The delivery, the snark, the attitude – god, I love this so much.
I love that in a second, in just a few thumb-swipes on social media, you can come across a video so well done that you’re saying the lines to yourself while you’re making coffee.
“Logistics? You want me to write… logistics?”
“Oh, you still have prisons!”
Like, growing up with Star Wars, Ghost Busters, Air Plane – there’s just random movie quotes that we all know from our years of watching movies. Then of course Key & Peele (“I said bisssshhhhhh”), or “it is you!” Then Vine, and videos like this; the videos get shorter, but the quotes are just as strong.
The last album that came my way via a DSP algorithm was VOWWS‘ ‘Under The World,’ back in 2018. For real, two years since and Apple Music nor Spotify has really surfaced anything for me.
These days I just go to Bandcamp, pick a genre that I’m interested in at the moment, then look for album art that intrigues me. It’s how I found these amazing albums:
If you’ve been listening to music for years, and buy albums, you know shit that looks good most of the time sounds good. It’s how DJs source music from local shops – finding shit that looks cool is a great place to start. And now with Bandcamp, it’s even easier.
Compare with this Spotify playlist, one of the biggest for “Dark Ambient,” with almost 7,000 followers.
It may has well be a fucking Google Sheet. No artwork, no branding, no vibes.
Same with Apple Music. Sure, it’s got the cool Apple playlist branding, and while it has album art, you have to use binoculars to really tell what looks good.
Of course, this is all a ploy to get you to hit play. Just trust them, and don’t worry about that album art, I guess.
All that said, nothing is black and white. I still use Apple Music for streaming a playlist on my runs. I also stream NTS radio via Apple Music, and some DJ sets via the MixCloud app.
There are so many ways to listen and consume music. Bandcamp, though, is the closest we got right now to the local record shop, and the feeling of digging through the used CD bins (my favorite).
Above I just outlined how I dig, and maybe you have better luck than me with the big streaming services. So keep digging, friends. Support artists and musicians when you can and buy their music.
This post inspired by a lovely Tweet storm by Vince Edwards:
Watching the Marc Rebillet stream & I'm frustrated with metal artists' resistance to promoting themselves online. Will the genre fall behind due to bands just not wanting to work w/ youtube/twitch? Feels like the majority of metal is artists that can't be bothered to tweet.
He’s talking about this live-streams that Marc Rebillet did today, on his way to one million subscribers on YouTube.
It’s easy to be a band and figure, okay, we want to do a live stream, so we have to just do a live performance and set up lots of cameras, and…
Well, yes, you CAN do that, but that’s a huge undertaking!
You can also just open up a live stream and talk about horror movies, or sports, or whatever.
Like, now is the time to connect and interact. Bands are competing with the The Madalorian and freaking COVID-19, like… do something.
I always think about all the shows I’ve gone to over the past 30 (?!?!) years – it’s the people. The people you meet at the show, in between sets, after the show in the parking lot, all that… that’s a part of the live show experience.
You can re-create that from your fucking porch with a decent WIFI signal and an iPhone.
Do you have to become a Loop Daddy? Nope. Do you have play guitar and videos games at the same time?
Remember your links when posting engaging content!
Metal Bandcamp Gift Club, where we gift people we don’t know from their Bandcamp wishlist on their birthday.
Got a Patreon? Link to it. Got a piece of press? Paste a pull quote and link to your Bandcamp. New video? New song? Link. To. It.
Worried you’ll come off looking spammy? Hah! Social medial algorithms ain’t letting 70% of your fans see your content without “boosting” anyways!
People unfollow all the time. Sometimes even by accident. Oh well. Link to your stuff. Make sure your links are in your bio. Set up a website with links to everything. Start an email list.
“But what would I even put in my email list?” Start with the 1000 pieces of content you post everyday on socials. Pick the three “most engaging” items. Boom (and include a link to your Bandcamp).
If you do all these 100% right does that mean you’ll be a star?
NOPE. But don’t take yourself out of the game without even taking a shot (horrible sports analogy).
