SOUND ON SOUND

[The Red Bladder]

Many professional musicians I know use Facebook and Twitter, I'm convinced it is pointless as promotion, although many advisers say social media is essential.

They're right and you are wrong.

A musical act still has to use all the other means of promotion, but you MUST maintain 'emotional proximity' with your audience and they all communicate via SM. By not using SM, you are failing to talk to your audience.

I don't much like SM either, but then there are many things I don't like and TBH nobody gives a F what I like or dislike. Nobody asks me and nobody cares what I like or dislike.

"So you don't like SM? OK, then shut the F up!"

I am certain it does not help their careers at all. Does anyone disagree?

Yes - me.

BTW - you're using a type of SM right now!

[CS70]

Nobody asks me and nobody cares what I like or dislike.

There's always your mum! :bouncy:

But totally agree, it's a tool and that's it.

[blinddrew]

There's always your mum! :bouncy:

My mum's quite clear on what she thinks about my music! :D

[blinddrew]

On a more serious note...

A musical act still has to use all the other means of promotion, but you MUST maintain 'emotional proximity' with your audience and they all communicate via SM. By not using SM, you are failing to talk to your audience.

I'd put a slight caveat on this, you need to go where your audience is. If your audience is on social media - that's where you need to be. If they're not (increasingly unusual but probably still some cases) then you can avoid it.
Depending on how niche your product is can change your social media platforms though. There's a lady (whose name I have irritatingly forgotten) who writes and performs songs about sailing. That's her thing. She does most of her promotion on sailing forums rather than facebook and the like, because it's a targeted audience.
If someone were to decide that the missing puzzle in the pop market was songs about audio engineering, I'm sure this is one of the places that they'd be inhabiting. :)

[desmond]

Like any tool, you can use it wisely, skilfully and productively, if you know what you are doing and are smart about it.

Just as equally, you can blunder around blindly, without knowing what you're doing, and at best waste time, and at worst, do some serious damage!

The 80:20 rule still applies here. :headbang:

[MOF]

Simon Cowell also once alluded to the point and he said "If you walk down the aisles of the supermarket you'll see stacks of different washing powder, all claiming to be the best, but what is in the boxes is essentially the same but we(SiCo LTD) make our boxes look more appealing because we keep telling people we're the best, so I suppose we're the best at telling people we're the best"

There is a difference though, music is better to some people than others (personal choice) but you have to get them to hear your music in order for them to make that choice. If they don't know about it they'll never hear it. Also there are only a handful of washing powder brands but loads of music out there.

[paul tha other]

there is a growing opinion that musicians are spammers on social media...
i used to have facebook and the rest and i used to think it was working for me...after about 10 years of having a social media ,ive came to this conculsion...

does it make gigs busier????......nope,tbh i think people are getting sick of seeing this kinda of advertising on it
do i sell more music because of it?????? not really...if i am its such small numbers its not worth the bother of dealing with sm (spending hours adding content etc)

in fact, i'll give you an example..a few years ago i was sitting in alone whilst the wife was out and i wrote and recorded a song ..i posted it up on facebook ..it got like 6 likes and maybe 1 or 2 comments...,if that!!!..
that same weekend i was out with my kids and took a photo of me and my kids hanging upside down on a climbing frame...i got over a 100 likes and prob more comments than i can count..for me it kinda tells me what people use social media for...music advertising is deff not it


i think facebook is a game and its designed in a way that keeps you busy doing nothing..they will throw you the numbers so you keep poking it...meanwhile you couldve wrote a new song with the time wasted on it

im not saying everyones experience has been the same but i do think all these platforms have had their day in the sun ,i am talking about facebook here mostly though

[desmond]

The bottom line is that probably most musicians, and others in the creative arts, are terrible at marketing themselves, or their work.

There are some that are good at it though, and those types will figure out how to make their available tools work for them.

Putting the occasional gig notice up on your Facebook page is likely to generate very little real value, as most have already pointed out.

