Thursday, July 31, 2008

I Hate Blogs & Social Networks!

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OK, seriously it is a love / hate relationship I have with blogs and social networks. I too often feel like I am drowning in a sea of digital content and such a minuscule amount floats! The buoyancy I am in need of is the kind that speculates much, much less and deals with facts much, much more. It seems as if the majority of digital commentary (mine included, like right now even) is speculation...I speculate.

I really miss the days when you would cut and paste together a flyer and head off to the copy shop to make a few hundred to pass out...Then go set up gear and wait for the crowd to arrive and play them a song. As easy as the Internet is supposed to have made it for the musician, I would contend that the only peoples who have been gifted by this pre-supposed ease are the consumers. I will whole-heatedly agree that the Internet has made it much, much easier for the fan / consumer to get exactly what they desire in the least amount of time with the least amount of trouble.

As for the musician...well, I would contend that the Internet & technology have created a deluge of arm-chair music critics turned musician. The saturation is unheard of, unprecedented! The battle against obscurity is the deadliest it has ever been for music careers everywhere...including for major recording labels. The only hope a musician has lies with his contacts data base.

Now more than ever it comes down to "who you know". If you make good music that is all good and well but if you do not have the contacts to couple with your creations you might as well play your songs for your siblings and call it a career. You absolutely, positively have to make contact with people already embedded in the professional music environment if you want any hope of profitable progress. (And YES, profit is 99% of the reason any of us bother with establishing a Mysapce, iMeem, etc. page...no matter how you try to defend your artistic integrity)

So what will I do? I guess I will stick with what I have going on right now and be thankful for the contacts that I do have (and I do have some). I will try to make a higher quality of music so that I can actually utilize these valuable contacts I have. For me the most frustrating part is that I have at least three viable outlets for profiting from my music and I have yet to produce something any of them want bad enough. This is why I say I must step up the quality of what I am doing and spend less fucking time wandering around the net listening to arm-chair-critics dissect a hopelessly saturated music environment.

Bitchity, bitch, bitch, bitch.

1 comment:

Justin said...

im glad im not the only one that feels this way.