I love the idea of having a blog that you update on occasion, more often than social media.
Those platforms made is so that every time you post something, something happens – usually a like. Then a comment.
When you post on your blog, the reaction isn’t quite so quick. Or sending a newsletter. The feedback loop is longer, and the social media platform makers knew this.
Make their product light up when you post something. Make it as simple as possible to post a video, go live, five photos. Try doing that with most apps for modern blogging platforms or website builders.
“These acts of sharing feel at least as substantial as the sharing I do online, reminding me that there is a wide, weird, and (often) wonderful world beyond the screen.”
There are sooooo many people who aren’t online!
“If a marketer is smart about finding, courting and delighting the group most likely to spread the idea, it’s time well spent,” Seth Godin
Now replace “marketer” with musician, artist, poet…
Who is the group most likely to spread your idea? Your music? Your art?
Maybe you’ve got just 10 people on your email list. Start there.
Selling one album on Bandcamp (or at a show) will put actual money in your pocket, and usually an email address for your newsletter list.
“It’s not on Spotify and it never will be. The corporate music industry and the tech oligarchy have nothing to offer me or my music.”
In school I could find the rockers because they had mullets, Bon Jovi and Motley Crue shirts. We obviously couldn’t carry around our guitars, but there were signals.
Growing up, I didn’t sit in the hallways and randomly yell things as everyone walked past.
“BMX! Dungons and Dragons! Guns N’ Roses!”
That’d just get me some weird looks, right?
Instead, I did what all of us shy nerds did – I carried around my BMX Plus magazines. Finally found an Anthrax shirt. Got some Airwalks from the JCPenny catalog.
Each of those things were a signal.
Once we found our tribe, we didn’t stay hanging out in the hallways at school, or the food court at the mall. We spent our evenings in our friend’s bedrooms and basements, learning Misfits’s covers and such.
This whole “hopping to different platforms to find out people” is a new thing that came about in the last decade, and it looks like it’s burning to the ground.
Start talking to the few people around you, getting a little deeper. Send a few emails. Plan a Zoom call. Meet in real life.
I’ve been taking photos since high school, from film to digital and back again. Nearing 50, I picked up a Nikon ZFC just to get back in the groove of manual mode, and it’s led to some fun opportunities like this; a fun little time to volunteer my enthusiasm and skills so the local library would have some images to use online.
Saying yes to more opportunities to this, even if they’re out of my element.
A rich person wants many things. A sick person wants one thing. And wow, that’s been me this week – a sick person. It was too bad, but it was enough to wreck my normal routine, especially running. I had just done back to back 30 mile weeks, but I know fitness doesn’t disappear in a few days, especially since I’m not training for the Olympics or anything like that.
If you’re an artist, and you’re shoveling everything onto social media, you’re missing the fuck out.
Every smart phone ships with a web browser.
Not everyone has a Facebook account anymore in 2025.
No one in the U.S. can install TikTok right now.
People are ditching Instagram and Twitter because of reasons.
You might not realize this, but some people fucking love music.
Like, that get band names and lyrics tattooed on their bodies. They wear nothing but band shirts. They dig through bins at record shops. They go to shows on Tuesday night.
The people who just load up automated playlists? Those aren’t your people.
Give people who discover you the ability to fall in fucking love with what you do.
If people find your music on YouTube, or Spotify, or Bandcamp, they can click on a URL and be on your website.
But if you website is just everything you already have on YouTube, and Spotify (a bunch of embeds), and a link to Bandsintown, well, what’s the point?
Wow, news and offers, huh? Sounds thrilling.
People still buy vinyl and CDs and cassettes. Yeah, a lot of people stream music these days, too, but fuck them.
Let people fall in love with you.
Give me a fucking bio. Where are you even from? What other bands were you in?
Stop posting every god damn bit of promo, behind the scenes, and assorted other photos on social media platforms and put that shit on your website.
Let people fall into your world and get lost in how damn cool you are.
Uploading all your cool vibes and good taste to fucking Facebook? In 2025? For 96% of your “followers” to never see?
In this economy?
Save your 5,000 word essays about how Chappell Roan is wrong and buy a fucking album or a hoodie from a band you like.