Having an official "commercial" social media outlet or two, that you work to direct people towards, provide additional content and engagement opportunities to encourage and reward people going there, with specific goals and aims in mind (rather than just randomly posting stuff because you feel you should), can result in more successful outcomes.

But like I say, most people don't know how to work them, or are uncomfortable doing the amount of marketing that a "marketing professional"** would want to do.

** Not that I agree on many things around the "marketing professional" area...

A sensible approach is looking at what the opportunities are, what the costs are, and what you want to get out of it- if you can make that equation work for you, great. if you can't - don't bother with it - you're probably better directing your energies elsewhere...

[Watchmaker]

part of whether social media is relevant, is whether you give a rats fart for recognition or some vague definition of success.

I put myself through hell hanging out with other musicians and clawing each others eyes out for some shit gig at a festival, or putting up with the last four assholes that just got signed. I learned that popularity ( "success! success! success!") has f*ck all to do with music, art, emotional connection or anything actually meaningful in life.

It (popularity) has to do with personal ambition, and if you are ambitious enough, then the tawdry return on investment "social media" brings can be delegated to some intern somewhere in the food chain and then who really cares? Marketing is a voodoo science that takes far more money than anything else. Sorry, but Instagram, facebook, twitter, etc. are all just megaphones for the ego. Not that I think that's a bad thing, but it is lower on the evolutionary scale than the alternative choice, which is to do what you love, regardless.

[The Red Bladder]

The reality is, nearly everything I see and hear, whether that is in our studio, online or in a club or pub that is not popular and successful is failing for one reason and one reason only -

It just is not good enough!

It starts with appearance - what are you wearing? Is what you are wearing suitable and does it display showmanship? Do you look at your audience and do you engage with them, or do you stare one another? Do your lighting and stage design match the music?

Then (after we have looked at you and how you perform) there are the musicians -

Are all musicians tight and on the beat? Is the drummer absolutely metronomically perfect? Is the rhythm section perfectly together? Do they look good? Nobody wants to see ugly or scruffy people!

Not yet last and by no means least, there's the music itself -

Do you have at least five melodies in every song? Are the bridges in the right key? Does the middle-eight rip one out of one's seat? Are all the harmonies and the counterpoints right and satisfying to listen to? And above all, are there some really good hooks in every song?

Last of all - is the sound good, or is it all too loud, distorted or out of balance?
________________________

Og course, if you are not a performing musician, none of the above will apply - in which case, carry on performing in your bedroom and perhaps your teddy bear will give you a standing ovation!

[MOF]

if you are not a performing musician, none of the above will apply - in which case, carry on performing in your bedroom and perhaps your teddy bear will give you a standing ovation!

I would say you’re more likely to have success from recording in your bedroom studio then promoting your songs via social media these days than endless gigging, if you’re able to get gigs in the first place, they require someone to do the promotion in the first place.

[CS70]

The reality is, nearly everything I see and hear, whether that is in our studio, online or in a club or pub that is not popular and successful is failing for one reason and one reason only -

It just is not good enough!

You’re being overly optimistic! You.ve gotta be appealing, not good. Anybody who’s been in high school knows the difference.

Do you have at least five melodies in every song? Are the bridges in the right key? Does the middle-eight rip one out of one's seat? Are all the harmonies and the counterpoints right and satisfying to listen to? And above all, are there some really good hooks in every song?

There’s a gazillion songs which do not have any of that and have been very successful commercially.

Popularity and success, in music like any other field of life, are complex processes for which there are many paths and no recipes. There’s a few common qualities who help (grit, determination or amazing looks or amazing work quality or likeability or ability to network and dozens more) but you certainly don’t even need all of them. Finally, randomness reigns supreme and affect you and anybody else way more than we like to think (starting with the most basic requirement of all.. your existence).

Social media is an helper because it gives you a little bit more steering on your image, and having a great quality product is an helper because it will increse your attractiveness to people who care about quality, but there’s many roads to success (and many more dead ends).

