Internet – Page 15 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

CALL SOMETHING GREAT

I’ve seen lots of discourse recently over the struggle for the press outlets to keep up with the unending wave of music releases each week.

For me I think it’s so many sites trying to cover so many genres.

And also trying to do interviews, reviews, and live gig coverage.

There is just too much, everyday, every week.

I’d love to see a site that just covers the metal shows happening in PA every month.
A newsletter that rounds up 10 great beat-maker videos.
A YouTube show like the old MTV Top 10 Video Countdown.

Be editors. Be tastemakers.

The internet is wide open again. Let’s fuck it up.

CHATGPT IS YOUR ONE PERSON WRITING ROOM

Throw it a prompt, get a result, and tweak it. Edit it. Ask it to reword a sentence, or a concept. Have it summarize the last two lines, reword the intro.

Since you’re leading the writer room, you now hack it together with tape and glue.

You’re not just copy and pasting the results into an email to your client, or a pitch to your boss – you’re using your years of experience and wisdom to pull out the best parts, get your mind moving, and hopefully get to a few “light bulb” moments during the whole process.

I’ve been writing online since 2001, and chatGPT is a great automated computerized writing partner, and I’ve used it for my newsletters, small bits of client work, and some emails here and there.

For me, my biggest obstacle in starting any written project is the EMPTY PAGE.

So even if you just use chatGPT to start a written project, it can be huge.

– Write five social media captions about my new music video
– Write how this new video “hit me in the face like a ton of bricks”
– List some keywords I can use on YouTube for my project
– What big technology thing happened in 2007 (see attached image)?

Now, for anything factual (like big technological things in 2007), make sure you fact check! It’s not perfect, BUT, it’s a starting point.

Just like when things get thrown out in a writer room, you’re not going to put everything on paper and publish it the next day.

So yeah… try it out, at least to just get past the “staring at a blank page” problem. Edit. Rework things. Have fun!

YOU NEED A PLAN

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?

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.

DOING STUFF

JAN 12: Posted another GOODNIGHT, METAL FRIEND mix.

JAN 14: Wrote ‘CASSETTES & EMAIL MARKETING WILL OUTLIVE EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM‘ which includes a tune I wrote.

JAN 16: Put up this subscriber-only ‘YOUTUBE POOPS, VIRAL AI VIDEOS, AND WHY YOU DON’T NEED A TIKTOK ACCOUNT,’ which is a new thing for me.

Oh, I’ve been doing the audio editing for this podcast:

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.