Listeners have unlimited options. They have probably 25 albums they could recite word for word and another 10 they put on for a good cry or workout.
Expanding on your “NEW SONG, CHECK OUT IT” messaging is the very least you can do.
YOYAKU INSTORE SESSION WITH KARLA BÖHM
Sometimes, the algorithms get it right. The computer overlords can feed me vibes like this any day.
FLAMES
Had a nice morning walk in the 50s today, but I didn’t realize it was the 1950s.
BETTER AMATEURS
I’ve heard the song a million times, but hearing guitarist Joe Gore talk about it just gives it so much depth. Like, I can’t even imagine standing in the same room with Tom Waits, let alone making music with the man, and hearing Joe talk like that – even with all his knowledge and skill – it’s just so heavy.
Love the concept of turning the artists into amateurs… using “inferior” equipment, no time to really come up with parts, everything in two takes, and Tom needs to be done by 5 so he can be home with his kids. Man. This is a great interview.
WORKING MEN’S CLUB, VIELS, OM UNIT & JAMES BANGURA
Three artists I found via Bandcamp’s ‘Selling Right Now’ scroller. Please enjoy.
DIG MORE
We talk a lot about not letting algorithms and AI take creative jobs – yet somehow we let robots curate “best of” lists and become tastemakers of music and media and art.
We subscribe to cool / smart / interesting people, right?
Then go to their Substack profile and dig through their subscriptions.
Dig around and find some blogs, click on the links in their posts – discover something new, fresh, and interesting from an actual human instead of a computer.
LOSE THE MAP
As Seth Godin says in his book Linchpin:
“The reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.”
If you want a guarantee, buy a hammer.
Stop looking for tricks. There is no shortcut. There’s no “one size fits all.”
Make a painting, a photograph, a sad song, teach a course, call an old friend, dance like no one’s watching, cuz no one cares more than you do, so you might as well get to it.
PROCREATE IS MULLET MARKETING
More mullet marketing, this time from Procreate.
Business up front (static website, text, one image, tiny button), party in the back (posting a compelling video on Twitter).
https://socialmediaescapeclub.substack.com/p/make-sure-youre-not-mullet-marketing
I still have a Twitter account on my desktop so I can watch videos like this, and that’s a good thing because, of course, it’s not on their website.
So if I want to share this video with a friend, I have to send them a link to Twitter, instead of Procreate’s actual website.
Rather than driving traffic to their own website – a place where they control the branding, the story, the message – they settle for this:
“But Seth, if someone wants to know more they can just click the link!”
That post on Twitter has basically 3 MILLION VIEWS, and if they’re lucky 1% clicked that link, which is 30,000 people.
On the internet you get ONE SHOT to pull someone. Making them click a link to somewhere else might sound like it’s not a big deal, but you can’t be clicking links all day either – there’s just not enough hours in the day.
I’d like if I could just send the link to the Procreate page, so a friend could check out that video, or at least skim the text to see their stance on AI.
I bet Procreate would like to have 3 MILLION PAGE VIEWS, too.
But Procreate will fine. They have lot of smart people working on this stuff, I get it.
So, let this be a lesson for you as a smaller business or artist—your video probably isn’t getting 3 million views, which means you won’t get 30,000 clicks to your website either.
I’m not saying don’t post it on Twitter, but put the video on your website, too!
P.S. my god, the video isn’t even on the Procreate YouTube channel (they haven’t uploaded a video in almost a year), which is only the second largest social network on the planet.
Find more statistics at Statista
SELF PROMOTION IS MASTURBATION
Self promotion* is masturbation.
Now, self destruction?
Yes, that’s a *slight tweak to the original dialogue, but in the spirit of my anti-social media mission (and the founder of the Social Media Escape Club) I’ll allow it.
As I said earlier this year:
At this point, it’s not even self-promotion – it’s tap dancing, juggling, or card tricks in Times Square, along with 900 million other creative people doing the same.
APPLE EATS ITSELF
Jon Gruber, on the recent news that Apple is demanding a 30% cut of fan payments in the Patreon app (read about it here):
“How do you put a price on the number of Patreon iOS users — who are all, by definition, Apple customers — whose view of Apple will shift from “Apple is a company that supports small indie creators and artists” to “Apple is a company that uses its position of power to extract exorbitant rent from small indie creators and artists” because of this change?
I’ve been a Mac user since 2003, so that’s 20 years. I had an iBook laptop, and marveled that I could take it to a Borders book store and surf the web.
I had a U2 iPod, and bought songs via iTunes.
If I remember correctly, I stood in line for a 3G iPhone at the Apple Store on 5th Ave.
I bought several more Apple laptops – at least five or six, and now own a M3 MacBook Pro which I love.
Apple’s “services” category (stuff like Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Care) reached $24.2 billion last quarter. Not year, but it took just three months for Apple to make just over $24,000,000,000 on digital goods.
And now, well, they need more. Like I said, growth is cancer. There must always be more money to squeeze, and now they’re going after the somewhat beloved Patreon.
This only applies to new subscriptions in the iOS app, so at least for now, direct your fans to sign up on the web.
As Derek Sivers wrote in ‘Use the Internet, Not Companies,’
“It’s so important and easy to have your own website. Instead of sending your fans to some company’s site, send them to yours. Get everyone’s direct contact information, so you don’t have to go through any one company to reach them.”
It was true seven years ago, it’s even more true today.