Here in Norway one of the most popular products ever is a kind of frozen pizza which, from the point of view of food quality is absolutely sh**te, and universally recognised as such. And yet it has other qualities (price, ease of preparation, social acceptance) which make it the national dish (probably in a tie with street kebab) and the hard truth is that the buyers - youngsters and family moms in desperate need of a quick dinner fix for Saturdays, mainly - don’t know and don’t care less about good food.

Guess what, these are in great part the same peole who buys (stream) music..



If there

[The Red Bladder]

Do you have at least five melodies in every song? Are the bridges in the right key? Does the middle-eight rip one out of one's seat? Are all the harmonies and the counterpoints right and satisfying to listen to? And above all, are there some really good hooks in every song?

There’s a gazillion songs which do not have any of that and have been very successful commercially.

Name one!

Here in Norway one of the most popular products ever is a kind of frozen pizza which, from the point of view of food quality is absolutely sh**te, and universally recognised as such. And yet it has other qualities (price, ease of preparation, social acceptance) which make it the national dish (probably in a tie with street kebab) and the hard truth is that the buyers - youngsters and family moms in desperate need of a quick dinner fix for Saturdays, mainly - don’t know and don’t care less about good food.

If they keep that up, they'll end up looking English - or worse still, American!

[Watchmaker]

Haha. There's an ego* based fallacy that tells us, hard work and our own inherent greatness leads inexorably to success, and if someone else is not successful, well it's cause they just ain't got the dedication to amazingness required and they get what they deserve.

I would offer that the literally tens of millions of people with vast amounts of innate talent who currently reside in refugee camps have no hope of success due to factors beyond their control - factors sadly, largely within OUR control, but that's a different kettle of fish. So the factors cited about what leads people to success is deceptive. Bob Dylan can't sing. Celine Dion has an amazing band but can't write. Snorah Jones is great in the studio but boooooring on stage. I know plenty of musicians who blow all of them away and can't get a gig on Saturday night because they can't be arsed to put on face paint and prance around a stage.

* I mean ego in the Jungian sense in that ego is a structural element of the human conscious mind, neither good not bad inherently, but as a mediator of personi which imbues itself with a sense of purpose. It arises as a matter of evolutionary biology and can be well formed or deformed genetically or experientially. Egos being fragile, they are often butt hurt.

[TNGator]

Oh boy..what a cool topic and Im so glad this was raised. Im a stuck at home musician/writer. we dont have a great gig scene in Dublin and besides...country is a non runner here. So my only option is to try pitch songs to publisher sin Nashville. Or....use what a lot of artists are calling the DIY model. these are bands that have decided they dont need a lable and are going it alone by using all the platforms. FB, Instagram, Titter etc. But they at least have bands and actual gigs so they have interesting pics of them playing to upload. I cant keep uploading a pic of me sitting here at home with my guitar. So the original question of is this a waste of time...for me it seems to be.
And Im not very good at social media anyway. Im on FB but honestly wouldnt be posting stuff daily. And apparantly this what you need to do...be constantly posting stuff.
Have you seent he number of emails you get from orgs trying to sell you courses on hot to use social media to increase your fans, sell more merch? There's Rick Barker who was T Swifts manager. So he's goign to cost an arm and a leg. Theres a girl who runs the Savvy Musician. Shes a stay at home mom who claims to be earning a 6 figure income from selling ehr music online and has never played a gig. She is charge about $800 for her course. And there are others such as Bree Noble, Dave Kusek, Bobby Owinski
Well i dont have any fans or merch and i dont have friends who are in bands. Im on the older side of things and lost touch with the "cool kids" about 150 years ago. For now, I'll keep working on getting the few songs i wrote recorded and uploaded. From there I might look into the social media thing a bit more. But right now I dont have a decent product on the shelves so no point in advertising the store or the big sale starting monday. Despite all the hype about social media I've seen on other sites and forums it's interesting for me to see the number of posts here that are very similar to my own thinking.
No one here so far is buying the "go team" bull. Great post and really glad this question was raised.

[Stickman0_3]

I'm on Facebook but I don't have any likes - that should not bother me, I'm too busy promoting my music.