X-53mph Posted January 28, 2021 Author Share Posted January 28, 2021 (edited) 14 hours ago, Starise said: The big questions to answer here are probably much larger than a thread could support or allow IMHO. I could give you the condensed version. You've put up some pretty good acoustic guitar music. You've made some nice nature recordings. You've maybe been a musician at local places to where you live. What more could a man want? Make music for yourself , make music for others, make music for God ( if you are prone in that direction) and maybe not in that order. I think these are achievements worth noting. If you believe we were made and not evolved as I do, then we were made to make music as a part of what we do or maybe it's all some of us do. Ask yourself why. Just a thought. If you can answer the WHY, you have answered many other questions. Starise, sorry for my flippancy. I hope you didn't take offense. The truth is I appreciate what you said and can understand where you are coming from. But there comes a time in every middle-aged musician's life when they ask themselves....why can't I seem to capitalize on my successes? To give you some context. I've been making music/gigging/recording etc since I was a teen (over 30 years ago) and have had highs and lows throughout. In my late 20s I had a chance at the big time, but I bottled it and missed that boat. Back then I was briefly A-listed to radio stations having my music played on rotation, but I never managed to capitalize on any of that. I was even courted by XL records and The Verve's management Even now, I have had my music used by Joseph Gordon Levitt's HitRecord in numerous projects (Zappos, TV series etc..) but I never seem able to capitalize on any of it. Do you know how much money I made from radio and TV plays back then....something in the hundreds in total. Then I see people on Bandcamp with 1,000s of subscribers or making $10,000s on Spotify, and I ask myself.....how the ***** did they do that? And why can't I? What I post to the forum here is a very small part of my output - introverted passion projects. Hope this clarifies a bit where I'm coming from. Edited January 28, 2021 by 53mph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno de Souza Lino Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 On 1/28/2021 at 5:00 AM, 53mph said: On 1/27/2021 at 2:01 PM, Starise said: Starise, sorry for my flippancy. I hope you didn't take offense. The truth is I appreciate what you said and can understand where you are coming from. But there comes a time in every middle-aged musician's life when they ask themselves....why can't I seem to capitalize on my successes? Because monetary compensation should a be a consequence of your work being recognized and not the means. On 1/28/2021 at 5:00 AM, 53mph said: Then I see people on Bandcamp with 1,000s of subscribers or making $10,000s on Spotify, and I ask myself.....how the ***** did they do that? And why can't I? There's a lot of marketing, social media stuff and others that you don't see by just looking at the numbers of Spotify and Bandcamp. Getting your music to those places is easy and you have subscription services like DistroKid that do it for you. How you get people to listen to it is the hard part. The hardest part of any product is selling it. Also, let's not forget that many of these people either know how to market their stuff or pay someone to do it for them. It's not some magic voodoo. It's hard work. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X-53mph Posted January 31, 2021 Author Share Posted January 31, 2021 On 27/01/2021 at 12:32 AM, bayoubill said: @Bruno de Souza Lino I totally get it.... but I totally don't get it too. ? It's really easy to say 'it's all marketing', but really hard to understand how to do that. You sure it's not Voodoo? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigb Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 6 minutes ago, 53mph said: You sure it's not Voodoo? Hmm... Haven't tried Voodoo yet... ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X-53mph Posted January 31, 2021 Author Share Posted January 31, 2021 34 minutes ago, craigb said: Hmm... Haven't tried Voodoo yet... ? It's like 'the force' but with more pins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno de Souza Lino Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 3 hours ago, 53mph said: It's really easy to say 'it's all marketing', but really hard to understand how to do that. A good starter is taking a look at those things from an analytical perspective. What are these people doing that makes them popular that I'm not doing and how do they do it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X-53mph Posted February 1, 2021 Author Share Posted February 1, 2021 6 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said: A good starter is taking a look at those things from an analytical perspective. What are these people doing that makes them popular that I'm not doing and how do they do it? But that is totally what I don't get. I see similar music to mine getting onto playlists, getting heavy rotation, getting placements but I don't see any marketing strategy going on. It's like the Wizard of Oz. How do I get to look behind the curtain? And please don't tell me I have to follow the yellow brick road. ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno de Souza Lino Posted February 1, 2021 Share Posted February 1, 2021 7 hours ago, 53mph said: But that is totally what I don't get. I see similar music to mine getting onto playlists, getting heavy rotation, getting placements but I don't see any marketing strategy going on. It's like the Wizard of Oz. How do I get to look behind the curtain? And please don't tell me I have to follow the yellow brick road. ? You don't see any marketing strategy. Do these musicians have Instagram, Twitter, YouTube... What they post in those places... And so on. Putting your music on playlists and streaming services is the easy part, but that alone doesn't make your music discoverable, since there's so much more people doing it thanks to the low entry point we have nowadays. I'm gonna offer you one bit of information that might not sit well with you it other people but... The music is the least important thing in this case. We live in a world where people have short attention spans and rarely listen to a music from beginning to end without skipping it. That effectively means what makes these other people retain an audience is not their content, but who they are. By and large, how you see people acting in social media is not how they are in real life. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starise Posted February 2, 2021 Share Posted February 2, 2021 On 1/28/2021 at 3:00 AM, 53mph said: Starise, sorry for my flippancy. I hope you didn't take offense. The truth is I appreciate what you said and can understand where you are coming from. But there comes a time in every middle-aged musician's life when they ask themselves....why can't I seem to capitalize on my successes? To give you some context. I've been making music/gigging/recording etc since I was a teen (over 30 years ago) and have had highs and lows throughout. In my late 20s I had a chance at the big time, but I bottled it and missed that boat. Back then I was briefly A-listed to radio stations having my music played on rotation, but I never managed to capitalize on any of that. I was even courted by XL records and The Verve's management Even now, I have had my music used by Joseph Gordon Levitt's HitRecord in numerous projects (Zappos, TV series etc..) but I never seem able to capitalize on any of it. Do you know how much money I made from radio and TV plays back then....something in the hundreds in total. Then I see people on Bandcamp with 1,000s of subscribers or making $10,000s on Spotify, and I ask myself.....how the ***** did they do that? And why can't I? What I post to the forum here is a very small part of my output - introverted passion projects. Hope this clarifies a bit where I'm coming from. No worries man! I think if we look at it in a more realistic way we will see it has absolutely nothing to do with us and everything to do with sheer accessibility of the masses. That's really where I think we are all at. Just to give you an example I use SC mainly because it makes a great place to store some of my music both good, bad and all in between. I managed to get over 16 thousand plays on one of my tracks which as I look back had some minor timing issues in it. It was nothing back then to get several thousand plays on a track if it was decent. I had a lot of tracks with thousands of plays 5 years ago. Since then I haven't done a whole lot different in anything I've done other than add the odd song or maybe a song with a spiritual theme that might not have appealed to everyone. Still the difference between now and 5 years ago is staggering. I am now lucky to get 200 plays in 6 months for the same or similar material. And this is all FREE. I'm not charging anything. Just about every time I post a track within 5 minutes or less I'll get a response on my SC that someone wants to market my track. I have the tier of SC that would let me market my own tracks if I wanted to start doing that. Not only that but people come around trying to sell me plays??? Seriously you can "buy" plays on SC. So some people with absolutely no talent can look as if they are getting lots of hits on SC. One listen to the track lets any decent musician/mixer know that there shouldn't be THAT much popularity for some of these tracks. It's all a farce. I'll go so far as to say most of music marketing never took talent into consideration. I regularly see good musicians with great mixes getting much less exposure than others who really aren't as capable. Even if you lock your tracks on any music site there are ways they can rip them. Reminds me of a few video/photography sites where photographers are giving away great high resolution pictures and requesting paypal donations in return. I don't see there being any money in it. I started adding up the cost of plugins and instruments in making some of the music I make. In one song I couold easily count at least $1000 worth of plugins excluding the computer, DAW and recording hardware. If you look at it that way most have probably been in the red for a long time. I guess I could cry all day about the way it is and never get anywhere. Just know it mostly is never the musician so I would never take it personally. It has everything to do with the ease that anyone out there can make a track in Garageband or similar and post it up. Essentially burying good acts and musicians under thousands and thousands of other songs. Some not so good. Some excellent and some in between. The musician's life is not an easy one financially, even on a good day for most. I wish I could say there's a way out but I really don't see it right now. I mean, If making a few dollars here and there makes someone feel successful and buys a McDonalds meal, then maybe that's enough for them. Much like online busking we are literally begging for someone to throw some change in our cup. I have had employment elsewhere or I would be in a bad way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigb Posted February 2, 2021 Share Posted February 2, 2021 We had a band ask if they could cover one of our [very few] songs. To me, that was the bee's knees! ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno de Souza Lino Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 As long as I can keep my cardboard box dry and buy noodles to eat, I'll still be making music. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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