Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Embrace The Horror

If I talk to or read about one more musician bitching about how the internet has made their job so much harder I am going to fucking scream. What is the primary job of a band or musical artist? I am pretty sure it is to make music. The internet and social media have nothing to do with it unless you can't get your bass player to the studio because he is addicted to internet porn. Once you have some music recorded you can do several things. Maybe you don't give a damn if anyone ever hears your work. I am completely fine with that (and those people usually are doing us all a huge favor) but most bands that endure songwriting and recording do it for others to hear. The internet has actually made your next job easier. What is that you ask? I think it is to deliver it to as many people as possible for them to hear.

The complaints I usually get are in regards to the amount of time it takes dealing with social media. Well boo-fucking-hoo. What a horrible world we live in where you can create music and have limitless boundaries and avenues of distribution. What a horrible world we live in where you can communicate with your fans daily and make your band a part of their daily life. What a horrible world we live in where your fans can turn others on to your band. What a horrible world we live in where if you create something special and work your ass off, you at least have the chance that someone you will never ever meet in the flesh might get turned on by what you do. Hard work and creativity might in some cases create luck and opportunity. Feel lucky if anyone is paying attention to you at all. The days when all musicians did was make music, play shows and talk about themselves in interviews are long over so get fucking over it and get to work.

5 comments:

  1. Wow... spot on man. I knew there was a reason i liked you HA. I had a rendering i did as an RnD project a few years back get posted on the website of the programmer who created the plugin i had used, and the image received LOTS of great comments... made me feel that much more proud of what i had created. If it weren't for technology, the image would have never been seen by anyone other than myself and my boss at the time. This same concept hold true for ANY creative endeavor.

    Keep up the good work!

    Dean

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  2. You know Jeff...you did this justice! Any entrepreneur knows it takes work, hard work, to make it to the top. For indie artist that talk about "DIY" some seem to really mean "SEDI" (somebody else do it). No one is going to promote you best except yourself. If you don't care enough to post, reply, network, then don't expect any results! (m-squared)

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  3. Thanks everyone. Will post more soon.

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  4. I love this blog and have read every post, but I do have to admit that I'm one of these bands that complains about the internet. It's not that I'm not willing to do the work to promote myself, but I wish labels still took a chance on industrial bands like GK, KMFDM, Stabbing Westward, NIN, etc. The labels don't take any chances anymore because of the internet. It's easy for someone who's already aquired thousands of fans from the "good ol days" to talk about how easy it is to reach fans online (Trent Reznor does this all the time as well) but it's a bit different from my side of things. I certainly do try to promote myself online (sellingtheashes.com), but I'd take an awful TVT contract from the 90's anyday over internet self-promotion! That said, I really do respect your blog Jeff.

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