From Stage Fright To The Net: She sits impatiently, staring at her computer screen, looking at the latest comments on her YouTube.com page. Her fan base develops not through record sales and concert attendance, but through fans listening to her on her MySpace.com music page and watching her oftentimes comical yet always entertaining videos on YouTube.
“In order for Tecle to conquer her fear of the stage, she decided to bring her talent to the masses through the power of the Internet”.
Have artists turned into mediocre marketers?
Read the full story here.
When you’re doing everything on your own without the help of a label or anything, you HAVE to market yourself, you’ll have to use the same avenues that everyone else has available, too.
This mediocre marketing is better than the efforts of most major labels!
This is silly. Fans buy records and attend concerts. Watching free YouTube clips takes no investment, and you thus have no actual fan base.
Andy Partridge didn’t need YouTube, and his stage fright goes beyond legend. XTC managed to sell millions of records despite not playing live since…what…1980 or so?
yep, deader than dead. Couldn’t even watch it.
I find it genuinely amusing how people on this blog act like new media is dead, when in reality it’s working a hell of a lot better than the traditional methods of building an audience are.
In the end, all that matters is that good artists have good audiences — not what medium they used to attract that audience.
better than the traditional methods of building an audience….
you mean like having good songs,realy know how to play,know how to put on a real show,and realy believe in what your doing ?
What’s happened with new media is that the bar for what constitutes a “fan” has dropped. There were always radio listeners who enjoyed your songs but never bought a record or ticket. A decade ago the average consumer was buying what? 5 or 6 cds a year? Maybe less. So you weren’t calculated into that many fanbases.
So all these folks who are myspace friends or youtube views are just these casual listeners who were never calculated. If I had to guess, I would say 20% of “new media fans” are genuine “old media fans” (i.e. ones that help you pay pay your bills), if even that many (though I’m sure this varies from genre to genre).
The other thing with new media marketing is that you can create an enjoyable experience that has little if anything to do with the music. For instance, the public says OK Go’s videos were better than the songs. And the public says it’s more fun to interact with PlayRadioPlay on myspace than it is to listen to his cd. And the public says they’d much rather see Tila Tequila’s ass than listen to her sing (she’s had over 160 million hits on her MUSIC MYSPACE and her album flopped). And while this can dilute the product (which is to say the songs themselves… and it often does), it might also come back to the fact that if you get your songs in front of everyone you possibly can, you’re going to sell the most amount that you possibly could. You don’t want to be known as the “youtube video band,” but it did sell SOME cds. If the song were a bonafide hit, perhaps the same video would have propelled them to superstardom.
There’s nothing wrong with new media, everyone’s just got to come to terms with the misleading numbers.
they say that the video “killed the radio star” is it possible that the “internet killed the rock star ??
so is it possible that the future of “rock stars” are the Jonas Bros and the likes and that a big audience of 10&12 year olds will be the buying public and all because of marketing and getting people so young that they “just don’t know the difference ?
The Hollywood Records band are more or less an industry unto themselves. It’s like Christian music, basically… they both have fans that are tight-knit, trend-obsessed, & parent-funded with very low artistic expectations and they both have their own exclusive network for marketing. It just so happens that Walt’s reach is a bit further than Jesus’. The mainstream music industry is simply reacting to what’s been done by Disney… the Jonas Brothers are an anomaly. There’s nothing to suggest that they will outlive Hillary Duff.
Dr Dog & Delta Spirit sold out the Earl in Atlanta last night &, even if just a few hundred people were there, every single person had a fantastic time. This is the future of music as much as anything, bands writing great songs, putting on great performances, selling out venues based on word of mouth, & just having an all-around good time completely outside of the little box that radio tries to shove music & musicians into. When they no longer have to compete with the propped up major label bullshit that no one believes in, these bands will begin to flourish.
“The other thing with new media marketing is that you can create an enjoyable experience that has little if anything to do with the music”
This is absolutely true. Once again, new media isn’t the problem, it’s an artist problem. Pro-tools isn’t the problem, its the producer/engineer behind pro-tools that decides to copy and paste verses and choruses that is the problem. Pro Tools is wonderful and convenient if used properly.
Some of these bands who think they can text or myspace themselves to fame is a problem.
the internet didn’t kill the rock star, it just made artists lazy. It made them lose the true connection of creativity. How can you write a passionate song with today’s distractions?
I like the fact that Coldplay’s Chris Martin gets strung out on sleeping pills and wakes up at 3:00am when a chorus pops in his head. He is a real artist and writes real songs.
The jonas brothers aren’t rock stars, they are a teen sensation. This happens every couple of years.
An approach to the Media. Use the media as a canvas of your art, not just a gimmicky promotion tool like ‘friend requests’