Category: Internet

YOU NEED A PLAN

@Gen_Erik on Twitter

Love love love this quote:

“What you need is a strategy to grow your fanbase. And as you’re growing your fanbase, you keep making music and improving your craft.”

If you write shit songs and get on stage and notice that no one is interested in what you’re playing, you’re going to make adjustments.

You work on your craft, develop your skills, and learn how to put on a show. This can take years, but that’s how it’s done.

This goes for writers, photographers, artists, whatever!

Goals are great, but what’s the plan?

MEG WHITE RULES

Imagine waking up and posting garbage like this:

The audacity to post “Meg White was terrible” to the entire world is beyond comprehension.

Meg White won four Grammy Awards
She’s in Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Drummers of All Time’ list
She’s a 3x Platinum selling artist.

You know what most normal people do when they don’t like something? They don’t think about it.

There are 1000s of bands and albums and song I don’t care for. Think I’m going to spend energy and time and effort and mental bandwidth letting the world know?

Nah.

This, though? This new album from Carmen Jaci is amazing, and I just pre-ordered it today (it’s out March 30th, 2023).

THE RICH RUIN EVERYTHING

The corporations bought up the blog thing and fucked it up (I was there when AOL was filling up the search engines, churning out websites, buying HuffPost, Seed).

The corporations bought up podcasts, and things ain’t working out, so now we’re gonna hear how “Podcasts lose their edge.”

No. Cheap podcasts that are profitable and also reach 1,000,000 per episode, and make lots of money for dude bros in suits are dead. RIP.

Now Spotify has a new AI DJ. Fuck off.

We had a thriving internet community with message boards, and email lists, and music blogs and websites, but then we relented. We all fell for the shiny objects called Facebook and Twitter and streaming music.

“That’s where everyone is,” is the biggest lie the devil ever told.

Not everyone is on Twitter.
Not everyone streams.

If you’re looking for the Superbowl Audience, sure, you better play your cards right and make the music that millions wanna hear.

But there are still record stores. Go shop at ’em.
Local music stores exist. Go buy some strings.
Bandcamp exists. Go buy a digital album, or a shirt.

Yes, the biggest players make the biggest noise, but the dam is breaking.

Layoffs, mismanagement. The consolidation of power isn’t natural.

Start your website, your email list, own your music, and talk to people and build your communities.

IF I’M MISSING I’M WORKING

“If I’m missing I’m working,” as said by the mighty Chuck D.

Social media ain’t working, so in effect, you’re missing.

When I see big media outlets reaching just 3% of their audience, with full-fledged social media and marketing teams on staff? HAH.

As far as the 97% of your followers who haven’t seen that post?

You’re missing.

I know that’s not what Chuck D is talking about here, but he’s been off Twitter. Long enough for someone to say “you went missing.”

Nah.

He’s working.

Get working on things that work.

ACCEPT THE LOVE

Been thinking a lot about Patreon (wrote about it a bit in my latest HEAVY METAL EMAIL), and having been blessed with another paid subscriber this week, this bit from another writer caught my eye:

I have a small group of amazing people who pay for my writings, despite not getting anything extra in return, just to support me. And if you are one of those people: thank you so, so much.

I think Patreon has cursed us with this idea that if we accept support on a monthly basis there must be more. Something extra to shovel on top of the work we’re already doing.

I did this with my Skull Toaster Patreon back in the day. I had one extra for like $10/mo where I’d go to a music shop, buy a used metal CD, and send it to you. I think I called it Mystery Metal or something. It was insane, and a LOT of work, on top of all the other things I was doing, when in fact my main thing was posting 1-3 metal trivia questions PER DAY to social media, and sending out a 200+ word email every night with the answers.

That was a lot.

So I turned on payments with HEAVY METAL EMAIL. I was sending two emails a week anyways.

In those emails I had a section called ANTISOCIAL, which was links to horrible things that the social media platforms keep doing.

But I moved them out of those two emails, and packaged it into a Monday morning email called ANTISOCIAL. Paid subscribers get that.

Not a lot of extra work, and I’m still doing the core thing that I offer – write about how cool email newsletters are, and how social media is horrible (you can subscribe to HEAVY METAL EMAIL here).

Let people support you for what you’re already doing!

RAGE AGAINST THE CONTENT

Love this from ‘2022: The Year Music Broke‘ from Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi):

We are in a far worse situation than we were in 1991. Thurston’s part-jokey, part-deadly serious condemnation of the industry then – “When youth culture becomes monopolized by big business, what are the youth to do?” – feels like an understatement today. It’s no longer just about youth culture; it’s all cultural production that’s monopolized by big business. Thirty years of capital consolidation have created monopolies larger and more disconnected from “content” than we could have imagined even at our snottiest in the 90s.

I was in the thick of the 2001-2005 music blog frenzy. A good Pitchfork review helped sell thousands of albums, but by 2007 cracks were already starting to appear. Consolidation, the fight for Google search results, social media killing the comments sections, and the push by everyone to get a mention in a blog post drove the value down. CPMs plummeted, it was a race to the bottom and some people won, and lots more lost.

The biggies came in, sold their ads, and when it crashed to the ground, they moved on to other companies with shiny new job titles.

Scorch the earth, destroy the culture, and reap the rewards!

BLOGGING LIVES

Saw a link to ‘Bring back personal blogging‘ from Jason Kottke, and his quote struck me:

I mean, absolutely. But…this is also the 78th time I’ve read this exact article since 2007 and I’m beginning to think it’s not going to happen.

I mean, there’s nobody to bring it back, which I think is wonderful. But what’s “not going to happen?”

It’s not like all our friends had their own sites and blogs to begin with. Social media platforms just made it super easy to post photos and write text, and that was fine for a minute.

But then we followed 1284 friends and things got muddy real quick.

FLIP IT BACK TO FILM

Starting doing “morning pages” since I finally started reading The Artist’s Way. In a short time I’ve already got ideas, or rather the universe has dropped some ideas in my lap and I’m already implementing one of those ideas pretty hardcore. I am excited for this and many things to come.

I’ll say this – I bought a disposable film camera for the first time in a million years. Oh, boy.

The whole idea here is this – as many of us contemplate “where to next?” in the whole social media world, I’m hopeful we just back back to visiting a few websites each day. I’ve already started looking at Flickr again for photography. Seeing the photos I want to see from the photographers I follow, without algorithms.

So yeah.. working on another idea that involves things we used to do and talking on the phone (well, Zoom, because seeing our friends faces is wonderful).

The thing that excites me about this is that it’s starting (or working) on something where it is.

Instead of doing some of the work, then spending a few hours a day marketing that work on various social media channels, it’s just.. the work.

Do the work.

Don’t worry about getting the word out. Make a great thing. Make a compelling product. Build the marketing into what you’re already doing. Are people sharing it and talking about it? No? Why not? Figure that out.

And then spend less time on social media.

And a year from now, we’re just working on our thing.