Engagement

What matters is not how many people listen to your music, but what their relationship is to that music. If they are people who show up only to see and be seen, or who collect books and CD's as household decorations so that guests will see them as more intellectual, then you have not really succeeded in the most important way. It is infinitely more gratifying to play for small, appreciative and engaged audiences than it is to play for throngs of distractible yuppie chatterboxes. I say this as someone who has done both.