Spotlight: Dafna

Written by: Chris Arencibia

In the past two decades, the music industry has been flipped on its head multiple times. Releasing music in the early 2000s looked nothing like releasing music in the 2010s, and today is even different than it was yesterday. According to Spotify, over 60,000 new tracks are uploaded to their platform each day, with about 22 million new tracks yearly.

That's a lot of noise.

While the democratization of music has led to thousands of artists getting the chance to build a career in music, it has made it more difficult than ever to stand out and build a steady following. In the world of digital streaming, data, and algorithms, things move fast and attention spans are short. Today's developing artist is challenged to consistently release music, post every day, and stay on top of ever-changing trends and strategies to maintain fans and listeners.

This week, we spoke with an artist who seems to defy these odds, building an amazingly consistent spread of streams across a wide ranging catalog of music. Dafna is a 23 year old singer, songwriter, and producer working as a software engineer in Los Angeles (originally from Boulder, Colorado). While boasting multiple songs with over a million streams each, what's even more impressive is that you won't find a single "throwaway" song on her page. Every track has been streamed consistently and frequently, with just about every song in the catalog in the 5-6 digit range.

In an industry that's leaning heavily into the TikTok one-hit-wonder model , it's clear that Dafna is building something special where fans stick around for more than one song. Skylyne recently had the opportunity to chat with Dafna about this, her background, release strategy, and much more.

SKYLYNE: Thanks so much for taking the time to chat! I’d love to start off with learning a bit about your musical background. Your music has such a seamless blend of modern styles and pop, but to me sound inspired by some classical and jazz fundamentals. Are you classically trained? If so how has that impacted your music today?

DAFNA: Thank you! My parents put me in classical piano lessons when I was 4 and I continued that until I was 18, which definitely was the number one reason I got into songwriting since I don’t think I would’ve been as into it without already knowing how to play an instrument. A lot of my early music was definitely very piano driven since that was all I knew, and it definitely still plays a big part in the way I write. It’s never really a conscious decision though– more of what just sounds good to me and makes sense for the song.

SKYLYNE: You have one of the most unique and interesting voices I’ve heard in music and it blends perfectly with your music. Would you say your vocal style plays a big role in how you’ve developed the overall sound of your projects?

DAFNA: My voice has definitely developed a lot since I started writing (I used to sing with a weird Irish whispery accent and had barely any range) but I’ve grown a lot since and now feel like I’m able to do more vocally which has been helpful in making cooler songs. I started out by playing live shows before I had any music out, so I do sometimes try and think if a song would be fun to sing live and write it around that, but it varies for each song.

SKYLYNE: That's so interesting, I love hearing music inspired by live sound, I think it really shines through and can make a song sound more authentic. Speaking of your writing process, you’ve done a lot of collaborations with artists like Mickey Darling, Cameron Desnoes, Nico Days, Mielo, to name a few. Do you find co-writing to be a challenge or is it easier than writing alone?

DAFNA: Most of the collaborations I have released I actually either wrote the song myself and then pitched for them to hop on or top-lined it (where they send me the instrumental and I write lyrics over it) so in a way I’m still kind of working separately even though we are still collaborating. I have been getting more into co-writes now that I’m in LA and have enjoyed the whole world of bouncing ideas off of each other, but it’s definitely very different than when I write alone. Not necessarily more challenging, but I do feel like I write less personal lyrics and more concept-based lyrics when I write with other people.

SKYLYNE: Seems like working alone seems to be very productive for you. You’ve developed a really impressive catalog of music in a relatively short time. I’d love to talk a bit about your release strategy and how you plan out your marketing. When you finish a track or collection of songs, what are your next steps?

DAFNA: My release strategy has pretty much always been releasing music whenever I feel like it. My usual goal is a song a month, and hopefully those songs are all together on the same project but it definitely varies. I also aim to have some sort of visual element with each song– either a lyric video or a music video, which depending on how far I plan it out is sometimes a rush the week of the release. I also usually plan to have 2 or 3 photoshoots a year so I have a lot of photos I can choose for artwork to randomly release a song with. So it’s a bit of an organized chaos.

SKYLYNE: Organized chaos is the best! At the very least it keeps you on your toes. A lot of artists struggle to get listeners on every track, even if they have one big song. You have such an impressive spread of streams across all of your music and it’s clear your fans take the time to listen to every track you put out. What do you think drives that consistent success across all your songs?

DAFNA: I’ve been posting consistently on social media (initially Instagram) since I was 17 with either singing videos or promoting my music in super dumb ways which I think has helped me slowly grow a bit of an audience over the years that has seen my music really change and develop. I’ve also been lucky to have a lot of songs go “micro”-viral on TikTok which hasn’t necessarily catapulted me to anything but has definitely made more people slowly see a lot more of my music and stick around which is always exciting.​

SKYLYNE: TikTok can be so difficult to harness, but it seems like you've done a really amazing job of building consistency there. What has been your biggest challenge as you’ve developed as an artist? Artistically or on the business side?

DAFNA: I do almost everything on my own (both creatively and on the business side, although now I have a very lovely manager who has been helping me out for the last 2 years) which can be time consuming on top of also working full time, but probably the biggest challenge and most confusing part has been my taxes. Shout out to any accountants, because this shit is so confusing, I am constantly scared.

SKYLYNE: OMG nobody ever tells you that's part of doing music and it ends up being the worst part of my year every year, so I really feel your pain there. Speaking of pain points, you’ve obviously found some success in the streaming world, but do you have any issues with the current music industry and how things work?

DAFNA: I’m lucky that I am able to stay independent and financially support myself through other means (I work as a software engineer) because the current way that most artists make money is absolutely insane to me. I won’t get too into it but the idea that you have to live off of what is pretty much a loan that a label gives you and not see any money from your streams until that loan is paid off doesn’t seem like the best system.

SKYLYNE: I 100% agree, music seems to be one of the only businesses where the person making the product has to give up all of their ownership to ever see any money, but hopefully we'll see a shift in the industry soon to be more focused around the artist as the center of their own business, rather than labels exploiting their work.

Looking back, what's something you know now that you wish you could have told yourself when you were just starting out?

DAFNA: Get braces. Just went to the dentist the other day and they said I might need braces so… if only I had gotten braces 5 years ago.

SKYLYNE: LOL, I wish I did the same thing, but I have a bad habit of ignoring dentists anyway. When you’re big and famous, who do you want to play your role in the Dafna biopic?

DAFNA: Hmmm I feel like by the time that would happen every actor I know would be super old… maybe I’ll have a kid one day and force them into acting so they can play me in a movie.

SKYLYNE: Perfect plan. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us, and good luck with your braces, haha! Here’s your spotlight - tell us what you have going on and what’s coming up.

DAFNA: My song “I WANNA FEEL” just came out and has a music video on the way that I’m super excited about. I’m opening for Madeline The Person in LA at the Moroccan Lounge on December 7th, so hopefully I’ll see you there?? And I have a lot of new songs coming soon in the next year so stay posted for that!!