Music And Success

Others who came after me had much more "success" in music. Maybe I never had the chance at that, or lack of talent. But the truth is I took a lot of effort to not make this happen.
When I started doing music, the "Underground" attitude was in full effect. Making music for a larger audience? Heresy! Already playing at a party with more than 50 people in the crowd smelled of "treason" to the underground spirit. So when I later played my first gigs at Tresor, my former friends answered with ridicule. Playing at a Techno club! A big club! How could you dare!
The second reason was my mental health problems. If the little "success" I enjoyed in 2002-2003 already wrecked my mind, what would happen if this went to a larger scale?
But the most important reason was something different. I intent to have a specific effect with my music. To simplify it, let's call it a "psychedelic" effect. Music to feed your head, to break established concepts and notions you have in your mind, to wreck your notion of reality and go into ecstasy and beyond. Now, the things is that these techniques are not without risk. The effect might not be predictable. What if it has a negative effect on people, a "bad trip" or worse?
My excuse for spreading my music regardless was always that the people who find my music are likely experienced with these things; they're psychonauts or used to subversive and deviant music so they can handle this amount of "psychedelia". It's not likely that some EDM-dolly or Pop-head with no experience in these realms will suddenly be hit with this type of music.
So I thought it is much more safe if I limit the audience of my music to this, let's call it, "inner circle" of psychedelic Hardcore, and only rarely release it on bigger labels or get it to a larger audience.
For example in 2011 one of the biggest labels in "Industrial Hardcore" asked me for a release; and only in 2014 I felt it was safe to have some tracks released on that label, because my music had changed from negative content to more positive vibes.
There also seemed to be a kind of automatism to this effect; when I indeed did this "neg vibe" music, my audience was very limited indeed; and in 2014 when I tried for the most positive aspects, I reached way more people than before.
Still I had my phases of regret when I thought that, because of what I mentioned above, I should have not spread my music at all.
I'm not alone with this motion; Throbbing Gristle mentioned that when this type of music or art or concept enters the "social realm", things can get out of hand very quickly; that's why they aimed for doing music and collaborations etc. rather on an individual, than social level.
Still even with doing, or aiming at, purely "positive" music I feel this "Psycore" is not without danger; so it's important to use a lot of care with it. But I think, if one stays true to ones aim, maybe doing all this, doing this kind of music, is still the "right thing".