There’s this notion that if you build something people will come. That notion is crap.
There’s also this notion that if you invest time, resources and energy into social media to build a presence, that people will automatically love you just because you’re there. That notion is also crap.
If anything, social media has shortened the life cycle of stardom to almost nothing. How many bands do you know that were unknown one day, only to be the “next big thing” the next? Out of those, how many are still popular?
Before you get out there and start telling people about who you are any why they should care, focus on your product. Focus on creating something people will care about, THEN get out there and start talking.
I’m not saying wait until you’re perfect, but don’t expect social media to cover up the fact that you may not be all that good. Put out stuff you believe in and constantly push yourself to be better. Prepare for honest feedback and embrace it. It’s a tough lesson to learn, and a tough spot to be in, but congrats – it’s reality.
I was invited by Mack Collier to co-host #blogchat (on Twitter) last Monday night (the 8th) and was blown away by the quality of participants and discussions taking place during the chat.
Before I get into my thoughts, let’s take a step back. For those that don’t know what #blogchat is, it’s a weekly chat happening on Twitter (check out tweetchat.com for more information on how). Essentially, you pull up a Twitter search for #blogchat at the appropriate time, and start Tweeting with the people already participating. The key is to use the hashtag (#blogchat) in every tweet so that the conversations can be seen by all. If you’re wondering how to find the “appropriate time” a simple Twitter search will tell you if you search for the hashtag.
The topic of the week was how musicians could use blogging and social media to help them achieve their goals – whether they be ticket sales, music sales, or just connecting with their fans.
The full chat transcript can be found here, and Mack’s review post can be found here. Happy clicking!
About an hour and a half into the chat, Curt Smith (co-founder of Tears for Fears) jumped into the fray and spent the next 30ish minutes answering questions. Part of the value (as a fan) of following artists on Twitter is the perception of personal connection you feel with the artist, their work, and their lives. Take the following exchange as an example:
Some of the other valuable music-related nuggets Tweeted during the chat:
Blogging and using other SM tools is a great way to build a passionate community
Communications should be authentic – no PR/marketing people tweeting “as” the artist
Don’t be afraid to have a personality
Many artists don’t see themselves as brands – that mind shift is necessary
Twitter can be a great “first step” tool to drive fans to other places (like a Facebook Fan Page or a website)
Offering up special incentives/announcements via SM is a great way to make your community in SM feel special (Ed note: as well as start to get an idea of the effectiveness of these tools!)
Artists and companies need to start viewing fans as long-term assets, not just short-term pockets stuffed with cash. The key? Building a relationship with them.
If you’re going to use SM, always consider what the fans want to read/might find interesting. The focus isn’t you as a person, per se – it’s about your brand and your work. Don’t be afraid to let personality shine through, but avoid excessive inane chatter.
Location-based software could be a no-no if you get big enough to worry about “crazy people”. Safety first!
Most agree a blog should be the “home base” in your digital efforts
Don’t forget the fan to fan connections – they’re key!
Before you can ever start to think about selling anything – you need to build a community who wants to buy.
What advice would you add? Leave it in the comments!
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing ever since this whole Internets thing started to pick up steam in the music industry. Namely, the recording industry has been fretting over what to do, and how to monetize this whole digital thing.
Ed note: The recording industry is a piece of the music industry – if you’re confused, go look here.
At first the Internets didn’t affect CD sales enough to actually bother anyone, so the strategy was “ignore, ignore, ignore”. The RIAA got all put bull and started bringing people to court over illegal downloading, screaming that the people who were doing the illegal downloading (or rather, sharing songs for others to illegally download) were responsible for the current state of the recording industry.
Jump forward a few years and nothing really changed. The recording industry was still for the most part refusing to provide legal options to people who wanted to download music, so the public was still downloading illegally, delivering the Internets equivalent of a middle finger to the big bad RIAA, as well as the recording industry.
Then iTunes happened. Suddenly there was a very popular was to legally download music, and people started doing so. Voila, problem not yet solved, but hey – it was a start.
The thing is, the recording industry and the RIAA were now playing two sides, so to speak. They were getting the revenues from the iTunes downloads, yet still screaming and suing. The theme as it appeared to consumers was “You’re consuming music in the way you want to, and we’re starting to allow you to do that, but we really want our old way back as we made more money, so we’re still going to whine and complain.”
Businesses have to make money, I get it. Everyone gets it.
What many companies in the recording industry fail to realize though, is that their refusal to innovate and adopt new technologies was effectively a huge middle finger in the face of the consumer. That pissed consumers off.
At the end of the day the consumer wants the music – and we don’t necessarily care about the medium it comes on. The limitation of choice is what really pisses people off, and that was a choice made by inaction within the recording industry.
Hello to a problem the recording industry helped create.
So today I ran across his gem of a quote on brand dna, and it got me thinking.
“I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky.
There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time.
I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going.
The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel.
Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth.
Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along.
Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.”
The quote started me thinking about everything I wrote above. How if the THING you trade or sell suddenly is made obsolete, you need to figure out a new thing, a new product, or in this case, a new transportation method (from CDs to fiber optic cables).
Do yourself a favor and go read the entire article. It will take you a few minutes, but the letter is wonderfully written and really shows the evolution and struggle of many to monetize this whole Internets thing, while still delivering what fans want.
I’ve included a few excerpts below (emphasis mine), but really, you should go and read the entire article.
