What Musicians Need Now…
Last night I received an email from a favorite record label promoting their special holiday sale. This morning I visited the site and bought their Christmas sampler disc ($13 + $2 s&H). While I could have got the same disc a couple bucks cheaper from Amazon, or even a few bucks cheaper still from a well rated reseller, that misses the point. My intention is to support the artists and labels that are important to me and allow them more funds to keep up the artistic efforts. As it turns out, 25% of the profits from this sample album go toward Children’s Music Education.
My point is that despite my seemingly unquenchable thirst for new music and support for music artists, more often than not, musicians do not take the extra effort to keep tabs on me. Despite having been to over 100 concerts in my life, how many bands passed out simple cards that captured my name and email? How many of their websites asked me to sign-up for their mailing list in order to receive special incentives like pre-sale tickets or unreleased music or limited edition CDs? How many send me an email when they are touring to let me know when they are coming to my town so I can buy some tickets and trinkets? Maybe five - no more than 10.
In these gold rush times of social media and web 2.0 and nearly total reorganization of music labels and music distribution, one thing remains: Music needs people. One guy strumming a guitar in his basement is nowhere near as rewarding as the same guy playing with 10 people singing along with him. I’m working with a friend and his band now, and they had all but abandoned their own website to focus solely on their MySpace page. Yet, when I asked about how many people could they email for their upcoming show in Poughkeepsie next week, the answer back was ZERO. MySpace doesn’t allow for capturing email addresses! At least not without some special add-ons. So, you need to rely on the idea that your friends/fans/family will visit your MySpace page frequently in order to find out about your new concert? Seems like a remote possibility at best and wasted time at the least.
And while most people probably don’t try to keep tabs on dozens (dare I say hundreds?) of bands like I might, the reality is that our information age hasn’t made keeping up with ANY band all that easy. Do you bookmark their website and revisit frequently? Do they have an RSS feed that allows you to keep up through your reader? Are you on any kind of email list that sends out consistent updates and info that are more than just record labels pushing their other artists? Are they friends on FaceBook/MySpace/Twitter/Whatever? Do I need to visit a myriad of music purchasing portals (iTunes, E-Music, Amazon, CDBaby, etc.) to see if they have any new music out or will they tell me about it using one of their other channels? Or maybe I need to be participating in some fan forums to stay in-tune? Why does it have to be so hard to be a music fan?
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there is already a website/web-service out there that will do the automated work of checking these things out for me? If so, please tell me, so I can spend my time doing something more important, like enjoying the music.
-pjc