I’ve been in and around this online music jam since 2001, I’ve seen a LOT. I remember mp3 DOT com and Rdio and Napster and Best Buy end caps and street teams. Put your links where fans can click them. Start there.
I didn’t watch any football on Thanksgiving this year. Not a single play. This year, while prepping dinner with my roomie, I propped up my iPad and streamed over two hours of Marc Ribellet’s ‘Stanksgiving’ performance.
Live, unfiltered, spontaneous, dangerous, sexy – you name it.
Marc had all his year stolen a month or so ago, so he was working his way through some new sounds, new equipment. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t always “100% funk jams,” it was raw and real, and we loved it.
During the pandemic I came across HOR Berlin, which is a bunch of live streamed DJ sets from Berlin, in what looks like a tiled-bathroom, but it’s seriously been so good for my soul.
I mean, I kind of didn’t even know I liked techno, but I guess I do now! Dark wave is a thing too, I guess? There’s just so many fun jams, which partially inspired me to start my ‘Goodnight, Metal Friend‘ mix project.
For me part of the appeal of all these sorts of entertainment is just being a part of something live, as it’s happening. Without being able to go to live shows, or take a bus into NYC and walk around and be surprised, these live streams are just doing it for me at the moment.
It’s weird in a sense, though, as these aren’t really recorded works. Well, they are, as you see from the videos embedded above, but there’s just so many good mixes coming out all the time, and this doesn’t even factor in NTS streaming radio, or what’s on SoundCloud.
Perhaps it’s that each of these moments is hand-curated in the moment, by real humans. It’s a performance, but it’s also something that can happen in the background. Music as a utility, as a backdrop, a live person performing in real time, on my computer, adding a bit of humanity to an otherwise repetitive and boring life at the moment!
I don’t really know much about Ahsoka Tano, save for a few episodes the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series (which I just couldn’t get into). I don’t really know much about Bo-Katan Kryze either, but I sort of new she was a big deal.
The neat thing about The Mandalorian is the story telling and production and writing and everything just works so well together that these characters just feel important, all without knowing the full back story.
And, oh my goodness, did I really just write two posts about The Mandalorian?
Many think some people are special but usually those people just put a lot more time in it than others. This applies to sports, arts, almost everything. It’s worth doing something for a long time, even if the benefits are not always clear. Good surprising things come out of it. You also learn about yourself in the process.
I’ve never quite got “reaction videos,” but when I break it down, all the music writing I’ve done since 2001 were “reactions.” It’s the same idea, different format.
The generation before me had magazines. We had music blogs. Today its video.
I can’t really watch someone “reacting” to an album that I love, but did I search for “Mandalorian The Siege” after I watched the new episode for “reaction” articles? Oh, you bet I did.
For years I listened to albums and wrote reviews. I wrote my reaction. People read them. Now you can watch people react in real-time to hearing an album.
Same idea, different delivery. It’s okay if it’s not for me.
This from ‘The Death of the Artist,’ (via @SorayaRoberts)
Anyone can easily market their own music, books, or films online, drum up a thousand true fans, and enjoy a decent living. We see proof of this, time and again, in profiles of bold creators who got tired of waiting to be chosen, took to the web, and saw their work go viral.
The artists tell another tale. Yes, you can produce and post your work more easily, but so can everyone else.
From the early 2000s until now, there has been no shortage of music, which is why there is no shortcut to getting your stuff out there. Unfortunately everything is stacked against the artist – rent, time, space, COVID-19. For every Marc Rebillet, there’s probably 1,000 artists who got two plays on YouTube today.
This is not some moral failing of the artist with two plays. The entire system is broken, art is de-valued, and oh yeah, almost 250,000 Americans are dead from a runaway virus.
Using TikTok videos to promote your thing across social media can be tough given the format of the video. The Toktok video is great for sharing as an IG or FB story, but what about everywhere else?
For this clip, I took the raw TikTok video, and put it in the middle of a 1280×720 video (I use ScreenFlow), then took the client’s existing Instagram Story assets and put them on either side.
The result is a shareable video clip that shows off a cool make-up sequence, and reinforces the brand and the actual release we’re trying to promote.