Believe us, we want you to pass our videos around more than you do, but, crazy as it may seem, it’s now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago
The label fronts the money for us to make recordings – for this album they paid for us to spend a few months with one of the world’s best producers in a converted barn in Amish country wringing our souls and playing tympani and twiddling knobs – and they put up most of the cash that it takes to distribute and promote our albums, including the costs of pressing CDs, advertising, and making videos. We make our videos ourselves, and we keep them dirt cheap, but still, it all adds up, and it adds up to a great deal more than we have in our bank account, which is why we have a record label in the first place.
Let’s take a wider view for a second. What we’re really talking about here is the shift in the way we think about music. We’re stuck between two worlds: the world of ten years ago, where music was privately owned in discreet little chunks (CDs), and a new one that seems to be emerging, where music is universally publicly accessible. The thing is, only one of these worlds has a (somewhat) stable system in place for funding music and all of its associated nuts-and-bolts logistics, and, even if it were possible, none of us would willingly return to that world. Aside from the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats? All the same, if music is going to be more than a hobby, someone, literally, has to pay the piper. So we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.
So, for now, here’s the bottom line: EMI won’t let us let you embed our YouTube videos. It’s a decision that bums us out. We’ve argued with them a lot about it, but we also understand why they’re doing it. They’re aware that their rules make it harder for people to watch and share our videos, but, while our duty is to our music and our fans, theirs is to their shareholders, and they believe they’re doing the right thing.
Let me say it again – go read the entire article.
OK Go (or Gizmodo, I’m not sure which) then included the Vimeo video you can see below, and me being a blogger of course put it on this very blog (I dig the song and love the video, so go forth and view).
What’s the conclusion? Well, I’d say right now we’re all in agreement on something at least. There’s far less money to be made from selling CD’s then there was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. This Internets thing has thrown a major wrench in the recording industry operations, and labels are suffering.
Is there a solution? That remains to be seen. Companies like Topspin, TuneCore, Involver, Kickstarter, ArtistData and others are coming out and helping artists (and labels!) better manage things in this whole Internet-driven economy, but these companies are still few and far between in the grand scheme of things. It’s progress, but is it the solution? I don’t think it is, at least not yet.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on things. Do you still buy CD’s? Do you download music from legal online sources? What trends do you see (for better or worse) in the recording industry??
Memories are powerful. Some songs play a leading role in certain memories, while others appear as a backup role.
I recently posted a question on my Twitter account (@misskatiemo) asking people what songs they associated with certain memories. Their answers are below.
Carla Lynne Hall: “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by Tommy James and The Shondells because it reminds me of growing up in Miami, with its blue skies and sunny days. Whenever I hear it, I think of carefree days of being a kid, with all of the time in the world to just dream and play. Ahhh….
Amy Garland: Footloose – This was my favorite movie growing up (still is), and I always loved dancing to the end (prom scene). Whenever the song plays at a wedding, my sister and/or I try to get everyone to form two lines and take turns dancing down the middle (like the movie). This song always brings great memories from weddings, etc to mind!
Andrew Stugots: New Years day 1999 my cousin and best friend in the world passed away after a life long battle with brain cancer. He was found laying in the parking lot of his job. Phillip lived life as if it was his last day on earth and pushed others to do the same. A year later I met a seer, Jennifer. I never believed in this type of stuff but take it for what you will. Over dinner with others she leaned over to me and said “Phillip said to tell you “Don’t Dream It’s Over“. I sat there with my mouth agape, she continued “Yeah, he is just singing that song over and over again ‘Hey now, hey now, dont dream its over. There is freedom within, there is freedom without….” and then she said, he waved and walked away. The song still gives me goosebumps and will make me get teary eyed.
My own memory is along the line of Andrew’s. Whenever I hear “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” or “Amazing Grace” I think of my Grandmother playing the piano as childhood versions of me and my younger sister bound up the stairs to her house.
Chris Brogan recently wrote about “Emotions At A Distance” – or, in other words, remembering that the people we connect and deal with from behind computer screens are just that – people.
It’s easy to get caught up in the nuances of your work from inside a practice room or behind a computer monitor. Not so easy when you’re performing your music in front of a crowd, or get recognized by a fan on the street. Music connects people across age differences, language barriers, and continents. Always remember that people have a choice to listen to your music, and that the music you create forms a very real part of the soundtrack of their lives.
“The younger generation has no romantic attachments to records as physical objects. To them, music exists as a kind of omnipresent atmospheric resource.
And it’s not that I begrudge them their online treasure troves or bite-size iPods. But I still miss the way it used to be, in the old days, when fans had to invest serious time and money to track down the album or song they wanted.
What I’m getting at here is a deeper irony: technology has made the pursuit of our pleasures much easier. But in so doing, I often wonder if it has made them less sacred. My children will grow up in a world that makes every song they might desire instantly available to them. And yet I sort of pity them that they will never know the kind of yearning I did.”
Even though I grew up mainly in the cassette and compact disc eras, I love vinyl. I love the feel of a record in my hands. I miss looking at the artwork on the vinyl itself or the packaging.
Music is an art form, both in sound, and in sight. Liner notes in CD’s have lately been reduced to a single slip of paper, instead of the large-format prints of the 90’s. Cassettes are all but forgotten, but vinyl has seen a surge in popularity as of late, selling close to a million albums in 2008, up over 15% from sales in 2007.
“Album extras Large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos (some even have full-size posters tucked in the sleeve) and liner notes are a big draw for young fans. “Alternative rock used to have 16-page booklets and album sleeves, but with iTunes there isn’t anything collectible to show I own a piece of this artist,” says Dreese of Newbury Comics.”
What was lost, and is now being found, is the second art of music sales.
The packaging.
I, for one, am happy to see that particular art form return.
