thematic not only created some cool opportunities for me and gave my songs a boost, Audrey [Thematic co-founder] has personally helped me protect my music from bad actors.”
Somewhere in Utah, 4,000 people decided they already knew the words.
Get Your Music Heard by 1M+ Creators
Mykyl did not walk away from a CS degree to wait for someone to notice him. He kept releasing, kept collaborating, and kept looking for the infrastructure that would match the effort he was already putting in. When one of his songs started moving without him pushing it, he knew he had found it.
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 Mykyl
Spotify: Mykyl on Spotify
Instagram: @itsmykyl
TikTok: @heyitsmykyl
YouTube: youtube.com/c/mykylmusic
Thematic profile: Mykyl on Thematic
✨ Creators: Mykyl’s full catalog is available to license free at the link above.
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Stories like this one happen on Thematic every day. We’re a creative community built for discovery, collaboration, and growth – where creators find the perfect sound to elevate their content, and artists build a fanbase with every play. Join 1M+ creators and artists: sign up for free and start your story today.
