How Far Are You Willing To Go?
Decent article on New Music Strategies describing how many musicians don’t do the hard work many other marketers do when marketing their music on the internet. The good news for me was that I do a lot of the things Ariel says to do already. The bad news is that the whole thing can be a real f-ing drag, knowwhatimean?
It’s strange to watch how the progression works for people and how their goals around making music and creating art quickly become lost to a different but related goal of becoming known for something. Reading those comments really bummed me out. Although it did make Josh Freese’s recent gimmick even more amusing.
But seriously forks. People in the comments of that post are basically advocating developing a whole series of strange side businesses all in the interest of doing absolutely anything to whore yourself out so that people might click on a link you supply so that somebody somewhere might learn a little something about you and discover a song you wrote.
Why? Is that why we’re writing songs, my friends? Are we creating art to involve ourselves in a whole host of soul-sucking endeavors some of which might one day down the line provide a little scratch in our pocket to help us make some more music? Okay. If the answer is yes, just get a regular f-ing day job, amigos, and save yourselves the heartache of trying to start some Dale Carnegie-style series of marketing videos and self-help seminars. I am not shitting you. Read these comments.
Here’s an example:
The difficulty with selling music is that it doesn’t solve a problem. But plenty of people have a music problem. They can’t tune their guitar, they don’t know how to set up a drum kit, they can’t get a good sound when they record themselves. All committed musicians have skills that people are willing to pay to learn. Make a living solving problems and enjoy your music.
Yes, I do make a living solving problems and that does pay for my music, Ukulele Al (seriously that’s his name). But I have to go around tuning people’s guitars? Why? Because tuning their guitars is somehow related to the music industry? No thank you.
How about this? I’ll work a decently stimulating day job. I’ll stop pretending I hate it and admit that I get to work with interesting people and solve creative problems and they pay me to do that. Then, I’ll have the freedom to record songs the way they should be recorded. I won’t have to write songs that “sound as if they could appear in a commercial” or that “sound like Blink 182 but in exactly 110 bpm”. I can create art for its own sake and not have to bullshit myself or suck d-ck for a living. But it’s a musician’s d-ck!
